Susan Silverman - Casting Lots

So many people helped make this story happenin life and into this book. My parents immense love shepherded me my whole life. Just months before publication, my mother died after a long illnessthrough most of which she continued directing plays and giving generously to everyone who crossed her path, mostly me. Her wisdom sustained me. Her husband, John, pre-deceased her, but his steady, fatherly love still held us all. My remaining parents are the crazy ones, and I would have it no other way. Donald and Janice Silverman are rocks for their children and grandchildren, and I love you like crazy. I am so blessed to have had four parents to love me. And an aunt, Martha PleasureI love you and am so grateful for you and my cousins. You and Mom taught my sisters and me how to be the kind of siblings we are. And my sisters, Laura, Jodyne, and Sarahnear or farwere always at my side and had my back. I love you like crazy cakes. YM4E. And to my hearts: Aliza, Hallel, Adar, Zamir, and Ashira. Thank you for letting me write the whole story, the not-so-flattering parts, too. And thank you for becoming the breathtakingly beautiful forces that you are. I love you the whole earth and the whole sky. To Pat Delzell, who was by Momsand oursides our whole life. We love you. And to the women who lovingly cared for my boys until they came home. You gave gifts for which you can never be repaid. I strive to be like you. Thank you to Sam Seder and to Lara Kislinger for your loving, adventurous spirits. Thanks to my honorary family Leah Schraga, Mali Mantasnot, Ziva Birasau, Shira Greenberg, Yonit Tefate, and Lital Polanski for lovingly keeping our family functioning despite all odds. And to Esther Ben Gigi for saving us. Loving friends at my side, with red pens in hand, include Leslie Lawrence, Rabbi Susan Fendrick, Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, Rabbi Susan Harris, Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses, Rabbi Sarra Lev, Rachel Kadish, Sara Cohen, Lisa Coll, and my awesome mother-in-law, Devora Abramowitz. To Rebbitz Yisrael Campbell, thank you for distracting me from writing every day, and Paula Weiman-Kelman for the beautiful video of Adars homecoming. And, for her wisdom, skill, love, and saintly patience, Judy Bolton Fasman. Jami Bernard of Barncat Publishing is a genius, and this book would not exist without her. If you are a writer, hire her. Tovah Lazaroff helped a very little bit, I think. Maybe she was there from the beginning and moved me forward, in baby steps, toward the vision that became this book, and I could not have written it without her. I dont really remember, but I love her anyway. Thanks to Paul Beatty for being Paul, to Charlie Kalech and J-Towne Internet Services for developing JustAdopt.net, and Bain Consulting for donating their wisdom. Thank you to the Mandel Foundation for its support, and, with all my heart, to Kibbutz Ketura for the peace, friendship, mountains, and coffee. Thank you to Both Ends Burning and to Elizabeth Bartholet for the tireless work you do on behalf of the most vulnerable, trafficked, and abused humans in the worldunparented children. Anne Hawkins believed in this book in its earliest stages and helped me believe in it, too. Andrew Blauners enthusiasm and faith carried the book, and me, all the way into the arms of the fabulous, amazing Da Capo Press team: Renee Sedliar, who edited with heart, wisdom, depth, and humor; Carolyn Sobczak and Lisa Zales, who copy edited with brilliant clarity; and Lissa Warren, who imagined its potential impact everywhere. Jonathan Sainsburys art captured my book perfectly. I am so lucky to benefit from Kevin Hanovers marketing vision. And John Radziewicz made this possible. I am grateful beyond words to be in the Da Capo family. And, above all, to Yosef, for making my life an adventure worth writing about. Love, big time.

P eoplesmart, well-read peoplehave looked at me in surprise when I say that there are tens of millions of orphans in the world. I dont understand, they say. It took my friends years to complete their adoption from_____________ . Fill in the blank

Russia, China, Romania. I thought that parents had to wait because there are not many kids who need to be adopted.

So not. There are long waits because governments and international aid organizations such as UNICEF and Save the Children obstruct international adoption. In fact, due to self-serving policies, such organizations have caused an international adoption cliff, reducing the number of unparented children adopted by families in the United States by two-thirds, from almost 22,991 in 2004 to 7,200 in 2013, despite tens of millions of children who do not have parents and who, vulnerable, die and are trafficked in appalling numbers.

Why? Here are some of the anti-international-adoption argumentsand my responses:

Children have a right to their cultural heritage.

Im not sure how you define cultural heritage, but a life of institutionalization, mental illness, sex trafficking, crime, and early death is not a worthy cultural heritage. And certainly not a life we should impose on a child in the name of some greater heritage value. This argument is predicated on the assumption that a cultural heritage is not a meaningful set of rituals, values, and metaphors to orient us in life, but our owner, who has the right to lock us up for the sake of its own honor.

The same folks who would never claim that DNA is destiny, claim precisely that in the case of voiceless children. If you are born an untouchable in India, does that caste or caste system own you? Are you morally obligated to remain in that culture? We would never tell an adult that he was bound by cultural normsimagine insisting that a gay Iranian stay in Iran and suffer the consequences in the name of cultural heritage? According to our liberal Western ideals (of which I am very much a part), adults are not expected to sacrifice themselves on the altar of racial, cultural, or sexual identity as defined by society. Why should children?

Adoption robs countries of their most precious resource.

This assumes that children are the property of the nation, culture, or religion into which they were born (and even that assumes genetic purity). We certainly do not make these claims for adults. If an adult wants to leave a country, religion, or culture, would anyone tell them they are obligated to their old ways? You were born an ultra-Orthodox Jew and you may be a woman who wants to become a rabbi but you are obligated to stay in Crown Heights and cover your hair and have ten childrenyou are Orthodoxys most precious resource! Why are children different?

Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet challenges us to a thought experiment. Imagine if children could speak for themselves, regardless of their age, and they were asked if they would prefer to live in an institution or on the streets in their country of birth over living with a family outside their country of birth. What does our empathy, our imagination, tell us? If, God forbid, our children were ever orphaned, what would we want for them? And at this point, for millions of children, that IS the choice.

International adoption is corrupt.

Abuses in international adoption certainly do exist, but shutting down international adoption is a cruel response. In The Debate in Intercountry Adoption: Policies, Practices, and Outcomes (Ashgate Publishing, 2012), Professor Bartholet writes

that this makes no sense as a way of addressing adoption law violations. It punishes unparented children by locking them into institutions and denying them the nurturing adoptive homes they need. It puts children at far greater risk of true trafficking and exploitation... The response to adoption abuses should be the same as in other areas of law violationenforce existing law, strengthen that law as appropriate, and punish those violating the law... Some say that it is hard for poor countries with limited infrastructure to enforce laws prohibiting baby selling and other adoption abuses. This may be. But it is also hard, indeed impossible, for these countries to guarantee nurturing parental homes for all their children. Even if adoption law violations occur, the harm such violations cause children and birth parents is minimal compared to the harm caused by shutting down or severely restricting international adoption.