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Jews and Adoption
The tenet to “be fruitful and multiply” can be complicated for Jewish women in the 21st century. Jewish families, to a great degree, are postponing parenthood until later in life, with an increasing number turning to adoption as an alternative, according to experts, surveys, and anecdotal evidence. Adoption raises a plethora of complicated issues for the modern Jewish family. To wit: There is a dearth of Jewish children available for adoption, which has led to a growing number of non-Jewish children, including those from overseas, being adopted by Jewish families. The result: youngsters with racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds that differ from their adoptive parents—and that can raise inclusion problems—some unique to Judaism. According to the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey, the latest available, 5 percent of Jewish families include at least one adopted child; experts say the phenomenon has grown even more in the years since. “Anecdotal evidence indicates that adoption continues to rise in the Jewish community,” says Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, an independent San Francisco-based think tank that studies the issues of intermarriage, conversion, and racial and ethnic diversity. “For some people, adoption is their first choice when it comes to starting or adding to their family,” says Tobin, father of an adopted African-American son. “For others, they have waited until their thirties or forties to have children, when rates of infertility for both men and women begin to rise.” The population survey says one in five couples who wait until later in life to have children will confront fertility problems, and at least 25 percent of the adopted children welcomed into the Jewish community come from abroad. “These trends are likely to continue, and so will more and more adoption,” Tobin says. The Problem of Inclusion There are a number of stories key to Judaism where adoption plays a significant role. These include the story of Moses, who, in order to save his life, was given up by his mother and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. When Moses forsook royal life to return to his birth family, his bond with his adoptive mother remained strong. But despite adoption’s long affiliation with Judaism and assurances that all adopted children who undergo conversion are enveloped by the Jewish community, inclusion is ongoing and evolving with varying degrees of success. “There’s midrash [biblical commentary] that [Moses’] birth mother, Jochebed, and the adoptive mother, Bithiah, make friends…It’s a beautiful story about a birth mother and an adoptive mother working together on behalf of their child,” says Julie Greenberg, a Reconstructionist rabbi in Philadelphia whose five children include two adopted from Guatemala. “Traditionally, adoption was always a very respected form of building a family and, in fact, when you welcome a baby, there is no distinction made between an adopted baby and a birthed-at-home baby,” she notes. “[But] we all need to address that there is a kernel of internalized racism that tells us that all Jews look alike. It is definitely there, and that will be a barrier for children in feeling a sense of belonging.” Greenberg sought a way to make it easier to absorb her diverse family into a Jewish communal setting. She joined a synagogue, Leyv Ha-Ir, where she later became the religious leader, because of its mission statement to be “inclusive and accepting of difference.” Even so, across-the-board acceptance can be a challenge. “My 11-year-old son will say, ‘They probably don’t think I’m Jewish because I have brown skin.’ He’s very aware of what some people think,” she says, adding that, although he is very comfortable with Judaism, his Latino background is not ignored—nor is the issue of racism. “It’s important to me that we think of ourselves as a multiracial family. It [racism] is our problem, our family’s issue, our community’s issue. It’s Judaism’s issue, and it is something we all need to be working on,” Greenberg says. Reena Bernards, of Chevy Chase, Md., a founding member of the Jewish Multiracial Network, whose mission is to build community for Jews of color and multiracial Jewish families, and herself the mother of two adopted biracial children, says she also has confronted the inclusion issue. “We created the Jewish Multiracial Network because there was little else in the community directly serving the needs of multiracial families.” To further ensure her children’s inclusion, Bernards sends her 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter to the Fabrangen Cheder, a parent-taught cooperative Hebrew School located in Silver Spring, Md., which promotes a diverse membership and “embrace[s] people with a multitude of interpretations of Jewish identity, as well as interfaith and interracial families.” “We wouldn’t just go out and join any Jewish institution. We’re very selective, to make sure there’s a welcoming perspective,” says Bernards. “The issue is racial identity. It’s a major challenge to integrate these two different parts of themselves.” When her son became a bar mitzvah, the family incorporated both his religious and racial backgrounds in the service. “He also participated in an African-American rites-of-passage group for boys. It was very meaningful to have this at the same time,” she notes. Looking the Part
