We spent months stranded in Brazil waiting for a baby of our own

My wife and I got married in 1989. It soon became clear that our dreams of having a large and lively family were not going to materialize that quickly, if at all. But we weren’t going to give up so fast either. We visited several top doctors, in New York and even out of the country. But nothing worked. After numerous failed attempts, we decided to go the adoption route.

But here, too, we soon learned that the road was strewn with obstacles. For one, adopting a Jewish American child is all but impossible. Even a non-Jewish American child is hard to find. At that point, we were so desperate that we were willing to adopt a child from out of the country, as far out as Ukraine. At long last, from all the other potential adoptive parents in the United States, we were next in line for a baby from Ukraine. We even booked tickets to Kiev, the capital. But then we were told that the United States had stopped adoptions through Ukraine. Nobody ever told us it was going to be easy.

We switched to a different agency and started looking in Brazil. Early one Sunday morning, we received a call that a baby boy was born, and he was available for adoption. We were barely awake, but we already had to give the child, whom we had never even met, a legal name so his papers could be processed. So we picked a name, Jason (name changed). Though we had already named our child and we couldn’t wait to meet him after all these years of waiting, we were told that we could not travel to Brazil until the preliminary paperwork was completed. We went back to our waiting game, going crazy from excitement, anticipation, and nervousness.

When we got married, we may have been told the importance of patience. But now, after waiting to have children, then waiting to adopt, and now waiting to travel to Brazil, we really learned how to be patient. We had no choice, after all. And we were soon to learn that our waiting game was far from over.

Finally, after three endless months, the agency informed us that we were good to go. The plan was to travel to a city in the north of Brazil, Fortaleza, known as the Miami Beach of Brazil. It sits right along the Equator, on the Atlantic Ocean, and lots of people vacation there. We would stay in a residence hotel, while the rest of the paperwork and legal proceedings were taken care of, which, we were told, would take five to six weeks. What can I say? Man plans and G-d laughs.

Before leaving for Brazil, we checked to see if there was any Yiddishkeit in Fortaleza. We were told there was a handful of Jews there, and even a “minyan,” but it was comprised of Jews and also non-Jews. There was a Chabad in Recife, but that was several hundred miles away, and there was no steady minyan there either. I would have to daven at “the Kosel.”

As we packed our bags, we hoped for the best. We made sure to take along plenty of foods with a long shelf life to sustain us in the “desert,” such as bread and hard salami. We also brought along a small English-Portuguese dictionary, which proved handier than we expected. And so, we left our families, our home, and our jobs, heading to a foreign place that barely anyone had ever heard of, where they speak a strange language — all so we could meet and take home the child we couldn’t wait to call our own.

After a very long and tiring trip, we arrived in Fortaleza at 3 a.m. It was a small airport and there weren’t too many people around, and we weren’t sure what to do next. Then we heard someone say, “Bruchim haba’im.” We turned to see a Brazilian young man, who was about 25 years old. He warmly introduced himself as Nestor and said he was our attorney. Those must have been the only two Hebrew words he knew. No matter. It was certainly a nice way to welcome us to the country.

The hotel was not fancy, but definitely homey enough for our extended stay. Though we had brought along plenty of food, we really wanted a bit more variety, especially since Shavuos was a few days away. Even more, how would we keep Yom Tov when we were so far away from Yiddishkeit? But we had encountered and overcome obstacles before on our journey, and were determined to overcome this, as well, especially since it seemed that the end was actually in sight.

There was a small shopping center nearby, complete with a real supermarket. We checked with a chassidishe rav in Sao Paulo, a city in Brazil with a sizeable Jewish population. Since he oversaw the kashrus in certain areas in Brazil, he was able to advise us. It wasn’t as if there was a plethora of kosher foods — nothing like sushi or corned beef or pizza — but at least we could eat the tuna fish and some of the cereals in the local market.

Yet a Jew is never alone. When the rav asked us what we were planning on doing in terms of Shabbos food, and we couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer, he immediately sprang into action. Each week, his wife would send us challah, fish, meat, and grape juice for Shabbos. This, too, was easier said than done. Did I mention that Sao Paulo is over 1,000 miles away from Fortaleza? Thus, every Friday, he would send us a “pekeleh” for Shabbos, and we would go to the Fortaleza airport and claim it. This “air care” system worked fine, except for one time when a mouse decided it was too good to pass up and got to it before we could.

