Children Are Our Future and They Are The Guarantee of our Eternity

A Childless Society
By Rabbi Berel Wein
Jerusalem

One of the many consequences, perhaps an unintended one of the current progressive, leftist, socialist societies that comprise Europe and other places on the globe, and is visibly present in American society as well, is that of the disappearance of the importance of having children.

Europe generally is suffering from a decline in its indigenous population and of its growth in terms of population is because of mass migration from the Middle East and Africa. Cloaked in the piety of human compassion for refugees and escapees from failed nations, there is a strong economic reason as to why Europe has become a place of open borders and mass migration. Simply put, since the population of its countries no longer produces children in numbers sufficient to balance the death rate, these countries need to import people to perform the jobs and services necessary for the comfort and functioning of their societies and economies.

There are today in Europe hundreds of thousands, if not even millions, of Poles, Romanians and other previously unwanted European minorities who are the backbone of the lower-class working society across western and central Europe as well as in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The population of countries such as Sweden is shrinking because in that most progressive of countries, that the current culture of that society is not to have children. This is a natural outgrowth of the decades long decline in marriage and in stable family life and structure. Basically, it is a culture based upon eating, drinking and being merry, for life as no real purpose or eternal structure.

There are other countries in the world outside of Europe that also face this existential threat to the continuance of their national culture. The population in Japan has been declining over the past few decades, but unlike Sweden, Japan still is not importing a foreign population to keep itself going. The birth rate in Japan is well below the 2.2 threshold necessary to keep the population stable, if not growing. The latest statistics show that its birth rate is only 1.1. This means that the decline in Japanese productivity which has taken place over the past few decades, is directly related to the fact that there are less people because less children and less people require less goods and services. The fact that the younger population is so small relative to the general population, creates an aged and dependent section of society that is no longer productive, and which requires the consumption of enormous economic and personal services.

This is the dirty secret that economists and diplomats are aware of regarding Japan, but it is not politically correct or socially acceptable to speak about having children and larger families. We all know that children are not easy to raise, consume most of the time and efforts of their parents and generally make noise when we are trying to take an afternoon nap. All of this, generally, speaking and in exquisite detail, helps explain why the current societies of the West, which are so self-centered and narcissistic, are creating a childless society.

Here in Israel, thank God, there is a very healthy birthrate of over 3.2 in the general population. In the Orthodox world, which comprises a substantial bulk of Israeli society and population, the rate is much higher. Jewish life in Judaism itself always has valued the importance of children and families for the betterment of society and the continuance of the Jewish people, its value system and way of life.

In the 19th century in Eastern Europe there was an explosion of Jewish population that brought the numbers of Jews living in Europe before the Second World War, to well over 11 million Jews. The war itself cut that number by more than half, and since then, as a result of Jewish emigration, but mainly because of assimilation and intermarriage, European Jewry today is quite small and almost nonexistent in influence and gravitas. The looming tragedy in the Jewish world is that Jewish society in the United States is not far behind in following this path of extinction. American Jews get married later in life, if at all, and again, excluding the Orthodox population, no longer are reproducing at a rate that can maintain the current Jewish population, small as it already is. It is almost banal to have to say that children are our future and that they are the guarantee to our eternity. But that certainly is the overriding truth.