Jewish Journal Boston North Feature stories 04.06.07

Mother’s Day is May 11. There are many ways to mother, and in this issue, the Jewish Journal is proud to salute those who have joined the ranks of motherhood by adopting children. Here we present four different stories of Jewish families that made the decision to bring one or more adopted children into their lives. Happy Mother’s Day to these mothers, and to mothers everywhere!

Sue and David Callum of Peabody yearned to give their daughter, Jayme, a sibling. When it didn’t happen biologically, they decided to explore adoption. They chose the domestic route, they said, “because international adoptions generally require two visits to the foreign country, there are more unknowns, and we wanted an infant.”

They worked closely with Ann Woodfork, director of adoptions at Jewish Family Service of the North Shore, and her associate, Ann White. JFS conducted their home study, handled all the paperwork and provided invaluable emotional support throughout the two years it took for them to adopt Eric, who was born in Texas and is now 18 months old.

The Callum case was one of 30 successful adoptions completed by the licensed private agency in 2007. “We couldn’t have survived without them,” Sue said, adding, “They were on top of everything.” David, who says he talked with Ann Woodfork every day by phone throughout the process, added, “If it weren’t for JFS, I would have gone insane in Texas.”

The Callums received a call on October 11, 2006 that a healthy baby boy was born in the Longhorn state. They were given two hours to decide whether to proceed with the adoption. They arrived in Texas the following day, only to learn that they would have to remain there for several weeks until FBI fingerprinting and other required clearances were completed. They could take the infant from the hospital, but could not leave Texas.

After eight days, Susan had to return to Peabody to tend to her daughter and her various responsibilities. An active member of the Jewish community, Susan directs a school age childcare program in Lincoln, serves as president of the North Suburban Jewish Community Center, and is the youth director at Temple Ner Tamid in Peabody. David, who was starting a new business and had a more flexible schedule, remained in Texas to complete the paperwork. He wound up spending 20 days there with the newborn. Virtual strangers reached out to help, including members of a temple in Houston who showed true Southwestern hospitality to the displaced New Englander.

The Callums were able to meet Eric’s 23-year-old birth mother, but do not keep in touch. Eric can contact her when he becomes 18. The birth mother was not Jewish, but never asked the Callums about their religion. “It was something we were concerned about, but it turned out not to be a problem,” Sue said.

When he arrived home, the Callums had Cantor Sam Pessaroff perform a bris, and since Eric was born to a non-Jewish mother, the Callums decided to have a conversion ceremony. Rabbi David Katzker conducted the spiritual event, dipping the baby three times in a Newton mikvah in April 2007 with two other rabbis, Cantor Pessaroff, and members of the Callum family present.

“Motherhood — there are tremendous ups and (laughs) things that are not so good. I love being a mother, that’s why we’re going for another one,” said Ann Fisher.

The Brighton woman, an Orthodox Jew, was on an ambitious career path, or rather paths. She became a lawyer and then a banker. She majored in the Russian language in college, studied at Leningrad State University one summer and fell in love with the beautiful centuries-old historic city now called St. Petersburg.

Like the proverbial refrain — ‘Oops, I forgot to have children!’ — Fisher came to her decision to become a mother a bit later than is the norm.

“When I hadn’t met someone and was approaching 40, the time to have kids was either now or never. I did what I had to do,” she said.

As a single woman, Fisher, now 49, adopted Dina from St. Petersburg in 1999. Five years later, Fisher gave Dina a sister when she traveled to Orenburg, Russia and brought home Zahava.

Again, she did what she had to do — she changed careers to be home for them, and now works in a Framingham public school with autistic preschoolers.

“I met a wonderful man, Joe Greisdoff, and married him in the summer of 2006. Now we are in the process of adopting a toddler boy.”

Greisdoff, 56, is also Orthodox and has stepchildren from a previous marriage. But he had never raised young children and now loves being a father, Fisher said.

When reached by the Journal, the family was packed into their car headed for a seder in Maryland. Fisher had just received the phone call that morning from the Florence Crittenton League adoption agency in Lowell that the family’s boy, from a St. Petersburg orphanage, was awaiting their arrival.

