the new demographic

Thanks to Chuck at TanoBlog for this piece. This is very true here in Boulder.

NPR Weekend Edition Saturday
September 23, 2006
A Heritage Revealed

SCOTT SIMON, host: Our daughter's Chinese class is cancelled tomorrow because of the Jewish holiday. Only in America. That may sound odd, but Jewish families with Chinese children, like ours, are one of the new demographic groups in the United States. An old childhood friend who's a rabbi says that in just a few years there'll be a tide of little girls who were born in Nanjing and Guangzhou getting bat mitzvahed in New York and Chicago. They already sit around the Seder table saying, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

When you read the Seder story of Moses, the baby cast by his crying mother into the bulrushes, and look at those faces of those children brought home from China or Kazakhstan or Ethiopia, the story has never seemed so beautiful or real.

Ellen here. I am sometimes asked why we chose to adopt, when we have biological kids already. There are many reasons, the main ones being that we wanted another child, we wanted a girl, and we didn't want to go through another difficult pregnancy. But why China? Besides the relative 'ease' and reliability of adoption from China, there was also the truth in Scott's piece. There are many Chinese girls in our community, in our temple, at our preschool and in our neighborhood. This 'new demographic' brings me hope that our daughter won't be 'the only one' in her position. And there is safety in numbers, for sure. Thanks for that, Chuck!