Fitting in can be a struggle, particularly when you don’t “look the part.” “I used to stand in services and worry that, if I didn’t know every single prayer by heart, people would think I wasn’t really Jewish,” says Jessica Radin, adopted as an infant from Thailand. Raised in Manhattan, Radin, now 32, and a New York City high school history teacher, recalls a childhood in which she felt both cocooned and disconnected—even though she was active in her Reform synagogue’s youth group and president of the Reform North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY) chapter in New York City. Radin felt like she stood out, but for the wrong reasons. “I’m the only Asian in my family and [was] the only Asian in my synagogue growing up. I was very welcomed and loved, but you constantly—visibly—have the appearance of an outsider. I was asked a lot to explain how I was Jewish, why I was Jewish.” The issue became particularly painful when Radin was 16 and participated in the Bronfman Youth Fellowship program. Each year, the program picks 26 high school students from hundreds across the United States and Canada to spend five weeks learning about Jewish life in Israel. “I was not considered Jewish in the eyes of my peers on that trip, and that was stunning and difficult for me,” says Radin. “I remember going to the Wall and I was treated as a tourist when I was there as a Jew to pray. That was very isolating for me.” Radin would ricochet between the predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish world in which she was raised and the diverse communities of high school and college where she found it easier to blend in. At least initially. “I felt like I couldn’t win. When I was with my Jewish friends, some of them had somewhat racist or problematic perceptions of people with color—Asians, blacks, or Hispanics—and I would feel out of place because I was the only Asian there. But when I was with my friends of color…some were also anti-Semitic or had misperceptions of Jews. Also, I didn’t know what it was like to grow up in a family of minorities.” Today, married to a Jewish man and leading a Jewish life, she shrugs off the stares and comments that still come her way. “Now that I’m older, I just think I can’t spend my energy on this,” Radin says. The Adoption Conflict
Radin’s experience is not unique. Rabbi Michael Gold, spiritual leader of the Conservative Temple Beth Torah in Tamarac, Fla., and the father of three adopted children, says when it comes to adoption, Judaism is in conflict. “There are two messages from Judaism that contradict each other. One is that lineage is everything. Your identity is based on your genetic background. The other message is that your true parents are the ones that raised you,” Gold says. That is why conversion figures so prominently in Jewish adoptions. However, true acceptance from the Jewish community doesn’t always follow, Gold says. In his case, he decided to ease the process and adopt Caucasian and domestically. “I felt like there were enough issues…without being a rabbi’s kid who came from another ethnicity and country. Today it’s not as unusual. We have more and more people in the Jewish community that don’t look like the Jews used to look,” Gold says. “Acceptance is happening, but slowly. Jewish law is much more liberal than Jews are. Jewish law says Judaism is not a race, but Jews are a little slower, especially when they are talking about who their kids are dating.” The issue of acceptance is further muddled by the schisms within Judaism. “You have to recognize that, if you do a conversion with a Conservative rabbi, the child will not be recognized as being Jewish by the Orthodox community,” says Ellen Singer, an adoption therapist at the nonprofit Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.), which provides assistance in suburban Washington, D.C., and herself an adoptive mother. “The division between the different movements is already enough of an issue, but adoptive families can be especially vulnerable. To say this child isn’t really Jewish is extremely hurtful to the adoptee and the adoptive family.” Singer’s daughter, Caucasian and adopted domestically, was converted by a Conservative rabbi. The fact that their child was not born Jewish led the family to lead a more observant Jewish life, Singer says. They followed the laws of kashrut, enrolled their child in a Jewish day school, and became more involved with their synagogue. “It was much more deliberate because we couldn’t just assume she’d get that feeling through osmosis. Now, at 21, I don’t know what she will do in terms of observance, but I do know that she absolutely identifies with