Dr. Baruch Brooks, recently retired halachic supervisor and embryologist at Shaare Zedek Hospital’s IVF unit, and scientific director of Zir Chemed, is the first address for fertility issues in the Orthodox world. A scientist and Torah scholar, he has merited to use his wisdom in Torah and science to bring the joy of a child’s laugh into the silent lives of hundreds of couples.
Most people sleep through the night once their kids do but Dr. Baruch Brooks still wakes up for babies — the unborn ones the ones he helps bring to life.
Dr. Brooks — who sees himself as a shaliach an extension of the father-mother-G-d triangle needed to create a baby — has spent the last two decades as embryologist and halachic supervisor atShaareZedekHospital’s IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinic. By night he is the scientific director of Zir Chemed which offers counseling and medical services within a halachic framework to religious couples faced with infertility.
It wasn’t easy to reach the decision to leave his position at Shaare Zedek and take early retirement but maybe now at least he’ll be able to get the sleep he’s been deprived of for years. Dr. Brooks has left his halachically run lab in good hands and now spends his mornings in kollel. He still counsels couples at night fusing on his vast knowledge of Torah with that of the complex and often confusing dimension of infertility. “I was longing to get back to serious learning but knew I still needed to be involved with fertility issues. Bringing babies into the world has become an essential part of my life.”
Here in the unpretentious dining room of his apartment in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul neighborhood many couples have sat cried and hoped as he professionally but tenderly led them through the maze of options and treatments any veneer of English reserve vanishing into warm fatherly concern. His days in the laboratory might be over but he’s still the first address when it comes to helping couples become parents.
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