Blessing Bella

Berger, Leslie

Blessing Bella Leslie Berger Last fall, while my husband and sons I attended1 H i g h Holiday services at our . M—jl architecturally minimalist, Conservative shul in Manhattan, I knelt before...

...One father in an affluent, predominantly white suburb of New York is taking Chinese classes with his 10-year-old daughter as a peace offering because she has balked at going to Shabbat services and bluntly told her parents she doesn't fit in there...
...But he went home early to be with our boys, while I waited for Bella's visa...
...And my daughter who's almost nine now wants to be a doctor...
...So far, Gabe has agreeably followed his older sister Rebecca to Hebrew school...
...J e w ish women, on average, bear only 1.86 children compared to the 1.93 children produced by American women overall, census figures show...
...During a tantrum over Hebrew school, the girl cried, in reference to her conversion, "And you never should have dunked me...
...There were eight other couples in our travel group so I was hardly alone...
...Religion should have nothing to do with blood ties," Kingston wrote from her home in Farmington Hills, Michigan...
...Since Jews rarely had the option of adopting non-Jewish children, conversion wasn't much of an issue...
...What more could I ask...
...They came and went during the course of their work day, setting down briefcases just long enough to light some incense and prostrate themselves, in Western business clothes, before one of several enormous statues of Buddha surrounded by gladiola-filled urns...
...Though they enjoy Vietnamese food, participate in Asian New Year's festivals, and have talked to Gabe about the wars in Indochina, their main family customs are Jewish...
...Today, J e w i s h women (like American women overall) are having fewer biological children...
...Leading demographer, Kosmin was among the authors of the landmark National Jewish Population Survey of 1990, a Jewish census that estimated that 60,000 adopted children represent three percent of Jewish children...
...It's all mirrored on earth in this one adoption, in this one child...
...Abramowitz, journalist and adoptive father to Ethiopian-born Adar, agrees...
...Everybody who is so concerned about the size and vitality of the Jewish community would be doing a great mitzvah for the Jewish people, and for themselves, by adopting children," Tobin says...
...An adopted child never brought to a mikveh and converted under the supervision of a bet din or panel of three rabbis, will not be officially recognized as a Jew—meaning no bar mitzvah or inclusion in a minyan...
...A Jewish policy analyst and president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco, Tobin believes that Judaism's traditional emphasis on lineage, and its perpetuation of a caste system that favors Kohens over Levis and Ashkenazim over Sephardim, are crippling a community sorely in need of fresh blood...
...In fact, adoption can be fraught with halachic complications...
...She says his attitude was that they should not assume there would even be a mikveh ceremony...
...A Lubavitch rabbi offered, but only if Schneider would study with him, telling her she was too ignorant to raise a good Jew...
...The open question is whether it is a benefit for the child to be converted but not provided with a Jewish education and upbringing, with the result that the child is non-observant...
...But the local faithful seemed perfunctory in their devotions...
...And that's God, the creator of good and of evil, of the whole spectrum...
...A local Reform rabbi refused to do it unless she joined his temple...
...And the Asian girl replies, "Sure...
...For example, Jews are more likely to adopt than others because of our culture's paradoxical emphasis on family as well as professional success...
...There was no question in my mind that we'd be raising Bella as a Jew, that she'd follow her two brothers off to Hebrew school, and that she'd one day learn about the other immigrants in her family who left authoritarian states...
...How dare anyone challenge my daughter's right to marry a Kohen...
...Part of what I've learned from this is that genetics do make a difference in who we are— not a total difference because, obviously, we are a combination of nature and nurture...
...H e said to me, 'It's a mitzvah for me to do this.'" Rabbi Susan Silverman and her husband, journalist Yosef Abramowitz, have waited four years to complete the conversion of their adopted son, Adar, so i t can take place in a new, progressive mikveh near their home in Newton, Massachusetts—the M a y y i m H a y y im L i v i ng Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center...
...A few months later, back in New York, I thought of that hungry monk again as I heard about juggling Hebrew school with Mandarin school, circumcisions for toddlers under general anesthesia, and gleaming new mikvehs for non-Orthodox conversions, among other innovations for r a i s i n g foreign-born kids...
...we don't need to go to the Orthodox community for its seal of approval.'" Many adoptive families today practice Judaism while fostering pride in their children's native culture...
...In general, the higher the level of education, the lower the number of children...
