Adoption: Sharing Love, Creating Jews
Released from her father's hands, the baby glided through the air. There was a gentle splashing sound, and water folded over her. A second later she reemerged, drops of water sparkling on her face. Her father gathered her into his arms, and Chana began her life as a member of the Jewish people.
Chana's journey had not been an easy one. Instead, it had been an odyssey undertaken by people who, at least at the outset, had little in common with each other.
In 1991, husband and wife Ronald and Barbara were faced with a decision; they could begin what might be a long, expensive series of treatments for infertility, or they could move immediately to investigating the possibility of adoption. In facing the reality that expensive infertility treatments might leave them with little money for the adoption process, they were also facing the first stumbling block to adoption; it is an expensive process. Depending on whom one speaks to, estimates can range from a low of $12,000 to a high of over $20,000.
In 1991, the couple experienced a failed overseas adoption which Barbara still finds painful to contemplate. In the process, however, they met another couple who were going through the same ordeal and who led them to Bolivia, where paralegals are allowed to perform a number of adoption-related functions generally performed by attorneys in the United States.
hana's birth mother was a woman making barely enough money to feed herself -- and certainly not enough to adequately feed or clothe her baby. Desperate to lift her child out of poverty, the twenty-two year old maid temporarily left her job in a distant city and made the long journey to La Paz so that her daughter might begin a better life.
Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech Ha'olam Sheheheyanu Vikiyamanu Vihigiyanu Lazman Ha'zeh. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, Who has sustained us and has enabled us to reach this day. With this prayer, the Jewish community welcomed Chana to its midst in 1992. Today, a four-year-old Jewish child, she remains a part of her parents' Jewish community, and she has been joined by her little sister Sarah, who was adopted in Paraguay in 1994.
Despite the difficulty and expense of arranging adoptions, many couples and individuals complete the process, and, each day, children begin new lives with the families who adopted them. Many of these families are Jewish.
On a weekday evening in late April 1996, in a meeting room at 575 Lexington Avenue in New York City, six adults -- four women and two men -- listen as Kathy Brodsky, the Executive Director of the Jewish Child Care Association of New York's Networking Adoption Project, describes the document with which the adoption journey begins: the home study. Conducted by a licensed social worker, the home study is a comprehensive document which contains much information, including a narrative about the life history of the prospective parents and a profile of the prospective parents' courtship and marriage. It should be noted, however, that singles are permitted to adopt and are doing so in increasing numbers.
Like other services connected with adoption, the home study costs money. Indeed, there is no way to do adoption "cheaply," although various programs exist to help moderate-income parents pay for some expenses. There is also no way to complete the process without extensive paperwork, particularly in foreign adoptions.
A different set of difficulties exist in the case of domestic adoptions, where the cost of locating a child and helping the birth mother with expenses can be significant. A number of prospective parents locate birth mothers through the increasingly popular method of placing advertisements in newspapers or magazines.
In domestic adoptions, it is generally the birth mother who chooses the person or couple to adopt her baby. It is the birth mother and the birth father (if he chooses to be involved) who decide whether to surrender parental rights to the baby. For the waiting adoptive parents, this can be a very difficult period -- both financially and emotionally. While prospective parents may actually purchase "adoption insurance" to help them recover some of the costs of a failed adoption, no amount of financial recovery can compensate for the emotional pain which comes with such an experience.
"Whither thou goest, I will go, and whither thou lodgest, I will lodge." With those words, Ruth followed Naomi into a lifetime of devotion to Judaism. After the immersion of an adopted child in the Mikvah, after the circumcision of a boy, after the naming ceremony for a girl, how do adoptive parents guarantee that their children will feel bonded to the Jewish faith and people?
There are no guarantees, but Dina Rosenfeld, DSW, of The Networking Adoption Project offers some useful thoughts on the matter. When it comes to Jewish education, she suggests that adoptive parents, like any other parents, choose the education option with which they are most comfortable, whether that be a Jewish day school, a congregational school, or any of a number of different after school programs.
