Have you heard about the single, gay rabbi & his newborn twins
Rabbi Joel Alter is a happy man — a new father to two girls, twins born on February 7th. But while he is delighted with his new daughters, Ayelet Ori and Annael Dora, he is also scared. Of the future, and of being a single father for the first time, aged 49.
Brittany, the surrogate, became pregnant pretty much straight away, but had a miscarriage. However, at the end of June last year, she found out she was pregnant again, this time with twin girls.
“I feel completely petrified, financially, emotionally, physically, morally,” he says. “I know that I will manage it, I just don’t quite see how yet.
“It’s incredibly sweet to embrace these little babies, my babies,” he says. “I’ve wanted this for so long and here I am, saying the words ‘my daughters’ in conversation as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.”
Rabbi Alter is director of admissions for the rabbinical and cantorial schools at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York.