Rabbi Binyamin Murray: Adoption Left Me With Lots Of Questions

00:03 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolak, and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. In 1984, an as yet unnamed baby boy was born to a teenage single mother in Cold Spring, New York, and put up for adoption. The birth mother had given her baby up because she wanted him to live and didn't feel she could provide a happy and stable home for him. About 100 miles away in Lebanon, Connecticut, John and Susan Murray were dealing with the heartbreak of childlessness.

01:10 Speaker 2 We had been trying to have children for many years, so we wanted a baby.

01:15 Speaker 1 The Murrays had applied to various adoption agencies. Susan is Jewish, and John is Catholic. Susan says the Jewish adoption agencies weren't interested in finding a baby for an interfaith couple, but John knew that his grandmother was a benefactor of Catholic Charities of New York, which runs an adoption service.

01:36 Speaker 3 So when she found out that we were looking to adopt, she put us in touch with people at the adoption agency, and then we put our name on the list, and um-

01:46 Speaker 2 And we waited.

01:49 Speaker 1 The birth mother had given her baby up for adoption because she didn't feel she could provide a happy and stable home. Her stipulation was that the agency would find a family that would raise Byron as a Jew. About a week after the boy was born, the Murrays got the call for which they had hoped and prayed. They agreed to the mother's condition that the boy be raised as a Jew. They brought their baby boy to the family poultry farm in Lebanon, Connecticut, named him Byron, and gave him the Hebrew name Binyamin.

02:24 Speaker 4 I had a very idyllic childhood from my home life and being very close to my grandparents.

02:30 Speaker 1 As he was growing up, young Byron helped on the farm, fished, and played sports. But not everything about life in rural Connecticut was idyllic, because Byron was of West African descent.

02:43 Speaker 4 Because it was a very small town, and my skin color is not the same as my parents', there was some incessant bullying that I experienced from the elementary school age.

02:57 Speaker 1 The Murrays now say they wish they had done more to shield Byron from racism, but they loved him dearly.

03:04 Speaker 2 We didn't introduce him as our adopted son. He's our son.

03:09 Speaker 1 Byron's brother, Drew, was also adopted, and he was being raised in John Murray's Catholic faith, but the family celebrated Jewish holidays together.

03:19 Speaker 4 My mother would explain to me, "This is our holiday, and your brother and father are celebrating this with us." There was always a very clear distinction of who I was, who we were as Jews, and who my brother and father were as non-Jews. We lit Hanukkah candles. We had a Pesach Seder, where we put the bread and everything else, like, up into the cabinet. We'd order deli. We'd recount the, the story. And for the high holidays, we would go to synagogue for an hour or so, drive there and drive home. It sounds silly, but I didn't know what Shabbos was, and Judaism wasn't such a big part of my life.

03:59 Speaker 1 But years later, that would change. It began when Byron was six years old, and he was teased by his friend, Ryan.

04:07 Speaker 4 And he said, "Yo, you're adopted."

04:09 Speaker 1 Byron didn't know what that meant, but he argued back anyway.

04:12 Speaker 4 I was like, "No, I'm not."

04:14 Speaker 1 Byron went home after school, and Susan asked him how his day had gone.

04:18 Speaker 4 And she could probably tell something was different this day, and she said, "What happened?" I said, "Oh, Ryan told me that I was adopted." And her face changed. The look she had on her face was angelic. She was smiling, and you could see, like, the soft lines of her face. And she said, "Do you know what that means?" And I said, "No." She said, "Your father and I adopted you after you were born. The woman who gave birth to you loved you very much, and she wanted you to have a good life, and so she asked that you be adopted by a family who would raise you as a Jew. And so your father and I said yes, and it was the happiest day of, of our lives when we got that phone call, and then you came home."

05:05 Speaker 1 The then six-year-old Byron accepted that explanation.

05:08 Speaker 4 Then I just, like, moved on. Like, it was, "Okay, so I have a family. This is my family." I- it wasn't something that I, I dwelled on, and I didn't really think about it or want to connect to my biological family for many, many years.

