Neighborhood Church Presents Author Event with Rabbi Susan Silverman

Neighborhood Church’s Author Event presents Rabbi Susan Silverman, author of Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World on Thursday, April 7th, 7:00 p.m. at the Ross Chapel.

Today, there are an estimated 153 million children in the world without parents. Only 250,000 are adopted worldwide each year. Susan Silverman has made it her mission to change these odds.

At the time a mother of two girls, Silverman and her husband decided to add to their family by adopting a little boy from Ethiopia. Along with her sister Jody, Silverman flew twelve hours on an Ethiopia Air flight, listening to Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” When they arrived at the orphanage in the sprawling city of Addis Ababa, they walked through a wide, metal gate and were greeted by children of all ages. That was it: Silverman was ready to live the story she would tell and re-tell her son Adar.

In Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World, Silverman chronicles this journey and tackles the many daunting facets of adoption, including transracial adoption, with wit, grace, and the occasional pitch-perfect Silverman swear word. She also sheds light on the “adoption cliff”-the steep drop-off in international adoptions by U.S.-based parents in the past decade.

Susan Silverman is a Reform rabbi, author, and activist. She is the co-author, along with her husband Yosef Abramowitz, of Jewish Family and Life: Traditions, Holidays, and Values for Today’s Parents and Children. She has written for and appeared in The Forward, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, The Jerusalem Post, The New York Post, Al Jazeera, and CNN, among others. She also partners with her sister, comedian and actress Sarah Silverman, on lectures and panels to address issues they are passionate about.

Neighborhood Church, 301 N. Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 449-3470 or visit neighborhooduu.org.