Posts

Showing posts from February, 2015

Pater: One Man's Meditation on Childlessness and Fatherlessness in Jewish Civilization

Image
May 2015 Rosh Chodesh I Dear Reader, Welcome to my new website. In the coming months my book on what it means to be a childless Jewish man is scheduled to be published by Toby Press. From the  catalogue : Part memoir and part reportage, journalist Elliot Jager tackles what has until now been an almost taboo subject: what it feels like to be a childless Jewish man. After a 30-year estrangement from his hassidic father, a halting recon ciliation is overshadowed by "the Pater's" desire that Jager father a child of his own. The Pater, as Jager calls the father who abandoned him as a child on the Lower East Side, now implores his son to visit the graves of holy men and living hassidic masters to seek Divine intervention that will end his childlessness. Meantime, as Jager grapples with the stunningly negative attitudes Judaism maintains toward childless men, he talks to other men who do not have children—single and married, gay and straight—to share their