“I kind of did it in backwards order — have kids, then get married. But I did it and it all worked out, which is difficult, and I’m a mother with two children about to have a third,” Fisher said.

“Adoption is an amazing way to make a family,” says Deborah Margolis, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and associate professor at Merrimack College in North Andover. “It unites children who need homes with people who want children, and it’s a great combination for everybody.”

She knows firsthand about the blessings it brings. Margolis and her partner, Rita Cusack, have two sons from Guatemala. Noah is seven; Jonah will turn five at the end of the month. The couple adopted both boys as infants.
“We decided to go the international route because we had friends who had done it successfully,” Margolis said. After careful investigation, the couple honed in on Guatemala.

“We did a lot of research and learned that the children coming from Guatemala are cared for in foster homes, rather than orphanages. They are generally healthy and well socialized. Guatemala is also relatively close, and our intention was to be able to return to the country with some degree of frequency so the children would get to know their native land,” Margolis said.

While some international adoptions are mired in bureaucracy and can take years to complete, their process was astonishingly quick. It took them just nine months to get Noah, and a mere six months to get Jonah. They attribute the efficiency to the fact that they worked with agencies specializing in Guatemala adoptions.

Although Cusack appeared in the home study and accompanied her to Guatemala, Margolis applied as a single woman because same sex couples are not legally permitted to adopt in the Central American country. After the international adoption was finalized, they completed a co-parent adoption in Massachusetts.

The couple is very honest and open with the boys about their heritage. “They are very much aware that they are adopted and are of Guatemalan/Mayan descent. We are part of a Guatemalan adoptive families network, so they have friends that look like them and have similar backgrounds,” Margolis said. Cusack, who is a teacher and head of the math department at Salem High School, would eventually like the family to spend time in Guatemala teaching English and studying Spanish.

The boys are also receiving a strong Jewish education. Noah attends Cohen Hillel Academy, and Jonah is enrolled in the Masoret preschool Hebrew immersion class at the JCC in Marblehead.

Noah and Jonah innocently believe that all babies arrive on planes from somewhere else. “One of their teachers was having a baby. Noah asked what airline it was coming in on,” Margolis said.

The couple reads a lot of books to the children — books about Jewish families, bi-racial families, adoptive families, and families with two moms. Yet Margolis was recently surprised to overhear one of their recent conversations.

“They were playing house. One was the Mom, and one was the Dad going to work. I was surprised because that’s not a model they’re familiar with,” Margolis said.

Joan Lehmann traveled regularly to China when she worked in international business development for Polaroid. “I always found the country and people fascinating,” Lehmann said.

When she and her husband, Kevin Collins, wanted to expand their family, they decided to adopt from China.

“Elizabeth is a feisty, demanding, interesting and smart little girl who is very much like the businesswomen I had met there,” said Lehmann, describing their now three-year-old daughter.

The interfaith, multi-cultural family lives in Westwood. Kevin is Catholic, Joan is Jewish. Although Elizabeth and her 11-year-old brother William are being raised Jewish, they have an awareness and appreciation of both religions.
“We try to do everything,” said Lehmann, who celebrates Chanukah, Christmas, and will hopefully integrate Chinese cultural traditions as Elizabeth gets older.

The career-oriented Lehmann, who is now a freelance marketing consultant, came to motherhood later in life. “I didn’t think about kids until I was 40,” said Lehmann, who is now 52. Their son, who is biological, has special needs. Because he requires a lot of care, the couple’s main priority when adopting was that the child be physically healthy.
“I was concerned about getting medical information with an international adoption. But I didn’t want to go domestic because I was nervous that the birth mother might change her mind,” Lehmann said.

They worked with an agency that provided only sketchy medical details. But before leaving China, Kevin took the child to a doctor for a complete physical examination, and she was in fine health. Elizabeth has adapted easily to her new world. “Her language skills were obviously delayed, but she has picked things up very quickly. Without words, she understood,” Lehmann said.

The couple has not gone back to Asia. “We’d like to take her to China, but she’s now so Americanized that she’d probably stick out,” Lehmann said.

