By Gila Arnold
At some point in our lives, many have felt they’ve hit a dead end. Like the ancient Israelites, we see a raging sea in front of us and a bloodthirsty army behind us. No way out. Then comes the pivotal moment. How do you respond? Despair. Desperation. Defiance. Refusing to give up. And finally, a decision: I will take my one small step and let Hashem do the rest.
And then the sea splits.
Only Hashem can make a miracle. But it is in that moment before the sea splits, before the miracle happens, when we become true heroes. It seems that the way we react when we’re up against a wall becomes the defining moment of our lives.
I would like to highlight two incredible stories of two women who underwent their own personal fertility journeys with the help of PUAH and came out stronger and better in the end. Each story contains a powerful element of hope, resilience, and determination, the same qualities that helped forge us as a nation.
Please read on.
Tikvah* was in her mid-thirties and still single when a married friend raised the topic of fertility preservation. Egg “freezing” (a cryopreservation technique) was new at the time and had only been recently approved by the FDA, so Tikvah shrugged off the suggestion. But a year later, after yet another dating relationship ended, she decided to do some research into fertility preservation. She attended a PUAH awareness event and subsequently met a doctor at a fertility clinic to learn about the process. The decision to go through with it was agonizing. It wasn’t just the physical discomfort or the significant financial expense. The true hurdle, she realized, was emotional. Freezing her eggs meant admitting to herself that she was stuck in a place she never imagined possible. She was supposed to be married with a family right now. Confronting the reality of being single in her upper-thirties and facing the prospect that she would soon be too old to have children was terrifying.
But the more she learned about the technology, the more she realized that she needed to do this. For her future, for the sake of the family she still longed for. So, she decided to confront her fears and step forward into those unknown waters.
And then the sea split. After so many years and tears, Tikvah met her husband and got married at the age of forty. A year later, when she still wasn’t pregnant, she knew it was time. The eggs she had frozen several years earlier with the hope in her future were now called upon to do their job. The same fertility clinic and PUAH counselors that had supported her through the egg retrieval process were now there to guide her through the IVF process.
And in time, she gave birth to two beautiful daughters thanks to her courageous step back then. Every baby born represents not just the continuity of an individual family, but the continuity of the Jewish people.
In these uncertain times when Jews worldwide find themselves isolated and hated like never before, there is no more powerful statement of our hope and resilience than to bring another Jewish baby into the world. This is why Tikvah finds it particularly meaningful that on October 7th, 2023, she fell pregnant with her second baby.
Miriam* is a ba’alat teshuvah who became religious at the age of thirty. She jokes that she was over the hill in the shidduch scene before she even started. Still, she never expected her single years to drag on as long as they did. When five, eight, and ten years went by and she still hadn’t met her bashert, she began to struggle with feelings of betrayal towards Hashem. She’d given up a successful career in the secular world in order to become frum. Why didn’t He give her the one thing she wanted so much?
It was a dark and painful place to be. She felt cut off not just from the family life she wanted, but from the very Source of life.
Finally, she reached her breaking point. One day, she sat down and asked herself why, if she trusted Hashem in every other aspect of her life, she was having so much trouble trusting that He wanted the best for her in the area of marriage and family too? Digging deep inside herself, she made a startling discovery. The real feeling underlying her anger was a personal sense of failure, that being forty-four-years-old and unmarried meant that she was a failure. Crying, she declared, “I’m worthy and loveable even without marriage! Hashem, I want to be married, but if this is what You want for me, then I’ll do my best to accept it.” She succeeded in entering a place of absolute surrender to Hashem’s Will.
The very next day, she met her husband. Her sea had split.
But her work surrendering to Hashem was not yet over. It would be another six long years until she gave birth to a baby using the egg she had frozen back when she was thirty-seven.
It was through PUAH that she was exposed to the concept of fertility preservation. Like Tikvah, she found it an emotionally difficult process, but it was also liberating. It took away the ticking biological clock pressure in dating. She felt strongly that this was the hishtadlus she needed to do before she was ready to let go and leave everything in Hashem’s hands.
As it turned out, from the few eggs she had frozen, only one viable embryo emerged, but that was all Hashem needed. And recently, at the age of fifty, she gave birth to a beautiful baby.
As we come into Pesach as a nation, we are more aware than ever that as we face our personal and national challenges, we have only Hashem to rely on. May we be zocheh to experience the sea-splitting miracles that bring our ultimate Geulah, just like Miriam and Tikvah experienced their own personal geulahs with the help of PUAH.