Our Child's Birth Was Miraculous
When my wife went into labor ten weeks early, our joy turned to terror. The doctors gave our child a zero chance of survival. The umbilical cord was around its neck, the lungs weren't developed, and the baby was upside down.
We prayed fervently to God. Against all odds, our child survived. The surgeons called him a “miracle baby.”
Today, that baby is a man, a husband, a father, and a grandfather.
The Torah portion, Tazria, speaks about the gratitude we owe God after childbirth.
Having witnessed a real miracle, I feel compelled to address the so-called "miracle" used by missionaries who spend millions to target our people for conversion by claiming that Isaiah 7:14 predicts a miraculous virgin birth.
However, Christian Bibles mistranslate the Hebrew word Almah as “virgin” when it means a “young woman” who may or may not be a virgin.
Secondly, the grammar and context of Isaiah chapters 7 and 8 prove that Isaiah was speaking about his pregnant wife who would give birth to a baby centuries before Jesus.
The birth of Isaiah’s son would be a sign to Judean King Ahaz that invading armies would be defeated before the child grew to an age of basic understanding.
The baby was named Immanuel, meaning “God is with us,” because the victory was due to God’s support of the Jewish nation and not that a baby was God in the flesh, as missionaries falsely claim.
When biblical arguments fail, some missionaries resort to other deceptive tactics. Some claim that the rabbinic scholar Moshe haDarshan said the Messiah would have “no father.”
In truth, Moshe haDarshan explicitly wrote that the Messiah will descend from a human father from the tribe of Judah. When he used the term “fatherless,” he was quoting a Midrash about being an orphan, like Queen Esther, whose parents had died.
These missionary arguments are misleading and false, exemplifying the saying “a text out of context is a pretext.”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz
→ Get my new book → Know What to Answer - When Someone Challenges Your Faith. Available on Amazon at: https://a.co/d/crv9E0L
© 2026 Jews for Judaism
P.O. Box 351235, Los Angeles, CA 90035 • 310-556-3344
www.jewsforjudaism.org/donate • info@JewsforJudaism.org • www.SMARTalks.com