Adoption and A Bridge Between Cultures: Jewish Couple Adopts Biracial Children

Two-and-a-half-year-old Talia Smerling pushes a toy baby stroller holding her African American doll baby through the lobby of the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center. Smerling is biracial with faint brown skin and dark blond hair. She is the adopted youngest child of Reena Bernards and Tom Smerling, a Jewish married couple who live in the District and belong to the Farbrengen cheder, a Hebrew school cooperative. The Bernards-Smerlings' elder adopted son, Ami, with light brown skin, tight brown curls and a big smile, is playful and precocious at almost 5 years old. Ami, also biracial, was born in Shreveport, La., and adopted by the Bernards-Smerlings through a Louisiana-based agency with an office in D.C. Ami is the child who came to us, and so we became an interracial family," says Bernards. "Once we had a biracial child, we wanted our second child to be biracial. We wanted our children to be able to support each other an issues of being biracial and Jewish.' The couple notes that their children are quadruple minorities, of a sort: Jewish, adopted, biracial and black. The couple works hard to raise the children as devoted Jews with respect for their ethnic backgrounds, Bernards says, pointing to a variety of multicultural and interracial organizations and events that are a part of the family's life. "The way I talk about it is in terms of heritage," Bernards says. "I say your ancestors are from Africa and Europe. So I try to do it not in terms of skin color but ancestry." Parenting biracial children has affected his life profoundly, says Smerling, director of the Israel Policy Forum's Washington Policy Center. "We became overnight a multiracial family and part of a minority. And every moment now, I see the world through not just Jewish and male and Caucasian eyes, but also through African-American eyes. And the world looks very, very different. It's shocking for anyone born into a privileged elm to experience the moment-to-moment pervasiveness of racism and the impact of that." While Smerling and his children have not experienced blatant prejudice, he is more aware of subtle cues of tension, discomfort and fear between races. "To me, the most pernicious part of it is that almost every human interaction you have, no matter how fleeting, reflects the cultural perceptions - how strangers' eyes move when they pass you on the street. It's kind of crushing to realize what it's like to live for African-Americans in a society in which racism is so deeply embedded in all of our psyches," Smerling says. The couple expels to be frank with their children and explain, "You are different. You are not going to fit into any small niche," says Bernards. Ami notices that he looks different than some of his peers, that he has brown skin and other children have white skin. We are conscious about trying to teach our children about their multiple heritages and make sure that they have black friends as well as white friends." Bernards believes that her children "have the unique advantage of belonging to different communities and having entrees to different groups. " Both children may serve as "a bridge between cultures and keep us less isolated. What it has done for me is really broadened and deepened my sense of who in the world is my family. It's brought me closer to a wider variety of people," she notes. Their children "will have unique challenges and unique gifts to offer."

© Merry Madway Eisenstadt