by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

April 14, 2009

There is simply no consistency in the Jewish community’s approach to the challenge of welcoming Jews with special needs, observed Rabbi Daniel Grossman.

“It varies from congregation to congregation and from moment to moment,” said Grossman, religious leader of Adath Israel Congregation in Lawrenceville.

For example, the rabbi said, for years he has been urging his colleagues to jointly underwrite the cost of hiring a regional specialist who would go from synagogue to synagogue to teach students with special needs.

“I have been in this community for 20 years, and it still hasn’t gone through,” he said. “There’s a big issue of ownership that gets in the way. They just don’t get it. They don’t get the notion that the Jewish community ought to be accessible.”

Creating that awareness was the goal of a mid-March panel discussion, Raising a Child with Special Needs to Jewish Adulthood, presented by the Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Mercer County. In addition to Grossman, panelists included two special-needs experts, a college student who has benefited from special-needs services offered by the Jewish community, and the student’s mother.

About 25 people attended the program at Congregation Beth Chaim in Princeton Junction — the first public program to be sponsored by the parents behind Hand in Hand: Serving Families with Special Needs, an initiative of JFCS’ special-needs task force.

“It was their brainchild, and they identified what they believe to be a need in the community — how to bring a Jewish child with special needs to Jewish adulthood. It was really their vision,” said Debra Levenstein, director of prevention and support services at JFCS.

Emily Josephson of West Windsor, a founding member of the task force, said that the program was a response to expressed needs in the community.

“We want to bring more special-needs programming to the community. There’s a real need for it,” Josephson said. “With one in 150 kids being diagnosed with autism in America today, the statistics speak for themselves.

“We feel that our kids could really use more help in a religious school setting,” she added. “We’d like to educate the teachers and the clergy and to let them know what the needs of these kids are.”

Panel moderator Linda Meisel, JFCS executive director, noted in an interview that the Princeton region, with its cluster of nationally recognized institutes for children with autism, attracts many families with special-needs children to the area.

One of her agency’s strategic planning goals, she said, is to increase its services to such families.

“I think families may choose to move here because they want the best for their children,” Meisel said, “and we as a Jewish community need to be responsive to that.”

‘Two-way inclusiveness’

Another task force member, Sherry Epstein of Hopewell Township, said she especially appreciated the presence on the panel of Doug Schneider, a young adult with special needs. A freshman at Bucks County Community College, Schneider is a graduate of Gesher LeKesher, JFCS’ teen-mentoring program.

“As the parent of a college student, it’s nice to see that Doug is willing to come out and speak to other youths and say: If I can do it, you can do it, too. I think this is a win/win for the community,” Epstein said.

As Doug’s mother, Debbie Schneider of New Hope, Pa., participated in the panel discussion with her son, she spoke about the welcoming atmosphere extended to her family by Rabbi Sandy Roth and the community at Kehilat Hanahar, the Little Shul by the River in New Hope.

“Rabbi Roth told us that Kehilat Hanahar is more about belonging than believing,” she said. “By and large, it’s been a good experience. We found people to be very helpful and very compassionate.”

At first, said Doug, he didn’t get a lot out of being in the religious school there, but then his teacher helped him to study.

“She tutored me at home, and that was a real help,” he said. “My bar mitzva — I have to say that working all those months and preparing was pretty big for me and my parents.”

Another turning point came when Roth recommended him for Gesher LeKesher, Schneider added.

“I found out I wasn’t the only kid there who had special needs,” Doug said. “I think Gesher LeKesher made me into the leader I am today, and made me a role model for teens living with special needs.

“I think you should keep searching and helping,” he told the audience, “because there are others out there, and it’s our job to help them.”

Another panelist, Sharon Frant Brooks, coordinator of Resource Center Services at Adath Israel, spoke about how the center served the synagogue’s goal to include students with special needs.

“The big point to stress is that inclusiveness goes both ways,” said Brooks. “There is no stigma to anyone going into the resource center. I think our model is great, because we offer services to the whole school.”

Brooks described one participant in the resource center, a little boy from another community who is significantly disabled with familial dysautonomia, a disease that leaves him dependent upon a feeding tube.

One day, when the boy was absent from Sunday school, Brooks said, she went to his class to ask the other children whether they had any questions about his situation.

“The only response I got was, ‘We love him; he’s such a nice kid,’” she recalled. “I kept waiting for difficult questions that didn’t come.

“It was an epiphany for me, because I realized we had created a culture that was nonjudgmental based on disabilities,” she said. “We had created a culture in which everyone was accepted and acceptable.”

Panelist Barbara Abrams, an occupational therapist and director of special-needs programs at the Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Southern New Jersey, described her agency’s SAIL program — Support to Achieve Independent Living. The program offers social and vocational programming and life-skills training in a Jewish setting to young adults with special needs.

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com

--TOP--