Strengthen Your Love of a
Fellow Jew, Torah and G-d

In reply to your letter in which you convey the request of ... that he be blessed with healthy male offspring:

It would be proper for him to strengthen his degree of love of a fellow Jew, love of Torah and love of G-d. For as is well known in the writings of Kabbalah and Chassidus, producing the spiritual (male) offspring of love is an auspicious qualification (segulah) toward producing a physical male offspring.

This, [i.e., the production of the spiritual [male] offspring of love], is accomplished by contemplating G-d's greatness, as the Rambam states.[106] This will, in turn, elicit from Above many long and goodly years, and the production of physical male offspring.

Therefore, [i.e., in order to also strengthen his degree of love of a fellow Jew and his love of Torah,] until his wife bears him a male child, he should give — bli neder — every weekday one or two francs to tzedakah prior to morning prayers. It would be appropriate that this tzedakah be associated with feeding impoverished [Torah] students.

When a child will be born to him, he should name the child after my father-in-law, the Rebbe, that name being Yosef Yitzchak.

(Igros Kodesh, Vol. VII, p. 51)

Be Hospitable to Guests and Strangers

With regard to being blessed with a son:

There is a story that I heard from my father-in-law, the Rebbe, ... with the lesson that one may merit a son through the mitzvah of hospitality, hachnosas orchim.

(Igros Kodesh, Vol. XIX, p. 333)

   

Notes:

106. (Back to text) Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, beginning of ch. 2.