Of course, many other issues and sh’eilos arose during this time. Baruch Hashem, our rav from back home was incredibly helpful, not only by answering our many sh’eilos, but by keeping our emunah and bitachon strong.

Back to the story of our baby. Our trip to pick him up started off well enough. The weather was good and the roads were clear. We traveled through Brazil, which looked just like the United States, and included some nice cities and country roads in between them. As we drove through the country, schmoozing about life in general, Nestor asked me why it is that Jews need to have our own special country, and why we have to pray in special places and we can’t just pray anywhere we want.

Suddenly, boom! We hit a double pothole and blew out two tires. Baruch Hashem, we were all okay, and we safely made our way to the side of the road. Then Nestor stopped the car, turned to me, and said, “That’s the last time I’m going to talk to you about religion!”

I just smiled and agreed.

We were miles away from any city. Nestor got out and said he would hitch a ride to the nearest town and get new tires. He said there was a gun in the glove compartment “if we need it.” He flagged down a truck and left us there. There we were, alone, in the middle of nowhere, in a foreign country where we didn’t even speak the language. And what could we possibly need that gun for, anyway? Not that we knew how to use it in any case. This was before cell phones, so we had no way of communicating with Nestor — or with the police even if we knew how to reach them or speak to them. This took our whole nail-biting wait to a new level.

About three hours later, Nestor showed up with two new tires and we were back on the road. As we drove on, the weather started getting worse. Clouds, then rain, then more and more rain. Torrential downpours that close to the Equator are common, but that wasn’t our biggest concern. The real problem was that the roads were more country-like at that point, which meant muddy and bumpy. A real roller coaster ride.

Eventually, after traveling 12 to 14 hours, we had to pull over to the side of the road and call it a night, or at least treat our driver to a well-deserved nap. After about an hour or two, the rains had subsided and we were up and running again. Though we had been told to expect a ten-hour trip, it still took another four to five hours of driving until we reached our destination, the small town of Codo, which reminded me very much of an old, dusty town in the American West.

By this point, Jason was already three and a half months old. He had been taken care of by a relative of his birth mother. She and her husband owned a bar attached to their “house,” which looked a lot more like a hut. They also raised chickens… inside their home. The chickens ran all around Jason while he lay comfortably on a baby blanket on the floor. As we took turns holding our baby, we also took turns taking pictures and videos of his interesting surroundings.

The trip back was much quicker, and uneventful. We got back to Fortaleza on Erev Shavuos. Somehow, we got ready for Yom Tov and settled in to enjoy time with our beautiful son. Since we had nothing to do there, we had plenty of time to bond with him; we played with him for hours, took long walks, and he and I “learned” Gemara “together.”

In the meantime, our five to six weeks stretched into two months and then more, with no end in sight. Almost every evening, we visited the nightly flea market on the Fortaleza beach. The locals soon recognized us as the Jewish couple with the cute baby. What a wonderful feeling to be identified with a baby!

When would we be able to share that special feeling with our families back home? How much longer would it take?

The first question in a South American country is: Is it just money holding back the process? But Nestor assured us that this was not the case. In time, we found out that the powers that be had heard of cases of Americans adopting children and abusing, even torturing, them. We made a special trip to Codo again, to meet with the judge and assure him that we were good people. Though he promised to get back to us soon, several more weeks of waiting passed. Then we found out that the original judge was no longer on the case, and that the new judge was even tougher than this one.

By this time, Rosh Hashanah was only a week away. Our kind benefactors, the rav and rebbetzin in Sao Paulo, graciously hosted us for Yom Tov. How nice to be able to daven with a minyan and to spend time with other frum people.

Before we headed back to Fortaleza, our Sao Paulo host was able to provide me with a lulav and esrog, and he promised to send hadassim as soon as they arrived from Eretz Yisrael. Aravos, we were told, grew abundantly in Fortaleza. Now, on to the succah. Sechach was easy; a Jew we had befriended provided us with some beautiful branches. The succah itself was not so simple; it was complicated to build a succah in the alley of the hotel, the only place available, since the winds there were very strong. Close to Yom Tov, we found out that our hadassim had not arrived. Not only that, but we had not yet found the aravos plant. To make matters worse, we had still not come up with a durable succah. So we had no succah and no arba minim.

