אימוץ ילדים

00:01 Speaker 1 We have here from the year that we're studying in Igris, from nineteen seventy-three, we have two letters on adoption. And because there's two letters on adoption that both happened a little while ago in our history of our letters, one from Tevis and one from-- What's this one from? Tevis and from Marchesvan, I wanted to go back and do the adoption thing. Obviously, the Rebbe has many, many adopt-- many, many letters on adoption. I put a lot of them into this document that I sent around to you, so we'd be able to look at it together. I also put a couple extra ones on the WhatsApp group. Uh, so please feel free to read all of the extra information and draw your own conclusions. The Rebbe's sheet on adoption is far from straightforward, and there's certainly parts of it that are very direct, where it's very clear what the Rebbe holds, and in other places, it sounds a lot more like things are on a case-by-case basis. So I want to explore that a little bit today. I just wanna start with the letters that we have in our volume because, of course, we're in the year exactly fifty years ago, so we have to stay faithful to our traditions. This first one up here-- Um, actually, I wanna go in the other order, I think. Yeah. This is a weird letter, and it's written in Russian in the original. And I gotta tell you, it's so weird that I wish that I read Russian 'cause

01:00 Speaker 1 I don't know how much I trust the translation. It's a weird letter. I do wanna read it anyway. It says, «...» I can make it a little bit larger for everybody, self included. Uh, somebody was complaining-- Oh, no. Now I lost the page. Let's move it over here. Sorry, people listening on audio. Okay. In response to your letter where you write that you have a child who you adopted and the child's not behaving appropriately, there's been behavioral problems with this adopted child. The Rebbe says, «...» generally speaking, «...» in these sorts of cases where we have trouble with the child, maybe specifically an adopted child, «...» there might be more of an effect from «...» from their friends, «...» than there would be from their relatives, «...» and specifically those who raised them. I'm not sure here if the Rebbe is saying things specific to adoption or if he's just giving good advice for parents whose children are acting out. He says sometimes chi-- sometimes their friends have a greater effect on them than their parents or those who raised them. «...» In addition to all of the hard work you're doing in bringing your child back to the straight and narrow, «...» you have to find people, find friends who are willing to talk to him. And it should be secretly, «...» in a way that the child won't suspect that you put their friends up to it. So when-- quietly go to some of their friends and tell them you gotta talk to

02:18 Speaker 1 him or her and put them back on the right path and make sure that the child doesn't know that the friends were put up to it by the parents. The Rebbe says here, «...» the self understood, «...» that the «...» the example that the father and mother are showing to their children, «...» in the highest order, «...» that will certainly help as well. And then the Rebbe says something really weird, which makes me wish I could read the original Russian. I tried earlier, and Google Translate didn't really help me. He says, «...» It's not clear from the letter that you wrote the circumstances of the conversion. So, «...» of the conversion, of the adoption, excuse me. «...» So we should investigate «...». We should check «...» whether the conditions that were accepted at the time to becoming a Jew were proper and in order. «...» It sounds to me like the Rebbe is saying that the behavioral problems the child has may stem from the fact that the conversion that was done at the time of adoption was not done properly. That's, that, that's what I think it's saying here. It's a strange lotion. Um, if anybody wants to disagree with that, please let me know at the end. I think that's what he's saying. So that's one strange, uh, strange letter on adoption. This one over here is also just-

03:34 Speaker 2 Sorry, what did you, um, say about the conversion?

03:38 Speaker 1 Uh, «...» I assume that this one is an adopted child that was converted. Well, how do you read it, Ferret? Tell me.

03:46 Speaker 2 I, no, I, I don't know. I was thinking maybe his, maybe that meaning whether he was Jewish, like maybe they, there was witness or testimony about the fact that he was Jewish and maybe there was like-

03:57 Speaker 1 Whether he was Jewish in the first place.

03:57 Speaker 2 Questioning that.