being Jewish,” Singer says. The whole issue about who is a Jew and proper conversion in general is a very difficult issue, say families who have adopted. “Nobody wants to have questions raised about the Jewishness of their children,” says Gold. “My own advice to people is to make sure it’s done properly as best as you can and at least the majority of Jews will recognize it.” A Lifelong Issue Sometimes even in the most loving of homes and where complexions are similar, acceptance and inclusion within the Jewish fold can be lifelong issues for adoptees and their families. Susan LaVigna, 46, a social worker, psychotherapist, and adoptee who also works for C.A.S.E., says that by telling her as a child that she had been placed through a Jewish adoption agency, her parents implied that she was born Jewish—when in fact she was not. She said it was no secret that she was adopted and that, while she felt completely at ease in her home, growing up she was routinely subjected to comments from outside of her family that she didn’t “look Jewish.” LaVigna learned the truth at 31, when she researched her background and discovered that her birth mother was Presbyterian. “It shook me up a lot. I had been in blissful ignorance and now I looked at myself differently. It’s hard when you’re part of a religion that really emphasizes a lot of this heredity and culture,” LaVigna says. She says she does not think her parents were being deliberately misleading. “I think they probably did that because they thought I’d never find out,” she says, adding she believes her parents were trying to raise everyone’s comfort level. LaVigna has since met her birth mother and also an older sister similarly given up, who by coincidence was also raised as a Jew and who lived for a while in the same apartment building as LaVigna’s family, although no one knew that at the time. LaVigna’s birth mother was not interested in maintaining contact with either woman, but LaVigna does have a relationship with her sister, whose adoptive family, unlike LaVigna’s, always acknowledged that she came from non-Jewish stock. While she favors disclosures like this, LaVigna says she knows that, on occasion, such openness can exact a painful price from within the Jewish community. “Through both my professional and personal adoption network of support groups and friends, I have heard of Jewish adoptees hearing derogatory comments made by older relatives who may not have realized how hurtful they were,” LaVigna says. However, based on her own struggle for identity, as well as those of the adoptees and their families with whom she works, LaVigna says adopted children need to know what their families know about them. Singer agrees. “We never want parents to lie to their kids, but that doesn’t mean they have to overwhelm them with information they are not ready to process,” Singer says. “But, by the time an adult adoptee leaves home, [he or she] ought to know everything that you know.” Such conversations are ongoing and, as the emerging details can be complicated and painful, it is crucial that the information come from the parents, Singer says. “Many times, to protect [the adoptee], they don’t share, and the kids, the teens, the young adults learn it some other way and it is much more hurtful and harmful,” Singer says. “Wouldn’t you rather they learn it from the parents they love and trust, who can help them process any kind of difficult information?” However, adopted children do speculate and ideally should learn about their backgrounds, even if the knowledge brings some grief, Gold says. “There are going to be issues around the fact that, somewhere along the line, they had a birth parent who could not or chose not to raise them. That’s a real loss,” he says. “The biological parents are part of who our children are. It is part of their identity and to know that part of yourself is important.” Gold says connection with one’s birth parents (one of his children has been in touch with hers) can be healthy. “They can tell you a little bit about who you are. Genetic predispositions can be important. Having said that, their values, their belongings, their sense of ethnicity, everything else comes from the parents who raised them,” Gold says. Fourteen years after learning her adoption story, LaVigna—devoted wife, mother, daughter, and happily Jewish—still wrestles with the reality that, for the longest time, she was in the dark about her heritage. “I know it was done with the best of intentions, but it is a constant thought process for me. Being honest is really important. It makes a huge difference with identity foundation. I think it would be much easier to integrate that part of yourself when you have the truth,” LaVigna says. “This story has evolved in a happy way. We are all very open about this now. I wasn’t born Jewish. I was raised Jewish. I am Jewish. It was meant to be. It’s bashert.” Finding Jewish Pride in America's Pastimes | A Continuing Heritage of Aid to Cuba's Jewish Community | Jews and Adoption |
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