Lehmann admits that her mother and father initially had trouble accepting her decision to adopt from China.
“My parents are German Jews, and my mother is a Holocaust survivor. Their world is much narrower. Their friends are mostly Jewish or German refugees. They could not understand why I did this. But international adoptions are so prevalent now. In our neighborhood there are kids from Guatemala, India and China. It’s not like the old days – today it’s a multi-cultural world,” she said.

The Lynn-Swampscott-Marblehead Chapter of Hadassah will honor Nicole Levy as its 2008 Woman of the Year at the Northern New England Region Gala on Sunday, May 18. Levy is the chapter’s Jewish education chair. She has started several programs for the chapter, including programs for young children, an adult study group and a book club. Levy holds a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College and a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts. She has also completed coursework for a master’s degree from Hebrew College. She and her husband Robert are members of Congregation Ahabat Sholom in Lynn. They live in Swampscott with their daughter.

“Hadassah provides a link with the Jewish people and with the State of Israel,” said Levy. “My goal as Jewish education chair is to offer our members opportunities to explore those cultures, thereby strengthening their connections to them. I am honored to be recognized for this work, and to be counted among the other women who have received this award.”

The Northern New England Region Gala will be held at the Doubletree Hotel in Bedford. The cocktail hour starts at 5:30 p.m. and dinner starts at 6 p.m. Reservations are $36 per person and can be made by contacting the region office at 781-280-0663 or region.nne@hadassah.org

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, is the largest women’s and largest Jewish organization in the United States. In Israel, Hadassah supports medical care, medical research, youth and educational institutions, reforestation and parks development. In the U.S. Hadassah promotes women’s health education, community volunteerism, social action and advocacy, Jewish education and research, partnerships with Israel, and the Young Judaea youth movement.

For more information, please contact the chapter office at 781-581-5790 or hadassahlsm@comcast.net.

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Danvers Teen Recycles Thousands of Cans to Aid
North Shore Medical Center’s Cancer Facility

For her bat mitzvah project, 13-year-old Marisa Paul of Danvers took on cancer, a cause that unfortunately struck close to home. Her beloved grandmother, Nana, and her aunt had both been diagnosed with breast cancer and were treated at North Shore Medical Center’s Cancer Center in Peabody. When visiting the facility, Marisa was impressed with the high level of care.

For a year prior to her March 15 bat mitzvah, Marisa collected, rinsed and hauled thousands of aluminum cans to a local recycling center, earning five cents per can. Her father, Gary, is employed at Salem Plumbing and Supply in Beverly. Ralph Sevinor, co-owner of Salem Plumbing, had a “can do” attitude about helping Marisa achieve her goal. For an entire year, he allowed her to recycle all the cans collected there and also gave her all the money collected from the company’s vending machines.

The seventh grader, who attends Holten Richmond Middle School in Danvers, was able to raise a total of $700, which she recently donated to the Cancer Center. In addition, she and her family chose to make mitzvah baskets to adorn the bimah during her bat mitzvah at Temple Emanu-El in Marblehead. The large baskets, which were donated to the NSMC Cancer Center, contained puzzles, books and games for young patients at the facility, and to amuse kids waiting for their loved ones undergoing chemotherapy treatment.

Since age seven, Marisa has participated in the annual 6.2-mile NSMC Cancer Walk. “I usually walk with my dad and other people from Salem Plumbing,” said Marisa, who dances and is in good physical condition.

This year, however, the Paul family has a wedding and cannot take part in the walk. But they are still collecting cans. And happily, Marisa’s aunt is in remission, and her Nana is doing great.

“We’re so proud,” said Marisa’s mother, Tracey. “It was important to Marisa to do a bat mitzvah project that meant something to her. This really touched home.”

Winning audience awards at the Boston, Washington, D.C. and San Diego Jewish Film Festivals, “Praying With Lior” is primed to become the feel-good documentary of 2008. But director Ilana Trachtman’s heartwarming film is also intended as a catalyst for action.

Lior Liebling is a Philadelphia adolescent with Down Syndrome. Perpetually smiling and openhearted, Lior brightens every room he enters — especially the shul where he’s davened loudly and fervently since he was a small boy. “Praying With Lior” follows the child and his family in the busy months leading up to his bar mitzvah.

