“Thank You, Hashem,” I whispered, “for choosing me from so many thousands here”: An adopted child makes the journey of discovery
As told to Shmuel Friedman
He was born in a poor Brazilian town and left in the local orphanage. At the same time, Reb Shaul Tzemach and his wife, a frum couple from Ashdod, Israel, decided to adopt a child and bring him up in their Torah home. And so, as Hashgachah brought their lives together from two ends of the world, little Andiano Fernandez soon became Yossi Tzemach. Three decades later, Yossi decided to complete the puzzle. What would he find on his search in a rundown Brazilian alleyway?
When my wife and I realized that b’derech hateva we wouldn’t be able to have biological children, we considered all the options and finally decided, on the advice of our rav, to travel to Brazil. This was 1987, and when people hear that, they immediately think of the horror stories of baby trafficking that plagued the country in the 1980s and ’90s, but our agreement was supervised and legal on all fronts — and saved us several long years had we decided to wait in line and try for adoption in Israel.
It’s important to note that, in relation to adoption procedures, Brazil is divided between north and south. In the south, at least back then — although they say it’s been cleaned up — it was common for babies to be abducted and sold to the highest bidder, or even for mothers to sell their infants on the streets. The agency we worked with was in the north, and the process was organized, legal, and humane. That’s not to say that we weren’t afraid to travel to Brazil. We didn’t speak a word of Portuguese, and had no idea how we would manage or how we would deal with all the government offices. But our rav in Ashdod has a brother in Brazil, and he agreed to take us through the process. He introduced us to a Jewish doctor there who helped us work with the authorities and even took us to the orphanage.
It was pretty common then for an indigent mother to leave her newborn in an orphanage. Brazil has many poor neighborhoods, and some of these families prefer to leave their children in the orphanages, hoping it will give them a chance for a better future.
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