STRONGER THAN DNA

By Faigy Peritzman

Courtesy of Family First Magazine

Though the room was pleasantly designed, and the atmosphere congenial, I was feeling stiff and on edge.  It’s not easy being anew bride and acclimating yourself to a new set of relatives.  But I was determined to be gracious to my husband’s aunt and to win over his extended family.  I settled myself more comfortably on the couch and glanced around, surreptitiously trying to find a new source of conversation.  My gaze lit on the mantelpiece, and the many family members clustered on it.

“Oh, are all of these our relatives?”  (Notice the emphasis on ‘our’.  I was pretty impressed with myself.)

“Yes, this is your second cousin, and this is his brother.  Here’s our niece, and that’s Uncle Rob’s family.  This is our family, your first cousins, and these are…”

My eyes glazed as I struggled to make sense of the myriad familial connections portrayed in vivid Technicolor on the marble slab.  Suddenly, I zeroed in on a cluster of photos of a sweet African-American boy with a yarmulke perched proudly on his head, his warm smile gazing from various photos chronicling different stages of his life.

“And who’s this?” I wondered out loud.

“Oh, that’s Sruli.  He’s our best friend’s son.”

Best friend?  Had I ever met this best friend?  I mentally ran through the list of guests at my wedding, but couldn’t place anyone who would fit the description of Sruli’s parents.

“You have lots of pictures of him,” I ventured.

“Well, of course! Sruli is everyone’s favorite!”

And that was my first exposure to Sruli.  An exceptionally warm, sweet boy, adopted as an infant, and raised in a close Jewish community where he is loved by all.  This is his story.  A story of success, inspiration, and love, shared in the hope that it will help other children in the same situation as Sruli.

No Neshama Will Be Left Behind

Yitzchak and Shulamis Ravick* were living in a small community in New York, where Yitzchak was the president of the local Conservative synagogue.  Eventually, the Ravicks became more interested in authentic Judaism and decided to become shomer Shabbos.  Their ‘coreligionists’ were appalled.  Eventually, life became so unpleasant that they were forced to leave town.

They decided to move to a nearby community that boasted an Orthodox shul, and sent their two children, Chana and Michael, to the nearby day school.  The close-knit, growth oriented families who surrounded them convinced them of the wisdom of their move.

Some time later, Shulamis received a phone call from her neighbor Rena, whose childless sister was looking to adopt a baby.  Rena had recently heard of a baby up for adoption, but while the baby’s biological mother was Jewish, the father was African American.

Rena’s sister wouldn’t hear of it.  She had dreamed of a blond-haired, blue eyed child and couldn’t let go of this image.  Rena suddenly remembered Yitzchak and Shulamis.  Although they had not been looking to adopt, they had applied to become foster parents the year before, after seeing an ad for a little Jewish boy in need of a foster home.  But their application was somehow lost in the bureaucratic maze, the boy had gone to another home, and the Ravicks had returned to their own busy lives.

Remembering this incident, Rena was spurred to call Shulamis to tell her about this other child awaiting adoption.

Shulamis listened politely, repeated the conversation to her husband, then ran out to an evening class she was taking at the local community college.  She quickly forgot the conversation.

“It wasn’t anything I was actively seeking,” she explained.  “We had no plans to adopt, and our previous application to become foster parents was prompted simply by that one ad.  I didn’t think this was anything we were going to pursue.”

However, when she returned home, she realized that her husband had taken this opportunity much more seriously.

“It’s a Jewish child and we can’t turn our backs on him,” Yitzchak insisted.

On further investigation, they discovered that the baby had been in a non Jewish foster home since birth, was now three months old, and if a Jewish adoptive family was not found quickly, he would be permanently turned over to Social Services to be placed as they saw fit.

There was a California family interested in adopting him, but within a few days they were persuaded by their extended family to forgo the ‘complications’ that went with such an adoption.

The Ravicks now had their chance.

“Did you discuss it with your other children?” I asked Shulamis.