One of the non-Jews from the hotel must have seen our concern, and he brought me to a lumberyard of sorts. Wood! I was so excited. We picked out three boards, which happened to be purple. At least we would have a three-walled succah. Back at the hotel, the workers helped me put our purple succah together, which I topped off with the sechach we had cut earlier. We ran to the supermarket and picked up a few decorative signs in Portuguese to use as noi succah. (Later, we found out that the signs read “Happy Anniversary.”) Ten minutes before Yom Tov, our succah was finished. When we came down later, we found that the workers had even placed a light and a nice plant inside.

That night, our seudah was filled with so much emotion and simchah. The first morning of Yom Tov, we davened in our room. We were sad that we could not fulfill the mitzvah of lulav, but at least we had our little purple succah.

Or so we thought.

Before going down to eat, I went to the hallway window on our floor, which overlooked the alleyway that housed our succah. Something didn’t look right. I ran down the seven flights — to discover that our succah had collapsed. I didn’t think we could fix it on Yom Tov.

I climbed back up the seven flights of stairs to our room and told my wife what had happened. Now we had no succah, no daled minim, and no way of knowing when this whole nightmare would end. I collapsed in a chair and cried like a baby for about three hours straight. Not the typical picture of zeman simchaseinu.

But as we know, once you hit rock bottom, you can only go up from there.

Finally, I collected myself and tried to deal with the situation. I went back to the window and looked at down at our succah. For some reason, it didn’t look as bad as before. With renewed hope, I ran back downstairs. The workers had fixed our succah! I ran back up to my wife and son, and they soon joined me. We were able to eat in the succah for the rest of Yom Tov.

The first morning of Chol HaMoed, we received the hadassim and aravos from Sao Paulo, and were able to fulfill the mitzvah of arba minim.

And that night, Nestor came over with a big surprise: We had permission to go home with our baby, who was not going to be Jason for much longer, but would soon be zocheh to a bris and a Jewish name.

Sitting in the succah that one last time with our long-awaited baby, we felt Hashem’s embrace as we’d never felt it before. He had brought us on this long journey through a strange country, but He’d shown us glimpses of His love throughout the wait — just like the pinpricks of light shining through the sechach.  —

My wife and I got married in 1989. It soon became clear that our dreams of having a large and lively family were not going to materialize that quickly, if at all. But we weren’t going to give up so fast either. We visited several top doctors, in New York and even out of the country. But nothing worked. After numerous failed attempts, we decided to go the adoption route.

But here, too, we soon learned that the road was strewn with obstacles. For one, adopting a Jewish American child is all but impossible. Even a non-Jewish American child is hard to find. At that point, we were so desperate that we were willing to adopt a child from out of the country, as far out as Ukraine. At long last, from all the other potential adoptive parents in the United States, we were next in line for a baby from Ukraine. We even booked tickets to Kiev, the capital. But then we were told that the United States had stopped adoptions through Ukraine. Nobody ever told us it was going to be easy.

We switched to a different agency and started looking in Brazil. Early one Sunday morning, we received a call that a baby boy was born, and he was available for adoption. We were barely awake, but we already had to give the child, whom we had never even met, a legal name so his papers could be processed. So we picked a name, Jason (name changed). Though we had already named our child and we couldn’t wait to meet him after all these years of waiting, we were told that we could not travel to Brazil until the preliminary paperwork was completed. We went back to our waiting game, going crazy from excitement, anticipation, and nervousness.

When we got married, we may have been told the importance of patience. But now, after waiting to have children, then waiting to adopt, and now waiting to travel to Brazil, we really learned how to be patient. We had no choice, after all. And we were soon to learn that our waiting game was far from over.

Finally, after three endless months, the agency informed us that we were good to go. The plan was to travel to a city in the north of Brazil, Fortaleza, known as the Miami Beach of Brazil. It sits right along the Equator, on the Atlantic Ocean, and lots of people vacation there. We would stay in a residence hotel, while the rest of the paperwork and legal proceedings were taken care of, which, we were told, would take five to six weeks. What can I say? Man plans and G-d laughs.

Before leaving for Brazil, we checked to see if there was any Yiddishkeit in Fortaleza. We were told there was a handful of Jews there, and even a “minyan,” but it was comprised of Jews and also non-Jews. There was a Chabad in Recife, but that was several hundred miles away, and there was no steady minyan there either. I would have to daven at “the Kosel.”

