National Scholar Updates

Ilana is a good natured, caring, religiously observant high-school student who enjoys reading, baking hallah with her mother, and spending time with her peers at school and in her synagogue. When it became clear in pre-kindergarten that Ilana had a learning disability, her parents made the difficult decision to transfer her from the local Jewish Day School to a private school that specializes in teaching children with learning issues. Although this was a difficult decision, they knew it was necessary for Ilana’s academic growth and development. They reasoned that Ilana would have plenty of time to socialize with her Jewish friends on Shabbat and on playdates. They knew they could count on her continued involvement in their large Modern Orthodox synagogue.

Ilana’s mother was shocked and disappointed when one mother at their synagogue stopped inviting Ilana to participate in weekly playdates with her child. Invitations to birthday parties and other social activities began to stop as well. Even a B’nei Akiva dinner, designed for children to socialize with other synagogue members, felt “closed” to children who did not attend Day School. Ilana’s mother feels that no attempt was made to facilitate interactions between the Day School students and those from other schools. She finds it ironic that the same synagogue that graciously and compassionately hosts adults with moderate to severe disabilities at its yearly Yachad Shabbaton is unable to successfully include children, such as her daughter, with milder disabilities. She wants genuine acceptance and inclusion—and not compassion or pity. She wonders why some people act as though Ilana is “contagious” and that others can “catch” a learning disability or other impairment by socializing with children with special needs. She laments, “The social isolation is worse than the academic isolation.”

The Jewish tradition has always been aware of differences among God’s creatures, who are all considered to be created in the “image of God.” The Bible and rabbinic texts detail laws about treating people with special needs. We are taught, “Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind,” (Vayikra 19:14), and there is much discussion in various codes regarding the status of the heresh (deaf person), and the shoteh (possibly a developmentally delayed person). Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Berakhot, 10:12, based on Berakhot 58b) has a detailed discussion on which berakha to recite upon seeing people who are “different.”And the Mishna in Sanhedrin 4:5 teaches, “Although a person stamps many coins from a single die, and they are all alike—the King of Kings has stamped every person with the die of Adam, yet not one of them is like his fellow man.” These sensitively crafted sources suggest that each person is unique and worthy of respect and inclusion in the community—regardless of appearance or level of ability to walk, speak, hear, or learn. Additionally, these sources suggest that the Jewish community has a moral and even halakhic obligation to create programs to meet the needs of all people within our communities—regardless of special need or circumstance. How accepting and accommodating are our synagogues, schools, and community institutions? What can we do to better include and support those with special needs?

[H1] Synagogues

The synagogue is central to the daily life of most observant Jews—as a Bet Tefilla (a house of prayer), a Bet Midrash (a house of study), and perhaps most importantly, as a Bet Kenesset (a place of gathering). The synagogue is potentially the most important religious institution in the lives of families of children with special needs. Sadly, many families like Ilana’s feel that their synagogues lack a genuinely accepting attitude toward their children. Shabbat morning children’s services and afternoon Shabbat groups are often unable to meet the needs of children with special needs. Many parents feel that their children would benefit greatly from weekly Shabbat services and social activities, even if they sometimes need redirection and gentle reminders from patient, experienced group leaders. Children and their parents often receive uncomfortable looks, “shushing,” and requests to leave the sanctuary when a child is “making noise.” While parents recognize that fellow congregants have a right to pray and listen to the rabbi’s sermon in peace, they are often struck by the lack of understanding in their synagogue. This reception in their own synagogue stands in sharp contrast to the genuine acceptance they receive outside of their own synagogues.

There are Modern Orthodox synagogues and rabbis who have taken the lead in meeting the needs of congregants with special needs. In my work teaching children with special needs for bar and bat mitzvah, several rabbis have suggested sensitive, creative options for members with special needs. For example, families may choose to have a non-Shabbat bar mitzvah, where fewer members would be in attendance, the length of service is shorter, there is no haftarah, and there are no Shabbat-related issues when it comes to microphones, adaptive technology, or computers.

