How my Biological Mother Found me

Let me set the scene a little bit.

I want everyone to understand the degree to which I identified as a Jewish woman at this particular time.

I was sitting at my In-law’s dining room table having just helped my mother-in-law serve chicken bottoms and potato kugel to my Father-in-law and my Husband. I had just turned 22, the year was 2007, and I had been married to my ex-husband for just a year. We had gotten married and lived in Jerusalem for 7 months and then returned to America so he could find a job to support us. We ate dinner at my In-laws who lived across the street from us, almost every single night at that time, much to my chagrin.

My In-laws were the most religious people I had ever met. My father-in-law was a good man and took his religion seriously while not being over the top. He had set boundaries and wasn’t afraid to say it like it was, but it was all right with me because he managed his life in a very respectful way. For instance, when we first came to Chicago I was not holding to their standard of their laws of modesty. So, he did not look me in the eyes when he spoke to me. But he did speak to me and always asked how I was and for that I was grateful. My mother-in-law on the other hand was never someone I could respect, although I never wished her ill will as she had given birth to my husband so I was thankful for that and respected her and tried to have a good relationship with her but I was never good enough, from the beginning. I was not religious enough to marry her son. I was not from the right sect of Judaism, and *gasp* I was a convert. I was not good enough, and she told her friends I wasn’t. It was a losing game where even as I became more religious, a daughter-in-law she could be proud of I ended up becoming a woman she became OK with and I pushed away my husband. It was a disaster from the moment we met but that’s for another time.

So, I’m sitting at this table and we’re nearing the end of the meal and I got on my blackberry as I heard it ding, warning me I was getting an email. I opened it and looked at my phone in shock. What was I seeing? It wasn’t even registering. The email read, “Hi Rivki (The Hebrew nickname I went by then), I am so glad I found you! I am your biological mother.”

She went on to explain how she had located me. My adoption had been closed and we had no idea of her name or her, of ours. When I was very young, she had bribed someone at the adoption agency to get a Family name. She had known what my father’s occupation was as it was in the file.

She was given 3 files to choose from with unidentifying details about the families. Of those 3 families she chose my parents because they were Jewish, she thought I would grow up with a moral background, and my father was a doctor so she was satisfied knowing that I would always be taken care of.  

With the knowledge of the occupation and a Family name she looked in the Indiana directory and found two Dr. Elliott Blumenthals. One in Indianapolis and the other in South Bend. She had even made an appointment at my father’s office to see if he had any pictures of me hung up there. She canceled the appointment and never showed up, she was too afraid of getting caught, I was still young and if anyone had found out she could have been arrested for stalking. So, she continued on with life hoping I was safe and happy.

Until one day she was googling Blumenthal and up pops the Wedding announcement of Yossi Abramovitz and Rivki Blumenthal from South Bend, Indiana listed on Onlysimchas (A website for Orthodox Jews to announce engagements and weddings, and births.) She had done it, she had found me and had seen a picture of me and she needed to get in touch. So, she made an account and sent me a message through the site.

It’s interesting to think back now about how I had deliberated on posting my wedding on the site. I had decided not to but a friend of mine took pictures of us at our Sheva Brachos (The seven days of celebration after the wedding.) and posted them herself. I had originally posted our engagement listing but without pictures. My biological mother later told me that if there had not been photos of me, she would not have messaged.

We emailed back and forth for a while with information about my adoption and about our families and then I asked about my biological father. “He was an Arab prince,” she told me. I had a hard time believing that. What was an Arab prince doing in Indiana in the 80s and how the heck would they have met? She told me his father had come to America and that was it. No other real information. She hadn’t known him long, you see. It was a short affair.

Putting the royal issue to the side, I looked inside. I am Arab? How could that be? I was the whitest Jew you had ever seen. I look like a quintessential German Jew, and I liked it that way. My parents always taught us to be respectful to all people no matter their race or religion but to KNOW I share the DNA of people who historically would have hated me just because I was Jewish was not ok with me.

My mother-in-law told me not to tell anyone. This was just one more embarrassment for the family name. I told people about it in passing conversations but had not dealt with it internally at all. I was married and religious and I had finally found my place and had fulfilled my lifelong dream of getting married and having a husband and my abandonment issues had subsided. I did not need this to rear its head and tear up what I had. So I told her thank you for the health information, thank you for making the right decision about which family to choose and I chose not to meet with her. She emailed me a few times throughout the years to check in but I never said anything committal because I didn’t know how to explain my life to her. I was an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman and she was a woman living in a trailer park who worked at a Walmart in Rural Indiana. She had grown up in a bad situation and her situation of being surrounded by people who abused drugs and alcohol had never changed. I thanked Gd I did not have to grow up in that atmosphere and went back to thinking about ways to make my Momma’s Boy Husband happy.

It wasn’t until 2012 that I thought back about what she had said, and I met her.