PERSON-SHAPED HOLES Childfree Jews, Jewish Ethics, and Communal Continuity

While much Jewish thought, culture, and professional ethics increasingly accommodate a range of gender roles and expressions, sexualities, and family structures, they also remain deeply pronatalist. This overwhelmingly frames reproduction as a core Jewish value and the choice not to bear or raise children as contrary to Jewish values. I argue that Jewish pronatalism masks the true extent to which the whole community must support the care and formation of all its generations. Through a counter-reading of a passage from the Babylonian Talmud in which three sages neglect their wives and children in various ways that allow a careful reader to notice "person-shaped holes"-narrative features whose presence implies various people's nonparental labor-I argue that multiple people in multiple roles within a community make it possible to sustain its continuity in a robust and all-encompassing way.