TH E CONSERVATIVE
MOVEMENT
Strange Bedfellows
Warmly Welcomes
Religion and politics make foreign adoption almost
impossible in Israel.
Rabbi Moshe Tutnauer
to Metropolitan Detroit
LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
as our
Scholar in Residence
for the Month of October
Rabbi Tutnauer is an
active participant in the
revitalization of Judaism
around the world. As a
lecturer, he has energized
communities in Argentina,
Peru, Ethiopia, Kenya and
the former Soviet Union.
Rabbi Tutnauer has been a
dynamic force in the
development of the Alasorti,
(the Conservative Jewish)
Movement in Israel, since
making aliyah in 1972.
Start the New Year right. Join Rabbi Tutnauer in Torah Study this October!
Consult your Synagogue bulletins, community mailings and
future Jewish News articles for times and dates.
Honorary Chairpersons
David B. Hermelin
David K. Page
ouples who want to adopt
children have a hard time
in most countries, but in
Israel, would-be parents
have to contend with the religious
establishment, the government
coalition and a state agency with
a monopoly on adoption.
For thousands of couples here
who want to adopt an Israeli
child, the waiting list is six years.
Last year only 79 normal, healthy
Israeli infants were adopted,
along with another 132 children
with "special needs," plus anoth-
er five children with Down's syn-
drome. At the same time,
estimates of the number of Israeli
abortions range from 45,000 to
80,000 a year.
Between the high abortion
rate, the common use of birth con-
trol, and the value placed on rais-
ing the children who are brought
into the world, `There are few un-
wanted children in Israel," says
Ella Blass, director of the state-
run Child Welfare Services, Is-
rael's only adoption agency. "Also,
there is no longer a stigma in Is-
rael attached to single mothers.
What still carries a stigma,
though, is giving up your child for
adoption. The mother is seen as
a monster."
With so little chance of adopt-
ing in Israel, hundreds of couples
C
brew University professor of
Child Welfare and Public Policy,
and a leading adoption reform ac-
tivist.
Except for England, Israel is
the only developed nation that
does not have legal, licensed pri-
vate agencies that arrange for
families to adopt abroad. Child
Welfare Services has always had
a monopoly on adoptions, and
while it has been giving limited
help in recent years to Israeli cou-
ples seeking foreign children, in
the past it gave no help at all.
"The reason we didn't [assist
with foreign adoptions] more be-
fore was for political reasons," Ms.
Blass said. "I won't say any more
than that."
The "political reasons" appear
to have been that control over the
Ministry of Labor and Social Af-
fairs, which operates Child Wel-
fare Services, was usually
reserved for one of the religious
partners in past government
coalitions, the National Religious
Party or one of the Orthodox par-
ties. The Orthodox Jewish es-
tablishment has had various
objections about the religious le-
gitimacy of foreign adoption.
Conversions to Judaism in Is-
rael are done only by the Chief
Rabbinate. For the last year-and-
a-half — ever since Eliahu Bak-
go abroad each year to try their
luck — mainly to Brazil and oth-
er South American countries, RO-
mania and Ukraine.
Horror stories are common: be-
ing ripped off for thousands of dol-
lars by criminal baby brokers,
getting run around, stranded,
and ending up empty-handed. In
the late 1980s, one Israeli couple
had to return their Brazilian
baby to its biological mother four
years after they'd adopted him,
when it turned out the child had
been kidnapped by a gang of in-
ternational cradle robbers.
"When it comes to intercoun-
try adoptions, Israel is almost in
a class by itself for backward-
ness," said Eliezer Jaffe, a He-
shi-Doron became Chief Sephardi
Rabbi and began overseeing con-
versions — no foreign adoptees
have been converted to Judaism
unless their parents were obser-
vant Orthodox Jews.
The reason, explained Rabbi
Bakshi-Doron's aide Rafi Dayan,
is that Jewish law requires con-
verted children to declare at age
13 that they accept the Jewish re-
ligion, otherwise they are no
longer considered Jews. "A child
who is brought up without keep-
ing the mitzvot, without keeping
Shabbat, cannot honestly say at
age 13 whether he accepts Ju-
daism, because he doesn't know
what it is," Mr. Dayan said.
Until Rabbi Bakshi-Doron
Chairpersons
Joel Gershenson
Sharon Hart
Sharlene Ungar
For further information call (810) 258-0055
Made possible in part by support from-
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Conservative Rabbis of Metro Detroit, Detroit Friends of The Jewish Theological Seminary, Hillel Day School,
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism - Michigan Region
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