The brit milah of my second grandson took place on Shabbat, two days after what was arguably the grimmest day of the past 500-plus days since October 7, 2023, with the unbearable return of the brutalized Bibas boys.
Here I was, looking at my glowing daughter-in-law with her two beautiful baby boys – a nearly two-year-old and a newborn – and I couldn’t help but feel how close the personal intertwined with the national.
Shiri Bibas, the forevermore archetypal mother bear, protector of her redheaded cubs, will be the picture in my mind of motherhood going forward.
This week marked the second intersection in my life with the tragic Bibas family. The first was at Nir Oz in December 2023, when on a visit to Israel, my husband and I went down to the Gaza border area to pick oranges after the foreign fruit pickers had returned to their countries due to the war.
We actually picked in the Nir Oz groves of Shiri’s sister, Dana Silberman Sitton, where we met Shiri’s brother-in-law, Elad Sitton.
His parents-in-law having been murdered, and his sister-in-law’s entire family having been kidnapped, he was doing his best to maintain his sanity while not letting his business completely evaporate.
This week the family – and the nation that has been praying for them – finally gets some closure with a burial back in Israel, but it is obviously not a closure that brings any sort of peace, certainly not in this world.
What it does feel like is some kind of rock bottom of evil, if that’s even possible after all the tortured faces we’ve seen and horror stories we’ve heard come out from that Gazan Hades, populated by millions of supporters, if not outright participants in evil.
Childbirth seems even more miraculous by comparison
Amid this national tragedy, the birth of children, like my own grandson, seems almost miraculous – life-affirming in the face of such overwhelming loss. Indeed, in light of this tragic backdrop of October 7 and its aftermath, it is truly striking that Israel has experienced a “wartime baby boom,” defying rational expectations, according to an article in Haaretz.
In fact, about 181,000 babies were born in 2024, a 10% increase from the same period in 2023. A 10% increase in births in the year following the greatest single calamity on the Jewish people since the Shoah? How is that possible?
Moreover, a 2024 Times of Israel article highlighted the fact that “Israel’s birth rate remains the highest among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development by far, at 2.9 children per woman.” It added that Israel is the OECD’s “only member state reproducing above replacement rate.”
Interestingly, this high rate of reproduction is prevalent not only among the more religious – where it is expected – “but even among the secular population it is higher than in any other OECD country.” In fact, the birth rate in Israel is nearly double that of its next two competitors, Mexico and France.
These birth numbers are truly remarkable. After the tragedy that befell the nation of Israel on October 7, one would expect a negative birth rate, due to somber predictions of uncertainty for the future. Indeed, in the rest of the developed world, birth rates are down due to economic worries but hardly existential ones.
Back in Houston, I had many privileged students from China whose parents chose to have one child even after the one-child policy was abandoned.
The students explained that their parents didn’t have more children because they wouldn’t have the means to support them in the way that would make the children most successful: the right schools, the best lessons, the private tutors, the most opportunities.
In Israel, by contrast, where survival has always been tied to the strength of community and continuity, the desire to create life even amidst tragedy is deeply ingrained. Here, every child born is not just an individual but a symbol of resilience and defiance against those who seek to break the spirit of the nation.
The fact that roughly 180,000 children were born in Israel itself contains a message – 10,000 times chai. Our enemies revel in death; we engage in 10,000 times life.
The writer is a recent new immigrant from Houston, Texas. Formerly a professor of English as a second language to international students at Houston Community College and University of Houston, she is currently a lecturer of English at Bar-Ilan University and Ruppin Academic College.