I Let Go of My Breastmilk… and Found Faith

Standing in front of my fridge with my baby on my hip, I stared at the unopened bags of breastmilk, calculating how much I should give away. What if I suddenly stopped producing? What if it became difficult to pump at work and I needed to rely on my freezer stash?

Faith and I have never been the closest friends. Hypervigilance has. Strategy. Skill building. Independence. But faith… I leave that to my little sister, an expert at going with the flow who knows that it will “all work out somehow.” That wasn’t how I typically organized the world. I wanted to give a mom in need at least 100 ounces of breastmilk, but what if I ended up needing it one day? What if I suddenly stopped producing? Giving Hadar formula would not be a crisis, but I had become intimately connected to breastfeeding her and felt idealistic in my quest to make the experience last as long as possible.

I hadn’t been sure how or where to donate my frozen milk. Sitting in a parking lot after a ballet class one Sunday morning,

I contacted a milk bank. Then my friend connected me with someone who was looking for donations for her friend with breast cancer. Because this new mom had begun chemo just after her baby was born, she was seeking donations. Tears pricked my eyes as I read the text. I quickly got in touch with her.

Giving my milk to a family with acute needs felt good; and it felt equally magical that my body could help in such a primal way. After sharing with my husband that I found somewhere to donate it, he enthusiastically said, “donate all of it!” I smiled, but his unabashed enthusiasm triggered my anxiety. Could I depend on my body to keep producing at its current rate? I wanted to operate from a place of abundance, but I felt the weight of primal responsibility on my shoulders, and these considerations as a first-time mom left me with a new kind of vulnerability I hadn’t previously experienced.

As I wrestled with these thoughts, I recalled our ancestors who were commanded by the mitzvah of terumah (an offering to God or a gift to another person) and offered korbanot (sacrifices that bring people closer to the Divine) to God as a symbol of the relationship between humans and the Divine, as found in the 26th chapter of Deutoronomy: “When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land … put it in a basket…go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, “I acknowledge this day before the LORD your God that I have entered the land that the LORD swore to our fathers to assign us.”

The Kohanim accepted agricultural and animal sacrifices, acting as intermediaries between the community and the divine. But what is interesting is that upon arriving to a new land, the people of Israel are immediately commanded to sacrifice their agriculture—even in a place where they are not yet established.

But that is, of course, the point, “Were not the mitzvot given so that man might be refined by them? Do you really think that The Holy One of Blessing cares if an animal is slaughtered by front or by the back of the neck?” Bereishit Rabbah 44, reminds us. “Therefore, mitzvot were only given to make humans better.”

In other words, bringing sacrifices to the Kohanim and, ultimately, to God, affects the giver. Fulfilling the mitzvah might not demonstrate a person’s inherent courage or faith, but going through those actions might cause them to develop courage and faith. In essence, people flex their spiritual muscles by engaging with the commandments, which can lead each person to become a more evolved human.

Additionally, the Kohanim worked on behalf of the com- munity and weren’t able to own their own land or cultivate agriculture, so they depended on the generosity of the commu- nity to bring them closer to God and fulfill their responsibility to engage in the work of the Temple. Today, since we don’t have the Temple, prayer has replaced sacrifice, so we offer our hearts to the Divine through our words. This, too, teaches us about the spiritual underpinnings of sacrifices.

We might think the sacrifices are simply about the items being offered, but they are more than that; spiritually, they’re about offering up ourselves. And this offer of oneself requires a great deal of faith. I realized that the act of giving away my extra milk was probably the closest spiritual experience I could have to understanding what b’nei Yisrael must have experienced during Temple times: giving from a place of abundance even when I could never be certain I would have enough.

I decided to act with faith as my central motivation. I felt the need to verbalize what I was about to do, so I pointed to the bags and explained to my ten-month-old baby that we had worked together to produce this milk, that another baby really needed it, and that we were going to give it to her. When Kate showed up at my door to collect the milk, I dutifully put 16 bags, totalling 160 ounces, in her cooler. As she left to bring it to the mother in need, I thought about the countless episodes of Parenthood and Queer Eye I had watched while pumping in my nursing chair—and the many emails I wrote while pumping at work. These all went with her.

I had put real work into producing those bags of milk, but I didn’t realize at the time that the avodah (spiritual work) of keeping my child alive and nourished would actually become more vibrant when I helped someone else in need.

Becoming a parent had pushed me to find a faith in myself— and others—that I’m not sure I had before. I have transformed my ability to be pushed past my edge, and in that pivoting, I’ve increased my capacity to negotiate predictable and unpredict-able moments alike. I’ve learned that when answers aren’t clear, wisdom will come, the next step will be revealed, and I’ll know what to do.

Closing the cooler, I suddenly understood the declaration scripted in the book of Deutoronomy, proclaiming the roles of God and humans in the process of creation, in which humans are invited to participate. When the Israelites would offer up their first fruits, as part of the choreography and drama of the moment, they would say “I acknowledge this day before the Lord your God that I have entered the land that the LORD swore to our fathers to assign us.”

It might appear that the point of this declaration is for God’s sake, but I think it is actually for the human engaging in terumah, to clearly mark the completion of the mitzvah. The statement is an act of radical gratitude, both acknowledging the constellation of events necessary to arrive at this moment, and paying tribute to the ecosystem that enabled it to happen.

Because the Torah’s commandments inspire us to undergo a spiritual process, we’re enabled to respond when called into something bigger than ourselves. Thanks to Jewish tradition, I pushed my fears aside to reach a place of faith and achieve an attitude of abundance. The character refinement I experienced with this powerful act led to a deeper understanding that I couldn’t predict the future.

And so, our work for the moment done, I turned to Hadar, smiled and made my own declaration: “Hadar! Guess what we just did? We helped another baby! We donated our breastmilk!” She giggled, smiled and nestled her head into my chest. As Kate’s car drove away, I felt grateful for this simple but transcendent lesson of faith.

Leah Kahn is the Vice President of Education of Assembly, a feminist mama of two, a mean vegan cook and a trained mod- ern dancer. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.