Ki Teitzei: Is it okay to benefit from lost children?

In this week’s parsha, we are told to return a lost item. In the Talmud, we are instructed that we’re not just to return the item that was found, but also the bounty that such an item created. For instance, someone left some chickens in your home. These chickens multiplied and produced eggs. You sell these chickens and eggs and buy a more expensive goat. When the person returns for the lost chickens, you give them the goat.

I find much in this week’s parsha troubling. This too troubles me, especially in the context of adoption. The child we’re to adopt will not be lost – their parents didn’t just accidentally misplace them – but they will have lost their family. What do we owe those biological parents who granted us this wonderful gift? What do we owe the other foster parents who nurtured the child and helped develop them into who they are today? How can we ever pay the universe back for the gift of parenthood?

In essence, I feel guilty for profiting from someone else’s tragedy. This child, this great gift, can only come from a broken home (otherwise they wouldn’t be in the foster care system). I feel guilty for the joy of parenthood when it can only be achieved by a broken family.

We are on the cusp of the next step. Our home study will be approved shortly and on Sunday, September 14 we get to meet foster children. About every six months there is a “matching event,” in which foster-adopt parents meet with foster children who are ready for adoption.  Next Sunday, we’re going to learn how to drum with 9-17 year olds waiting to be adopted, and I can’t wait.

I’m not expecting to meet our child there, but the possibility itself is exhilarating. More likely, we’re now starting a more arduous and anxiety-producing process of identifying our child, which will transform into an even more arduous and even more anxiety-producing process of adopting him or her. All made possible by the child’s tragedy.

Childhood trauma made me the strong-willed, resourceful, efficient, and thoughtful person I am today. I think experiencing trauma makes a human being stronger and can help a person cultivate gratitude and sustaining justice work. Maybe the abundance from tragedy, from a child who has lost their family, goes to the child themselves. Maybe it makes them stronger and helps them become a better person. Maybe we don’t find the child, but the child finds our family, and together we get to nurture each other to make a better world.  Which would mean that there's nothing to return - what was a lost child is now a family, found among lots of loving family.