Fertility problems? Eat figs, garlic, and warm eggs

Rabbi Lazer Brody, our friendly neighbourhood Breslov nut, whose dealings we’ve covered before here on the Xyre, is at it again. An obviously desperate woman, who despite being “healthy and fertile” has not been able to conceive a child with her husband in eight years of attempting. They’ve tried everything—even getting their mezuzot and ketubah checked—to no avail. What’s to be done?

Fortunately, Lazer has several helpful suggestions: First, make sure to pray to God. It helps if you’re both separate when you do this—and ideally, you should abandon him in the desert for this purpose:

You may find this odd, but have you and your husband ever asked Hashem for a baby? If you were here, I’d take your husband out to the desert, give him a canteen of water, and leave him on a hilltop for an hour to yell his heart out to Hashem. Since you’re not here, go with your husband to a deserted stretch of beach on Long Island Sound, take separate directions, and cry your eyes out, praying in your own words - in English - and beg Hashem for what you want. Hanna, the prophet Samuel’s mother, did the same thing. So did Isaac and Rebecca. Repeat this as much as possible.

They did it in English? Seems improbable, but whatever. Seriously, though, I’ve heard that prayer does terrific things. Really. Taking time to yell your heart out to an ancient sky-god—time that you could be spending doing things more likely to produce a child, like having sex or visiting a fertility clinic—is really a worthwhile investment.

Try to eat as naturally as possible. Your husband should eat figs, garlic, and warm eggs. You both should eat red or blue grapes as well.

Red or blue grapes? You mean we can’t have both, even if we want them? And no green or yellow grapes? Shit, this regimen simply couldn’t work for me—personally, I can’t get off unless I’ve had plenty of grapes of all different types beforehand. Also, figs, garlic, and warm eggs? Really? I know that the fig is often a traditional fertility symbol, especially in Mediterranean cultures, and eggs too, of course, but garlic? At least they’re ensuring that their child won’t be a vampire. And what the heck does he mean by “warm” eggs? Like, raw eggs that you left out overnight to raise to room temperature? Or eggs that you warmed by cooking, say, scrambling or making an omelette? (Possibly a garlic/fig/grape omelette?) The former seems unhealthy and unhygenic, and the latter seems, well, not as “natural” as Lazer seems to be going for.

If you’re not pregnant within the next 60 days after taking the above advice, don’t despair: Rebbe Nachman of Breslev writes that living in Israel is conducive to childbearing and to peace in the home. I would therefore suggest that you seriously consider moving to Israel. If that’s out of the question, I would suggest two alternatives - one, give regular charity to a worthy cause in Israel, and that way you are in effect a shareholder in Israel, and second, fill your house with Torah-oriented books printed in Israel.

Because if you’ve waited this long, you can wait another 60 days, but if you still aren’t successful, you can move to Israel! Or at least, buy lots of Israeli Jewish schwag. It doesn’t matter if you read these books or learn anything from them; the important thing is that you buy them. Becoming a “shareholder in Israel”—which essentially means spending money that you could be spending on medical assistance—is absolutely guaranteed to make your husband’s little swimmers faster and stronger and your own reproductive organs healthier and more productive.

And lest the commercialism and “buy my book” attitude that makes Lazer as entertaining as he truly is be forgotten, despair not—he doesn’t disappoint:

Another good ploy that has helped loads of people is by spreading emuna CDs all over the place. Either way, with Hashem’s loving grace, I pray that you’ll be parents within the next 12 months.

If all the above things—trips to the desert, eating unusual foods, and giving half your income to Israel—don’t dehydrate or bankrupt you or give you salmonella, you still have an ace in the hole: buying my CDs! At least Lazer has the grace (or is it a Freudian slip?) to note that this is, at its base, a “ploy”. Or something. But at any rate, he does seem to recognize that all this might not work: “Either way … I pray that you’ll be parents within the next 12 months” is not his usual ringing, clarion guarantee of success.

The truth of the matter is that fertility problems are an extremely complicated and not completely understood area of modern medicine. But none of what Lazer Brody suggests will really do anything to help on the medical end. As per usual, he does a terrible disservice to the people involved by dispensing this kind of quack “advice”. A real shame too, because he is in a position of being able to give genuinely helpful advice that might actually lead to help in solving this couple’s fertility problems. Eating warm eggs isn’t going to do that.