After Israel’s fall elections, the new Knesset will take up legislation that would allow soldiers to become parents after their deaths through the posthumous extraction of sperm. Shlomo Brody analyzes the ongoing halakhic debate about the permissibility of the practice:

One of the impetuses for facilitating such a procedure is to allow the deceased to leave behind descendants to preserve his legacy. In biblical law, when a married man dies without any progeny, a “levirate marriage” is arranged between his brother and widow. “The first child that she bears shall be accounted to the dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out in Israel,” the Bible declares (Deuteronomy 25:6). [This practice has] largely been defunct for many centuries. Nonetheless, some Israeli jurists and rabbis view posthumous sperm implantation as a modern-day [application] of this biblical value.

The most prominent supporter of this line of thought was [the late Israeli halakhic authority] Rabbi Zalman Nehemia Goldberg, who argued that such a procedure is permissible if the deceased gave explicit permission or “we can safely assume that he would have desired this.” While it may be sometimes difficult to know the desires of the deceased, one must take into account the “natural human desire” to leave a legacy. Goldberg further argued that the default perspective of Jewish law is to permit an action unless it violates some clear prohibition.

Others, like Rabbi Yigal Shafran, worry that in cases when sperm was not already frozen in one’s lifetime, the procedure to retrieve it violates the biblical prohibitions of desecrating a corpse or gaining illicit benefit from it.

[A] range of figures, including Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Dov Lior, and Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, . . . offered a more fundamental moral objection. While they are deeply sympathetic to the bereaved widow or parents, they contend that it is immoral to bring a child into the world knowing that he or she will not have a biological father. However noble the intentions, it is not in the interest of the child or broader society to allow such a phenomenon.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.