05:23 Speaker 1 In the fall of 2002, Byron became a freshman at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

05:29 Speaker 4 I made sure I had a ski schedule, which means I didn't take classes in the morning. I tried to make sure my classes were in the afternoons or the evenings, so if there was snow, I had the ability to be on the mountain.

05:40 Speaker 1 During his sophomore year, he took a course titled The Moral and Religious Perspective of the Holocaust. Byron was interested in the topic, but it also fit his ski schedule. But one book he read for that course made him question his own Judaism. It was a collection of Halakhic responsa by Rabbi Efrayim Oshry, the Rav of the Kovno ghetto, written during the Holocaust, and retrieved and published after World War II.

06:15 Speaker 4 They were questions of life and death, of what to do in such a difficult and challenging situation, but the fact that people there had the questions showed me there was such a richness to Judaism that I hadn't experienced yet.

06:28 Speaker 1 The class was taught by Professor Richard Sugarman. He and his wife, Linda, invited Byron to a Shabbos meal at their home, and that inspired Byron to attend services at the Chabad shul in Burlington, and to explore Torah Judaism even more. Byron Murray became a graduate of UVM in 2006. The following year, Murray and family were vacationing in Jamaica.

06:57 Speaker 4 So we went on a, on a hike, a place called the Diamond Falls. It's very beautiful. A freshwater waterfall coming into the ocean.

07:04 Speaker 1 The Murrays and a few dozen other tourists were there to make a water hike up the river and over several waterfalls. Murray claims the guides were negligent in disregarding the potential danger. It wasn't long before he noticed something wrong.

07:21 Speaker 4 And there's a woman who had fallen in and was floating headfirst towards the falls. I jump in the water, I grab both of her ankles, and I arrest the descent by planting my feet into the gravel, and we come to a stop, and we manage to get the woman out of the river, and she's in shock.

07:41 Speaker 1 A few years before that incident, Byron had seen his own father rescue a swimmer who was in danger of being swept out to sea by rip currents. This had a big impact on him, in part because he had escaped several near-death experiences of his own: a car accident, an uncontrollable plummet down an icy mountain on his snowboard, and having a gun drawn on him several times, once because he's Black. But he says there was something else. Where did you get the inspiration to risk your own life to save a total stranger?

08:18 Speaker 4 From my biological mother. From my mother telling me how much my biological mother loved me and wanted to save my life and give me a good life by making a very, very hard decision.

08:28 Speaker 1 Murray had stayed in Burlington after graduation. He felt most comfortable in a Chabad shul and a Chabad community, but-

08:37 Speaker 4 I didn't really know my family's Jewish background so much at the time. You know, I had darker skin, so I didn't know if I was Sephardi or Temani, or really anything about my Jewish heritage.

08:48 Speaker 1 He wanted to marry a Jewish woman and live a Jewish life, but he had no way of knowing if, according to Jewish law, he was a Jew. All he knew is that his birth mother had insisted he be raised as one. But in what Murray describes as Hashgachah Protis, or divine providence, there was one bit of information that had gotten through as a result of a clerical error.

09:16 Speaker 2 About a year after Byron came to our home and the adoption was legalized, the adoption agency, by mistake, sent us the birth certificate with his birth mother's name on it.

09:30 Speaker 1 Susan Murray was not supposed to have gotten that document, so-

09:34 Speaker 4 Being a good Jewish woman, she received something that's not mine, and so she sent it back without making a copy.

09:41 Speaker 2 However, it was embedded in my mind what her name was.

09:45 Speaker 4 'Cause it was a very unique name.

09:49 Speaker 2 This was key in him being able to find his birth family.

09:54 Speaker 1 Byron had searched a bit, but had not discovered any more information.

09:59 Speaker 4 I had done an internet search to find her address and phone number. I made phone calls. There was no reply.

10:05 Speaker 1 Not yet, anyway. In the fall of 2009, Murray went to Israel on a government fellowship. There, he met Rabbi Fishel Jacobs. Jacobs took to him right away.

