By Rabbi Richard Address
"Remember," said Neil, looking up from his
wheelchair. "It is not them and us. It is all of us, together." Neil
was a part of a small lunch gathering of a congregation's Committee on
Access, whose job was to raise awareness and create a welcoming and
caring environment for members with disabilities. I attended the lunch
to provide help on these issues through programs developed by the
Union's Department of Jewish Family Concerns.
Many of our congregations have done a wonderful job
in re-designing buildings and bimahs to be accessible for people with
physical challenges. Increasingly, the awareness is growing for the
need to develop programs that support all aspects of disabilities. In
many of our religious schools, the growing number of students with
disabilities has led to hiring specialists who create educational
programs tailored to students' specific needs. The Union's Camp Kutz
hosts an annual summer program for children with autism. While there is
a sense that there is much being done within our congregations, we have
no coordinated approach.
As Neil reminded me, we are all part of a people;
there are no "them" and "us." Many of "us" will eventually encounter a
disability, given the extended life span of contemporary Americans.
This in itself is a sobering reality check. The time has come for us to
take a hard look at this issue within our congregations. Just as in
this week's Torah portion Lech L'cha, Abraham is called to "go forth"
to an unknown land, so we as a Movement need to create resources that
support congregations and congregants who deal with a variety of
disabilities.
To begin to address that problem, the Department of
Jewish Family Concerns has created a Task Force on Disabilities to
develop what will become a Movement-wide program. In a
soon-to-be-published piece in the Union's on line newsletter "Inside
Leadership ," Shelley Christensen, Task Force co-chair, and
Lisa Freidman, special needs coordinator for Temple Beth El in
Hillsborough, N.J., note that twenty percent of the American population
has some sort of disability. They describe the challenge for us to
"adapt our culture to welcome all Jews with disabilities and their
families."
Part of this approach is to raise awareness of the
issue and to create a "spiritual ecology" within our communities. This
reinforces the mandate from the texts to not put barriers in front of
individuals that would make access difficult for them (Leviticus
19:14). Some who might find it hard to embrace the disability issue
may, in fact, do so not out of cruelty but out of fear. This point was
made by Emily, a young woman who discussed her community and their
approach to the issue. People, she writes, are not cruel but are just
afraid of someone whom they may perceive as being different. Similar to
helping those individuals with mental health concerns, our
congregations must assume a primary role to raise awareness and reduce
any stigma attached to physical disabilities.
This call for awareness and inclusion is part of
what makes a congregation a truly caring community. Many of our
congregations do wonderful work in training special needs children for
bar and bat mitzvah. Still, how we interact with and welcome people
with disabilities is open for us, insuring that no one is denied access
to his or her Judaism. This has become something of a concern in the
development of our program on Sacred Aging. As Neil has reminded us,
many who are now fully functional will be dealing with a variety of
disabilities in the future.
To further develop awareness of the Union's new
project, we ask for your help. Many of you reading this have
congregational programs to aid those with disabilities; other
congregations can benefit from hearing of your success. Our department
is preparing a "best practices" guide that will feature programs to
assist individuals and families dealing with issues related to
disabilities. We intend to publish this guide for distribution at the
Union Biennial in San Diego next year and invite you to send the
details of your program to us. We of course will give your congregation
full credit for creating your program.
Mail your program to the Union for Reform Judaism,
Department of Jewish Family Concerns, 633 Third Ave., New York, NY
10017. If you have questions, please call us at 212.650.4296. Join us
as we go forward together into this new land.
Rabbi Richard Address, D. Min., is the director of
the Union's Department of Jewish Family Concerns. http://www.ufj.org/jfc/
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