The Blogs: Starting with Words - In Support of IWSTHAB | Lisa Gelber

July 17, 2026
3 Av 5786This shabbat we open the book of words. Words tell our story and help us remember. “Then all of you came to me and said, ‘Let us send agents ahead to reconnoiter the land for us and bring back word on the route we shall follow and the cities we shall come to” (Deut.1:22). This represents a shift in direction from the narrative offered in the book of Numbers. There God instructs Moses to send leaders representing the ancestral tribes to scout out the land. The book of the wilderness demands a different telling of the story than the book of remembering, retelling, and rewording.

The words we choose to weave our narratives create our future. They emerge from our experiences and illuminate our sacred relationships. We speak the lives we seek to live into existence. Like the holy one, we create the world with our words. Just as we take up a pen to write the stories of our lives, so too do we breathe our ongoing narratives into existence through telling and retelling. Sometimes our stories evoke humor. Sometimes they summon joy. Sometimes the truth of our story sits in deep and layered pain. When we meet pain points in our story, we name what hurts. We share our pain. That is what it means for a personal story to live alongside and within a communal story. Sometimes, the way in which we tell our story lands uncomfortably on the ears of another. When your story reflects the pain of the wilderness, it might not resonate so easily with someone else’s recollection and retelling.

This cognitive dissonance is part of what it means to live as a human in community. It is a sacred seed whose spindly roots undergird a commitment to belonging. We cannot always see the web expanding to hold us. We do not always hear the words we need to root and sustain us. Because sometimes our words and our story break the heart of another and ourselves. When those words land, they generate worlds of worth, compassion, connection and belonging.

I’m honored to serve as an ambassador for this year’s campaign to support I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A BABY, a sanctuary for those traveling through the wilderness of the fertility journey. Did you know 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss. 1 in 6 people experience infertility. I experienced both – loss and infertility. I’m a firstborn overachiever. When I committed to becoming a mother on my own, I imagined I needed a doctor, a sperm donor, and some mazal. I was in good health and good spirit. I connected with an amazing medical team. Friends cheered me on. As the Yiddish proverb goes, (wo)man plans and god laughs. Boy, did god laugh in the face of my plans, with the temperament of the matriarch Sarah who could not believe she could conceive. In my case, it was the opposite. I appeared a perfectly capable and strong willed human set on becoming a mother. It turned out my body was not designed to host an embryo that would nestle into a womb and grow into a human that entered into the world to fulfill its purpose. I could not, ever, never, sustain a pregnancy. I could have been a specimen for a medical student’s research project. God created me broken in that realm.

At the time, I thought of writing a movie script about the trials and tribulations of my path to becoming a mother. Then I said I would write a book. But the pain was too vast and unforgiving. I lived outside of my body. It was a strange and lonely place to be. I yearned for a place to belong. If only I could find a similar community of humans wandering in their own wilderness. If only I had a welcome space to tell and retell the stories of odd – impractical and ridiculous – words people (even doctors) shared with good intention. If only there were podcasts and resources and support to affirm the path and the pain. If only I could say I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A BABY and be heard with love, care and compassion. If only IWSTHAB existed then.

My child – adopted – is now closer to 17 than 16. In these many years, hard work, commitment, pain and love birthed IWSTHAB. Yasher Koach to its leader and advisors. This campaign marks the 7th year of IWSTHAB. It is truly a place that generates worlds of worth, compassion, connection and belonging. IWSTHAB catalyzes possibility, honoring each individual world entering its sacred space to build partnership through belonging.

Words create worlds. Words create the future. Perhaps you, or your neighbor, your teacher, or taxi driver, your sister, or aunt, or librarian is struggling to tell the story of their fertility journey. Maybe they yearn to reframe their landscape. Your gift to IWSTHAB will speak out and expand the reach of belonging for so many people striving to build their family. I invite you to join me and give here https://causematch.com/iwsthab26/rabbi-lisa-gelber

May the one who makes peace in the high places embrace our stories and bless us with peace – within us, around us, and among us. May we cultivate and nourish a sense of belonging in those who need it most without judgement, without envy, only with love.

@RabbiLisaGelber
July 17, 2026/3 Av 5786