Holy Pregnancies

(Translated from the books Kedushat Yeladim and Omek HaLev (Hebrew) edited by Rabbi Yachad Witt.)

Here are some wonderful, spine-tingling, goose-bump raising sayings from the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z”l. You can read these teachings over quickly, or you can close your eyes after each one and savor it for a long time. That’s because all of Reb Shlomo’s teachings are inspiring on a simple level, and much deeper and sweeter if you take some time to think about them. For more information on Rabbi Carlebach, click here: http://www.rebshlomo.org/

Reb Shlomo taught:

What do children learn in their mothers’ bellies for nine months? They learn why their souls need to come down to this world right now. They learn what their role will be in the world. My rabbi cannot teach me this, and no holy book in the world can answer this question This is the torah of the nine months.

We pray so much that we should become parents before our babies are born- we really pray with all our hearts. But now that we have already received them from Heaven, we do not pray so much. The truth is that after children are born, we really need to pray for them all the time as well.

The woman is the one who brings a child to the world. Men have only a small part in creating a baby. Pregnancy and birth are too deep for us men. They are too high for us- that’s holiness that we are not able to reach. That is the holy secret that the Creator of the Universe passed on only to women so that they can be holy mothers.

Everyone knows that Elijah the Prophet comes to the circumcision of every Jewish boy, but when does he come to every girl? Under the wedding canopy, of course. And why does Elijah wait until the wedding? Because the truth is that the most important thing for Jewish women is to bring more holy souls into the world, and for that reason Elijah waits to come to their weddings and bless every Jewish woman that she will have the strength to build a Jewish home, and to be a holy mother to her children.

Before a child is born, he asks the Holy One, “Why do I need to be created?” And the Holy One answers him, “The world of souls is spiritual and holy but the physical world is the Holy of Holies.”

Why do children close their eyes when they are born? They want to know how much their parents love them even when they don’t see them.

When children are born, they know that their parents love them so much, and that they want to give their children everything even when the children don’t know about it. This is the reason babies close their eyes during the birth.