10:19 Speaker 5 Personally, what stood out to me in his personality was his dependability, his responsibility. He looked like a solid guy.

10:26 Speaker 1 Jacobs studied Tanya with Murray, and they farbrenged. Byron told Jacobs his story, and that he wanted to raise a Jewish family.

10:35 Speaker 4 And in the spring, Fishel wrote up a whole brief, and we, we went to a beit din in Bnei Brak. I had already been living an observant life for five years, and we just wanted him to substantiate the information that we had.

10:48 Speaker 1 Jacobs and Murray went in front of a beit din, a Jewish rabbinic court. They submitted what documentation they had.

10:56 Speaker 5 My goal was to try to circumvent the necessity for him to do a conversion.

11:03 Speaker 1 Jacobs is trained in Jewish law and in Israeli secular law, so he knew Byron had a big challenge ahead of him.

11:11 Speaker 5 Any court, whether it's rabbinic or whether it's secular, they just need a paper trail. You know, it's just that simple, and he didn't have one. Obviously, the most important thing would have been to find the biological mother and get some sort of certification, some sort of what have you. Uh, but at that time, we didn't have it.

11:29 Speaker 1 That must have been pretty tough on him, I would think.

11:33 Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah. Now, this situation with his biological mother and who he really came from, you know, his past, that's a frightening battle to face, and it took him a long time to face it, and he, he looked, you know, he looked for the answers.

11:50 Speaker 1 The verdict of the rabbinic court was that Byron needed to contact his birth mother. At one meeting, the court's senior rabbi leaned over to Murray and said...

12:00 Speaker 4 "How hard could it be to find someone in America?" I'm thinking, "I- Like, America's a big country. It's not like the size of Israel, which is like the size of New Jersey or the size of Vermont. It's huge, and it's hard to find someone there. And he said to me, "You have the name. I think you should find her, and you will find her." I'm thinking, "This is such a waste. Like, why did I even do this?" And so after that, I just, I dropped the whole thing entirely for about a year and a half.

12:31 Speaker 1 Murray returned to the States and accepted a teaching position in Chicago. He began to date for the purpose of marriage, but his status was an issue. Then, in November 2012, Murray was driving to Connecticut to visit his parents. He was thinking about his failed attempts to contact his birth mother.

12:52 Speaker 4 And just feeling, like, confused and upset, and I had an idea. If my biological mother doesn't wanna have a relationship with me for whatever reason, it's her business, then most likely my grandmother, her mother, would. Most likely she would.

13:09 Speaker 1 He suddenly pulled over on the Merritt Parkway and Googled the name that he knew had been on the accidentally shared birth certificate. Three phone numbers came up. He called the first two, but came up empty. On the third call, which he made right before Shabbat-

13:27 Speaker 4 I left a message with my name saying, "I'm doing genealogical research. Could you please call me back?" And she did call me back. I didn't receive the message until after Shabbat, and I called her. And she said, "Oh, you must observe Shabbat." And I said, "Yeah."

13:44 Speaker 1 The woman identified herself as Byron's step-grandmother, explaining that his maternal grandmother had passed away, and that she had married his grandfather. Byron quickly gave her the information he knew.

13:58 Speaker 4 And she interrupts me, and she says, "Are you sitting down?" I said, "No, I'm too excited." And she said, "You better sit down." I said, "I'm not sit-" I said, "Listen, I'm not sitting down. I could tell you I'm sitting down, but I'm not gonna lie to you." She said, "I don't want you to faint." I said, "I'm not gonna faint." And she says, "You are Jewish. Your mother is Jewish."

14:18 Speaker 1 Murray now had the answer to the question that had eluded him for the better part of three decades. But Byron knew there was still work to do.

14:33 Speaker 4 And I said, "Thank you very much. I believe you, but I need to prove this in front of a court, a Jewish court."

14:39 Speaker 1 Murray needed documents to prove what his step-grandmother had told him. So she suggested that he contact his aunt, who was religious, and might be able to provide the proof and the documents he needed.