For their part, Dina Rosenfeld cautions, teachers in both Jewish day schools and after school programs should remember that when they deal with family issues, they are speaking to a class in which a number of children may be adopted. A teacher who speaks only of families formed by parents and their biological children may alienate some of his or her students, and a teacher who fails to use the adoption stories found in Jewish text is foresaking a valuable teaching tool.
Rosenfeld notes that Jewish holidays provide teachers and parents of adopted children with an opportunity to bring their children closer to Judaism. She facilitates The Networking Adoption Program's chapter of Stars of David, a national group for adoptive Jewish families. That chapter has planned a number of programs, some centering on such holidays as Purim and Hanukkah, for adopted Jewish children and their families.
Jill Dalin, Executive Director of the Ocean County (New Jersey) Jewish Federation, often reflects on her life as an adopted Jewish child. Born in 1966 in Lakewood, New Jersey, Jill was adopted when she was three days old. She retains certain memories of the conversion ceremony which occurred when she was eight. The drive to the Mikvah, parts of her father’s explanation of the impending ceremony, the smallness and squareness of the tub in which she would immerse herself, the process of removing her clothes and pierced earrings before immersion; these remain with her twenty-one years later.
Jill began her Jewish education at the nursery school of Congregation B'nai Israel in Toms River, New Jersey. She attended the Solomon Schecter Academy, a Jewish day school, from the time she entered fourth grade to the end of her sixth grade year. During other years, she attended B'nai Israel's after school program. Her Jewish education climaxed with her 1978 Bat Mitzvah ceremony, which took place on two separate days. On the first day, Rosh Chodesh, she read from the Torah, and, two weeks later, she read a Haftarah portion.
As a teenager caught up in the myriad of new experiences offered by the high school, she drifted away from active involvement with Judaism. That drift ended abruptly in 1980, during a trip to Israel which her family took in conjunction with her brother's Bar Mitzvah, which was held in Jerusalem.
"The trip changed my life," Jill says, although she notes that she did not realize this at the time. "All I knewthen was that the trip was fun and interesting," she says. She realized the trip’s effects four years later, after her sophomore year in college, when she felt the strong desire to return to Israel. Two and a half years later, she returned to the United States, after having lived for a year on Kibbutz Gadot in the north of Israel and after attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem for one and a half years.
The synagogue in which Jill received much of her Jewish education and in which she celebrated her Bat Mitzvah has been led for well over twenty years by Rabbi Richard Hammerman, who has worked successfully with a number of adoptive families. Rabbi Hammerman maintains an optimistic and practical outlook on two important Jewish adoption issues.
One issue is the acceptance of Conservative conversions, a problem which faced Jill Dalin as she considered making aliyah. Rabbi Hammerman knows well the challenge faced by the Conservative Movement as it seeks universal acceptance of conversions performed by its rabbis, but he feels that this challenge will be met by the growing strength of the Movement and its institutions.
The other issue is that of the Jewish community's acceptance of non-Caucasian children. The rabbi points out that "the first time a child who looks different from his or her parents comes to services, some people will stare," but he notes that, "by the third time that child comes to services, no-one notices." He feels that the way to involve the community with any child is to involve the child with the community.
This sentiment is echoed by Rabbi Edwin Farber, spiritual leader of Beth Torah Adath Yeshurun Congregation in North Miami. He notes that his congregants show a strong inclination to accept all adopted children who come into the congregation. Like Kathy Brodsky of the Networking Adoption Project, Rabbi Farber is aware that few adopted children are Jewish by birth, but he does not feel that this affects, or should affect, the way he and his congregants treat those children. Once a child has been converted, "that child is Jewish," and nothing more is said about the conversion. Just as he does for all children in his congregation, Rabbi Farber conducts brit ceremonies for adopted boys and naming ceremonies for adopted girls.
According to Rabbi Elliott Dorff, Rector and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Judaism and a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, "within the [Jewish] tradition, adoption is prized." Rabbi Farber believes that, far from feeling uncomfortable, Jews who adopt "should feel that adoption is a normal way of becoming parents."
Kathleen Goodkin, a freelance writer based in Trenton, New Jersey, is the publisher of "Jewish Perspectives," a bi-monthly newsletter. She is a member of Congregation Brothers of Israel.