03:58 Speaker 1 Maybe not, maybe not the «...» maybe the adoption. I, I guess I was thrown by the «...» and how would a Rav know if not for-- I really don't know what this let-- Like I said, I'm not com-- I'm not entirely clear on this last piece of advice. It's a strange letter. We have to think about it more. We have to discuss it in the group during the day. This one I'm a lot more comfortable with because this is right in my, my favorite areas, «...» The Rebbe says here, «...» Somebody had apparently, they wrote to the Rebbe, there's a line down here, that a child who had been adopted wrote to the Rebbe saying that the Rav who wants to marry them wants to put on the ketubah before his name Hammeumatz, which is a kind of rotten title if you think about it. Hammeumatz, Avraham ben Yitzchak. That's what they wanna name him. So Hammeumatz. «...» The Rebbe goes, they clearly had made some sort of mistake because this is not the halakha. He says, «...» you should ask, you should double-check with the Rav who told you this or the Rav who's in your place right now, and I'll mention you by the aisle. So, uh, what do you write on a ketubah of a child who's adopted is an interesting question. If the child was a ger, meaning that you adopted a non-Jewish child and you converted that child, we write Ben Avraham HaVenu. That's the din. We write that on

05:02 Speaker 1 the ketubah. If the child was born Jewish and we know the biological father, we're supposed to use the biological father's name, even if that causes a little bit of discomfort because we know the biological father and the person's born a Jew. In most cases, where you-- where somebody adopted a Jew, but we don't know the biological father, which I guess is the usual case, the convention is to write, «...» That's what it measures «...» So you write so and so, the son of so and so, and after this father's name, you write, this is the person who raised him to signify that this isn't the biological father. There's an option brought in the Minchas Yitzchak that's kind of creative. He says, «...» use the person's regular name, «...» So you can say that he's Ploni, uh, he's a-- he's got a name, and we call him so and so, the son of his adoptive father, and that way you don't have to put «...» afterwards. And since you're allowed to read whatever you want under the chuppah, they can just skip his first name in the ‹miskeri› and name him as his actual names, then his father's name of his adoptive father's name. This is a sort of creative solution found in the Minchas Yitzchak. Uh, both options are brought in the Sefer Chuppah V' Kiddushin from Rabbi Farkash. So I suppose both options are on the table for anybody looking for a halakhah nice approach to how to marry adopted people. For your next

06:09 Speaker 1 civic edition. Okay, these are the two letters that we have from our year. One letter that says that, uh, when it comes to this adopted child's particular problems, the Rebbe feels that the general approach is to ask his friends to influence him in a secret way, and maybe that there was some sort of problem or issue with the-- with how Jewish he is, whether he was Jewish, whether he was, um, converted properly, something that you don't know about his early origin story that might explain his behavioral problems, and we didn't know exactly what to do with that. The other thing we have from our letter this year is that, uh, is what to do with a kasubah, that the Rebbe says, "Certainly we don't write Hamomatzim. Looks like what we do put is Shegiddely after the father's name, but not before the child's name." Okay. This launches us, however, into a larger discussion of what the Rebbe says about adoptions in general. Uh, the first thing that I have over here, if you open up your supplementary packet on a collection of Rebbe letters on adoption, make the screen big over here. One thing that is all throughout the Rebbe's letters on adoption, and I think it's safe to say that this is the Rebbe's shiur and it's not circumstantial, is that the Rebbe wants us to tell children who are adopted that they are adopted fairly early on. I'm not sure this has to be told to a one-year-old, but you know, it doesn't

07:08 Speaker 1 have to be part of the lullaby. But, uh, the Rebbe wants children to know, and he wants them to know pretty soon. He has two reasons here, the one that is psychological and one that's halakhic. I wanna start with the psychological one. You'll see this at the top. It's in volume nineteen, page four thirty-five. The Rebbe writes, "V'ledati kemin shekik savei bitik va'bas sheshas shana." They were writing about a girl who they'd adopted, who's already sixteen years old, and she still doesn't know that she was adopted. The Rebbe says, "Tzedekim balahach limtei shas keishir." You have to, in any case, find a proper time, "V'lesaper la kolim," to explain to her the whole story. "Kemin shekaru lavadei," because it's almost certain, "She sev sev tislada al derecha." She's going to find out eventually. "V'lachen tevye sheshtei al derecha meanesh, meanesh, meanesh meye sekrev libi-libite bizman amatima v'diburim hamatimin." Rebbe says, "Look, she's gonna find out anyway, and, um, it, it, it can be with people who love her, who tell her in an appropriate environment, in an appropriate way, or it can be people who, you know, blab it to her. But she's getting old already, and eventually some-- she's getting older already. Somebody's eventually going to tell her." So reason number one to tell children that they are adopted is they tend to find out on their own, and, uh, and since they tend to find out on their own, you-- it better-- it's better to hear it from the adoptive parents. There's another

