Young couples fall in love and plan for marriage, eventually. Along the way, they talk about being parents. Typically, they do imagine themselves as parents. Their meetings with the rabbi to prepare for the wedding and married life includes talk about their roles as parents and expectations for their children. Atypically, they do not imagine themselves as parents. Not unlike the 1960s and 1970s, some couples see the world today as horribly unready for children. It’s too broken, too evil, and too undeserving of children. They might not know that the only reason a rabbi, who would otherwise accept the couple for marriage preparation, would refuse to officiate is their unwillingness to be parents of children in the future. Why not?

The wedding canopy, the “chuppah,” is a symbol of their Jewish home. And in that home, a couple that is committed to the Jewish future is committed to the mitzvah, “p’ru ur’vu,” to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). We know that not every couple who wants to have children can have children easily. Thankfully, Judaism celebrates adoption, IVF, surrogate parenting, and other means of bearing Jewish children.

Years ago, in another congregation, a senior citizen who had no children of his own told me that he regretted not having children. But I reminded him that a scholarship that he endowed to support the Jewish education of highly intelligent children in the religious school created many scholars in his name. Further, I told him that Talmud explains that one who teaches another person’s child Torah and its teachings is as if he were the child’s parent. In fact, I told him, he had hundreds of children. When he took in what I said, he shed tears of utter joy.

Some young couples are challenged to see that while the world is broken today, and seemingly undeserving of children, we are duty-bound and commanded to bear children and rear them to be sources of future blessings, discoveries, loves, and dreams. If we wish for peace we must also work for peace, and if we wish for a better world then we have to build that world. But we can’t do all the work that needs to be done, and we can’t imagine ever finishing it (Pirkei Avot 2:16). So we do our part in our lifetime and also bring new life—born with our hope, love, and peace—for a future we may not live to see but cannot fail to provide for through our children’s visions (Joel 3:1).

A couple who is steadfast about not having children is more confident about the future than they should be. It’s a future they cannot know for certain. Further, if that future about which they are so confident is unworthy, then why are they making any difference in it now? For what future are they working, and for whose children are they making a difference, if not for their own or for the Jewish people’s? We cannot know the future well enough to deny ourselves God’s joyful promise to every wedding couple. In the last blessing of the “Sheva Berachot,” the seven blessings at a wedding, we read, “Praised are You, Eternal One, who causes the bride and the groom (wedded partners) to rejoice, together!” It’s a euphemism for the privilege to engage in lovemaking for the sake of wedded joy and the hope for children in their home.

When my married daughter proudly told me that she and her husband were “talking about starting a family,” I replied (lovingly and honestly), “That’s not how it happens.” Today, my grandson is a source of unending joy to his parents, and, needless to say, to his grandparents. In a world that we all agree is broken, complicated, and unworthy of many people’s deeds, it is still a world that is worthy of our greatest hopes, dreams, loves, and visions reflected in our children. Let the chuppah, the wedding canopy, continue to be a symbol of the sturdy abode where God’s blessings are sources of beautiful and brilliant children, in a future we must believe will be better, if not for us, then for them.

L’Shalom,