W

hen Tova Landau’s* husband told one of their neighbors that they would be making a kiddush that Shabbos for their new baby, the neighbor was skeptical: I just saw his wife the other day, he thought to himself. She didn’t look like she was having a baby!

The neighbor was right, but it didn’t occur to him that that there could be another way to bring home a new baby.

For a significant — and growing — number of couples who struggle with infertility, adoption has become a promising and viable avenue for achieving their dream of having a family. Yet while this path may not involve nine months of physical preparation and the inconvenience of morning sickness, each successful adoption carries with it years of emotional and financial investment. And bringing home the baby is, of course, just the beginning of a new journey.

Am I Giving Up?

“We get several new calls a week from couples,” says Brany Rosen, director of A T.I.M.E., an international organization that provides wide-ranging support to couples suffering from infertility. “If you gave me 100 babies today, I could place them all in a second.”
Yet while the demand is there, the road to adoption is not easy, and often the first hurdle to overcome is the decision itself.

“Couples fear that deciding to adopt means they’re giving up on their dreams of having their own babies,” says Brany. “We emphasize that Hashem has many ways of sending a baby to his family.”
Yettie Katz, who together with her husband Alter is director of A T.I.M.E.’s adoption services, recalls being at an A T.I.M.E. retreat, where one of the workshop facilitators spoke about the beauty of adoption. “I stood up and said, ‘No way! I’m not giving up!’ ”

Yettie recounts the chain of events that brought them to adopt their first child. She had already been childless for several years when a rebbetzin she knew advised her to daven at the kever of the Noam Elimelech.

“I thought she was crazy,” recalls Yettie. “But my mother booked me a ticket to Lizhensk.”

After she and her husband davened at the kever, she felt a strong sense that this time, their prayers would be answered — so strong that, at the airport on the way home, she ducked into the duty-free shop and bought some liquor, for their upcoming shalom zachar or kiddush.

Two days later, they got a phone call that a baby was available for adoption. Were they interested?
“Up until then, I didn’t want to consider adoption,” says Yettie. “But now, for the first time, I said yes.”

They called the baby Elimelech.

Suddenly a Mom

While the story may sound like a happily-ever-after tale, it belies the years of emotional turmoil that came before. Adoption itself is a process that generally takes years — and it tends to go hand in hand with years of infertility treatments.

Each country — and in the US, each state — has its own adoption laws, although all Western countries require a similar process that puts a couple through rigorous assessment procedures to determine their fitness to be parents.

Tova Landau, who lives in Beit Shemesh and has two adopted children, explains that in Israel, the only way to legally adopt is through the government social service agency. According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Social Services, while the actual number of adoptions in Israel has been declining over the past decade (from 300 in 2004 to 191 in 2013), the number of new couples seeking to adopt has steadily risen (from 434 in 2004 to 675 in 2013).

Once a couple calls and expresses interest in adoption, the agency sends over a social worker to meet with them several times, assessing their ability to be stable parents. During this period the couple also undergoes a battery of medical and psychological testing, which, although necessary, were “excruciating,” Tova says. “By the time you go home, you’re on your knees. You feel like you’ve been scraped away and they know your innermost flaws and secrets.”

The waiting time in Israel is an average of four to five years; toward the end of their own waiting period, the Landaus were invited to participate in group-dynamics sessions, dealing with the challenges of raising the baby, handling nosy neighbors, and more. Soon afterward, they got the call: “We have a baby; we think it’s for you.”

Sensitive to religious nuances, the Israeli social services has each couple record in their file exactly what they are looking for in a baby, and encourages a religious couple to speak to their rav first. The social worker told Tova to check with her rav yet again, and to get back to her as soon as possible.
“I remember getting the call,” says Tova. “My husband was out, and I just sat on my bed, staring at the closet door for an hour and a half until he came home.” The next morning they took care of all the paperwork, and a little over a day after getting the phone call, they became parents.

“Most women have nine months to prepare,” she says, but the social worker got right down to business, told her to take out a pen, and said, “Here’s what you need to buy.” They raced over to the local baby store and bought out the place.

Tova still relates to the psychological shock of suddenly becoming parents. “From the time we were married, we went from assuming we would have children, to thinking, ‘maybe not,’ and from there to ‘probably not.’ By the time a couple has reached the stage of looking into adoption, they’ve been through years of unsuccessful treatments, years of dashed hopes. So what happens, psychologically, is that you don’t let yourself get your hopes up, until the baby is actually there in your arms.”