In one Boston area synagogue, a bat-mitzvah girl gave a devar Torah and “announced pages” using Power Point slides during a Sunday morning service. One Modern Orthodox rabbi suggested that a particular child with learning disabilities celebrate his bar mitzvah on the Sunday of Hanukkah because the Torah reading, from Parshat Naso, is repetitive and predictable and therefore less difficult for this child to learn. Another rabbi found a halakhically acceptable way for a non-verbal boy to celebrate his bar mitzvah on Shabbat morning. The boy had a very large brain tumor removed when he was two years old, and has unfortunately never been able to speak. He uses a Dynavox Dynamo augmented communication device seven days a week. He pulls down screens by topic and depresses buttons to communicate his needs. His very dedicated parents worked with the rabbi, so that their son could be called to the Torah on Shabbat morning. He essentially activated his father’s voice to recite the Torah blessing, lead Adon Olam, and deliver a devar Torah.

Despite these success stories, there remain unmet needs for people with disabilities in Modern Orthodox synagogues. Parents express frustration that they do not feel comfortable taking their children with special needs to Shabbat groups or children’s services. Orthodox parents who have made the painful decision to educate their children outside of the Jewish Day School system feel that such groups and prayer experiences are precisely what their children need to fully experience synagogue and Jewish communal life.

One Modern Orthodox rabbi, a parent of children with special needs, feels uncomfortable bringing his children to his own synagogue; yet, he and his children have been warmly welcomed and embraced “outside” of his community. He feels the neighborhood Hassidishe shtiebel understands and accepts his son—even if he is disruptive during the sermon or the repetition of the amidah. The Conservative Movement’s Ramah camping movement, through its CampYofi Program at Ramah Darom, has been similarly accepting and inclusive. Yofi offers a week-long camp for children with autism and their families. Similarly, Ilana and her family have been warmly embraced by a smaller, more traditional Orthodox synagogue in their neighborhood; each Shabbat afternoon the rabbi and his wife invite Ilana to their home, where she socializes with and even babysits for their children. Modern Orthodox synagogues should similarly embrace differences and work toward accommodating children with special needs.

[H1] Al Pi Darko—According to His or Her Way: Jewish Education for Children with Special Needs

Most parents in the Orthodox community accept as a given that their children will receive a Jewish Day School education. When it comes to providing an appropriate Jewish education for children with special needs, families often find that choices are limited. There are many reasons for this. First, the term “special needs” encompasses diverse impairments, including learning issues, physical disabilities, mental retardation, autism, psychiatric disorders, and other genetic and acquired conditions. Approaches and philosophies toward education, even within the special needs communities, can vary widely—from those advocating full inclusion to those promoting separate classrooms.

A second reason that choices are limited is that schools lack the staffing and expertise to consider implementing special-needs programs. Teachers and therapists with training in special education, speech and language therapy, psychology, physical therapy, and occupational therapy are required to support students with special needs.

Third, schools typically lack the financial resources for starting and running such specialized programs. The costs of providing a Day School education—even for “typical learners”—are never covered by tuition costs alone and can be prohibitive. Dr. Jed Luchow, Director of Special Education/Project SIR for the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York, notes how complex and expensive providing such services can be. “When public schools need more money for services, they can raise taxes,” remarks Luchow. Yeshivot and Day Schools cannot.

Families specifically seeking a Modern Orthodox approach to educating a child with special needs find that few programs exist. Some turn to Hareidi schools, where there is more general acceptance of all learners who are viewed as created in God’s image. The recent movie, Praying With Lior, portrays the warm acceptance experienced by Lior Liebling, a young man with Down syndrome (and the son of two Reconstructionist rabbis) in a Philadelphia-area Hareidi yeshiva. Modern Orthodox parents of children with special needs have reported similar acceptance by the Hareidi world.