...Blessing Bella Leslie Berger Last fall, while my husband and sons I attended1 H i g h Holiday services at our . M—jl architecturally minimalist, Conservative shul in Manhattan, I knelt before the elaborately adorned altar of an ancient temple in Guangzhou, China, w h i l e a Buddhist monk drummed and chanted over our newly adopted daughter...
...Census, which found that 2.5 percent of children in all American homes are adopted, compared to Kosmin's estimate of five to six percent in Jewish homes...
...But adoption as a legal procedure was unknown in ancient Jewish law because of its emphasis on bloodlines and lineage, says Rabbi Michael Gold, who leads Temple Beth Torah in Tamarac, Fla., and has written widely on adoption and Judaism...
...I was so angry about that...
...If the child is in fact going to be non-observant, then is the conversion a benefit, or exposing him to transgression...
...Well-known examples of adoption punctuate the Bible, such as Mordecai's raising of his heroic cousin Esther and Abraham's adoption of his servant Eliezer...
...It's 184-foot-tall, red and gold pagoda towered above busy L i u Rong Road, where a bicycle crashed into a taxi just as we were leaving, prompting an argument in the middle of gridlocked traffic...
...I was hardly alone in my doubts...
...I knew at that moment that I'd go ahead with Bella's conversion, if for no other reason than to seal h e r union with us and make sure she entered her opinionated new community with its blessings...
...Traditionally, adoption was an unusual and discrete practice among Jews...
...Adoption for her is a deeply spiritual act, one that reflected the origin of family in God...
...We are obsessed with intermarriage and how everyone's leaving rather than opening the gate and making it more vibrant by welcoming people in," says Tobin, author of the book, Opening the Gates: Hoiv Proactive Conversion Can Revitalize the Jewish Community...
...Before legalized abortion and the availability of the pill, Jewish authorities and adoption agencies quietly found homes for the mamzers of wayward youth...
...Another father of two Chinese-born girls, an academic who did not want his family identified, told of quitting their Reform synagogue in the Southwest because of the racist attitudes there...
...Hanna had screamed, scandalizing the mikveh matron...
...But because she's not biological, you're making that distinction...
...Maybe we can someday envision J u d a i sm beyond lineage but right now, it's a big part," says Rabbi Gold, an adoptive father of three American- born children and the author of And Hannah Wept: Infertility, Adoption and the Jewish Couple...
...a rigorous bet din may decide the child's parents aren't observant enough to warrant conversion...
...Linda Kingston, the adoptive mother of two Guatemalan-born sisters, now five and six, decided with her husband Keith to let their daughters make up their own minds about conversion when they're older...
...Tracy Schneider, a social worker and single parent from the Bronx, longed for the affirmation of a ritual conversion but had trouble finding a sponsor for her Chinese-born daughter, Emma, now five...
...Adoption, says demographer Gary Tobin, "ties into a wider set of issues, which I call the Jewish obsession with bloodline...
...But a local Orthodox rabbi "was so incredibly rude and demeaning" that she decided to hold off...
...F i n a l l y Schneider found a Conservative rabbi who "could not have been nicer...
...It isn't always so easy...
...I feel that's what adoption does...
...Still, I was having second thoughts about converting Bella, the remarkable toddler we were just beginning to know...
...Adoptive families also tend to be in the liberal wings of J u d a i sm since Orthodox Jews many earlier and are more insular...
...W i t h tens of thousands of Jewish parents adopting children overseas—most of unknown but presumed non- Jewish origin—modern Jews are suddenly confronting the intricacies and tribal snobberies of Talmudic law...
...I was finally in China after nearly two years of meetings, paperwork and waiting—fiilfilling a lifelong fantasy of having a family with both biological and adopted children and, I have to admit, a middle-aged yearning for a third kid...
...Would she someday resent being converted without her consent...
...I feel that religion is about what's in your heart and your head...
...Like me, Silverman said she had always imagined a family of both biological and adopted children...
...Kenny, my husband, had come with me to meet Bella and adopt her in her home province...
...T h e delay was just the reminder I needed (lest my Jewish soul get swept away by all those flowers and incense) of the universal tension between religious ideals and everyday life...
...I noticed, of course...
...Tobin had already been writing about the subject when he and his wife adopted their son Jonah, an African-American boy who is now seven and attends Jewish day school...
...Kosmin, who co-authored the book, The Next Generation: Jewish Children and Adolescents, sees several trends among adoptive families...
...Our group's guide, a meticulous facilitator raised in a proper Communist home, had marched off to find the monk...
...If you have Jewish beliefs then you are Jewish...
