Towards Healing the Pain of Infertility: A Book Review Adina Kalet Families who experience loss during pregnancy, or who struggle with infertility, often suffer in isolation. The book reviewed below recasts the issue of infertility, helping to reframe the struggle in a Jewish light and thus offer some healing. Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope: A Jewish Spiritual Companion for Infertility and Pregnancy Loss, by Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin. Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999. My attention was immediately captured when in the opening paragraphs of Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope Rabbi Cardin speaks directly to my own experience of five years of infertility, writing, "My friends wondered how I could go on. I wondered how could I give up. But I needed to find solace and strength in my sorrow." Exhausted from two years of struggle to have a second baby, I sought the help of rabbi friend, and my sister-in-law, a cantor. Together we searched the available Jewish sources to create a way for me to honor my spiritual needs during a process that was becoming increasingly technical and psychologically challenging. There was so little to go on. And while we were able to create a deeply meaningful ritual for us to perform prior to my subsequent In Vitro Fertilizations we could only do so by recasting and rewriting what we found to fit the occasion. I wish I had had this book at the time. It is a unique spiritually practical contribution to modern Jewish life. The structure of this book clearly reflects Nina Cardin's personal knowledge of the material as well as her professional experience with comforting and advising those who are suffering. The brief, eloquent introductions to each chapter provide simultaneously religious, historical, and deeply personal context for the collection of prayers, rituals, poetry, and stories contained within. Of special note is the piece by Deborah Nussbaum Cohen, describing her recovery from the loss of a pregnancy, in which she muses about not feeling ready to make her suffering public and instead creates a very personal ritual out of baking challah. Contained in this slim volume is something for everyone touched by infertility and it therefore can be used in many ways. Now that my own passage through the infertility experience is over, I especially appreciate the clear, gentle, and jargon-free way she contains the fundamentally joyful messages of this book. Somehow she avoids sounding patronizing, when she unabashedly guides the suffering couple to (and how to) honor the romantic and physical love in their marriage. Similarly she reminds us that in our tradition "child-free" women have played mothering roles of great importance. She says "Eve is the one who populated the world. Deborah is the one who built a nation. Both are ways of mothering." When I was in the throes of infertility, I would have been grateful to have been able to have this book, as it would have allowed me to gravitate to the empathic, unapologetic way this book honors the spiritual pain and provides us with things to say and do to make personal meaning of the infertility experience and connect us with our tradition. Dr. Adina Kalet, M.D. M.D.H., is Director of Medical Education, Division of Primary Care in the Department of Medicine of New York University School of Medicine, Bellevue Hospital Center. She and her husband recently adopted a beautiful baby girl.
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