So eight years ago he published a book, “And Hannah Wept,” to offer information, support and encouragement to the 20 percent of childbearing-age Jewish couples who cannot have children. And Gold was in Baltimore late last month to give the keynote address at the first national Jewish adoption conference at the Pikesville Hilton.
The conference, which drew more than 150 participants, was sponsored by Families Adopting Children Everywhere (FACE), an adoptive parent support group in the Baltimore-Washington area, and Stars of David International, a national Jewish adoptive-parent support organization, as well as a number of Baltimore-area agencies.
Workshops addressed such topics as transcultural adoption, single-parent adoption, growing up in a Jewish family, dealing with extended family and estate planning for adopted children.
Gold, who is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Torah in Tamarac, Fla., is also the author of “Does God Belong in the Bedroom?” He is in the process of completing his third book, also about adoption, called “Building Your Family in the Image of God.”
He touched on some of his books’ themes during his 20-minute luncheon talk, speaking candidly about the private domestic adoptions of his three children, now ages 14, 11 and 7.
All three children were born to non-Jewish mothers. Gold and his wife converted them to Judaism when they were infants.
He noted that during the adoption process for one of his children, a required evaluation known as the “home study” was conducted by Lutheran Social Services because at that time Gold’s local Jewish Family Services would not help with adoptions. The agency has since changed its policies, he said.
Gold noted that Judaism sends two contradictory messages on the issue of adoption: first, that the true parent is the parent who raises the child and, second, that bloodlines are very important.
He pointed to many biblical examples of parents raising children who are not biologically their own. For instance, Abraham’s wife, Sarah, raised Ishmael even though he was the son of Abraham with Sarah’s handmaiden, Hagar.
On the other hand, Gold said that while encouraging Jews to care for orphans, the Torah stops short of advocating adoption. He noted that classical Hebrew has no word for adoption.
He illustrated the contradiction with a story about his father-in-law, who is now deceased.
The father-in-law told the Golds that while he accepted and loved their first two adopted children, he would prefer that they not adopt any more. The rabbi grinned as he explained that after his father-in-law’s death, the couple adopted a third child and named the boy after him.
Gold poignantly described the pain and emotional vicissitudes associated with adoption. One Shavuot, he and his wife learned that an infant promised to them a month earlier would not become theirs after all.
Then he raised the thorny subject of adopted children’s curiosity about their birth parents.
“When they are adults, if [my children] want to make that search, I will support that search because that’s part of who they are,” said Gold; truly loving one’s children means loving everything about who they are, not just who they became after they were adopted.
“My kids have genes; they have birth parents,” he said, adding that it’s an adopted child’s right to say the Kaddish mourning prayer for a birth parent, even though such an act would no doubt be hurtful to the child’s adoptive parents.
Despite the challenges — and the Jewish community’s inconsistency in welcoming adopted children into the fold — adoption can be a tremendously rewarding step for Jewish families who choose that route, Gold said.
“I think that God led these babies to us,” he said of his own three, “and that somehow we are fulfilling God’s will by caring for these children.”