08:11 Speaker 1 reason here that I brought from a letter that was translated into English in the supplementary thing that I sent you in the WhatsApp that I don't have on the screen. That's a series of letters from the Rebbe on, I think, chabad.org. This is taken from there. This is a recurring theme from the Rebbe. Says that, uh, he's worried about, he's worried about negiah, and he's worried about yichud. The Rebbe says, and this is in like seven or eight letters, the Rebbe's very firm that an adopted child has all the laws of yichud and all the laws of negiah that you would have with someone that you're not related to, and that we have to keep these things. And the Rebbe shows a certain degree of shock. The Rebbe's very surprised that in these pamphlets and these books about what to do with adopted children, they're always talking about other halakhic concerns, about things like inheritance or about things like who they can marry. And these come up in all of the shailas and tshuvas, and the Rebbe goes, "Why is nobody talking about an issue that arises once she's three-- once the girl is three years old and the boy, boy is nine years old?" The earliest problem in halakha that will come up, the Rebbe says in one of the letters, I think the letter that he wrote to Eitzah Poskim asking them to include his shiur there. Um, the Rebbe writes to Eitzah Poskim saying, "One of the, the earliest problem that comes

09:10 Speaker 1 up in adoption is the question of whether you can touch your kids or whether you can be alone with your kids, and that one's gonna come up long before these issues of inheritance, where everybody's writing Yerusha shailas on adoption. No one's worried about this issue." Uh, so the Rebbe says we have to tell children they're adopted because if we don't, it could lead to the prohibitions of negiah and the prohibitions of yichud. It is worth noting that there are poskim who say that adoptive parents can be alone with their children and can touch their children. The most noteworthy is probably the Tzit Zeliazar, and that's also brought in Eitzah Poskim. But the Rebbe wrote to Eitzah Poskim personally to say that it was his shiur and the shiur of, of, of leading Rabbonim that yichud and negiah are in full effect. I don't believe that this is circumstantial. Um, I don't believe this is case by case, given that the Rebbe wrote to Eitzah Poskim asking them to include his shiur in Eitzah Poskim, and they did include it in his name. Uh, it seems that this-- which is a rare thing by the Rebbe, that the Rebbe's brought as a posek in a safer poskim. That it seems that with adopted children that there is a problem with negiah and there's a problem of yichud. That would as probably start at age three for a girl and nine for a boy. But there's a tshuva from Rav Moshe that says Veshasat chak, you can

10:07 Speaker 1 go up to bar and bat mitzvah for a boy and a girl. And I think there's reason to believe that we're talking Shasat chak when we're dealing with, uh, adoptive children. At the same time, adoptive children have the problem of liba gasba, that you're excessively comfortable with them, and that usually adds prohibitions of yichud. This is obviously not a halakha shiur, and that's a question for a Rav to take on a case-by-case basis which leniencies to take. But the idea that the Rebbe holds that negiah and yichud, regardless of what leniencies we use within the halakhas of negiah and yichud, that negiah and yichud are applicable to an adopted child, that I don't think is really up for grabs. That's, uh, that's all over the place. And that is another reason to tell children that they're adopted, because otherwise they might wonder why you're not touching them or being alone in a room with them. That can certainly cause-

10:44 Speaker 2 Excuse the pun

10:45 Speaker 1 ... confusion. Yes. Huh?

10:48 Speaker 2 Up for grabs. Excuse the pun.