Of course, nothing is simple with Lior, including the responses of those around him. Some members of the congregation think that Lior’s lack of inhibition and filters brings him closer to God and gives his words more power. In fact, that was what fascinated Trachtman when she first encountered him at a prayer retreat in the Catskills in the fall of 2003.

“I was really struggling with prayer, and I always have — the whole concept of loving Judaism but having a hard time being a devotional person,” says Trachtman, a 30-something Manhattan producer and director who has done award-winning work for HBO Family, PBS, Showtime and the Sundance Channel. “The idea that somebody could do it well — however you want to judge success — who was also supposedly compromised intellectually, is really fascinating to me.”

Trachtman describes her upbringing as “Reformadox,” “and considered leaving it entirely, because, she says, “there wasn’t enough for me to hold onto.” She spent a semester in Israel, and another year and a half there after college doing volunteer work through a Peace Corps-inspired program called Otzma, in anticipation of making aliyah.
Trachtman flirted with the idea of becoming a rabbi. Bright and vivacious, she was a seriously committed but frustrated Jew when she met Lior.

“I don’t know specifically that I was looking for a way to talk to God, as I was looking for a way to feel moved, fed, and somehow connected. I was looking for a way that the [prayers] would be able to take me to someplace beyond words on the page. [When I met Lior I felt like] ‘This kid is experiencing focus. This kid is experiencing kavanah [intention]. This kid is experiencing concentration.’”

“Praying with Lior” provides ample opportunity to observe what Trachtman witnessed that day. While she was privately wondering how many more pages there was until the Alenu, Lior was totally engaged. “All of him, all of his cells, were there in that moment, undistracted,” she said.

Trachtman shot 200 hours of footage, becoming extraordinarily close to the Lieblings in the process.

Lior is a special individual, but what Trachtman came away with was a new appreciation for community. Now when she prays, “I get a lot out of being there among everybody and feeling the connections between people and the potential of what’s possible. And I think a lot of that is from witnessing in such an intimate way the sustenance that Lior’s community gives him. I learned to value it in a way that I didn’t necessarily before,” Trachtman said.

Trachtman emphasizes that Lior’s synagogue is an exception in its acceptance and celebration of a child with a disability.

“When I started working on this [project], I had no disability background or interest, even,” Trachtman admitted. “I am somebody who has marched for all different kinds of marginalized causes — immigrant rights, gay rights, women’s rights. Disability issues (were) just not on the radar at all,” she said.

“But the fact is, people with disabilities exist in the Jewish community. They just don’t exist in our synagogues. The fact that I went to a synagogue [as a child] that had 3,000 families and I never saw anybody with Down Syndrome or any other kind of obvious mental retardation or otherwise at synagogue isn’t because they weren’t living in my community. It’s because there wasn’t a place for them in my community. And that is the norm,” she added.

“I don’t necessarily feel like the Jewish community is any worse than anywhere else in society. It just happens to be the place that I know the best. By having a community that includes everybody, then you have a closer relationship to God,” Trachtman said.

Praying with Lior is playing at the West Newton Cinema. Call the theatre for show times.

While his kids were growing up, Steve Boudreault and his wife, Emily, regularly attended Friday evening services at Temple Beth Shalom in Peabody. They both taught in the temple’s religious school. On their refrigerator, they had a “quote board” on which they kept a frequently changing quote to inspire, amuse or motivate the family members.

“Many of those quotes were things that were said in the synagogue,” Boudreault recalled.

On weekends, Boudreault could be found among the temple members pounding nails in a volunteer work group replacing shingles on the temple roof; and he and Emily found much of their social life in the company of their fellow temple members.

What is unusual, and surprising, is that neither Boudreault nor his wife is Jewish. Although now unaffiliated, he was brought up in a Roman Catholic family, and Emily is an Episcopalian. So why are their lives so involved in the Jewish community? Therein lies the story.

Steve’s first wife is Jewish, and when they were married, they agreed to bring their children up in the Jewish faith.
“Fundamentally, even though the religions have different names,” Boudreault said, “the morals and the ethics and the values are the same. The roots of Christianity are Judaism, so starting (our children) off with that culture seemed to me a perfectly natural thing to do.”