As we packed our bags, we hoped for the best. We made sure to take along plenty of foods with a long shelf life to sustain us in the “desert,” such as bread and hard salami. We also brought along a small English-Portuguese dictionary, which proved handier than we expected. And so, we left our families, our home, and our jobs, heading to a foreign place that barely anyone had ever heard of, where they speak a strange language — all so we could meet and take home the child we couldn’t wait to call our own.

After a very long and tiring trip, we arrived in Fortaleza at 3 a.m. It was a small airport and there weren’t too many people around, and we weren’t sure what to do next. Then we heard someone say, “Bruchim haba’im.” We turned to see a Brazilian young man, who was about 25 years old. He warmly introduced himself as Nestor and said he was our attorney. Those must have been the only two Hebrew words he knew. No matter. It was certainly a nice way to welcome us to the country.

The hotel was not fancy, but definitely homey enough for our extended stay. Though we had brought along plenty of food, we really wanted a bit more variety, especially since Shavuos was a few days away. Even more, how would we keep Yom Tov when we were so far away from Yiddishkeit? But we had encountered and overcome obstacles before on our journey, and were determined to overcome this, as well, especially since it seemed that the end was actually in sight.

There was a small shopping center nearby, complete with a real supermarket. We checked with a chassidishe rav in Sao Paulo, a city in Brazil with a sizeable Jewish population. Since he oversaw the kashrus in certain areas in Brazil, he was able to advise us. It wasn’t as if there was a plethora of kosher foods — nothing like sushi or corned beef or pizza — but at least we could eat the tuna fish and some of the cereals in the local market.

Yet a Jew is never alone. When the rav asked us what we were planning on doing in terms of Shabbos food, and we couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer, he immediately sprang into action. Each week, his wife would send us challah, fish, meat, and grape juice for Shabbos. This, too, was easier said than done. Did I mention that Sao Paulo is over 1,000 miles away from Fortaleza? Thus, every Friday, he would send us a “pekeleh” for Shabbos, and we would go to the Fortaleza airport and claim it. This “air care” system worked fine, except for one time when a mouse decided it was too good to pass up and got to it before we could.

Of course, many other issues and sh’eilos arose during this time. Baruch Hashem, our rav from back home was incredibly helpful, not only by answering our many sh’eilos, but by keeping our emunah and bitachon strong.

Back to the story of our baby. Our trip to pick him up started off well enough. The weather was good and the roads were clear. We traveled through Brazil, which looked just like the United States, and included some nice cities and country roads in between them. As we drove through the country, schmoozing about life in general, Nestor asked me why it is that Jews need to have our own special country, and why we have to pray in special places and we can’t just pray anywhere we want.

Suddenly, boom! We hit a double pothole and blew out two tires. Baruch Hashem, we were all okay, and we safely made our way to the side of the road. Then Nestor stopped the car, turned to me, and said, “That’s the last time I’m going to talk to you about religion!”

I just smiled and agreed.

We were miles away from any city. Nestor got out and said he would hitch a ride to the nearest town and get new tires. He said there was a gun in the glove compartment “if we need it.” He flagged down a truck and left us there. There we were, alone, in the middle of nowhere, in a foreign country where we didn’t even speak the language. And what could we possibly need that gun for, anyway? Not that we knew how to use it in any case. This was before cell phones, so we had no way of communicating with Nestor — or with the police even if we knew how to reach them or speak to them. This took our whole nail-biting wait to a new level.

About three hours later, Nestor showed up with two new tires and we were back on the road. As we drove on, the weather started getting worse. Clouds, then rain, then more and more rain. Torrential downpours that close to the Equator are common, but that wasn’t our biggest concern. The real problem was that the roads were more country-like at that point, which meant muddy and bumpy. A real roller coaster ride.

Eventually, after traveling 12 to 14 hours, we had to pull over to the side of the road and call it a night, or at least treat our driver to a well-deserved nap. After about an hour or two, the rains had subsided and we were up and running again. Though we had been told to expect a ten-hour trip, it still took another four to five hours of driving until we reached our destination, the small town of Codo, which reminded me very much of an old, dusty town in the American West.

