All information about adopting children in Israel or abroad
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. All human beings are endowed with the capacity for reason and conscience and should behave towards others in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Child Adoption (Intercountry Adoption) Bill, 1993
The purpose of the proposal is to regulate international adoption procedures in law and emphasize the prevention of child abduction and trafficking. The amendment made to this law seeks to determine that only adoption procedures conducted within a legal framework by authorized institutions will be recognized.
The innovation in this proposal, in the spirit of the International Convention on the Adoption of Children, is the permit to establish associations for the purpose of handling intercountry adoption. In almost every adoption law in force in the world, the legislator has taken care to propose a complete ban on adoption mediation, but this is the first time that the law has been required to regulate the issue of expenses and fees for professionals, such as social workers and lawyers.
Child Adoption Bill (Amendment of Qualifications and Overseas Adoption), 1993
This proposal is made in the spirit of social progress and aims to allow an individual and a man and a woman, living a family life in a joint household but not married, to adopt children. The proposal also seeks to allow the conversion of the adopted person’s religion with the permission of the court, in order to ease the provisions of matching the religion between the adopter and the adopted person. (The intention of the law is good, but as long as the conversion depends on the exclusive will of the religious circles, this section of the law is irrelevant).
Israeli Government Proposal – Amendment to the Child Adoption Law (Intercountry Adoption Law), 1993
This proposal is the result of public pressure, which seeks to change the dismal state of the field of child adoption in Israel and abroad. The cumbersomeness of the process and the rigidity of the institutions have led to quite a few entanglements between Israelis and the legal authorities and have caused suffering and growing frustration among potential adoptive candidates.
The vast majority of those who want to adopt want to embrace a baby who is only a few months old; the proposed process complicates the proceedings and prolongs them in an unacceptably long way. Although the government’s proposal is close to the spirit of the international treaty, intellectual perfectionism should have made room for a little human flexibility, for recognition of the objective conditions prevailing in the Third World, and of course for a little consideration of the special nature of Israeli society and the essential difference between any theoretical procedure and its social implementation in Israel.
This bill also addresses the approval of the illegal brokerage and delivery of a child and stipulates that, in addition to the penalties stipulated in the general law that harm the child’s well-being, child traffickers will be subject to three years in prison.
The Israeli legislator who sought to address the issue of adoption was faced with a given situation: the British Mandate authorities included adoption in the list of personal status matters and subjected it to the exclusive authority of the courts of the various religions.
As a result, the legislator determined that the adoptee and the adoptee must be members of the same religion. Today, there are problems because more and more Jewish Israeli citizens travel overseas and marry non-Jews there; it often happens that one spouse has a child from a previous marriage, and the spouse seeks to adopt, despite religious differences.
In Judaism, religious affiliation is determined by the mother’s religion, but some religions determine affiliation by the father’s religion. There are also cases in which it is not possible to determine the parent’s religion at all. There is the possibility of converting the parent or child, but the requirements for conversion are extremely strict and often violate the worldview of the non-Jewish spouse.
On February 3, 1992, the Jerusalem District Court issued an adoption order contrary to the opinion of the Attorney General. The minor’s father is a Jewish citizen of Israel. The mother is an Israeli citizen, not Jewish, and of no other religion. The father is deceased.
An Israeli citizen, a Jew, married the child’s mother in Paraguay in a civil marriage. The couple has lived in Israel since then and have a full family life. The husband asked to adopt his wife’s son and become his father. The welfare officer gave a positive opinion, but since the mother does not belong to any religion, her son is also a child without a religion, and therefore, according to the law, a Jew cannot adopt even if he actually serves as his stepfather.
In the stories of the Bible, we find many testimonies about adopted children and adoptees. The first adopted child in the Bible is Moses our Lord. “And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she called his name Moses…” (Exodus 2:10).
The biological father is obligated to bring his son into the covenant of our forefather Abraham and to bless with the blessing “Let him be brought into the covenant of our forefather Abraham.” Some add the blessing “Shehayinu,” but an adoptive father is prohibited from blessing the blessing “Shehayinu.” A natural father is obligated to redeem his firstborn son when he is thirty days old.
If the father does not perform the ceremony, the son is obligated to redeem himself when he grows up. For an adopted son, the issue of redemption is more complex, since the lineage of the adopted son is usually unknown, whether the father is permitted to recite the blessing, etc.
The adoptee is not obligated by the commandment to honor his father and mother in relation to his adoptive parents. We generally expect the adoptee to honor his parents due to his human-moral obligation as those who have influenced him for the most good. An adoptee is permitted, but is not required, to say Kaddish for his adoptive parents. An adoptee is also not obligated in the customs of mourning for his adoptive parents, but he is permitted to the extent that he feels he must do so.
Adoption does not sever the family ties between the adoptee and his natural family, and he is not connected familially and halachically to his adoptive family. An adoptee is prohibited from entering into marriage with his natural relatives. When an adopted person seeks to enter into a marriage covenant, the rabbis examine his family affiliation and the family affiliation of his partner in order to prevent a situation where relatives marry each other.
