Water feature, Louisville, Kentucky
While some Jewish rituals may prove difficult, one veteran of infertility treatments, Naomi Zikmund-Fisher, found one to be especially helpful. As a teacher of b’nai mitzvah classes at Temple Sinai in Squirrel Hill, Pa., she always has encouraged her students not to knock things until they try them. In that same spirit, she decided to try going to the mikvah (ritual bath) and found that it really meant something to her. When each month brought disappointment, she looked at going to the mikvah as a new beginning. “OK, here’s a rebirth, a fresh start; God cares about what’s happening to me. Going to the mikvah was really important to me,” Naomi explains. [Exerpted from Infertility and the Jewish couple]
Finally achieving a long desired pregnancy, the Zikmund-Fisher family faced their next challenge at 6 months along- Naomi’s husband Brian Zikmund’s diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome, a form of pre-leukemia that causes bone marrow to function improperly and fail to produce blood cells, especially, in Brian’s case, clot-making platelets. To save his life, he received a bone marrow transplant from an anonymous donor through the National Marrow Donor Program and underwent a long recovery process that had no guarentee of sucess. Naomi’s Jewish faith helped her through this period. “I had absolute faith that I was not being punished. From Judaism, I’ve learned I have a religious obligation to make the world a better place,” says Naomi.
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