Dashed Hopes

In the US, adoptions are handled either privately or through an agency. (Overseas adoption, a traditionally popular, if pricier, source for locating babies for adoption, has been steadily decreasing in recent years, according to statistics in both the US and Israel. While in 2005 there were 22,734 overseas adoptions by US parents, in 2013 that number had fallen to 7092. In Israel, the 233 overseas adoptions in 2005 dropped to 81 by 2013 — largely due to more restrictive measures in these countries.)

For a couple choosing the private route, there are lawyer’s fees for both the birth mother and the adoptive parents, psychological and medical testing fees, and (often) medical care for the birth mother as well as financial support throughout her pregnancy. This can easily run upward of $10,000. Going through an adoption agency, which takes care of all paperwork as well as locating babies, can run between $30,000 and $50,000. (Organizations like A T.I.M.E. and Bonei Olam help couples with the financial outlay.)

In the US, where the process is less centralized and there are more babies available, the wait time can be shorter — but the risk of disappointment greater. Yettie Katz says that the first thing a couple must do is hire a lawyer. They then hire a social worker, who comes into their home, assesses whether it will make a good setting for a child, and interviews the couple extensively. The next step is to get fingerprinted, to check for criminal records or history of abuse. The lawyer receives the results of these tests, which are considered current for 18 months, after which the testing process must be repeated.
After all this, the search begins. How do parents actually find a baby to adopt? “It’s like looking for a shidduch,” says Yettie. “You have to put the word out everywhere.”

She recalls Shabbos afternoon discussions with her friends’ mothers and asking if they knew of a baby to adopt. People take out ads in newspapers or contact college campuses — a fertile environment for unwanted pregnancies.

And finally, finally — they’ve hit the jackpot. Someone calls — a baby is available.

“When you get that call,” says Brany Rosen of A T.I.M.E., “You don’t say, ‘Wait, let me check with my husband.’ You say ‘Yes!’ If you pause first to consult, you’ll lose the baby.”

Still, as a result of laws developed to protect birth mothers (and prevent unscrupulous adoption schemes), even if you think both parties have agreed to the adoption and the baby is yours, there is still a lot of room for heartbreak.

“We are totally at the mercy of others,” says Yettie. “I can’t tell you how many babies we almost had.” In the world of adoption, stories abound of mothers who, after receiving financial support throughout the pregnancy, chose in the end to keep the baby. Of mothers who promised the baby to more than one couple. Or of mothers who, after giving over the baby to the adopted parents, changed their minds — within the time limit allowed by state law — and petitioned in court to take the baby back.

In this regard, New York has some of the strictest adoption laws in the country. They do not allow residents to adopt though other states’ agencies. And they allow the birth mother — and father — 45 days to change their minds (as opposed to New Jersey, for example, which gives one day).

It is after this point that a social worker revisits the adoptive home, and, based on her approval, the family goes to court for the finalization process — at which point they break out the cake and balloons. The baby is legally theirs.

Fostering Love

There is another way to adopt a baby in the US, at zero expense to the parents. The foster care system has many children looking for permanent adoptive homes, says Shelley Berger, director of foster care and preventive programs at Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services.

Just a year after opening its doors in 1969 as a residence for boys in need of a home, Ohel began contracting with New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), whose job it is to remove children from dangerous home situations and find appropriate placements for them — hopefully temporary. As a foster care agency, Ohel has a unique relationship with ACS; when a Jewish child requires a foster placement, ACS turns to Ohel first. (Most other county children’s protective service agencies do their own foster care placement, not necessarily with sensitivity toward finding Jewish homes for Jewish children.) Ohel is then on the clock to find an appropriate placement.

“We have a very clear and formalized path to adoption, which is unique to the foster care system,” Berger says, noting that in many ways, this path is the opposite of the traditional adoption process. Foster parents receive a monthly stipend from the city, called board rate, of about $600 — and if the child has extra issues that need servicing, this rate goes up to $1,100 and includes coverage of all medical expenses. Ohel will supplement this stipend as well, to help the family pay for uniquely Jewish expenses like tuition or camp. If foster parents go on to adopt, they continue receiving the board rate until the child turns 18 — together with full medical coverage for the child.

The goal of foster care is to eventually reunite the child with his parents, but when that isn’t possible, the system will push for adoption of these children — with the foster parents the most likely candidates.
“The foster parents have already been checked out and trained by Ohel, according to city regulations,” explains Berger. “Ideally, the foster parents will adopt their foster child if he or she can’t return home, and if that isn’t possible, we will look for other adoptive families — but obviously, we can’t just give the children to anyone. I often get calls from childless couples asking how they can adopt children through Ohel. I explain that you have to first be foster parents in the system. But it’s an emotional roller coaster ride, because the goal is to reunite the children with their parents.”