Some families feel that private special-needs schools (and in some cases, even Catholic schools) are better equipped to provide services to children with special needs. In the Northeast, for example, observant families sometimes opt for well-regarded schools such as Churchill and Gateway in Manhattan, Mary McDowell in Brooklyn, Windward in White Plains, New York, Eagle Hill in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the Cardinal Cushing School in Hanover, Massachussetts. This “trade off” means that families need to seek other avenues for providing Jewish education and Jewish socialization environments.

Fortunately, some Jewish community Day School programs do exist for educating children with special needs, and there are some successful initiatives supporting Jewish special education throughout the United States. Although specifically Orthodox-affiliated programs exist, families of children with special needs are more likely to cross denominational lines than they might for their other typically developing children.

Although it is impossible to highlight all such programs, I will mention some programs, mainly in the Northeast, in order to illustrate the various models and approaches currently offered. Many of the descriptions below are provided by the program; ability to live up to their claims are difficult to assess and are beyond the scope of this article.

In 1985, Rabbi Dr. Martin Schloss, currently the director of the Division of Day School Education for the Board of Jewish Education, and Dr. Sara Rubinow Simon founded the Consortium of Special Educators in Central Agencies for Jewish Education. The purpose of this group is to support special education programs in North American Jewish communities as well as to provide resources to Jewish special educators through professional networks. Members meet once a year to share ideas and materials to enhance and expand special education in Jewish educational settings.

Parents for Torah for All Children (PTACH) has supported children with learning differences from elementary school through high school for more than thirty years. PTACH programs exist at such schools as the Yeshiva University School for Girls and Chaim Berlin High School. Strides have also been made to sensitize and train teachers. PTACH’s educational director, Dr. Judah Weller, has created the “Jewish Day Schools Attuned Program,” based on the Schools Attuned Program, a nationally recognized professional development and service program, created by Dr. Mel Levine, Director of the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill. The Schools Attuned program covers eight neurodevelopmental constructs that affect learning—including attention, memory, language, motor skills, and social cognition. Several years ago, The Nash Family Foundation of New York City funded a grant to train 125 Jewish Day School educators in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities in the Schools Attuned program.

Kulanu Torah Academy in Long Island, New York, is a program dedicated for Jewish students with special needs, including students with Asperger syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, dyslexia, and Tourette’s syndrome, as well as developmental disorders, attention disorders, learning disabilities, and physical challenges. Students receive educational services within the yeshiva environment from middle school through high school. In addition, Kulanu’s Gesher Program is a three-year program initiative for 18- to 21-year-old students with special needs, which serves as a “bridge” from school to the world of work.

The Sinai Program in New Jersey offers schools for children with developmental disabilities and learning disabilities. According to their website, Sinai is sometimes referred to as a “school within a school.” Although Sinai is independently operated and funded and each school has its own administration and staff, all of Sinai’s schools are comprised of self-contained classes set within larger, typical community Jewish Day Schools, including the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and Yavneh Academy. This structure increases opportunities for mainstreaming within the host schools.

Yeshiva Education for Special Students (YESS!) is the only full-service, professional, special-education yeshiva elementary school in Queens, New York, serving children in grades K through 8 with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and language-processing disorders. According to their website, “It is the philosophy of YESS! that all Jewish children, regardless of their cognitive or physical challenges, have a place in the mainstream of the Jewish community." YESS! espouses individualized special education for general and Judaic studies. Mainstreaming and integration with the typically developing Yeshiva of Central Queens (YCQ) community are integral to the YESS! program.

Some Modern Orthodox schools have started programs to support students with a range of learning issues. Manhattan Day School in New York City has been offering support services for students in grades 1 through 8 with learning-based language disabilities since 1984. According to Sharon Miller, Director of Special Education, the program provides self-contained classes for between six and eleven students, who learn with one head teacher and one assistant teacher. Students learn basic skills in both secular and Jewish content areas, including reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, science, computers, organizational skills, Hebrew language, Bible, Talmud, and laws and customs. Students with Individual Education Programs (IEPs) often receive in-school services, such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, counseling, and physical therapy. The staff also includes special educators and school psychologists.

