Mo's Saint Patrick's Day blog post about being Irish and Korean just happened to coincide with a discussion on one of the groups I visit about an article on a adoptee born in China and her bat mitzvah ... one Twice the Rice was apparently not impressed with ... putting me to pondering the Waring Blender of international adoption, and the concoction it contains.

Some concern themselves with the idea that whirring very different ingredients together will dilute each until there's nothing left but an unpalatable pap. Others fear that combining amounts to replacing, indicating that one will be lost completely while another gets gets to be the cherry on top that everyone sees.

For a look at how this may play out in years ahead, I took a peek back in history and found just how differences managed to hold on, even in the middle of the blender, and how some of the combinations we may find odd or arbitrary are, in fact, old and logical.

I didn't find anything historical on Irish Koreans, but there is enough information on Chinese Jews to sink a junk in the Jordan.

According to historical records, a Jewish community, with a synagogue built in 1163, existed at Kaifeng from at least the Southern Song Dynasty until the late nineteenth century. Some accounts suggest they in fact had lived there since the mid Han Dynasty.

It took 700 years for the Kaifeng Jewish community to blend into the majority of Chinese through gradual assimilation ... an indication of cultural tenacity that bodes well for the long term for those worried about what international adoption may do, and proves that the idea of a Chinese Jew is neither new nor radical.

Guatemalan Jews also have a root in history, as do all from Latin America, so a child from that part of the world could have Jewish roots.

The history of the Jewish people in the Americas dates back to Christopher Columbus and his first cross-Atlantic voyage on August 3, 1492, when he left Spain and eventually "discovered" the New World. His date of departure was also the day on which the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon decreed that the Jews of Spain either had to convert to Catholicism, depart from the country, or face death for defiance of the Monarch.

There were at least seven Jews (either crypto-Jews, Marranos, or sincere Jewish converts to Catholicism) who sailed with Columbus in his first voyage including Rodrigo de Triana, who was the first to sight land (Columbus later assumed credit for this), Maestre Bernal, who served as the expedition's physician, and Luis De Torres, the interpreter, who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, which it was believed would be useful in the Orient - their intended destination.

There are now more than 400,000 Latin American Jews.

Here's a site for Jews in Guatemala, residents and visitors alike.

Continued ...