“Perhaps a day before we actually got him.  The whole thing went so quickly, there really wasn’t much time for any preparation.  Our Rabbi contacted the biological mother and did extensive research on the maternal side of the family.  It was concluded that Sruli was definitely Jewish.”

Shulamis’ daughter, Chana, recalls the event clearly.  “I remember being asked about adopting and I jumped up and down because I was all for it.  We never realized that something was missing in our lives until Sruli came home.  Suddenly, it was like, now we are complete.  We had so much to offer this little baby that didn’t have a home.  I was fourteen and my younger brother was eight, so having a baby in the house was a novelty.  I went to school one day, and when I arrived home, he was there.  There was no was my parents were going to let a Jewish neshama be lost.

“Not long after Sruli came into our lives (yes, that’s how we refer to it), I asked my mother when she’s going to tell Sruli he’s adopted (as if it wasn’t completely obvious).  My mother started singing a song:  ‘Sruli is adopted, Sruli is adopted 1-2-3, 1-2-3.’  But both Michael and I do not think of Sruli as our adopted brother.  He was the little brother that Michael always dreamed of.  He just wasn’t an addition to our family—he became an addition to our entire kehillah.”

The First Smile

Once the Ravicks were approved for temporary foster care, they made plans to receive Sruli.  (He was adopted officially three months later.)   His biological mother took him out of Social Services to personally hand over the baby to the Ravicks.

“I didn’t want to meet her,” remembers Shulamis.  “we arranged for a couple to be the liaison and went  to pick him up at their house.  When we walked into the house, Sruli was crying.  Yet when he took a look at us, perfect strangers, he immediately stopped and smiled.  The whole way home he continued to smile.  It was instant connection.  We belonged together.”

As Sruli’s father, Yitzchak say, “Sruli was made to belong to us right from the beginning.  That was Hashem’s plan.”

Although he had already had a surgical bris, another bris was preformed according to halachah and he received the name Yisroel, after Yitzchak’s father.

And so, although the Ravicks were in their forties, and their youngest child was eight, they were once again initiated into the world of infants, sleepless nights and all.   “It’s like riding a bike,” laughs Shulamis.  “Once you get back on and start taking care of a newborn, it’s like you never forgot.  He was the worst teether, though,” she recalls fondly.

“I still remember taking turns with Shulamis pacing the floor to calm him when he teethed,” recollects Yitzchak.  “But after feeling him nestle in my neck—knowing he was relying on me to take care of him—how can you not love a kid after that?”

Their community was remarkable.  In the few days she had had before receiving Sruli, Shulamis had contacted several other families with infants to see if he would have a supportive network of friends as he was growing up.  Everyone was enthusiastic and urged them to go ahead.  Once Sruli came home, one woman came over immediately with baby clothes, as the Ravicks didn’t have a thing.  “Most mothers have nine months to prepare for this!” chuckles Shulamis.

Another member of the community showed up one Friday with cakes and beer.  “What is all this?” she asked.

“We’re making Sruli a shalom zachor!” was his reply.

“We did have one funny incident,” muses Shulamis.  “When he was an infant, I remember taking him to shul with me one Shabbos morning.  Two little kids came over and were staring at him.  Then they reached out and tentatively rubbed his arm to see if the color would come off!”

Jewish With Dark Skin

Did Sruli ever encounter prejudice and stereotyping?  “No. Never.  He was very confident in who he was.  ‘Jewish with dark skin’ was how he described himself.  And sure enough, that’s how everybody saw him.

Shulamis recounts a funny tale.  “When Sruli was in seventh grade, his rebbe encouraged all chavrusos to set up a learning seder over Shabbos. Sruli’s chavrusa lived on the other side of town and there was a bad neighborhood of low class minority groups between the two houses.  On the first Shabbos, when Sruli had to go to his friend, my husband walked him there.  On the second Shabbos, his chavrusa came to us alone.  When he arrived at our house he was panting and exclaimed, ‘I’m so glad to have gotten here,  away from all those shvartzehs!’

I turned to him with a twinkle in my eye and said ‘But you came here to Sruli!’.

“He looked at me with astonishment and said, ‘Sruli?  He’s Jewish!’”

