This week’s Shabbat Smile is by Rachel Kunstadt, a mental health advocate and self-advocate in NYC. Her presentation at our Empowerment Training for Jewish Women with Disabilities – entitled “Choosing Life!” – included a musical performance of a song she co-wrote, addressing her agoraphobia. This past January, I became a Bat Mitzvah for the second time. Or [click to continue...]
Israel has a lot to celebrate – and we can and should take the time to kvell. A big part of the success is how Israel leads the world on several key innovations when it comes to disability. I know that you’ve likely seen ReWalk, the exoskeleton that enables people who are paralyzed to “walk”. But [click to continue...]
A new Israeli study finds that negative views on aging are often passed down in families of Holocaust survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings, published in the Journals of Gerontology: Series B, show that Holocaust survivors with PTSD view themselves as aging less successfully compared to survivors without PTSD as well as to older [click to continue...]
Moses – Moshe Rabeinu – lived with a disability. The Sages recount that as an infant and prince in Egypt, the future hero of the Passover story had a choice to take either gold or hot coal. The Egyptians were testing the baby; had he taken the gold, he would have been considered a threat to Pharaoh. [click to continue...]
Our Shabbat Smile is early this week, so you can have time to: consider making some easy, last minute, inclusive changes if you are hosting a seder; or respectfully engage the host, with suggestions for easy, last minute, inclusive changes. This piece on Seder inclusion was written by Dov Hirth, ALEH’s Coordinator of Marketing, Development and Special [click to continue...]
Ayala’s eyes darted around the screen, choosing words and pictures as her teacher asked her rapid-fire questions. Ayala, 11, has a cognitive disability that prevents her from speaking. But she can communicate thanks to a screen that reads her eye movements and transmits answers to questions. “Do you want to go to the bathroom? Say [click to continue...]
At Beit Issie Shapiro, joy is present every day – this is our protest to a world that views disability through the lens of helplessness and suffering. Beit Issie Shapiro, tucked away in Ra’anana, Israel, is a leading pioneer of innovative therapies and services to improve the lives of people with disabilities, impacting on almost [click to continue...]
Judaism taught me that we are all created in the image of God; the disability rights movement has taught me what this means. This statement from Rabbi Ruti Regan, an Autistic Conservative Rabbi, has become a personal mantra that defines why disability inclusion is critical to us as a community. At the Jewish Federation of Greater [click to continue...]
Cori Ashkenazy was only two-and-a-half-years-old when he and his family made Aliyah, making Israel their new home. But it was only after their arrival to Israel that his parents became aware that their son was “different” than other kids his age: after a battery of tests and evaluations, Cori was diagnosed with autism. Undiscouraged, Cori’s family invested [click to continue...]
I don’t wear glasses, at least physically speaking. My identity as an American Jew with learning disabilities acts like glasses though. It is as if my disability is a lens teaching me the power of perspective. I can apply my Judaism lens to better understand my disability, and my disability helps me understand Judaism. Together [click to continue...]
