גיורים רפורמיים וזהות של תינוקות מהפריה מלאכותית.

Shalom Dr. Halperin,

I was given your email address by Yael Samuel. I hope you do not mind my writing to you directly with these questions.

I am a physician in Seattle, Washington – a diagnostic radiologist specializing in oncologic imaging. I have 2 children born through IVF and gestational surrogacy, 6 yr old son and 3 yr old daughter. The egg donor in each case is Jewish (2 different egg donors) and the sperm is from a Jewish donor (me or my partner, both Jewish born from Jewish mothers). The gestational surrogate, though, is not Jewish in either case. We lived in Houston, Texas at the time of my son's birth, and moved to Seattle prior to my daughter's birth.

My 6 yr old son had a bris on day 8, performed by Cantor Mark Kushner of Philadelphia, of the Conservative movement, which included milah L'shem giur . We also performed a mikveh ceremony with our rabbi in Houston when our son was about 3 weeks old, at the mikveh located at the United Orthodox Synagogue there, but it was not attended by the orthodox rabbi or 2 other rabbis. At neither time was a conversion approved by an orthodox Beit Din.

My 3 yr old daughter also had a mikveh ceremony and Reform conversion in Seattle where we live, at about 2 months of age, attended by 3 rabbis from our Reform movement synagogue – again, there was no involvement by an orthodox Beit Din, though we were permitted to use the mikveh at the Orthodox synagogue.

Our desire is to ensure that our children would be considered Jewish according to Israeli law, in case they ever desire, or need, to make aliyah. We attempted to obtain an Orthodox conversion shortly after birth for each of our children, but we were unable to do so in each case. For our son, born in 2003, the Orthodox rabbi in Houston refused to convene an orthodox Beit Din because we could not pledge to raise our child in an orthodox home – the orthodox Rabbi said he needed us essentially to pledge to join the Orthodox movement, and he knew we could not do that. As I mentioned above, he did allow our Reform rabbi to use the orthodox mikveh with us. For our daughter, born in 2006, we asked the head of the Orthodox Seattle Hebrew Academy, Rivy Kletenik, who happens to be the wife of Rabbi Moshe Kletenik, who serves on the Seattle Beit Din and also is President of the Rabbinical Council of America, to help us obtain an orhtodox conversion. She indicated through a colleague that such a conversion would no longer be possible, if it ever would have been possible, because of a recent decision by the Rabbinical Council of America, formalized in April 2007, prohibiting such individual conversions.

I read a recent article stating that you assisted families with children born through IVF with egg donors in ensuring the Jewish identity of their children according to Israeli Jewish law, and also that a recent shift in the Israeli policy allows for the automatic Jewish identity of a child born through IVF in which the egg donor is Jewish, without the need for any conversion process.

So would it be possible for us to provide you with whatever you might need to furnish us with some form of written proof of our children's Jewish identity from birth based upon the Jewish identity of our egg donor? You should be aware that our egg donors made their donation anonymously, though we were given assurance that they were Jewish women. In one case (that of the egg donor of our son), we may be able to provide more direct proof of the Jewish identity of the egg donor, because we now have an ongoing personal relationship with her in spite of the initially "anonymous" nature of the egg donation. In the case of our daughter's egg donor, we likely would be able to furnish only a copy of the egg donation contract and the profile we were given at that time identifying her as a Jewish woman.

Thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy email and for any help you might provide.

Best regards,
Marc Jacobson, M.D.