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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am AA. My child (bio) is half-Jewish. Her dad is not observant (he waffles on whether he is an atheist), but has a strong Jewish cultural identity. Our child is a very active Catholic. For the most part, her dad's family's congregation has been welcoming of her attending events. There are a few other children of color in mixed marriages or transracially adoptive families at the shul and we know others socially. All of those kids are being raised Jewish. They seem quite accepted by that particular religious community. None seem to have a non-Jewish cultural identity, which may have been intentional on the parents' part in order to strengthen a sense of being Jewish. This is the divide that my child experiences, but she seems untroubled by it. Only recently has she begun to distinguish between Catholic culture and AA culture or Jewish culture and mainstream European American culture.

I think you'll be fine adopting an AA child. Most Jews in this area tend to be very committed to social justice. If that's true of you, you probably already plan to teach your children about racism, slavery, the Civil Rights movement, etc. this area has many resources for interracial and trans-racially adoptive families.

If you decide to raise your child religiously Jewish, there are many liberal and Reconstructivist communities with Jews of color.[/quote]

OP here. Thanks for this perspective. To be clear, I am not worried about overt rejection by the Jewish community. More that the child would feel isolated because the difference would be obvious even though no one mentioned it. I was one of the few Jewish kids at a Christian day school as a kid, and I was always aware of the difference. I also did not quite fit in at Hebrew school because most of those kids went to Jewish day schools and camps and socialized with other Jews. I had no Jewish friends until I went to college, and it was a big factor in choosing a college -- I wanted one with a strong Jewish community, to see what I was missing. (Not much, as it turned out; I still am a bit turned off by people who spend all their time dropping Yiddish code words and traveling to Israel.) One of my good friends from high school chose Spelman for similar reasons -- she was tired of being one of the few AA kids in our school and wanted to connect with the larger community. I would not change my childhood or do anything differently; I think it made me stronger and more interested in maintaining my Jewish identity because it wasn't just an easy default. But another child or another personality might feel differently or might be more concerned with "fitting in."

We are committed to social justice, yes, and also see parallels between the AA experience in this country and Jewish experience in pre-WWII Europe. Maybe I'm overthinking things. But learning about racism and slavery and the Civil Rights movement isn't the same as knowing that in a different family, in a different era, that would have been your experience. Like, I read Toni Morrison or James Baldwin and it's like peering through a window into a vastly different culture that's separated by more than just skin color. Maybe it's like that for anyone, AA or not, because those books are generally set well before the Civil Rights era and the whole world was different. But when I read Chaim Potok, even though that super-religious upbringing was not mine, it's familiar to me in a visceral way. The values and the heritage is the same even though the expression of it is not. I don't know if this makes any sense. Like I said, I tend to over-analyze things, and I've read a fair number of dismal stories from adult adoptees, which probably colors my perspective. I just worry that a kid who does not share bio heritage with either parent could feel that we plucked him away from his heritage and that he'll never quite fit in anywhere. Then again, that's how one of my cousins feels and he was born to Jewish birthparents, so race may have nothing to do with it at all ...
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