Although childless couples do occasionally serve as foster parents purely for the sake of helping these Jewish children, Brany Rosen of A T.I.M.E. recommends against foster parenting for childless couples. “It can be wrenching for these couples when the child is taken away.”

Finding a Jewish Baby

“When A T.I.M.E. first tried to convince me to consider adoption, I said, ‘Fine, but if you want me to adopt, I better get the cutest, nicest baby there is,” Yettie remembers.

But, like with any shidduch, the couple soon learns that it’s usually about compromise.

“Every couple starts with a wish list,” says Mrs. Rosen. “And then they realize that they will have to give in on some things.”

High up on the wish list is adopting a Jewish child. While rabbanim are known to be wary of adopting Jewish babies, out of fear of yichus issues or the possibility of two siblings marrying down the line (less of a fear today, when records are readily available, and contact between birth mother and adoptive family much more open), prospective parents still feel a natural draw toward adopting a Jewish child.
The problem is that outside of Israel (which only allows its Jewish babies to be adopted by Jews living in Israel), a Jewish baby up for adoption can be hard to find.

“If you’re going to wait for Jewish children, you can be waiting for a very long time,” says Yettie Katz. “People have to realize that there’s nothing wrong with taking in a non-Jewish child and raising him to be an amazing Yid.”

Yet there are Jewish babies out there being given up for adoption — the question is how to find them. Today there are several organizations that have taken up the challenge of seeking out these babies and connecting them with Jewish parents.

Twenty-five years ago, Denver resident Steven Krausz and his wife, Vicki, heard about a Jewish baby in need of a home. Having suffered many miscarriages after their first two children, the Krauszes jumped at the opportunity.

“We got so many phone calls afterward from people saying, ‘We heard you adopted a Jewish girl. We always thought there were no Jewish children for adoption!’ ”

In reality, there were; in fact, the Krauszes discovered a whole population of Jewish children in need of adoption — children with Down syndrome. At that time, many of these babies were being left in the hospital, and often adopted by non-Jewish families. The Krauszes — who later adopted two babies with Down syndrome themselves — decided to start an agency to connect these Jewish babies with Jewish parents looking to adopt. Their organization, the Jewish Children’s Adoption Network, has blossomed over these 25 years to become a powerful force in the Jewish adoption scene, having facilitated over 2,000 adoptions.

Steven Krausz explains that they aren’t an adoption agency, but rather a matchmaking service; they maintain a nationwide database of Jewish parents looking to adopt, and when they hear of a Jewish child available, they jump into action.

The Menorah Project is a similar project that was started several years ago by a parent looking for Jewish babies to adopt, and has now been taken over by A T.I.M.E. Its goal is to locate Jewish babies around the world for adoption.

After the Mazel Tov

For these couples, finally bringing a baby home is the culmination of a long journey. But it’s also the beginning of a new one. The first challenge is dealing with the reactions of family and friends.

“There was no way to hide the fact that we’d adopted,” says Tova Landau. “We live in a close-knit community; everyone knew us, everyone had been davening for us.” Still, she found the telling process draining, even within her own family.

Tova’s mother was thrilled. “That baby’s going to be the luckiest baby in the world!” she enthused.
Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, a Holocaust survivor, told them, “Whatever you do, don’t tell the children they’re adopted.”

Yettie Katz admits that one of the first things she had to learn as an adoptive parent was to develop a backbone. “At the beginning, I felt that people were whispering about me. I had to adjust to saying the words, ‘I adopted,’ and not to worry so much about what people thought of me.”

Tova is convinced that others take their cue from the adoptive parents themselves. If the parents are perfectly comfortable with the situation, then friends and neighbors will be natural about it as well.
Still, even the best-intentioned neighbors and relatives can leave adoptive parents squirming with their questions or comments. Yettie Katz mentions a few distinctly uncomfortable questions: “Is your child Jewish?” (“Do you really think I’m going to share that information with you?”) “Where’s the baby from?” (“Is that any of your business?”) “Do you have anything to do with the mother?” (“Hello! I’m the mother!”)
Nevertheless, dealing with the occasional thoughtless comment is a small price to pay for the joy of raising a child. The Torah lauds an adoptive parent as a true baal chesed. And, certainly, there’s no escaping the element of hashgachah in adoption; as Brany Rosen puts it, “There’s a name tag on every baby.”