And that’s how everybody views him.  An exceptional mentch, he quickly won the hearts of all of those who met him.  Hence, the many photos on the mantelpiece of my husband’s aunt.

When Sruli was seven, the Ravicks decided to move to a larger metropolitan area so Michael could still live at home while going to yeshiva. Although a move can often be difficult for a child, Sruli was immediately accepted by his peers and the community alike.  They viewed him as what he truly was, a part of the Ravick family, and the Jewish family as a whole.

“I never remember a single incident of race or stereotype,” insists Shulamis.  “It just wasn’t there”.

Yitzchak recalls Sruli’s interview before being accepted into the neighborhood day school:  “The English principal went out of with Sruli to test him, and the menahel turned to us and said, ‘Tell me the whole story.  I want to know how you became Sruli’s parents.’  After relating the events leading up to his adoption, the menahel smile and said, ‘I want to be prt of your mitzvah.’”

Sruli’s bar mitzvah highlighted the community’s acceptance.  The Shabbos he was called up to the Torah, a mixed race couple was visiting the neighborhood.  The husband was Caucasian, and the wife was a black convert.  When they watched Sruli’s aliyah and his friends’ and neighbor’s happiness, they made a decision to move to the city.  They know they would feel at home.

As Sruli got older, he attended a prominent yeshivah in New York.  Although his parents urged him to go to Eretz Yisroel to study, he declined.  As the ‘baby’ of the family, he found it hard to break away.

Later on, the Ravicks came to visit Eretz Yisroel with Sruli on a ‘pilot trip’ to find him a yeshivah.  My husband and I set them up in a nearby apartment and they came to us several times for supper and Shabbos.  I was curious what would be my children’s reception of Sruli.  They loved him.  Not a comment.  Not a question.  And this from Israeli kids, who don’t see black people very often.

When I pushed them a bit  as to how they liked Sruli, they responded, ”He’s fun”.  And indeed he is.  Fun and warm and loving.  We still have pictures of our kids rolling down the hills in one of Jerusalem’s parks and Sruli laughingly encouraging them.

Every Stage Of Life

Then came shidduchim.  It’s an area fraught with emotion for every parent, and the Ravicks were no different.

“What types of shidduchim did he get redt?   I asked.

“Invariably, people did suggest the black converts they knew about.  There was one girl who was suggested many times over!  But he also went out with plenty of blonde haired blue eyed girls.  He was redt top girls because he was a top boy.”

Baruch Hashem, Sruli found his zivug, a wonderful girl named Miriam.  Her mother is a black convert and her father is white.  Miriam herself is not as dark skinned as Sruli, but their two year old daughter resembles her father.

“It was a shidduch meant to happen.  As soon as we saw them together we knew they belonged,” relates Shulamis with obvious nachas.

At his wedding, the aisle was lined with the many bubbys he had befriended, all bawling their eyes out from emotion.  As he walked down, he pauses and bowed in their direction, acknowledging their love and thanking them for their support.

Miriam is deeply appreciative of her in laws.  “It’s hard to realize that they didn’t give birth to Sruli,” she says.  “But in thinking about it, they saved future generations of Jewish children!”

Yet, Shulamis does not regard raising Sruli any differently than raising her other kids.  “Every one of my kids is special and I can’t imagine my life without any of the,” she confides.  “I don’t recall anything different in raising Sruli.  He’s just mine and he always has been.”

Sruli himself bears testimony to such an attitude:  “I may not be connected to my parents by DNA,” he says strongly, “But love is often stronger than a blood connection.  And no blood connection can compete with the unconditional love that I received from my family.  The fact that I was dark did not make a difference to me.  I never felt that I stood out.”

“This is the message that I’d like to convey.  There are so many Jewish children out there who need homes.  I hope my story can encourage parents to look past superficial differences, not just skin color, and be able to open their homes and their hearts so that others can be as lucky as I am.”

Sruli is now learning part time and working in a program that services those with special needs.  He has a chavrusa with an autistic man and is mentoring a teen as well.  Returning to Klal Yisroel some of the love and acceptance that he’s received.