Here, there, and everywhere

As an adopted Jew, I appreciate the community’s growing diversity

April 13, 2010

NU Magazine – April 2010

Judaism says, “Be fruitful and multiply,” but sometimes creating families is not that simple.

Adoption is an alternative. According to the Talmud, someone who raises another’s child is viewed as if the child had been born to him. The adoptive parents’ name is used because “he who brings up a child is to be called its father, not he who gave birth” (Exodus Rabbah 48:5).

I am an adopted Jew. I was born in Guatemala and lived with a nanny for my first five-and-a-half months. I was held for the first time by my adoptive parents and sister in a hotel room crowded with lawyers and adoption agency representatives. I still have the tiny lavender flowered dress I wore that day and sometimes take it out to look at.

From my baby pictures I can see I had abundant black curls. I am told I had a happy personality even as a baby.

With the adoption finalized, our visit to the American consulate in Guatemala should have been a snap. However, my older sister Claudia became ill and my parents still say that she “defaced” the American consulate. But I charmed the consulate workers and we left for my new home in New Zealand.

Yes, I lived in New Zealand, where there are more sheep than people, but only for one month. The Kiwis (New Zealanders) were extremely hospitable. They loaned us a crib, changing table, rocking chair, and even toys. I would love to return to New Zealand, since a five-month-old cannot appreciate, let alone remember, much.

We moved to Pittsburgh, best known for its football team (the Steelers), and its steel mills. I was converted there when I was submerged in a kosher mikva during a ceremony conducted by a Conservative rabbi. My sister, Claudia, then five, screamed “Don’t drown my baby sister!” But when it was over I was alive, well, and also Jewish.

Claudia was adopted five years earlier from Chile. She, however, was converted in a mikva by an Orthodox rabbi.

I am a member of a family that loves to travel. Although only 17, I have visited 16 countries, one of them Israel. Claudia celebrated her bat mitzva on Masada.

When it was my turn to become a bat mitzva, our family lived in England. It was here that I had the opportunity to meet Jewish people from different backgrounds. I met Ethiopian Jews and other Spanish Jews. I also realized that many non-adopted Jewish kids often do not look like their birth parents. I’ve met red-haired Jewish kids whose parents have brown hair.

My mom told me she read recently that 25 percent of Jewish people who adopt choose to do so overseas. The last National Jewish Population Survey found that nearly 3 percent of all Jewish children under age 18 were adopted. That means there are many other Jewish kids out there who are American citizens with ties to places all over the world, such as Latin America and China.

Being an adopted Jew in the United States has given me many opportunities. I am going to college in a year, an opportunity I probably would not have in Guatemala. Judaism has given me a religion to identify with (and great matza ball soup). I wouldn’t change anything in my life.

Julia Ring, 17, attends Livingston High School and is a member of Nu’s teen board.