After 27 years of marriage, 18 children, and seven grandchildren, Yosef Yitzchak and Sima Zalmanov of Safed, Israel, were blessed with the birth of a baby boy – their ninth – last week.

The pregnancy “came as a surprise, we didn’t think that at my age I would have another child,” Sima Zalmanov, a 47-year-old principal of a Chabad-Lubavitch girls high school, told the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot. “This is very joyful for me.”

Just last month, Zalmanov married off child No. 6; next month, she’s expecting the birth of her eighth grandchild. …