...The child is converted on the theory it is for his benefit," explains Rabbi J . David Bleich, a Talmudic scholar at Yeshiva University...
...Whenever I see anything in Jewish tradition I find troubling," Rabbi Gold tells me, "I think of the things I can learn from it...
...The first time I took my Chinese daughter to a temple for a child's service, I was somewhat nervous that she would feel that she might not fit i n , " recalls Los Angeles screenwriter Shelley Schumacher...
...Don't make me do this...
...But on that muggy morning in China, in a city steeped in smog, in a courtyard thick with incense I felt compelled to participate in this hypnotic ritual with our 13-month-old girl, as if to seal in her native culture and make sure she left with its blessings...
...And an Orthodox conversion isn't guaranteed...
...Did our family really need to be vetted by a bet din...
...In and around New York, the ever-growing number of Jewish families with Chinese daughters has given rise to an old joke with a new twist...
...W h e n we left, I said to my daughter, it was nice to see so many Chinese girls at the temple...
...The bet din might not approve the conversion...
...Clearly, it isn't just adoptive parents and siblings who are adjusting to these new family members, but Judaism itself...
...It all works out," Schumacher adds...
...Adar is amazing," Silverman says, "and he's a symbol of what's amazing...
...So Jewish couples who get married tend to want children and if they can't, they adopt...
...In my sons' public elementary school alone we've had a Chinese-born Sara, a Russian-born Sarah, a Paraguayan-born Hanna, and a Gabriel from Vietnam, all with Jewish parents...
...As I listened to her speak, I couldn't help sighing...
...T h e white girl asks her classmate, "Are you really Jewish...
...Or would she suffer more if anyone ever challenged her Jewish status...
...Three years later, after swimming lessons, Hanna didn't want to get out...
...If half of Jews are intermarrying and there are increasing numbers of Jews who are adopting and more and more people want to convert to become part of the Jewish people, our ancient ideas become barriers...
...In this magazine's April issue, for example, he proposed several strategies for "doubling the number of Jews in the world in the next generation...
...In one instance, he said,an older congregant asked why he and his wife had chosen to adopt "schwartzes" instead of white children...
...Lisa Gibbs and her husband Philip Kasinitz, of Brooklyn, have made such an effort to honor both traditions that her older daughter, Basya, 8, has confused Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with the Chinese Autumn Moon Festival...
...And infertility is no longer the only reason Jews adopt, Kosmin says, citing gay and lesbian parents, many of them single, and what he calls ideological adoptions among couples with biological children— including some who advocate adoption as a way to bolster a shrinking Jewish community...
...It goes like this: Two girls, one Caucasian and one Asian, are sitting together in Hebrew school...
...But their raw talent and looks don't come from us...
...According to strict Jewish law, for example, an adopted girl—even if properly converted in a mikveh—may not marry a member of the elite Kohen class...
...And the white girl says, "Of course I am...
...I'm also conscious of the incredible loss on the part of his birth mother that never leaves my heart...
...Kingston nonetheless sent her daughters to a Jewish preschool and plans to hire a tutor for their religious instruction...
...We say Jewish couples have low fertility but high fecundity," Kosmin says, "meaning they don't have lots of children but there are fewer childless couples...
...I think the most interesting thing today is that all these categories, including who is Jewish, are more complicated...
...My husband and I have often marvel over how little control we really have over our sons' innate abili t i e s and interests...
...This is the family he's in, this is the choice we made for him, and being Jewish is just part of the package...
...I remembered the disconcerting experience of another parent, Isabel Berkowitz, when her threeyear- old daughter Hanna, from landlocked Paraguay, freaked out in the mikveh...
...When we say blessings, we bring ourselves from the immediacy of that moment into something much larger," Silverman explains...
...When I look at my son, I can't just think of that moment...
...And the Asian girl says, "Funny, you don't look Jewish...
...He came back miffed that the monk wouldn't sound the gong until he ate his lunch...
...Never a comment in a store or a restaurant or a school or anywhere else...
...Turned out there were 10 children there that evening—six Chinese girls and four Caucasian boys...
...In his sampling, these more liberal Jews are less likely to formally convert their children, choosing instead to simply raise them as Jews—or as Jews and Christians since many are part of interfaith homes...
...The only racist comments that we ever received since our adoption of these two children have been at our synagogue," this father told me...
...Born in Ethiopia and adopted at eight months, Adar, now 5, was circumcised under general anesthesia at age one to prepare him for conversion...
