So far Global Aliyah has helped hundreds of Jewish people who didn’t have necessary documents to prove their Jewishness or had no money and needed assistance to prove their family relations by a DNA test. Now we have decided to help thousands who were told that they cannot make Aliyah because they were adopted by non-Jewish parents.

The real question is why would the Ministry of Interior claim that adoption of a Jew by non-Jews makes the adoptee less Jewish. This means that the Jewish children saved by Christian parents during the Holocaust – Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman, for example, who was raised as a Catholic by his rescuers – could face serious problems if they wanted to make Aliyah under the Law of Return. According to the Jewish law – the determining factor of Jewish identity for thousands of years – a person who is Jewish cannot become non-Jewish.

Attorney general Meni Mazuz told the Supreme Court in 2009 that adoption of a child by non-Jewish parents should not invalidate his right to make Aliyah to Israel, by virtue of his blood ties with Jewish people. Mazuz said that he preferred the legal interpretation by which adoption does not constitute religious conversion, and therefore the adoption process does not work to change the adopted child’s religion or biological affinity. In spite of that fact, the Ministry of Interior has denied the right of the adopted Jewish children or grandchildren to make Aliyah to this day. Our lawyers took this issue back to the Supreme Court.

Global Aliyah Helps Adopted Jewish Children

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