SAR Academy in Riverdale, New York, offers a program to support elementary and junior high school students with language-based learning disabilities. According to Rebecca Hirschfield, Director of Educational Support Services, the program was started, in part, to help keep students with learning issues in the Jewish Day School system. The SAR program is an inclusive educational initiative, designed to be able to meet the needs of children whose learning needs differ from their typically achieving peers. Children with special needs are placed in "inclusion" classrooms with typically developing children. The class is staffed by an additional teacher, who is a learning specialist. In the high school, students receive support through the Student Learning Center and may participate in a modified program, consisting of fewer periods per week of Talmud and Tanakh, and/or exemption from a foreign language requirement.

Ramaz School in Manhattan offers a Learning Center to support students. In the Lower School, students in need of remediation work individually or in small groups in the Learning Center. In the Middle School, students receive one-on-one remediation during the time they would otherwise be attending specialty classes such as music, art, or parashat haShavua. Students who have completed a formal external psychoeducational evaluation to document a learning disability are eligible for Learning Center services. Upper School students seeking the services of the Learning Center also must undergo psychoeducational evaluation; students may then be eligible for certain accommodations, including extended time for test-taking and laptops for use during exams. Based on the recommendations of the tester, students may also receive remediation from the Learning Center faculty.

A unique Boston-area program, Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, offers several programs for Jewish students with a wide range of special needs. Gateways provides a Jewish education to children with moderate to severe disabilities who are not able to receive one in a typical classroom setting (for example, children with autism spectrum disorder, hearing and visual impairment, developmental delay, cerebral palsy, and/or genetic disorders). Gateways also works with students in Jewish Day Schools across the denominational spectrum, including the Chabad Day School of Sharon, Maimonides School, JCDS, New England Hebrew Academy, Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston, South Area Solomon Schechter Day School, Striar Hebrew Academy (SHAS), The Rashi School, and Torah Academy. Within each Day School, Gateways staff (comprised of speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and reading and learning specialists) provide extra support and assistance. Gateways works with students to help improve their academic and social skills and generalizing strategies in the classroom. In addition, the therapists assist teachers with curriculum modifications and provide teachers with professional development, including weekly coaching. For students who need more intensive instruction to develop reading and writing skills, Gateways provides an intensive alternative language arts curriculum to the classroom. This class focuses on explicit teaching of skills, including reading comprehension and decoding, written language, and word study (phonics, spelling, and vocabulary). Rabbi Mendel Lewitin is pleased with what Gateways has accomplished in his Striar Hebrew Academy. “Gateways has sensitized us to the fact that children have unique needs—from enrichment to remediation—and even helped remove the stigma associated with asking for special-educational services. Now, parents are comfortable seeking support, and all students are developing a deeper understanding of their peers.”

Sulam, established in 1998, is the only non-profit Jewish educational organization in the Greater Washington area for children who require specialized services for learning needs. By collaborating with Jewish Day Schools, Sulam educates children with diverse needs alongside their peers in a Jewish Day School setting. Sulam also provides adjunct educational services to high-school students at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy.

Another non-Day School alternative is MATAN: The Gift of Jewish Learning For Every Child, whose mission is “to give the gift of Jewish learning to every child, regardless of ability.” MATAN provides support to children, teachers, and families through teacher workshops, school consultation, program development, consultation with families, curriculum development and modification, behavior management, community presentations, and neuropsychological assessments. MATAN works with synagogues and provides after-school Talmud Torah-equivalent programs for children with special needs. MATAN also offers teacher training and provides consultation to families and synagogues.

[H1] Youth Groups and Summer Camps

Parents recognize that their child’s Jewish education is comprised of more than the school experience. Opportunities to participate in the richness of Jewish communal and synagogue life are extremely important to a child’s Jewish and social development.

