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as“without religion,” [i.e. not Jewish, not Moslem, not Christian etc.].
According to Israeli law, a child can only be adopted by an adoptive
family that shares the same religion as him.

2. Several potential adoptive families consulted various rabbanim,
who advised them against adopting a possibly non-Jewish baby, be-
cause even if he is converted his soul will not be a Jewish soul.

3. Even if he is converted and adopted, his mother cannot be se-
cluded with him, because of concern about the law prohibiting seclu-
sion with a member of the opposite gender who is not a close relative.

We would be most grateful to the respected rav for responding in
regard to adoption of Jews and non-Jews according to halachah.

Dr. B. Milbauer, Director
Dr. A. Tomer, Deputy,
Dept. of Premature Births and Neo-
nates – Hakiryah Hospital, Tel Aviv

ɳ Response

The abandoned baby whose parents came from Russia and then
abandoned him and left, is considered to be of uncertain Jewish lin-
eage and when he grows up, it will be a mitzvah for him to convert.
Therefore even now when he is still small, if kind hearted Jews were to
come and consult us as to whether or not to adopt him, they should
be told that it is a mitzvah to perform a proper conversion now and
to adopt him.

While it is true that his soul will not be on the same level as a
soul that was born to Jewish parents, the child is nonetheless capa-
ble of becoming the Jewish nation’s foremost Torah scholar of the
generation. Furthermore, the soul’s stature is not the yardstick that
determines whether or not to convert and adopt. That is decided by
whether or not it is a mitzvah. In practice, it is a mitzvah to convert
this baby, therefore our advice is to convert him properly, following
which it will be a great mitzvah to adopt him. We shall now elucidate
these comments:

Adopting a Child 2 495