About this episode

Dr. Aimee Baron interviews Rabbi Daniel Fellman about his personal experiences with loss and fertility challenges while serving as a religious leader.

In this episode, Dr. Baron sits down with Rabbi Daniel Fellman, Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, to discuss his deeply personal experience with loss and fertility challenges. Recorded live in Pittsburgh, this raw and honest conversation explores the unique intersection of communal religious leadership and private grief. Rabbi Fellman shares the story of his and his wife Melissa's fertility journey, navigating a polycystic ovarian syndrome diagnosis, and the heartbreaking loss of one of their fraternal twins at 22 weeks. He describes the painful medical and halakhic choices they faced, the profound "black hole" in Jewish law regarding early infant loss, and how they ultimately managed to save their surviving son, Zach, through an emergency cervical cerclage. The conversation explores the heavy burden of compartmentalizing personal trauma while serving a congregation through their own seasons of grief and joy. Rabbi Fellman opens up about his private moments of wrestling and "rebelling" against God, his family's subsequent experiences with a second trimester miscarriage and raising a child with special needs, and how these collective scars have shaped his life. If you…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Aimee Baron

Guest: Rabbi Daniel Fellman

Topics covered

• loss
• fertility challenges
• grief
• Jewish law
• parenting
• faith

Keywords

• fertility journey
• polycystic ovarian syndrome
• infant loss
• Jewish law
• miscarriage
• special needs

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Temple Sinai

Places: Pittsburgh

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