14:52 Speaker 4 And as we were getting ready to, to get off the phone, she said, "Would you mind if I give your mother your phone number?"

14:59 Speaker 1 Which she did.

15:02 Speaker 4 A few weeks later, I was hosting a Hasidic gathering at my house for Yud Tes Kislev, the Yom HaHalula of the Alter Rebbe when he was freed from prison. And after the farbrengen, I received the following message. It says, "If you love something and you give it up and it comes back to you, it's truly a blessing. I would love, love, love," it was repeated three times, "you to call me back." It was a message from my biological mother.

15:27 Speaker 1 Murray called her back.

15:29 Speaker 4 And we ended up speaking for several hours, catching up on each other's lives, what are we involved in, what was my life growing up, her family, her children, and it was, uh, a very special conversation.

15:45 Speaker 1 During that conversation, Murray's birth mother substantiated everything Susan had told Byron.

15:52 Speaker 4 There was a sense of completion, but at the same time, I was very cognizant of my adoptive family's feelings. Although they'd always told me, "You should search and you should reconnect, and don't worry about it," I wasn't running to tell them 'cause I didn't know how they would react.

16:09 Speaker 1 When he did tell them-

16:10 Speaker 3 We are both very happy for him. Extremely happy that he did find his birth family.

16:15 Speaker 2 It gave us great joy that he had clarity.

16:23 Speaker 1 Byron says he deeply appreciates his parents' love, support, and encouragement throughout his search for his identity.

16:31 Speaker 4 She wanted children more than anything else in the world, and how broken she felt when she wasn't gonna be able to have biological children. And it's to their merit, really, that they decided to fulfill the wish of this young Jewish mother who requested that her son be raised as he was born, as a Jew.

16:51 Speaker 1 Byron's biological mother provided signed documents proving Byron Binyomin Murray's status as a Jew from birth. Rabbi Fishel Jacobs says the discovery marked the end of a very challenging time in Byron's life.

17:06 Speaker 5 It was an intense period. For me, Byron epitomizes facing your challenges. He's just, in my mind, just one huge bundle of facing his challenges and responsibly overcoming them.

17:22 Speaker 1 Murray attended yeshiva from 2013 to 2017. He married his basheret, Davita, in 2014. For the last four years, they've run Chabad of Middlebury in central Vermont, along with their children. Murray is now living the life he was meant to live. He says growing up in a loving household and learning from the example of his birth mother has informed his work as a Chabad shliach in inspiring others to overcome whatever obstacles they face.

17:59 Speaker 4 You see every person as a story, that there's a tremendous amount of divine providence that we all have in our lives, and- When we can look at life from that perspective that we're able to overcome, to jump over, from that we're able to springboard on to many, many more things.

18:24 Speaker 1 John and Susan Murray moved to Middlebury just a few weeks ago. Their other son, Drew, is living there too. Binyomin says it's nice to be close to his family. And how do they feel about their son and brother, the rabbi?

18:39 Speaker 2 Fabulous. We're-

18:40 Speaker 3 Fabulous, and I would s- also say sort of, um, blown away. We always knew he was an outgoing and giving person, but to see what he's done as he's gotten older is just absolutely flabbergasting to us.

18:55 Speaker 1 Rabbi Binyomin Murray often mentions how much he loves and appreciates his adoptive family, but even so, he thinks a lot about his biological mother. Have you met your biological mother face-to-face?

19:11 Speaker 4 Not yet.

19:12 Speaker 1 Is that in the works, if you don't mind me asking?

19:16 Speaker 4 Um, so y- yes and no. I don't think that she's ready to meet me. It was obviously a traumatic situation, and I just don't think that she's ready yet.

19:31 Speaker 1 Are you ready for that?

19:34 Speaker 4 Yeah, but I don't want to push her. It's not my place to do that.

19:39 Speaker 1 But would it be accurate to say that she essentially saved your physical life by putting you up for adoption, and your spiritual life by insisting that you be raised as a Jew?

19:51 Speaker 4 Yeah, twice. That's right, for sure.

19:59 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.