10:52 Speaker 1 Okay. Right. Um, so out of that section and moving into the next one, um, this one's a lot more controversial, and this is the one that I kinda teased at the beginning, but I don't know if we have the shiur to write. Uh, a lot of people like to quote this letter that's in Yiddish up here on the screen in front of you. To make a, a long Yiddish letter a little bit shorter, somebody writes to the Rebbe asking about adopting a non-Jewish child, but the Rebbe uses the lashon chas v'shalom. And he goes, uh, look at that, chas v'shalom, to even think of such a thing. You see that in that line at the beginning of the second paragraph. Chas v'shalom to even think of such a thing. And you know that expression, there are children starving in Africa? The Rebbe uses it. He says, "There are, there are children starving in North Africa. There are enormous frum families in North Africa that can't afford their children." He says, "These are good Yidden who r-- who do keep Tarus Mishpacha, raise their children properly, have like nineteen kids and can't afford to keep them. Why don't you adopt one of those and, and raise them in your home? It would be a lot better to, uh, to, to, to take a Jewish child." Based on this letter, people have, uh, people have made the claim that the Rebbe has a shiur that we never adopt non-Jewish children. The Rebbe has a couple other letters

11:50 Speaker 1 where when people ask him should they adopt a Jewish child or a non-Jewish child, he gives a strong preference to Jewish children, and also gives a strong preference to Jewish children whose parents kept Tarus Mishpacha. This is true. And by the way, this is universal in Poskim, that if you have a choice of helping a non-J-- non-Jewish child or a Jewish child, it's, it's, it's not open, it's not open for, it's not open for debate. Obviously, ideally, we do adopt Jewish children. And the fact that the Rebbe says chas v'shalom to even think of adopting a non-Jewish child is a strong argument that the Rebbe does not approve of adopting non-Jewish children. But then Check volume thirty, page three hundred and eleven, where somebody wrote the same question to the Rebbe. Look what the Rebbe writes here. Somebody writes to the Rebbe asking, "Can I adopt a Jewish child, non-Jewish child, which is better?" And the Rebbe writes back, :"Ask a posek," because when it comes to adopting a yeled, , you have to ask the Rav Meir Yehuda whether it's better to adopt a Jewish or non-Jewish child, and to do according to what he says. That sounds like the Rebbe is open to the possibility that it might be even better to adopt a non-Jewish child in some circumstances. Um, he's saying, ask a Rav Meir Yehuda. So I-I-- Based on the fact that there's another letter where the Rebbe goes, "Hey, ask a Rav, might be better to adopt a non-Jewish child,"

12:56 Speaker 1 I think it's, uh, certainly premature and a little immature maybe to suggest that the Rebbe has a defined shita when it comes to whether we adopt non-Jewish children. Uh, especially also in subsequent letters, like over here in volume thirty-two, page one twenty-nine, the Rebbe explains to a family exactly how he wants them to conduct the conversion of their non-Jewish child. This-- It isn't the-- This isn't the letter of someone strongly opposed. Now, you could make the argument they'd already done it, so having already adopted a non-Jewish child, the Rebbe's mitigating. But I don't think so. I think the language of these letters are very much that it-- there are certain circumstances that the Rebbe seems to have been okay, of course, when after consulting with the Rav, with the idea of them adopting non-Jewish children and converting them. Uh, which brings us to a really cool letter here. This letter in volume thirty-two, page one twenty-nine. I'm not gonna read the whole thing, I don't think. Uh, we're already a little short on time, but there's a, there's a really cool point near the bottom. I'm pointing to my screen like you can see it when I do that. Here, I'll use the mouse. I just pointed to my screen. Okay. Uh, says at the bottom of the letter that, um, it sounds like the mother was not totally on board with, uh, with sending the child to a Jewish school. They'd adopted a non-Jewish child, converted them to Judaism, and either didn't want to

14:01 Speaker 1 send them to a Jewish school or didn't want to send them to a school that would be doing . In any case, the Rebbe writes back that, uh, I'm putting words in his mouth a little bit. But read the letter on your own and tell me if you feel I've been truly betraying the Rebbe's messenger. There's, there's several ingredients to making a geras. One of them, if it's a boy, you need a brit milah. Everybody needs to go to mikvah. And then there's something called Kabbalas hamitzvas. Now, with a child, we, we do a conversion, what's called al das bezdin, based on the principle of, principle of zechiyah, , that bezdin is empowered to help people with things that would be good for them. We have a standing assumption that it would be good to be Jewish, which I know is controversial, but that's in-- it's brought in Shulchan Aruch that way. There's an idea of zechiyah that bezdin is allowed to convert a child al das bezdin. Nonetheless, the Rebbe introduces the idea here that there does need to be a Kabbalas hamitzvas. There needs to be somebody declaring that this child's going to keep Torah and mitzvahs, and that's not the child, that's the parent. If you look at that third to last line here in this top paragraph, or fourth to last line, the Rebbe says that when we convert a Jewish-- a non-Jewish child to a Jew, they get a Jewish neshamah. God's the one who gives that neshamah. And God

