In honor of Pride Month, the critical contribution of our LGBTQIA+ rabbinic and Jewish community, and the 35th anniversary of the CCAR Report on Homosexuality in the Rabbinate, the CCAR is honored to share the stories of the experiences of LGBTQIA+ Reform rabbis.
During my first contract negotiations, my congregation was in new territory, never having hired a woman as clergy. I argued for maternity leave. In the end, they gave me about four weeks of leave only in the event that I personally gave birth. There was something curiously odd about how my gender failed to align with their ideas about what parenting could or should mean.
In the end, my partner and I had a remarkable pregnancy story. We had chosen an anonymous donor, and decided my partner would try to get pregnant first. We both wanted the chance, but it seemed like she might have less time to work with. She tried for many months and had a few miscarriages. We took a hard look at our situation, and realized that we had two wombs in “their” mid-thirties.
We wanted to maximize the odds that we would have a child. So our plan was to go back and forth until we had a viable pregnancy. The IVF team assured us that we would be very unlikely to BOTH have pregnancies that “took.”
Well, in later years, folks would ask us if we planned it. We learned that she was pregnant, and then a week later, we learned that I was pregnant. My response is always, “Do you know anything about fertility?” How on earth would someone plan for two simultaneous pregnancies? It gave new meaning to the oft-uttered phrase, “We are pregnant.”
When we brought our new little ones to shul for a formal welcome, my partner and I each held one of our babies as we schmoozed at a reception. A woman nearby us complained to a friend that I should not be carrying the child that my partner birthed, and vice-versa (as we were at the time), because it confused people.
I had no words in that moment for how one might respond.
Rabbi Shoshanah Tornberg, RJE was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in 2006. She serves Congregation Keneseth Israel in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
