Infertility Time and Crip Time: Temporality and Disability from the Talmud to Modern Jewish Thought

This paper offers an analysis of “infertility time,” arguing that infertility’s distinctive forms of temporality shares key features with “crip time.” While recent scholarship in Jewish thought has devoted significant attention to the ethical significance of maternal experience, it has devoted much less attention to infertility. The paper thus argues that taking account of “infertility time” changes the way that experiences of childbearing and childrearing ought to be analyzed and used philosophically. To do this, the paper first analyzes the ways that “infertility time” appears in rabbinic texts, including the Bavli’s discussion of the Mishnah’s ruling that couples who do not have children after ten years together should divorce (B. Yevamot 62a-b). The paper then uses this analysis to re-read recent work in modern Jewish thought on maternal experience.