That marriage did not last. When his ex-wife moved out, Boudreault retained custody of their children, Amanda and Noah, then eight and 10 years old. He decided that he would do everything he could to continue their Jewish education and to provide them with a Jewish home life as well.

“Even after the divorce, Temple Beth Shalom was very supportive of what I was trying to do,” Boudreault said. “I stayed with the religion, made a lot of friends, and had a lot of support to do the things I couldn’t do.”

Amanda and Noah were already attending religious school and Hebrew classes by then. With guidance from the rabbi and his Protestant grandmother, he focused on raising them Jewish.

“I think people have a lot more in common than differences, and it is very easy to focus on the differences and miss the big picture,” he said.

Boudreault began teaching a seventh grade class in the Beth Shalom religious school. To prepare for teaching the 12- and 13-year-olds in his class, he learned about Judaism online, in classes, from books, from friends, and from the rabbi. And he visited his grandmother every Monday and went over his lessons with her.

When he began dating Emily, she accompanied him to Friday evening services, where the children sang in the chorus.
“She found (the temple) very accepting and meaningful,” Boudreault said. She felt that the rabbi’s sermons seemed tailor-made for concerns in her own life. Before long, she, too, was teaching in the temple school. The two were married in a civil ceremony, but the following Friday, after services, the temple congregation danced and sang with them in a circle to celebrate their marriage.

Once, in Boudreault’s religious school class, he pronounced “Pesach” wrong, and one of the pupils corrected him, then asked, “What? Aren’t you Jewish?” The answer was “No” and the kids in the class were amazed and curious to know how he came to be their teacher. Boudreault explained to them that he thinks Judaism is a great religion. “So much is to be learned from it,” he told them, and added that he hoped they could also learn something from him.
Noah and Amanda became bar and bat mitzvah at Temple Beth Shalom (with Boudreault’s parents joining them on the bimah), and continued through confirmation there. When the family took a road trip across the country, they called it “Hebrew Across America,” with the family practicing Hebrew lessons.

“I am closer to Judaism than I am to Christianity. It is a way of life; it is not about fire and damnation,” he said. But still, he feels that he grew up in a different environment, which remains a part of him. So he does not feel that he can identify himself as exclusively Jewish.

Still, a Jewish way of living and thinking looms large in his life. He joins other temple members to volunteer for Meals on Wheels at Christmas and Easter to allow Christian volunteers to enjoy their holidays. He still has “a great fondness” for Temple Beth Shalom and remains a member there, even though his children are now grown and living on their own. He no longer attends services regularly, but many practices are still part of his life. On Yom Kippur this year, he and Amanda fasted together. And when his daughter moved to her first apartment, Boudreault and Emily bought her a mezuzah for her doorpost only to find that Amanda had already bought one herself. When Emily’s mother died recently, she and Boudreault sat shivah and took comfort from visits from their many Jewish friends.

Passover is always celebrated with a family seder. And one of Boudreault’s greatest wishes is for his children to go to Israel.

So, while retaining his own spiritual identity, Boudreault has incorporated a large measure of Jewish culture, custom and community into his life.

“At the end of the day, we all have the same values. We all want to have a happy family life and live responsibly in our community,” he said. He has honored his children’s Jewish heritage by emphasizing in his own life and in theirs that which unites them with the Jewish community.

Sue Callum

Sue and David Callum of Peabody used Jewish Family Service of the North Shore to help coordinate their adoption of Eric, who was born in Texas in 2006. The Callums are pictured above with Eric and their daughter, Jayme, who is eight.

Deb Margolis

The Cusack-Margolis family of Marblehead recently took a ride on the swan boats in Boston. Pictured left to right are Noah, Rita Cusack, Jonah and Deb Margolis.

Kevin Collins

Joan Lehmann and her husband Kevin Collins of Westwood adopted Elizabeth, now three, from China. The couple also has a biological son, William, who is 11.

Courtesy photos

The Paul family (Gary, Tracey, Max and Marisa) poses with the gift baskets they made for the NSMC Cancer Center.

First Run Features

Lior Liebling and his friend, Shawn, in “Praying with Lior.”

Steve Boudreault