Every baby has a family that he is destined for. For most babies, it’s the families they’re born into. For some, it takes a few more steps until family and baby are joined together.

Who Gives Away a Baby?

Perhaps the biggest emotional hurdle in raising adopted children is knowing that at some point, you will have to tell them the truth. “It can be earth-shattering for a child who grew up thinking the people raising him are his biological parents, and then to suddenly find out they’re not,” says Beryl Tritel, MSW and individual and marriage therapist in Jerusalem and Ramat Beit Shemesh, who works with families who adopted. She recommends telling children as early as possible.

Tova explains how she did it, without “the talk” or drama. “From when my children first began developing language, at around two years old, we made them a little picture book about how Abba and Ima got married, then waited and davened for children for a long time, and finally adopted our babies. We did it very matter-of-factly.”

Yettie agrees that, in her experience as an adoption counselor, waiting too long to tell the children or trying to hide the fact altogether can result in some very messy situations down the line. “In our home, the concept of adoption is very normal, just a part of life. From a very young age, we would tell them, ‘Hashem gave you to us, you’re our gift — you just weren’t born from Mommy’s tummy.’ ”

If the parents have a healthy attitude, it usually filters down to the kids as well. Yettie relates, “When we adopted my second child, the older one, who was seven at the time, looked down at his brother in the infant seat and told him, ‘You know, you’re adopted. But that’s okay. So am I.’ ”

This doesn’t mean, though, that the children don’t have trouble dealing with this sensitive information — some personalities are more sensitive to the issue than others, and a parent has to be alert to this.

“My son has always had more trouble with the concept,” says Tova. “When he would come home and complain that kids were teasing him in school, my daughter would say, ‘Just tell them that it’s none of their business!’ But he couldn’t let go of it so easily. He’s the only one who’s expressed the idea that it’s hard to be adopted, asking questions like, ‘Who gives away a baby?’ ”

Yettie, whose husband is a Kohein, says that her older son finds it uncomfortable dealing with the fact that he is publicly different from his father. He’s asked several times about his birth mother, wanting to know why he was given up.

“We tell them, ‘She loved you, but she just couldn’t take care of you.’ ”

Yettie Katz stresses that it’s important for children to feel like they have an address for those questions. “One day we were driving in the car, and out of the blue, my son asks, ‘So, who’s my birth mother, and where was I born again?’ I thought my husband would crash into the car in front of him. But I answered nonchalantly where he was born, and he said, ‘Oh,’ and that was that.”

Beryl Tritel warns that adopted children may harbor resentment toward their birth parents that gets projected onto their adoptive parents. “If this comes up, the first rule is not to personalize it,” she says. “You should empathize with your child — ‘I can understand why you’re upset with your birth mom, but I’m here for you, so let’s work this out together.’ In some cases, it might be helpful to go for therapy together.”

How open should adoptive parents be when their children start asking uncomfortable questions? “I’m very grateful that in Israel, we’re legally protected as parents,” says Tova. Unlike in the US, in Israel the birth mother can’t insist on meeting the child. When the child reaches adulthood, he can choose to go to the child welfare agency to find out about his birth mother — but even then, it’s not simply a matter of requesting and being handed a file. A social worker has to be involved, who reviews the file and determines whether a meeting is in the child’s best interest, regardless of the birth mother’s desire. And of course, if the social worker agrees, the birth mother, too, must agree. “These laws provide my husband and me with a feeling of safety,” Tova says.

In the US, on the other hand, the birth mother is given more freedom. Yettie has already determined that she will give her children whatever information they seek, should they ask for it.

“My son’s natural great-grandmother gave him a beautiful Haggadah when he was born. I kept it, and presented it to him when he was older, explaining who it was from.”

She recalls him trying to get the relationship straight in his mind. “So this is from my birth great-grandmother?” he asked.

She nodded, and, with a touch of self-consciousness, asked him, “So what does that make me?”
He looked at her strangely. “My mother!”

“It Was Just Part of My Life”

I was adopted as a baby; my parents (for me, “parents” always means my adoptive parents), who live in Europe, were childless for many years, and, through a series of providential events, heard about a newborn baby up for adoption in Israel. I’m not sure why the birth parents were giving their baby up — maybe they were no longer alive. I don’t know, and, honestly, in the 40-plus years since, I’ve never really had a desire to know. What’s important to me is that my parents got on the next plane to Israel, and somehow managed to cut through the country’s tight adoption laws to legally adopt me and bring me home with them.

