Kickoff to Jewish Disability Awareness Month
Rabbi Lynne Landsberg is the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism's Senior Advisor on Disability Issues. She is a former Associate Director of the RAC and a former regional director of the URJ's Mid-Atlantic Council.
This month, February 2009, is the first annual Jewish Disability Awareness Month, recognized by all streams of Judaism (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist) and most, if not all, national Jewish agencies. Local synagogues, organizational chapters and federations are observing Jewish Disability Awareness Month with special programming to educate their members about people with all kinds of disabilities -- physical, intellectual, psychological and more.
We would never consciously do it, but are we putting a stumbling block before the blind? As Jews, we must understand that serving the community of individuals with disabilities means more than just constructing a ramp to the front door: We shut Jews out by not altering other physical barriers. We shut Jews out by continuing non-inclusive programming and religious education. We shut Jews out< by maintaining attitudes of discomfort and disdain.
If you or your congregation are on the lookout for programming ideas for Jewish Disability Awareness Month, you can find ideas at any of these Web sites:
- URJ's Department of Jewish Family Concerns (and while you're there, how about joining the discussion about disability issues, too!)
- Jewish Special Education International Consortium
- Jewish Community Inclusion Program for People with Disabilities Resource Guide
- Empowering Jews with Disabilities
- Interfaith Disability Organization
- United Jewish Communities has also created an extensive resource guide.
- And please send any information about events you plan to hold or have already held to me at llandsberg@rac.org!
While we're at it, here are a few more options:
- Check out the Web site for ""Praying with Lior"," about a Jewish boy with disabilities, to see if it is playing locally and/or how to arrange for it to be shown at your synagogue. A home DVD version is not due out until late March, but a newly published "Praying with Lior" Jewish study guide is available.
- People with disabilities are treated as animals in many countries, as exemplified by extensive research done by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI), which has produced three disturbing videos on the issue. As such, the URJ is advocating for the signing and ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the US has not signed or ratified. For more information, see www.un.org/disabilities and RatifyNow.org or email the RAC's Disability Legislative Assistant, Jason Fenster.
Let us use February 2009, Jewish Disability Awareness Month, as our starting point to become truly welcoming, both congregationally and individually. Together let us break down physical, communicative and attitudinal barriers wherever they are. We must come together both as Jews and as Americans to help others to recognize that people with disabilities are people first -- people with unlimited potential who are not to be defined by their disabilities.