Fresh Updates from RAC

This article was originally published in The New York Jewish Week on April 23, 2013.

As concerned as we are about economic justice, the American Jewish community has failed to understand, on a gut level, a glaring reality: adults with disabilities in the U.S. disproportionately experience poverty. According the census bureau, about one in five Americans has a disability. That means twenty percent of us.

Eighty percent of adults with disabilitiesare unemployed or under employed not because they cannot work, but because they are denied the opportunity to work at jobs they are qualified to do. Employment discrimination makes people poor!

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The URJ, as a member of the Interfaith Disability Advocacy Coalition (IDAC), is proud to release Grounded in Faith: Resources on Mental Health and Gun Violence. We hope you will use this resource guide to inform your personal, professional and congregational life.

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The Chasidic rabbi Yehudi haKodesh taught, “Good intentions alone not followed by action are without value. It is the actions which make the intentions so profound.”

Acceptance is an action: In its statement officially recognizing the name change to April as Autistic Acceptance Month (vs. Autistic Awareness Month), the Autistic Self Advocacy Network writes, “autism acceptance is an active process that requires both a shift in thinking and in action.” Too often, we satisfy ourselves during these themed months with reading a single blog and certifying ourselves “aware.” Yet to be worthwhile, this raised consciousness must be followed by an action. In the case of the month of April, this action is actively accepting people with autism into our communities.

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This was originally published in the New York Jewish Week’s blog, “The New Normal,” on March 4th.

In Berachot (34b), the Talmud teaches that a synagogue must be built with windows in the sanctuary. I believe this is so we can see who is outside and unable to join us. As Jews, we have to maintain “mental windows” everywhere so that we understand that those whom we refer to as “shut-ins” are not shut-in. They are cruelly shut out of the life many of us take for granted.

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We made it! This weekend was our last L’Taken of the year. It’s a bittersweet moment: we’re happy to have a few more free weekends and sad that one of the most meaningful and fun parts of the program year is drawing to a close. And in case you missed it, here’s a story in the New York Jewish Week about L’Taken participant Jacob Weiner, written by his mother, Susan. It’s a truly moving piece that makes all of us even more proud of the way L’Taken touches and transforms the participants.

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This was first posted in The Jewish Week on February 26, 2013.

“My name is Jacob Wiener. I am from Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, N.Y. I am almost 15 years old. I have PDD-NOS and bipolar syndrome. The American Disabilities Act allows me to go to school…”

This is the beginning of my son Jacob’s speech when he joined with a group of other Reform Jewish teens to lobby Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s staff on the importance of supporting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He was one of 2,000 high school-aged people attending the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center’s annual L’Taken Seminar in Washington, D.C.

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If you’ve kept up your habit of reading RACblog religiously (you’re supposed to check for updates three times a day, right?), then you must know that February has been Jewish Disability Awareness Month. While most of our JDAM coverage has focused on the struggle for inclusion in the United States, as the month draws to a close I’d like to highlight some of the issues confronting persons with disabilities worldwide.

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On Purim we read about Esther
And how Haman’s plot didn’t best her
But this year there’s more
Evil plotting in store
As we worry about the sequester.

–Rabbi Joe Black

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