Agudath Israel is planning on filing a friend of the court brief on behalf of a Jewish mother whose two children were placed in non-Jewish foster care. The organization claims that Renssellaer County Social Services in upstate New York violated state law when it placed the two children — a 2-year-old boy and 6-month-old girl — in non-Jewish homes.
Should Jewish kids stay in non-Jewish homes?
Agudah protests adoption
By Michael Orbach • The Jewish Star
Agudath Israel is planning on filing a friend of the court brief on behalf of a Jewish mother whose two children were placed in non-Jewish foster care. The organization claims that Renssellaer County Social Services in upstate New York violated state law when it placed the two children — a 2-year-old boy and 6-month-old girl — in non-Jewish homes.
Rabbi Mordechai Biser, general counsel for Agudah, said that the children’s mother requested they be placed together in a Jewish home, a request the agency did not fulfill. When Rabbi Biser contacted the agency, it refused to move the children, despite the availability of Jewish homes.
“I’ve never had this before,” Rabbi Biser said. “I’ve dealt with a number of situations where children have been placed in foster care. Once we make a protest, within 24 hours the children have been switched [to Jewish] homes.”
Agudah, a multifaceted Charedi organization run by a council of Orthodox rabbis, is submitting the brief before the mother’s parental rights have been fully terminated. Part of the social service agency’s refusal seems to stem from the complexity of the case. The mother, who is Jewish and “has a very Jewish last name,” according to Rabbi Biser, is a heroin addict who lives in housing projects next to the Orthodox shul. The boy was placed in his foster family, a lesbian couple,a year and a half ago. Rabbi Biser said that the couple’s sexuality has nothing to do with the protest. “We would be objecting just as vigorously if the boy was going to live with a non-Jewish heterosexual couple,” he said. When the woman’s daughter was placed in foster care a month ago, the woman, with the aid of the community, requested that they be placed together in a Jewish home.
“A Jew has a neshama (soul),” explained Rabbi Leible Morrison of the Beth Tephilah synagogue. “They want to do the right thing even if they themselves don’t do the right thing.”
It is unclear whether the mother requested that the children be placed in a Jewish home when the boy was initially placed in foster care. According to Rabbi Biser, both foster families are planning to adopt their respective children, but they will only be allowed if the mother’s parental rights are completely terminated, which is before the court. “We don’t take any position on whether she is a fit mother or not,” Rabbi Biser said. “Our only interest is that if you take the children they have to be in the same faith home.”
Randy Hall, the commissioner of the Renssellaer Department of Social Services did not respond to requests for comment in time for The Jewish Star’s deadline.
The Agudah is basing its objection on a statute of child custody law that maintains that any child “remanded or committed by the court to any duly authorized association, agency, society, or institution” should be placed “when practicable… under the control of persons of the same religious faith or persuasion as that of the child.”
“Basically [Rensellaer County Social Services] made a mistake and now they want to continue the mistake,” Rabbi Biser said. “Now they want to make that permanent. Once a child is adopted there’s no recourse … I don’t feel that the department, because of whatever reason, lack of inquiry, negligence, made a serious mistake and that this child be lost forever for the Jewish people.”
Rabbi Biser claims that the agency is not moving the children because the move would not be “practicable,” since the boy has already bonded with his foster parents and the girl suffers from various medical issues associated with her mother’s addiction.
Though the case may be more complicated than that.
According to Jim Dyer, the Arthur B. Hanson professor of Law at the college of William and Mary, moving the boy may be a violation of the his constitutional rights.
“A child has a 14th amendment right against the state going into their existing homes and family and terminating their relationship,” Dyer said. “There are reasonable policies behind the statutes, but now we have a different story. The child, by mistake or accident, has a relationship with caretakers and that relationship is likely very important to the child’s welfare… It shouldn’t matter to the child’s constitutional rights to the state how the relationship arose.”
He said the court would look askance at Agudah’s involvement.
“They’re bystanders and they have no legal standing to protest the adoption,” he said about Agudah. “The adoption mandate is to do what’s in the best interest of the child.”Alan Kadzin, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University, said that a child adapting to a new home would be dependent on different factors.
“It depends on the temperament of the child,” Kadzin said. “Is it possible to recover? Yes. It is possible to be traumatic? Yes. It depends on the environment they are placed into.”
Kadzin also stressed the importance of placing the children together. “That sibling is going to be the buffer relationship for life,” he said. “They may go through death and to have your main sibling plucked from you, I would go for that more than compatibility in beliefs.”
David Mandel, the CEO of Ohel, the largest Jewish social service agency was not surprised by the case. “We’re constantly disappointed when we hear such stories,” he said.“
While he said he couldn’t offer a comment on this particular case, Mandel said that the case highlights the need for more Jewish foster families.
“That they may not be separated since they have a bond, only makes the story more compelling for all the rest of the time that a child is moved into foster care and needs a Jewish home,” Mandel said. “And there will be a next time.”
To Rabbi Biser, the case is a simple one.
“There were children in the Holocaust who were put in non-Jewish homes,” Biser said. “Would anyone say that after the war that when the parents went to the family, the family could say ‘Well the kids have bonded and we’re raising them as Catholics.’ What would we say? It’s the same thing over here. There are Jewish children and they belong in Jewish homes.”