As we prepare for Shabbat, I’m so pleased to share with you that the Project Moses website is live, at www.respectability.org/projectmoses, and that we are accepting applications. With that excitement, I’m asking for your help. For those who have not yet read about it in a previous Shabbat Smile, Project Moses is RespectAbility’s new leadership program to [click to continue...]
Tomorrow in Iowa, eight campaigns are set to participate in a history-making Accessibility, Inclusion, and Outreach Conference focused specifically on issues that affect people with disabilities. This is important, as while recent polling suggests that voters with disabilities themselves are more enthusiastic about participating in the 2020 elections than the nation at large, none of the [click to continue...]
“It’s awesome to see our participants smiling when we’re at a volunteer site,” said Bri Nichols, a Program Coordinator for JF&CS CHAI Works. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a frown!” CHAI Works is a community-based day program for adults with disabilities offered through Jewish Family & Children’s Service. With locations in Waltham and Canton, [click to continue...]
At the beginning of the holiday season, Rabbi Daniel Dorsch delivered a sermon from his brand new, inclusive sanctuary at Congregation Etz Chaim. Read his entire sermon, republished with his permission, below. I met Anna (not her real name) for the first time when I was a chaplain at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. I [click to continue...]
Many of us spend time leading up to the high holidays helping congregations and organizations prepare to fully respectfully welcome Jews with disabilities into our communities and rituals. Most of the training is good, and the organizations are almost always earnest. Hence, we can get really optimistic and expect that everything needed will be implemented. [click to continue...]
Perhaps the most universal theme in the High Holy Days is what our tradition calls a cheshbon ha-nefesh — the accounting of the soul — that Jews do leading up them. Many may not use Jewish law as their barometer, but most prepare for a new year with an examination of our past year and [click to continue...]
Moses was the original Jewish political activist and lobbyist. He organized his thoughts and priorities, then went to the top powers to demand action. What’s more, God made it clear the choice of Moses, complete with his speech disability, was intentional, leading many to believe that Moses’ experience as a person with a physical disability [click to continue...]
It’s been 18 years since 9/11. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was shocked, saddened, scared. There were the heroes who went up the towers to save lives and who died. There were thousands of other heroes helping in thousands of other ways and places. The way that America pulled together, and the way [click to continue...]
On August 18, 2019, Douglas Jarett, a 51-year-old mensch with Down Syndrome, died unexpectedly. Obviously, it is a tragedy when someone so young dies, especially when it is someone as beloved as Doug. However, I’m making Doug our “shabbat smile” because the impact of his life was enormous and he always made me and others [click to continue...]
For this week’s Shabbat Smile, RespectAbility’s president Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi offers tips on things parents of children with disabilities and their teachers need to do in order to have a great experience in Hebrew and religious school. This piece was previously published in the Times of Israel. As someone with a disability myself, and who also [click to continue...]