By this point, Jason was already three and a half months old. He had been taken care of by a relative of his birth mother. She and her husband owned a bar attached to their “house,” which looked a lot more like a hut. They also raised chickens… inside their home. The chickens ran all around Jason while he lay comfortably on a baby blanket on the floor. As we took turns holding our baby, we also took turns taking pictures and videos of his interesting surroundings.

The trip back was much quicker, and uneventful. We got back to Fortaleza on Erev Shavuos. Somehow, we got ready for Yom Tov and settled in to enjoy time with our beautiful son. Since we had nothing to do there, we had plenty of time to bond with him; we played with him for hours, took long walks, and he and I “learned” Gemara “together.”

In the meantime, our five to six weeks stretched into two months and then more, with no end in sight. Almost every evening, we visited the nightly flea market on the Fortaleza beach. The locals soon recognized us as the Jewish couple with the cute baby. What a wonderful feeling to be identified with a baby!

When would we be able to share that special feeling with our families back home? How much longer would it take?

The first question in a South American country is: Is it just money holding back the process? But Nestor assured us that this was not the case. In time, we found out that the powers that be had heard of cases of Americans adopting children and abusing, even torturing, them. We made a special trip to Codo again, to meet with the judge and assure him that we were good people. Though he promised to get back to us soon, several more weeks of waiting passed. Then we found out that the original judge was no longer on the case, and that the new judge was even tougher than this one.

By this time, Rosh Hashanah was only a week away. Our kind benefactors, the rav and rebbetzin in Sao Paulo, graciously hosted us for Yom Tov. How nice to be able to daven with a minyan and to spend time with other frum people.

Before we headed back to Fortaleza, our Sao Paulo host was able to provide me with a lulav and esrog, and he promised to send hadassim as soon as they arrived from Eretz Yisrael. Aravos, we were told, grew abundantly in Fortaleza. Now, on to the succah. Sechach was easy; a Jew we had befriended provided us with some beautiful branches. The succah itself was not so simple; it was complicated to build a succah in the alley of the hotel, the only place available, since the winds there were very strong. Close to Yom Tov, we found out that our hadassim had not arrived. Not only that, but we had not yet found the aravos plant. To make matters worse, we had still not come up with a durable succah. So we had no succah and no arba minim.

One of the non-Jews from the hotel must have seen our concern, and he brought me to a lumberyard of sorts. Wood! I was so excited. We picked out three boards, which happened to be purple. At least we would have a three-walled succah. Back at the hotel, the workers helped me put our purple succah together, which I topped off with the sechach we had cut earlier. We ran to the supermarket and picked up a few decorative signs in Portuguese to use as noi succah. (Later, we found out that the signs read “Happy Anniversary.”) Ten minutes before Yom Tov, our succah was finished. When we came down later, we found that the workers had even placed a light and a nice plant inside.

That night, our seudah was filled with so much emotion and simchah. The first morning of Yom Tov, we davened in our room. We were sad that we could not fulfill the mitzvah of lulav, but at least we had our little purple succah.

Or so we thought.

Before going down to eat, I went to the hallway window on our floor, which overlooked the alleyway that housed our succah. Something didn’t look right. I ran down the seven flights — to discover that our succah had collapsed. I didn’t think we could fix it on Yom Tov.

I climbed back up the seven flights of stairs to our room and told my wife what had happened. Now we had no succah, no daled minim, and no way of knowing when this whole nightmare would end. I collapsed in a chair and cried like a baby for about three hours straight. Not the typical picture of zeman simchaseinu.

But as we know, once you hit rock bottom, you can only go up from there.

Finally, I collected myself and tried to deal with the situation. I went back to the window and looked at down at our succah. For some reason, it didn’t look as bad as before. With renewed hope, I ran back downstairs. The workers had fixed our succah! I ran back up to my wife and son, and they soon joined me. We were able to eat in the succah for the rest of Yom Tov.

The first morning of Chol HaMoed, we received the hadassim and aravos from Sao Paulo, and were able to fulfill the mitzvah of arba minim.

And that night, Nestor came over with a big surprise: We had permission to go home with our baby, who was not going to be Jason for much longer, but would soon be zocheh to a bris and a Jewish name.

Sitting in the succah that one last time with our long-awaited baby, we felt Hashem’s embrace as we’d never felt it before. He had brought us on this long journey through a strange country, but He’d shown us glimpses of His love throughout the wait — just like the pinpricks of light shining through the sechach.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 780)