15:03 Speaker 1 says in this that he will switch the neshamah and give this child a Jewish neshamah if they give him a brit. put him in the mikvah. And the people who adopt him make the firm resolution that they are going to give him a chinuch kedat Hashem, which means shmiras hamitzvas. That never makes that a tanai for geras. And then a Jewish soul enters the child. If any of those factors are missing, brit milah, mikvah, or the parents resolving to send their children to a Jewish school and give them a Jewish education, then a non-Jewish soul remains in that child. The Rebbe is saying an incredible chiddush here, saying that if parents do a proper Orthodox conversion and have not resolved to raise their child according to Torah and mitzvahs, that child does not become Jewish. A Jewish soul simply does not enter such a child. So the Rebbe then adds as a subscript here in the, in the letter, he says, there's no mitzvah to switch neshamas or to do geras. There's no neshamah to switch over a non-Jew to a Jew, and it's totally fine for you not to convert your child to Judaism. You would just have a relationship with the child like one-- like a Jew with a non-Jew has, which can be pleasant. Rebbe goes, no obligation for a Jewish parent to adopt a non-Jewish child and convert them. But if you wanna convert them and you want it to work, you have to be determined to give them a Jewish

16:16 Speaker 1 education. Uh, the last thing I have here is really not about adoption, but I liked the language, so I brought it in. Somebody wrote to the Rebbe that they were interested in doing something in someone's memory. Uh, somebody had died and they wanted-- they were trying to decide if they should buy a Sefer Torah or they should build a shul in honor of this person. And the Rebbe says back, "It would be better if you adopted and not adopted a child. You should adopt a, a person learning Torah and start paying for them to learn Torah." He says, to basically, um, fund a young person learning, and that would be a bigger honor. Now, I understand people wanna dedicate Sifrei Torah and shuls to their loved ones, but the truth is, the Rebbe says the strongest dedication is a spiritual adoption of a person learning in yeshiva, and that's something to consider. If you have an ex-extra money running a-- lying around and want to help out a young Torah scholar, there's many available. Um, I wanna just go through our, our major takeaways and then talk with whatever time we have left. I think we-- My, my, my big takeaway is I, I think we really can't be sure of the Rebbe's shita on adopting non-Jewish children. I think an honest analysis of the letters looks like he ruled on a case-by-case basis, and it looks to me like we should follow above all else this letter over here in volume thirty that says,

17:25 Speaker 1 that this is a question for a Rav depending on the circumstances about non-Jewish children and adoptions. We can be sure that the Rebbe holds that you can't have negiah or yichud with adopted kids. The Rebbe is so firm on this that he wrote to the Eitzah Poskim asking for it to be adapt-- it to be adopted. For non-Lubavitch Hasidim, there is certainly a, a way out. There's a Tzemach Tzedek and many other Poskim, but I don't know what you do if you're a Hasid of the Rebbe and don't like his shita. That's another question for a Rav. Um, we can be sure that the Rebbe holds that we need to tell kids that they're adopted. He says this in many letters, and he links this to the idea of negiah and yichud. And since he links it to the idea of negiah and yichud, which he takes so seriously, I think we can hold that the Rebbe would say we should tell kids in almost all, maybe even all circumstances, that they are adopted. And, uh, I think we can be quite sure the Rebbe holds that geras hinges on the parents' Kabbalas hamitzvas, the parents committing to raising the child in a kosher way, and if not, the geras wouldn't work. And of course, we have our two letters that we learned at the very beginning. The first one saying that when an adopted kid has trouble, maybe it's a problem with the Judaism in the first place, which is a, an interesting And

18:21 Speaker 1 uncomfortable letter. And we had the idea of writing, uh, not writing, "Ama uma tzanuk subban," instead writing like Meshes says, "Yigdaloo." Or maybe like Yitzchak, plain de miska de plain eben plain eben. Okay, that's it. Floor is open.

