What is it like to be childless as a Jew, when the very first Jewish commandment is to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28) and scripture likens the childless to the dead? What is it like to be childless in Israel, a country that values children above all, as a supreme value? These are just some of the questions Elliot Jager addresses in a brave new book, The Pater: My Father, My Judaism, My Childlessness.
Jager frames these questions from his perspective as having been abandoned as a young child by his father--the "Pater" as Jager has come to call him in his mind. What does it mean to be a father, he ponders. Was he robbed of a chance to prove himself a better man, a better father? Would he have been a better parent than his own father?
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