Yachad/National Jewish Council for Disabilities (NJCD) includes individuals with disabilities (ages 8 through senior adult) in Jewish programming across the United States and Canada. Yachad members participate in Shabbatons at various Orthodox synagogues. Yachad Shabbatons are generally staffed by high-school and college-age Orthodox youth, allowing for socialization between typical and disabled peers.

The Jewish Community Center of Manhattan and other Jewish Community Centers across the country offer programs that focus on providing Jewish cultural programming for children and young adults with varying needs. Initiatives include programs for school-age children such as after-school or Sunday programs, summer camps, sibling workshops, assistive technology, lectures and support programs for caregivers, and a Special Needs school fair. The JCC in Manhattan also offers a program for young adults featuring Sunday outings, lounges, drama therapy, technology training, and career development.

The Friendship Circle, founded in 1994 by the Lubavitch Foundation of Michigan—and now existing in many communities nationwide—offers programs to provide assistance and support to the families of children with special needs as well as to individuals and families struggling with addiction, isolation, and other crises. Teen volunteers are an integral part of their program serving individuals with special needs.

According to The Foundation for Jewish Camp, “No experience is more powerful, thrilling, or transformative than Jewish overnight summer camp.” Various Orthodox summer camp programs offer socialization and Jewish immersion experiences for children with special needs. Camp HASC, a summer program of the Hebrew Academy for Special Children, provides a seven-week overnight camping experience to over 300 children with mental and physical handicaps. HASC is specifically dedicated to children with special needs.

Yachad b’Nesher is a Yachad/NJCD program within Camp Nesher, a camp for typically developing children. Yachad b'Nesher specializes in mainstreaming boys and girls who are developmentally disabled. There are accessible bunks on each campus set up for these campers, their special needs, and their specially trained staff. Yachad campers participate daily in all activities with different bunks.

Yachad also offers Yad B’Yad travel programs, where typically developing high school students and members of Yachad together tour the East Coast, the West Coast, or Israel.

The Tikvah Program was founded nearly forty years ago at Camp Ramah in New England and now runs programs at several Ramah camps throughout the United States and Canada. Although Camp Ramah is the camping arm of the Conservative Movement, the Tikvah Program has historically attracted a significant population of its campers from Orthodox homes. In the Tikvah Program, campers are included in all aspects of the rich Jewish summer camping experience and benefit from the richness of “immersion” in Jewish communal life. Prayers are modified for the needs of the campers and generally involve singing, dancing, and repetition. Following spirited weekday morning prayers, campers begin and end breakfast with the appropriate blessings, return to bunks for nikayon (clean up), and participate in daily activities such as Jewish learning, Hebrew instruction, swimming, sports, arts and crafts, and vocational training. Tikvah campers even take a turn leading the camp in Shabbat evening services, and they perform a Jewish-themed play, partially in Hebrew, for the entire camp.

[H1] A Modern Orthodox Action Plan

Clearly, the Modern Orthodox community can do more to help make people with special needs feel more fully included in synagogue and communal life. A move toward full inclusion will require working collaboratively with others in the Jewish community (often across the “denominational divide”), continued education of rabbis, leaders and community members, and ongoing congregation and communal self-assessment.

[H2] Working Collaboratively with Others in the Jewish Community

The Jewish disabilities world has been very successful in breaking down denominational barriers. I heard a story of two Philadelphia-area Jewish parents of children with autism speaking very comfortably and openly—one was a Lubavitch rabbi, and the other was a female Reconstructionist rabbi. The chances of these two interacting in another context are slim. This heartwarming anecdote illustrates the potential for Jews of various backgrounds to work together. Successful collaboration already takes place in many communities across the United States.

In Westchester, New York, Carol Corbin is the chairperson of the Westchester Special Needs Roundtable. She is also the coordinator of Synagogue Inclusion, which is part of the UJA of New York Caring Commission. In the first year of the Roundtable, nearly forty Westchester area rabbis and parents from across the denominations, as well as directors of special-needs programs, JCCs, and various agencies, came together. They determined that the focus of the initial phase of their work should be on teacher training and congregational sensitivity. As their work has continued, the Roundtable has addressed ways to make congregations sensitive to populations with special needs. They have addressed such topics as building access and the social, emotional, and educational needs of those with special needs.

