How does it feel to have been pregnant or breastfeeding for most of your married life? This is one among many questions posed frankly in BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY, which exposes the consequences of the biblical commandment—the mother of all Mitzvot—upon ultra-orthodox Jewish women, for whom life is a continuing cycle of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and nurturing.

The film profiles four ultra-orthodox women, in the U.S. and Israel, including Miriam, the mother of 16 children in Brooklyn, New York; Emunah, mother of 14 in Jerusalem; Yaffa, mother of 5 in Kfar Chabad; and Yentl, mother of 4 in Meah Shearim. BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY documents the women's daily routines of cooking, shopping, housework and child care, with the older children assigned chores to help their overburdened mothers.

In interviews, each of the women discuss their lives, focusing on their belief in the traditional and distinctive roles for women and men as dictated by Jewish religion—in particular such matters as education, work outside the home, and the proper raising of children—as well as on the condition of perpetual motherhood as the "natural" and desirable state of being for women.

Amongst this group of women who rarely express self-doubt, and for whom asking one's doctor for an IUD would constitute an act of rebellion, Yentl is the rare exception. This child-birth trainer and educator, whose decision to take a job outside the home was in itself a radical move, explains why she has decided to have no more children. Although admitting that she hasn't told her husband she is participating in the film, Yentl has essentially rejected the role of the obedient wife who internalizes the strict social code and has become an independent woman who challenges religious conventions.

Yentl's inside view of the overwhelming peer pressure to continually have children, as well as her questioning of how happy her peers actually are, reveals the extent of the struggle within the community to break out of the social and ideological structures that bind them.

"A sad, moving and wise film."—Ma'ariv

"Absolutely fascinating! Sensitive, entertaining, enriching, revealing."—Yediot Hacaronot