...Silverman, ordained as a Reform rabbi and raising Adar along with three biological daughters, originally wanted an Orthodox conversion so that no one could ever make Adar doubt his Judaism or exclude h im from a minyan...
...You should have seen two Chinese girls carrying around the little torah...
...In Manhattan, Martin Fradis said he and his wife Kim are less inclined to promote Asian culture for their Vietnamese-born eightyear- old son, Gabriel...
...Today, adopted children probably comprise between five and six percent of the 1.3 million Jewish kids tallied in the American Jewish Identity Survey, another large study prepared by Kosmin and others in 2000...
...That relationship disproportionately affects the Jewish population since Jewish women are so highly educated," says Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, the National Jewish Population Survey's director of research...
...My kids' identities, values and relationships all come from my wife and me...
...I'm always conscious and aware of the forces that brought him to me...
...While some of these strategies raise serious halachic issues we can contend with them creatively and honestly...
...Rabbi Gold's words resonated with me...
...Most ancient peoples are hierarchical and Judaism has taken ancient hierarchy and ideas into modern times," Tobin says...
...There's a huge clash of cultures going on in Judaism between those ancient hierarchies and ideas and the realities of contemporary Jewish life...
...I'd worn a silk skirt for the occasion and dressed Bella in a Chinese-red romper that had belonged to our younger son, Nathan...
...My husband said, 'What we do is authentic...
...Hadn't Bella immediately responded when my mother played die old Yiddish clapping game, potchkee potchkee kihele, with her, and wasn't this evidence enough of her Jewishness...
...She said, "There weren't any Chinese girls there...
...I had certainly never dabbled in Buddhism, or any other faith, despite many years of lapsed Judaic devotion and zealous hedonism...
...She didn't even notice...
...Now Tobin advocates adoption as a way to rejuvenate the Jewish community...
...Are you...
...As I discovered while preparing for Bella's conversion, adoption, for all the hope and joy it offers, also inevitably leads to the explosive question of who is a Jew...
...By the time we gathered in a shady prayer hall for the babies' blessing, sweat was running down Bella's shaved head and I couldn't help noticing how young and skinny the monk was beneath his saffron robe...
...An adopted boy, some authorities still insist, may not use his adoptive father's surname but the generic "ben Avraham Avinu" (descendant of Abraham) used by adult converts...
...I thought of another Biblical adoption—of Moses transplanted into the Pharaoh's court, a classic outsider painfully aware of how different he was—and wondered how best to protect Bella from ever feeling marginalized...
...In fact, even in the stifling heat with a sticky Bella on my hip, I liked the idea that our American folly could wait while he finished his rice...
...It exposes some hard truths about our community—about the values and vanity that contributed to have diminished fertility, the growing estrangement between the observant and the secular, and the racist strains in some of our traditions...
...Those observations are borne out by the 2000 U.S...
...There may be as many as 78,000 adopted children in Jewish homes—about a quarter of them foreign born—according to Professor Barry A. Kosmin, Executive Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London...
...My husband and I were just beginning to plan Bella's conversion and naming ceremony when I interviewed Rabbi Gold and admitted I was having a hard time reconciling my modern sensibilities with such ancient exclusivity...
...The shrine we found ourselves in, a 1,600-year-old landmark called the Six Banyans Temple, was a lot like China itself—crowded, chaotic, a dramatic blend of old and new, frenzy and serenity...
...I said to him, 'If this baby came out of my body, nobody would question my ability to raise her as a J e w i s h person or to be a J e w i sh mother...
...Silverman, his wife, insists this was not their primary motivation for adopting Adar or for planning a second adoption...
...I didn't mind...
...Things are not as clear cut as they used to be...
...Until recently, secular Jewish families seeking conversions had no other choice than mikvehs controlled by Orthodox rabbis...
...As far as we're concerned, we're raising her biculturally," says Gibbs...
...I'm always conscious of God in our lives and of people we'll never know who did good things to bring this child into our lives and make sure he'd have a good life...
...I'm really conscious of the poverty, economic circumstances and other circumstances that prevented this woman from raising her own child...
...W e can triple the number of intermarried families who raise their children as Jews, encourage adoption after families have had their biological children, welcome back the spiritual exiles, offer incentives for having more children, lower the assimilation rate of our young people and actively share the option of Judaism with the broadest possible audience...
...Kosmin's estimate that 25 percent of adopted Jewish children are foreign-born sounded high to me but entirely plausible...
...Only at the synagogue did we encounter racial comments about adopting these children from China...

Vol. 29 • August 2004 • No. 4


 
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