Shelly Christensen, Program Manager for the Jewish Community Inclusion Program for People with Disabilities (a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis, Minnesota), is a frequent presenter across the country on the topic of inclusion. Christenson, author of “Jewish Community Guide to Inclusion of People with Disabilities,” has worked with synagogues and agencies to help create awareness and action. Synagogues across the denominations are collaborating in an effort to serve those with special needs, and are taking part in “February 2009 is Jewish Disability Awareness Month.”

Following her presentation several years ago, each synagogue appointed a lay leader to a community liaison committee. Each committee meeting takes place at a different synagogue, and committee members tour different synagogues and discuss issues of accessibility. Christensen reports that members of the Orthodox community have been very involved with the committee, and that synagogues and schools have embraced inclusion. Synagogues of all denominations may wish to consider starting inclusion committees, which function much as social action, Israel action, and ritual committees.

 The Modern Orthodox community also has numerous opportunities to join the larger Jewish community in workshops and conferences. For example, the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning in the Washington, D.C., area has a Department of Special Needs and Disability committee, which organizes a yearly conference, “Opening the Gates of Torah: Including People with Disabilities in the Jewish Community.” Their most recent conference featured twelve sessions on inclusion and attracted more than 350 people. In addition, this organization provides information, resources, consultation, and professional development to parents, teachers, and administrators in preschools, congregational schools, and Day Schools in community. Their extensive range of services strives to “help ensure that every member of the Jewish community, children and adults alike, has access to the range of social, educational, and religious opportunities that the Washington area has to offer.”

Modern Orthodoxy, with its long, impressive history of collaborating with the larger Jewish community, has an unprecedented opportunity to take the lead in the area of inclusion and accommodation of special needs. This willingness to work collaboratively and diplomatically can be useful in helping the community address sensitive issues such as religious and dietary policy in Jewish group residences.

[H2] Education of Rabbis, Leaders, and Community Members

Pulpit rabbis are often sensitive to the diverse needs of their membership. Yet each rabbi can point to the moment he was “sensitized” to the needs of a congregant he hadn’t previously “noticed.” These needs frequently come up when a family is considering the bar or bat mitzvah of a child with learning disabilities or physical disabilities. One rabbi sheepishly recalls being asked if there were any people in his congregation with visual impairments. He reported that he didn’t think so. When asked if his synagogue offered Braille siddurim or special seating for members with visual impairments, he reported that it did not. He was then asked if he felt there was any connection between the lack of accommodations and the lack of attendance by those with visual impairments. And, as noted earlier, parents of children with autism are often uncomfortable bringing their children into the sanctuary for fear they will be disruptive.

While parents are instrumental in educating rabbis, rabbinical seminaries can offer “disability awareness” as part of the rabbinical school curriculum. Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh Yeshiva and Dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Manhattan, recently brought the entire rabbinical school graduating class to a community-wide inclusion conference, held at the JCC of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Linzer reports that the education of rabbinical students was encouraged by Shelly and Reuven Cohen, Manhattan residents, who had spent years seeking and developing educational and camp programs for Nathaniel, their son with special needs. When Nathaniel died, the Cohens approached Rabbi Linzer about possibly funding a program in their son’s memory, with the goal of training rabbis about developmental and physical disabilities. This program is now part of every YCT student’s rabbinical education. These rabbis will surely go out to their respective communities more knowledgeable and more sensitive to people with a wide range of special needs.

[H2] Ongoing Congregational and Communal Self-Assessment

Each synagogue has an opportunity and a responsibility to determine whether it is doing enough to meet the needs of people with special needs. This may involve surveying members as to their unique needs and assessing accessibility in their synagogues—from entrances, to the women’s section, to the reader’s desk.

