I’m really excited to announce that NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality has just published a new blog post written by yours truly! The post is based on my own research, so if you’ve been curious about what kind of work I do when I’m not writing here, check it out! Here’s a short preview:
In 1965, a Jewish couple living in Venezuela contacted the Jewish Child Welfare Bureau (JCWB) of Montreal and asked about the possibility of adopting a Jewish child. The JCWB declined their request and told them that due to the small number of Jewish children eligible for adoption, they only placed children with permanent residents of the city. They tried to entice the Venezuelan couple to adopt children that were harder to place: mixed-race children born to white Jewish mothers and Black Canadian fathers.
Montreal’s Jewish Child Welfare Bureau reflected the widely held view in Jewish communities that reproductive intra-faith sex was vital to shoring up racial-religious boundaries and to reproducing Jewish religion and ethnicity. Indeed, Jewish institutions such as the JCWB regulated reproduction and reproductive outcomes, including adoption, in order to construct and preserve Jewish identity in interracial and interethnic contexts.
Check out the rest here!
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