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What are our main goals?

    Our primary goal is to find Jewish homes for Jewish children.  We have worked on over 1,000 cases over the past eleven years, and charge no fees for any of our services, which include helping a birth family parent a child, locating resources for help with personal problems or coping with a child's limitations, helping an adoptive family find resources for adoption or parenting, helping biological and adoptive triad members in getting a search started.
 

What kind of children are referred to us?

    Our statistics show that of the children referred to us, fewer than 15% are "healthy" infants.
    The remaining 85-90% include:
    infants and children who are developmentally disabled
    infants and children with moderate to severe physical disabilities
    infants exposed to drugs or alcohol in utero
    children with a family history of mental or emotional illness
     children with severe emotional disturbances, and victims of abuse or neglect

FOR THOSE OF YOU WITH QUALMS ABOUT ADOPTION:

            Everything I needed to know about adoption, I learned from marriage (or, Take my mother-in-law...please!)      

“My wife/husband isn’t sure s/he can love someone else’s child as much as his/her own.” This is a call we have received numerous times.  It isn’t surprising that people contemplating starting or enlarging their family without the use of personal biology are often unsure of whether they can parent an adopted child as they would a child born to them.
     Long ago we figured out that the best response was “Does s/he love you, even though s/he’s not genetically related to you?”.  Turned out that most spouses were perfectly comfortable with that (also, fortunately, it turned out that most husbands and wives weren’t genetically related!).  In that case, we added, why couldn’t one also love a child who was not genetically related?!
 While the inability to produce a genetic offspring, to maintain the family gene pool, is a painful experience, it is important to separate the child-producing experience from the child-raising experience.  These are really two separate events, and if we can’t derive the pleasure of the first, why deny ourselves the pleasures (and challenges) of the second?

After a while of working with this analogy, it really seemed to us that adoption was like marriage in lots of other ways, too:

 • You can love someone you are not related to genetically
 • You need to start with a commitment for “forever”.  There is no guarantee that things will always work out, but you have to start with that commitment.
 • Love doesn’t conquer everything, but it helps ( you may need support, counseling, etc, too)
 • The process may require some adjustment - just as in a marriage, you may have to get used the quirks of another person, so too in adoption
 • Age may not be very important, certainly is not the most important aspect of the relationship
 • The marriage is more important than the wedding; likewise, parenting the child is more important than how you got him/her (that is, adoption is also a great experience, and usually requires fewer stitches)
 • The relationship of biological and adoptive families is really like that of in-laws.  By adopting someone else’s child, you now become part of their extended family.
 • Marriage totally changes your life in ways you can’t begin to understand until you’ve been there; so, too, does adoption.

 What Elisheva Didn't Miss

These are just a few of the many Jewish experiences that Elisheva did not miss because she was adopted by a Jewish family.  There are, however, many Jewish children in the United States who aren't as lucky.  They haven't found a Jewish family, and won't have these experiences or memories.  The Jewish Children's Adoption Network was established to help these children find an appropriate Jewish home.  Currently, an average of three children are referred to us every week, by agencies, social workers, attorneys, Rabbis and family members.

    If you would like to help a Jewish child experience his or her Jewish heritage in a warm, loving home, or if you know anyone else who might; if you know of a Jewish child in need of a home; if you need help in raising a Jewish child with disabilities of any kind; or if you are able to assist our organization financially, we would very much like to hear from you.

- Mitzvah Project by doing -