Her eyes twinkling behind oval glasses, author Phoebe Potts led seven of us into the kitchen of the education center at a suburban Boston community mikveh. She lit a piece of paper on fire in the sink, and then urged us one at a time to toss our slips of paper into the flame. On…
It’s no secret that Israel is a fabulous country to live in if you happen to be struggling with infertility. Not only is health care considered a right, not a privilege, but so is childbearing. The universal government-funded health care, package covers fertility treatments for women until they produce two children. Israeli women take full…
Dear Bintel Brief: Six months ago, my husband and I began trying to conceive our first child. Since we’re both young and healthy, and had no reason to think we’d encounter any problems getting pregnant, we told close friends and family that we were “trying.” But making a baby has proved harder than expected, and…
For many couples, keeping the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” doesn’t come easy. The good news is that, today, those who have trouble becoming pregnant have options that Abraham and Sarah (the Bible’s most famous reproductively challenged couple) never did; the bad news is that halacha or Jewish law — with its set of…
Israeli sperm is declining in quality. Fast. Research at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Hospital found that the sperm-cell concentration among sperm donated in Israel declined by 40% between 2004 and 2008. In the last decade, the concentration of sperm among donors has declined from 106 million cells per cubic centimeter on average to an average of…
Retail is sluggish; real estate prices are down; but the market for Jewish eggs seems not to be suffering — even though it costs the couples receiving them between $40,000 and $50,000. In New York, payment to the women who “donate” their eggs is between $5,000–$8,000; the rest of the money goes to pay medical…
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