Shelly Christensen is the Chair of the Disability Task Force and Program Manager of the Jewish Community Inclusion Program for People with Disabilities, a program of the Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis.
Almost nine years ago, when I began my career in the field of Jewish disability advocacy, I called a local synagogue to tell them about my program, the Minneapolis Jewish Community Program for People with Disabilities. I wanted to schedule an appointment with the rabbi to talk about my program and to discuss the kinds of challenges his congregation had. When I explained my purpose, the administrator on the other end chuckled, and said, “Well, that’s wonderful, but you see, we have no people with disabilities.”
Would it surprise you to learn that I am speaking next Shabbat to that congregation for Jewish Disability Awareness Month?
At some point, everyone comes to the realization that there are Jews with disabilities. It takes some longer than others, but the conditions are almost always the same: A congregant has disclosed a disability, and the congregation isn’t sure how to deal with it.
But the truth is that we don’t have to have all the answers, and we don’t have to “fix” a situation. Somehow, we have acquired the notion that it’s rude or impolite to ask
the person what we could do to provide access – as if asking the
person with a disability how to do that would offend them. There is the small matter of asking someone what they need; most likely, they will tell you.
Until that happens, many of us remain so uncertain about what to do
that, to the person asking for accommodations, it can often seem as
though the synagogue just isn’t going to do it. The most important idea
here is collaboration, a brain trust composed of people from the
organization and the person who has a disability, or, if that person is
a child, his or her parent(s). Building a trusting relationship and
working together to create appropriate accommodations and modifications
are two very important reasons to collaborate.
We have applied the principals of collaboration and
partnership to Jewish Disability Awareness Month in its second year. All four major Jewish movements – Union for Reform Judaism, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Orthodox Union through Yachad: The National Jewish Council for Disabilities and the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation – have committed to support raising awareness during the month of February and beyond. The result is a
well-rounded effort to promote inclusion of people with disabilities
using the many resources that are available on the websites and through
the organizational professional staff and lay leaders.
The Jewish community would be remiss if we did not collaborate and partner
through information and resource sharing, and even through joint
programming on a number of local levels. Our individual efforts toward Jewish
Disability Awareness Month would be considerably diminished if the
movements did not simultaneously support this month-long event. We are
much more effective when we are all speaking together and generating
programming and shared resources. We are able to combine the strengths
of each organization, the materials they publish and the programs they
support to provide better access to Judaism for people with
disabilities and their families, and to the synagogues, camps and
organizations that serve them.
For more information, visit:
- The URJ’s site on disability awareness
- The RACs Jewish Disability Awareness Month page
- The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s accessibility page
- Yachad: The National Jewish Council for Disabilities (including a list of awareness events)
- The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation’s disability resource page
For more information on Jewish Disability Awareness Month contact me at [email protected] or RAC Legislative Assistant Samuel Lehman at [email protected]. We’d love to hear how you’re honoring Jewish Disability Awareness Month!