18:40 Speaker 2 Interesting.

18:40 Speaker 3 Great topic. Thank you. And so j-- to me, it's very interesting the, the, the, the, um, different sheetas and different situations which leads to what you said. The, the key here is that you should, that you should ask a Rav in these cases. Um, it would also be interesting, I don't know if there's letters from the Rebbe about this, like if there's any s-situations where a child who was raised as a frum Yid and now has reached the gil of chinuch, right? Because they've reached-- 'cause it's interesting because the way the Rebbe describes it here, it seems the Neshama Yehudis goes into the person when they are educated. Whereas in most cases, there's the concept that when somebody becomes a bar or bat mitzvah, they're supposed to be making a choice. Do they wanna continue with this life? But if the person already has Neshama Yehudis 'cause you sent them to Alektota or whatever, then you're gonna say now that this person-- there's no conversation with this person at bar, bar or bat mitzvah to either accept or not accept because based on this, it's nichnas b' Neshama Yehudis. He has Neshama Yehudis just by the fact that he was, he was toveled in a mikvah or he was mohel and he was, uh, educated.

19:47 Speaker 1 It's a really cool point. You're right. It does sound like from this letter that the, that the Neshama enters the moment that they do the process, and that should be long before the decision. So you're asking, can the decision really undo that? I, I don't know. Cool question.

20:01 Speaker 2 I wanna sort of fas-- talk about here. Uh, uh, Kedusha and Neshamas. I heard a fascinating story. I don't have any facts verified, but it, the story is a funny story. That there's a Bachar in Toronto who insisted on learning Nigla during Chassidus and Chassidus during Nigla. He was always like reversing his storm. And apparently, somebody mentioned it to, uh, to, uh, Mendel Aronov, a Chassidus Yid in Toronto. So he said ps-- something like, "By Untling Azaka Zaza Acha Dafambedix Andayichas." And apparently, he checked his Yichas and there was a Psagedis, and there's something with the, the Herasa, the Ledaса. Something... it came out that he wasn't really a Yid, and he's like, "Okay, bye." He's out.

20:44 Speaker 3 Wow. He probably said it for like a hundred people and then such a mysap and, you know.

20:53 Speaker 1 Could be.

20:55 Speaker 3 His role.

20:55 Speaker 1 Keep on taking shots in the dark.

20:57 Speaker 3 Or as they say, they call it a maisashi kimaltalia.

21:01 Speaker 2 That's right.

21:02 Speaker 1 We used to, we used to, we used to fake-

21:03 Speaker 3 Something that almost happened.

21:05 Speaker 2 I heard someone fake quote one of the teachers say, uh, "Maisashi Yohalius," from Is-- like makers of Eisenbacher's stories. Maisashi Yohalius.

21:13 Speaker 3 Got it wrong, guys. Talk to you later. Thank you very much.

21:15 Speaker 1 Nice one.

21:16 Speaker 3 Good day all.

21:16 Speaker 1 Ruby, were you gonna say something?

21:18 Speaker 4 No, I have a similar story. My brother was in Brunoy, and he said there was a Bachar there who was a, who was a Masmid, and he found out one day he's not Jewish, and he checked out completely. So I don't know where this French Bachar or whatever, but whatever. But I, if I'm not mistaken on the podcast, I think they mentioned the Rebbe as saying that he was vehemently against the fact that a stepparent could touch, um, could be, uh, Negiah with a, uh, a stepchild.

21:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, I think that's safe to say. I mean, vehement's the right word. When, when the Rebbe writes to the guy editing the Ozer HaPoskim to say, "Please include this sheet, that's definitely what we hold," that's pretty vehement. Yeah.

22:00 Speaker 4 All righty. Thank you, everybody.

22:02 Speaker 1 Yeah.

22:03 Speaker 3 Thanks.

22:05 Speaker 2 Thank you.