Organizations systematically sacrifice children on the altars of politics, ideology, money, religion and expediency.
By RABBI SUSAN SILVERMANRabbi Susan Silverman with Zamir(photo credit: Courtesy)
When I first met my son Zamir, now 15, he was four years old and living in an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. My two older daughters, Aliza and Hallel, then 12 and 10, came with me to bring home their new brother. As we waited in the courtyard of the children’s center to meet him, we watched the orphanage director, Gail, through the series of windows that ran the length of the building. It was naptime, and we held our breath glimpsing Gail walk from one bed to the other. Which held my son, their brother?About two-thirds in, Gail reached up to a top bunk. She emerged into the courtyard with Zamir slumped in her arms, his head on her shoulder, his legs and arms hanging loosely at her sides. She leaned over me and his weight transferred to my lap. After a few beats he roused, looked into my face and stared. Recognition dawned. He knew my face, as well as that of his new Abba, brother and three sisters from the little red photo album we had sent months earlier.Then he broke into a smile that still gives me chills, the opening for his big sisters to say their first hello.Like millions of children worldwide, Zamir lived in an institution. And his was better than most. He had food, shelter, a pre-school class and only suffered mild physical punishment. But no institutional upbringing can provide what children are innately wired for – love. Love that says “I see you”; “I got you.” Just as babies in orphanages can lose their eyesight from lying on their backs, staring only at white ceilings and thus never stimulating their optic nerves, little souls cannot flourish without the stimulation of full-hearted human engagement.Orphanages cannot provide what Martin Buber called an I-Thou relationship – relating with the entirety of our being to that of another. In the relationship that Buber calls “I-It,” we see others as members of categories, or as instruments of achievement.Orphanage workers have I-It relationships with the children. How else can you get dozens, or even hundreds, of children fed? But the ultimate goal for every person, if we believe that we are each made B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, is personal agency or, at least, an I-Thou relationship with someone who has agency. Orphans have neither.We can’t be rooted in the world – in our souls or our bodies – when we lack I-Thou. Perhaps we can’t even be connected to God without an I-Thou relationship to mirror the Divine. Maybe that’s why, before the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the Akeida , Abraham was described as “Lover of God” – but after, he was known as “Fearer of God.”“Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” (Gen. 22:2)Abraham feels powerless before the magnitude of God’s demand and obeys. He and Isaac walk in silence before the Almighty Divine Power. Who can fight God?“They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son.” (Genesis 22:9)Abraham and Isaac have moved from “I-Thou” into “I-It.” For Abraham, he can no longer see his son fully, as Isaac’s own human self – made in God’s image. Isaac has become a means to an end, a tool for proving the depth of Abraham’s devotion to God.The gods now playing with children’s lives are organizations such as UNICEF and the US State Department, as well as some in the Israeli government, who systematically sacrifice children on the altars of politics, ideology, money, religion and expediency, and keep children in institutions instead of ensuring a family for every child, despite their claims to the contrary.There are 425,000 children in the US foster care system. There are between 8-12 million children living in institutions worldwide. And tens of millions on the streets. That’s a lot of children living, at best, as Buber’s “It.”The crisis of children outside family care is so huge that we find ourselves Abraham-silent before it. So too, the perceived, and sometimes real, trauma of an individual child who has had a difficult start in life can also feel overwhelming, silencing. For many of these children, adoption is their only hope. Around a quarter of the children in the US foster system are intended for adoption. And many internationally, despite the obstacles, can be adopted. They just need for us to overcome our fear, to step up.Imagine if people in your synagogue got together, encouraged one another to adopt, and committed to creating concentric circles of support for those families. We would see more adoptions, better adoption experiences, richer family life and more engaged communities. Imagine if each community cultivated networks, with professional guidance, to address issues such as physical and mental health, identity development, and be- longing, developing materials to integrate adoption into community life so that our children know they are not grafted onto the Tree of Life, but grow from its roots. Imagine if, when I went to get Zamir, multiple groups from communities across the US came – and every child in that orphanage went home with her or his new family.I-Thou relationships would characterize our families, our communities. I-Thou is more than a way of relating to others; it is also how we can, a bit at a time, experience God’s presence in the world.After our first day together, the girls and I brought Zamir back to the small apartment in the boarding house that the orphanage provides for adopting families. We were tired. I tucked the children in and, for the first time, sang Shema to Zamir.The next day we raced around Addis Ababa – doing errands, and navigating the day’s legal proceedings in court. That night, exhausted, I got the kids into bed, said goodnight, and got up to go to sleep in the next room. Zamir grabbed my arm and pulled me back down. Again, I kissed him and said goodnight. Again, he wouldn’t let me go.“Maybe he wants you to sing Shema,” one of the girls said.Not likely. He had only heard it once. But I did forget, so I sang.Shema Yisrael ....Hearing the words, Zamir smiled that smile, lay his head down, and closed his eyes.I have probably sung Shema 10,000 times in my 24 years of being a mother – all a big mush in my mind. But that time I re- member clearly. That time my new son, on a mattress on the floor of a paint-chipped rooming house in one of the world’s poor - est cities, bathed in the love of I-Thou, and elicited God’s presence. Something every child deserves.Rabbi Susan Silverman, @rabbasusan and rabbisusansilverman.com, is the author, most recently, of ‘Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World’ (Da Capo Press, 2016), the founding director of Second Nurture: Every Child Deserves a Family – and a Community, community- adoption.org, and speaks regularly through- out the US and Canada