I don’t recall ever being sat down and told, “We have something to tell you, now take it easy…” Being adopted was just a natural part of my life. And it was never an issue for me socially either; I was always very popular among my friends. That’s not to say that there weren’t points of embarrassment for me. There were some obvious differences between me and my parents, such as the fact that I look ethnically different from them. But every kid has his own sources of embarrassment that he has to overcome, and, aside from the self-consciousness of looking different, I don’t remember ever feeling my adoption as a negative thing in my life.

The only hurtful comments I recall are when people would hesitate to refer to my mother as “your mother” or to me as her son. I’m sure it was coming from a place of discomfort, and not knowing the right way to speak to me, but, as a boy, it really stung.

Aside from some natural curiosity, I never had any real desire to find out about my birth parents. However, as an adult, I wrote a letter to one of the gedolim asking if I had a chiyuv to search them out in order to do the mitzvah of kibbud av v’eim toward them. The rav answered no.

In one way I do retain a connection to my birth parents; when I’m called up to the Torah, it’s as “ben Shimon Levi” — with Shimon being my adoptive father, and Levi my birth father. However, in every way I’ve always felt my adoptive parents to be my true parents. When my father passed away, I followed the psak that I could sit shivah and say Kaddish for him.
—Ephraim Stein

What Does Halachah Say?

“In numerous places in the Talmud, our Sages lavish praise on one who raises another person’s child as his own, yet a matter as sensitive as adopting a child should only be undertaken with the guidance of a halachic authority who is experienced in these matters,” explains Rabbi Doniel Neustadt, chairman of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit and rav of Bnai Israel-Beth Yehudah in Oak Park, Michigan. “When the adoption process conforms to halachic guidelines, it is considered to be a noble deed whose rewards are incalculable.”

Rabbi Neustadt discussed some of the questions and concerns people have when contemplating such a step.

When considering an adoption, should the couple try to adopt a child who is born Jewish, or are there legitimate halachic concerns in adopting a Jewish child? Does raising a Jewish child outweigh those concerns?

“Theoretically, a Jewish child would be preferable, since it is a great mitzvah to raise a Jewish child who may otherwise not have a Jewish home. In practice, however, it may prove difficult to verify the lineage (yichus) of the child, in which case problems may arise in the future when the time comes for him to enter into a halachically valid Jewish marriage. Thus, before adopting a Jewish child, one must thoroughly investigate the child’s background to clarify his yichus.

“There is no such issue with a non-Jewish child. At the time of adoption the child undergoes conversion, which allows the child to marry any person permitted to wed a convert. The drawback, however, is that the child must be told of his conversion when he or she reaches the age of maturity, thirteen for a boy and twelve for a girl. At that time, the child is given the option to reject the earlier conversion, which took place without his consent.”

Should the child be told that he is adopted?

“Adopted children should be told of their origin at the earliest possible time. People who choose to hide the origins of their adopted children from them may unwittingly cause these children grave halachic hardships or complications in the future.”

What type of a physical relationship may the adoptive parents have with their adopted child of a different gender?

“Although in a spiritual sense an adopted child may be considered as one’s own child, this does not apply to physical contact, which many poskim strictly forbid.

“There is, however, a view that tends to be lenient on this issue. This view holds that when a child is adopted at a young age, we assume that a normal father-daughter or mother-son relationship has developed between them. We do not fear that any illicit relations will take place and hence do not restrict the parents from treating their adopted children as their own. This leniency applies only to children who were adopted before the age when yichud is prohibited, three for a girl and nine for a boy. A couple may not adopt a child of an older age unless they observe all restrictions of yichud and physical contact.

“Rav Moshe Feinstein ztz”l also holds that yichud is permitted with adopted children, but for a different reason. No adoptive father, he suggests, would dare act improperly with his adoptive daughter for fear of discovery. That intimidation factor alone is enough to permit yichud. Consequently, as long as both adoptive parents are alive, married, and living together in one home, yichud with an adopted child (in their home) is permitted. According to Rav Moshe, it is also permitted to kiss and hug an adopted child, since the kissing and hugging is done as any parent does to his or her child, which is permitted. Other poskim allow this only until the age of five or six, but many do not agree with this approach altogether, and in their opinion, an adopted or a stepchild is just like any other stranger with whom yichud and physical interaction are prohibited.”

How is an adopted child called to the Torah?

“There are various opinions among the poskim. Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach ztz”l ruled that if the biological father’s name is known, then the child should be called to the Torah by that name. If the biological father’s name is not known, then he may be called to the Torah as the son of the adoptive father.”