An Odd Jewish Ritual Question...

[gnomi]

...that occurred to me over Shabbat:

If one is eating in the home of a couple whose children are all adopted, does one say v'et zar'am* in the Choose Your Own Adventure harachaman** in bentching***?

*"and their offspring," literally "and their seed"
** "the compassionate one," the first word of a series of blessings
*** the blessings after meals ("bentching" is Yiddish; in Hebrew, it is called "Birkat HaMazon," the blessing of the sustenance)

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Where's the Narf! tickybox? I'm looking around but I can't find it.

[lomedet.livejournal.com]

my instinct is that yes, you say it, although an argument could be made for substituting in v'et yaldam or v'et tzeitza'am or something like that.

[morgan-lowri.livejournal.com]

I think so. My childhood best friend is adopted and his mother always did the regular blessing him as one of her children, and even did the same for his husband when he came along. ^_^

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You absolutely would in the Reform community -- adopted children are considered exactly the same as born children. (In the Reform community, adopted children aren't required, for instance, to undergo conversion, although many do, anyway, just to not worry Orthodox Jews.) One could make an argument that adoption and conversion are very closely related processes -- that, in fact, conversion IS a process of adoption -- and therefore prohibitions analagous to those against treating gerim differently than born Jews apply.

[laurens10.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. It makes perfect sense that Reform would do that, but I didn't know!

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

i am reminded of a comedienne whose name i forget, who said that her favorite response when asked about her braids--are they yours?---was:

"of course they are! i figure i've either got follicles or receipts."

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

I'd go with yes, if for no other reason than that you're trying to offer someone a blessing, not insult them and alientate them.

As a side question, do you say covenant inscribed on our flesh, since you're female?

[sethg]

Also, harachaman is not one of the Divine names that you're not allowed to take in vain and those blessings aren't part of the liturgy composed by the Men of the Great Assembly, so even if v'et zar`am is spurious, you don't do anything wrong by adding it.

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

I'd go with yes, if for no other reason than that you're trying to offer someone a blessing, not insult them and alientate [sic] them.

Except that in pretty much every place where I've ever benched, even when most of the text is said aloud, this part is said silently (because of the variances in the text depending on one's point of view).

As a side question, do you say covenant inscribed on our flesh, since you're female?

Actually, that line strikes me as being more applicable to women than to men. The line is "... Your covenant which You [emphasis added] sealed in our flesh...". Females are said to have been created by God as already effectively circumcised, so it was God who did the sealing. Males have to be circumcised by a human being, so I'm not sure how we say "...which You sealed..."

[dpolicar]

It amuses me that you helpfully translated all the Hebrew while leaving the cultural tradition underlying the "Choose Your Own Adventure" bracha unexplicated.

Also, I now have the appallingly cheerful NCSY harachaman niggun stuck in my head.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

appallingly cheerful NCSY harachaman niggun

This would be the summer-camp Birkat tune, right?

I didn't go to one of the Jewish overnight camps, but my brother and all my cousins did, and my brother even went to the same one that my DAD had gone to in his youth, so when extended family sang the Birkat, it was ALWAYS that tune.

[betra.livejournal.com]

My summer camp uses the same tune that my Orthodox cousins used. I didn't know there was more than one!

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Oh, no you don't! I just got through reformatting that beracha to include singular and plural masculine and feminine head(s) of household, and I am *not* going back there again!

[Although I did put "v'et zar'[o/ah/am/an]" in parentheses]

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about judaism, but I have heard interesting discussions of the views of adoption in the ancient world, in the jewish culture (and hence the early Christian culture) as well. My understanding is that adoption was considered a total ontological change. There was no concept of "birth parents" or "genetic parents"--the adopted child becomes your literal child, there being only one definition of such a thing.

I think it's rather sad, actually, that we have a comparatively weakened concept of a child by adoption. Adopted parents are, in so many ways, made to feel lesser, unworthy, even as if they are doing harm to the child by taking him/her into the family. I even encountered a person on LJ who seems to consider herself as adoptive mother as something of a babysitter for the child's real parents, and has deferred to the "real parents" much more than I thought anyone ever would. In our secular, scientific society, there is no room for a ritual that changes the whole being of a person--to change, for example, their parents.

Does the Hebrew language distinguish adopted child from birth child?

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

It's impossible to imagine that you do not say this — too impolite. Well, not impossible, but you get my drift.

[cellio]

If said aloud, I would think yes to avoid embarrassment. If said silently, I think it's fine (not a divine name) or you could substitute yeladim or some such.

Converts get Avraham and Sarah as parents even though there's no biological relationship. Is a term like "av" or "zera" always meant literally? (Now I'm curious -- but no, not curious enough to pull out a concordance right now, about uses of zera in text...)

[sorek.livejournal.com]

"choose your own adventure" part of benching.

I love it! Hee!

[betra.livejournal.com]

In my family we always went with v'et zar'am (when we benched at all. Asking my father to sing/chant is a sort of masochism.) Both my brother and I are adopted, but honestly, the only reason we know is for any medical reasons that might pop up. My parents consider us as theirs flesh and bone.

The whole 'born of a Jewish mother' things actually was one wedge that came between my parents and the conservative synagogue. My birth mother was Catholic (GASPOFHORROROMG) but my parents to this day assert that it doesn't matter since she is not really my mother.

We are now Reconstructionists (chuckle)