Casting Lots

January 4, 2016
Rabbi Silverman (Jewish Family and Life), who always dreamed of adopting a child, chronicles her journey from her home in Massachusetts to an orphanage in Ethiopia to do just that. Silverman and her husband, Yosef Abramowitz, an activist and writer, had three daughters when they adopted Adar, who was relinquished by an unknown birth mother and gathered into the Silverman and Ambromowitz’s family at the age of nine months. They would eventually adopt a second Ethiopian son. Though the title may sound solemn, Silverman’s writing is anything but; like her sister, comedian Sarah Silverman, the author has a keen sense of humor and embellishes her narrative with laughs. For example, the night of the baby’s circumcision, her husband cuts the tips off all the vegetables served for dinner. The memoir also describes how she embarked on the path to become a rabbi, though her parents disdained religion and at the onset she didn’t even know the Hebrew alphabet. On occasion, she weaves in tales from the Bible, relating them to contemporary life and particularly her own story (Moses, for instance, was abandoned by his mother to save her son from harm). Devoted to family, faith, and her partnership with God, Silverman paints an honest portrait of an imperfect but loving household. Readers of many traditions will enjoy Silverman’s tender adoption story.

January 1, 2016
A rabbi's account of how she helped her two adopted sons from Ethiopia assimilate Jewish cultural traditions and blend into her family. Silverman (co-author: Jewish Family and Life: Traditions, Holidays, and Values for Today's Parents and Children, 1997) grew up with nonpracticing Jewish parents who, through divorce and remarriage, eventually evolved into a "sprawling, unconventional, and finally happy family." When she started her own family after college, it was with a devoutly Jewish man who actively supported political causes and inspired her to learn more about her cultural and religious traditions. After going "from zero to two children within two years" and writing a book about the "organic relationship between Jewish life and progressive, activist values," she decided to live out her most cherished dream of adopting a child from abroad. She and her husband registered with an adoption agency and allowed their faith to guide them to the two boys they adopted from Ethiopia, a country with historical ties to Judaism. The sense of fulfillment she experienced was profound. So was the frustration at being unable to give her adopted children more than a "messy mosaic" of family stories within "the unwieldy unfolding narrative of Jewish people" upon which to construct their identities and lives. When her first adopted son, Adari, began to express his unhappiness at being unable to live in a "brown family," Silverman saw just how far the lived reality of blended family life was from her Edenic visions. Yet for all its imperfections, which she and her husband embraced with open arms, she also realized what a miracle her family was. In a book rich in understanding and humor, the author chronicles her quest to bring herself and her family closer to God. She also meditates on what it means to live as a broken being in a beautifully imperfect world. Warm and spiritually engaging.

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