The holiday season is right around the corner, meaning we must start preparing ways to make it fun and accessible for all. The best way to make it enjoyable for everyone is to ensure everyone who attends the holiday celebration is included! Here are some helpful tips to implement in your faith community for holiday [click to continue...]
Faith Inclusion and Belonging Newsletter
Many holidays are filled with expectations—rules about how to look and act that everyone seems to just know, everyone except for me. At least, this is how I have often felt as a high-masking and late-diagnosed/discovered Autistic person. Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays, but it has also been one of the [click to continue...]
December religious holidays and celebrations are natural opportunities for houses of worship to embrace practices that welcome and support people with disabilities in all aspects of the community. One of the most common questions we get is, “Our congregation wants to include disabled people, but where do we begin?” My answer comes in the form [click to continue...]
October is celebrated as National Disability Employment and Awareness Month (NDEAM). This month provides employers with the opportunity to reflect on ways to increase accommodations and foster inclusion for their employees. It also serves as a platform for job seekers to receive support in finding inclusive jobs, and for employees to advocate for necessary workplace [click to continue...]
“How can my faith community become better at including people with disabilities?” This question, raised by people with disabilities, clergy, lay leaders, and community members, is why Faith Inclusion and Belonging is one of RespectAbility’s four pillars. Spirituality and faith are incredibly important to many disabled people. The Faith Inclusion and Belonging team recognizes that [click to continue...]
In celebration of our newsletter edition on disability and religious education, my colleagues, Shelly Christensen and Ben Bond, invited me to share a brief reflection on my own personal experience, from being a young Catholic with a reading disability in both public and private school, and through my journey of becoming an advocate for disability [click to continue...]
Have you ever been at a staff meeting to plan an event, class, service, or project, and one voice spoke clearly at just the right moment: “Have we thought about how this will affect [insert name of particular individual or group you are thinking about]?” Perhaps you have been that voice. In seeking to include [click to continue...]
The profile of bar and bat mitzvah recently got a boost thanks to Adam Sandler’s 2023 movie You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. While the movie takes a playful look at how plans for a girl’s bat mitzvah unravel over a popular boy, the institution of bar and bat mitzvah has been [click to continue...]
Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, offers us a beautiful explanation for those who convert to Judaism. Conversion isn’t seen as a choice as much as it is a calling—specifically a calling from Abraham and Sarah who are considered the forebearers of Judaism. The souls of their children are thought to be dispersed throughout the world, some [click to continue...]
The Jewish High Holidays are a time of coming together. Many Jews return to their hometowns for traditional Rosh Hashana meals and to break Yom Kippur fasts with their families. Jews who attend synagogues frequently welcome people whose attendance is more sporadic. The latter group often includes people with disabilities, who find synagogue attendance difficult [click to continue...]