[Groucho]

Hello - I am new to this board. I have been part of my agency's listserve which has been great, but I was getting frustrated being the only Jew! However, living in a small midwestern town, I am used to that! We are adopting a baby from China (hopefully) this summer. In our town, there will probably be more Chinese adoptees than Jewish kids! So I am stressing about how to give her a strong Jewish identity along with a proud cultural heritage.

For others who adopted: how long after your adoption did you wait to do a baby naming? Since we don't have any other kids in our temple, I haven't been to one! Any suggestions would be great!

[spaypets]

Hi! Mazel Tov!
We converted our daughter two months after bringing her home from India. Because the conversion involves completely submerging her under water and we didn't know how well that was going to go over, the only people attending were the rabbi and the bet din (three witnesses). She was officially named at that point.

But we wanted to have a party and three months later, after we had all settled in, we hosted a naming at our house and had it catered by an Indian restaurant to acknowlege her history. It was five months after she came home -- we're not big party throwers and we just couldn't seem to get it together before that.

I highly recommend two books: "The New Jewish Baby Book" by Anita Diamant and "Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter" by Debra Nussbaum Cohen. Both have chapters about adoption and both have sample ceremonies.

The wonderful thing about namings, since they are a new tradition is that there is a lot of latitude. Because my husband isn't Jewish, we had to sort of work around that in the liturgy. I think we had a moving ceremony where we honored all her names, her Indian, English and Hebrew names.

[rsw9697]

Hi Groucho,
I am also new to this forum. Our son is now 7 years old. We brought him home from Guatemala when he was 5.5 months old. He was circumsized under general anesthesia at 1 year. Our Rabbi scrubbed in and did the "first cut". One week later we took him to Mikvah. I could not go in with him because I had just given birth to our other miracle (I had been diagnosed as infertile) so my brother, who is his G-d father took him in (which was better because my poor baby was not happy being dunked three times). My husband could not take him in because he isn't Jewish either.

Since our bio son's bris was the night before our older son's surgical bris (timing is everything) we did not have a family celebration for a few weeks.

[Yocheved]

We have adopted 3 children. 2 older and 1 newborn. We did their naming right after their conversions were complete. Our children are black and we have had no problem giving them a strong Jewish background as well as keeping them strong in their own self immage. If you are strong in your faith and in your love for your child I am sure she will do fine.
Mazel tov on your new family addition