From "Jews and Adoption" the Jewish Press, 1987, available as a PDF download here.
Rabbi Menachem Porush, in an article in THE JEWlSH PRESS (November 29 1985) elaborated on the great pain felt by the hundreds of Yemenite parents whose children have been missing for over thirty years, apparently to adoption. Rabbl Porush states: “Gezerah at hamet sheyishtakach min halel. It has been decreed in heaven that the deceased will eventually be forgotten, but that Yaakov Avinu grieved over Yosef for twenty years” because he was alive and missing. Isaiah asks us “Can a woman forget the child she bore?’ The scriptures also tell us that the worst sin of all is to “blot put their names” – to erase their identity as though they never existed – a more powerful threat than physical death. Yet this is what is done in sealed adoption.....
Rabbi Hayim Doninin his book “The Be A Jew” states: ”Since Jewish law does not regard children as the property of parents, the notion of transferring title of the child to someone else simply does not exist. Jewish law regard the relationship between natural parents and their offspring to be irrevocable.”
3 comments:
Why then is Jewish adoption practised?
Same reason all other adoptions are - want of a child.
Things to be aware in Judaism:
There are different sects of Judaism from very liberal to very conservative. But all married people (and now even single and same sex couples amongst liberals) want children and,just like for Christians, more religious among them are further compelled to go for and be fruitful. Jews do not adopt to recurit more of their flock or "save" non-Jews as some Christain zealots do, but any child adopted into a Jewish family will be raised as a Jew which is tough because there is an ethnic element and a knowing that Judaism isd apssed down matrilineally. Some are also prejudiced against non-Jews.
The other thing is that unlike Catholicism, there is no one authority. Rabbis like those quoted here can interpret law,, but others my well disagree with their interpretation.
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