(RNS) — This is a sweet story, and frankly, we are overdue for one.

It is about a woman named Irina Barskaya, a 33-year-old hair and makeup artist who works in a salon in Midwood, Brooklyn, and whose story appeared in a recent article in The New York Times.

In November, Ms. Barskaya attended the rally for Israel in Washington, D.C.

Like many of those who gathered there, she held a sign.

The front of the sign said: “Bring them home — but also … ”

On the back of the sign: “Who’s coming home with me? #Makejewishbabies.”

Apparently, the project of meeting and marrying a Jewish man, and having children, had never been a top priority for her.

Oct. 7 was a game changer, mind changer and soul changer for many American Jews. It has prompted a reassessment of the meaning of Jewish commitment; the balance between universal obligation and obligation to the Jewish people; the nature of Jewish politics; even, and especially, the role of the university. 

Those reassessments are all communal and they are all about ideology.

Ms. Barskaya’s reassessment is personal and it is about biology.

As she learned about the horrors that were unfolding on that “Black Sabbath,” Ms. Barskaya not only thought of her family and friends in Israel. 

She also realized she wanted a Jewish partner and she wanted to have Jewish children.

“There’s not a lot of us in the world,” Ms. Barskaya said. “If we don’t continue this path and journey of marrying people and having children within our religion, that could end.”

She was, perhaps unconsciously, echoing the famous words of the Jewish thinker Emil Fackenheim. He believed that the Holocaust had presented the Jews with an additional commandment — a 614th commandment.

His words (quoted by Michael Marmur and David Ellenson, of blessed memory, in “American Jewish Thought Since 1934”):

The authentic Jew of today is forbidden to hand Hitler yet another, posthumous victory … Moreover, it may well be the case that the authentic Jewish agnostic and the authentic Jewish believer are closer today than at any previous time …

We are, first, commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish.

We are commanded, second, to remember in our very guts and bones the martyrs of the Holocaust, lest their memory perish.

We are forbidden, thirdly, to deny or despair of God, however much we may have to contend with him, or belief in him, lest Judaism perish.

We are forbidden, finally, to despair of the world as the place which is to become the kingdom of God, lest we help make it a meaningless place in which God is dead or irrelevant and everything is permitted.

To abandon any of these imperatives, in response to Hitler’s victories at Auschwitz, would be to hand him yet other, posthumous victories …

Consider what happened after the Holocaust. Survivors found themselves in displaced-persons camps in Europe. They met, they fell in love; in contemporary language, they “hooked up.” That produced the biggest Jewish baby boom in history. Many of my friends emerged from that historical moment.

This is why many of my peers wanted to have at least two children — in order to replace themselves, in order not to diminish the number of Jews in the world. 

This is also one reason why ultra-Orthodox families have eight or nine children — yes, “be fruitful and multiply” — but also, 80 years after more than 1.5 million children died in the Holocaust, those Haredi kids are a raised middle finger to Hitler.

Not everyone is on board with the “Jews should have more children” agenda. Among the objections: that “pro-natalism” is sexist; that it’s potentially judgmental of those who cannot or will not raise children; that it’s heteronormative; and that Jewish families need more support from the Jewish community than they are getting.

My teacher Mijal Bitton sums up and responds to those critiques:

There simply is no denying the gendered aspect of fertility. I once expressed my frustration to a friend that although both my husband and I wanted children, I would have to bear them — a fact of biology that does not align with gender equality …

… I feel no ambivalence over the precious value of children. My own upbringing in a family of seven children showed me how much joy family can provide. Our parents treated us as their most sublime legacy and worked hard to make our family time — especially on Shabbat and holidays — replete with moments in which we felt the grandeur of belonging to something greater than our individual selves.

My Jewish values also informed my feelings about being a parent. Our tradition is unequivocal in treasuring the ability of parents to pass their legacy forward. Even a not-so-lachrymose conception of Jewish history is replete with examples of attempts to destroy Jewish continuity. The Pharaohs and Hamans and Queen Isabellas and Hitlers have ensured that Jewish survival — biological continuity endowed with spiritual meaning and covenantal commitment — became a sacred act of Jewish resistance, what Emil Fackenheim called the 614th commandment …

I am sensitive to all of these arguments and tensions. In my own life, and in the life of my family, I have lived them, intimately.

To be clear, raising children is not the only way for Jews to embody hope. Jewish tradition understands there are many ways to move Judaism through the generations — teaching, for example. 

Still, Ms. Barskaya’s quest moved me deeply. It takes a lot of chutzpah to proclaim to the Jews and to the world: “Hey, I am all in with my people. I need someone to be all in with me, as well.”

One final word.

Would you like to guess how many Israeli babies have been born since Oct. 7?

17,629 — at last official count.

Would you like to guess what Israeli parents are naming those children?

Names like Be’eri, Nir and Oz.

Those are the names of the ravaged communities and kibbutzim.

Three girls now have the name “Nova,” a possible reference to the Supernova music festival, where terrorists went on a killing spree.

Now you know why the national anthem of the Jewish people is “Hatikvah.”

It’s all about hope.

(Please enjoy my new book — the first book to outline what a post-Oct. 7 American Judaism will look like — and how we can restore communal obligation to liberal Jewish life: “Tikkun Ha’Am/ Repairing Our People: Israel and the Crisis of Liberal Judaism.”)

(And, also, join the conversation about what it means to be Jewish and human after Oct. 7: “Wisdom Without Walls: An Online Salon for Jewish Ideas.” Learn with the most thoughtful thinkers in the Jewish world.)