A bill to prevent the conversion of minors who are under state supervision will be considered soon by the New York State Assembly. Assemblyman Leonard Silverman, who represents the Flatbush and Boro Park sections of Brooklyn, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he introduced the bill after learning that two retarded young Jews in state-supported foster homes have been converted to Catholicism.
Silverman’s bill would forbid the religious conversion of any minor in a psychiatric center or facility, development center, group home, family care home, foster care home, for retarded children being supported or maintained under the supervision of the State Department of Mental Hygiene. A similar bill is expected to be introduced in the State Senate.
Silverman, urging Jewish organizations to support the legislation, said the problem came to his attention when he learned that children who had been sent to foster homes from the Willowbrook Developmental Center on State Island had been converted by their foster parents.
HOW THE PROBLEM AROSE
Rabbi Philip Goldberg, the Jewish chaplain at the center for retarded children, told the JTA today the problem arose when the state decided a few years ago that children would be better off in foster homes than in institutions. However, he said Jewish families have not offered to take in the children, even though funds are provided, so they go to Christian homes. At the time the program began, Goldberg said, 1400 of Willowbrook’s children were Jewish; now there are 700 Jewish children there.
Goldberg said that some of the foster parents want the foster children to have the same religion as they and their other children have and so have converted them. This, he noted, has happened in three cases. He said that the Catholic chaplain at Willowbrook also complained that two Catholic children sent to foster homes were converted to the Pentecostal faith.
Asked whether these children would have the mental capacity to understand the conversion process, Goldberg stressed that they do. In addition, he emphasized that as Jews “they are as dear to us as normal children.” He said according to Jewish law they are accepted fully as Jews.
FOSTER HOME CHILDREN AIDED
As Jews, the children may be better off in institutions than in the foster homes, Goldberg noted. He said he provides the children with Jewish education and with Sabbath services as well as with special programs for the Jewish holidays. Funds come from various Jewish organizations and the rabbi himself.
He said as a means of helping the Jewish children in foster homes one temple on Staten Island has offered to include them in their Shabbat services and the Board of Jewish Education plans to operate Jewish education classes for them at various locations.
Meanwhile, Rabbi Harold Gordon, executive vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis, has reported that a woman in a state-operated mental health home in Rockland County was converted to Catholicism. He said Silverman’s bill was a step forward in stopping this “stealing of souls.” Silverman is expected to amend the bill to include all persons considered by the state to be incompetent to deal with their own affairs.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