[H1] Conclusion

Meeting the needs of those in our community with special needs involves a sincere belief that all Jews are created beTselem Elokim, and that each person has a right to respect and full inclusion in our communities. The Modern Orthodox community is in a unique position to champion efforts, within our synagogues and within our communities, to expand educational and socialization efforts. It is not our job to complete the task—but neither are we free to desist from it!

The Torah emphasizes repeatedly the importance of treating those around us with kindness and recognizing their fundamental humanity. This ongoing emphasis implies the Torah’s awareness that each of us is inherently self-interested and, consequently, that we require reminders and even commands to look outside ourselves and acknowledge the value and inherent holiness of others.

Often in the Torah’s presentation of such ideas, individuals who are not ourselves and whom we should treat as ourselves come from within our community and need our help: the widow, the orphan, and the poor among us. And, indeed, attending to the needs of fellow Jews is central to Jewish practice in the contemporary world—although there’s still significant work to be done in that area.

The sources for this mandated kindness and recognition of one’s self in the other are well-known and widely varied. To offer just a very few examples, Jewish texts underscore gemilut hassadim (found in Pirkei Avot 1:2 and many other places), injunctions to care for the orphan and the widow (first in Shemot 22:21–23, but nearly a dozen more times as well), and the mitzvoth that require caring for and seeing oneself in one’s neighbor, all of which point to Judaism’s concern for other Jews, especially those who are vulnerable or lack power. Rambam’s rationale for caring for the widow and orphan specifically highlights the importance of recognizing another’s feelings even when we ourselves do not share those feelings; he writes that a person is required to show special care for widows and orphans because their spirits are low and they feel depressed (Hilkhot De’ot 6:10). He reminds us of the importance of placing oneself in the sufferer’s position in order to express genuine sympathy, a difficult but necessary endeavor.

However, beyond this emphasis on those who fundamentally differ from us but, ultimately, come from among us, the Torah also insists upon an even more difficult responsibility: that we behave humanely to those from outside our community, the stranger or the Other. This Other is also required to be treated as an equal, as we learn throughout Torah. In vaYikra 19:34, we read, “The stranger who lives among you should be treated as a fellow citizen; you should love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” This common formulation—you should love another because you were strangers in Egypt—is meant to create an implicit connection between ourselves and everyone else. We have the imperative not only to remember the experience of stranger-ness, but to apply it meaningfully to our ongoing interactions with others. In every moment, as we see someone struggle, we are instructed to say to ourselves, “I was once a stranger in the land of Egypt” as a way to reorient ourselves to the plight of others, to see them not as separate—as fully and entirely Other—but as akin to us, sharing our own experience.

Our memory of that experience is so remote, though, and usually so fully relegated to collective rather than individual memory, that we need tools—such as the Seder—to help us flex that muscle of remembrance. That this verse ends with “I am the Lord your God” also recalls for us our shared origins with all of humanity: We were all created beTzelem Elokim, in God’s image. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks highlights this point when he writes that “Pesaĥ is the eternal critique of power used by humans to coerce and diminish their fellow humans.”[1] As the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 4:5 articulates, there was a single source for all humanity for a reason: “Because of this, humanity was created as one person, to teach that anyone who destroys one life is considered as having destroyed the whole world.” While some strains of Jewish thought teach that Jews are superior to others, a significant tradition exists that negates that opinion. As Hanan Balk explains of Rambam’s approach, “Maimonides emphasizes that the fundamental of free-will applies to all human beings and that every human being can achieve the highest possible rank in the realm of spirituality.”[2] Balk notes Rambam’s similar approach to Jews’ and non-Jews’ equal ability to serve God, to love God, to access divine prophecy, and even to achieve the holiest spiritual state. According to these views, all humans’ shared origin and similar godly potential are fundamental to recalling every person’s humanity, regardless of the person’s other qualities or identities.

For all people, not just Jews, understanding the true personhood of the Other is an ongoing struggle. When we look at someone who seems different, particularly when we have been conditioned by popular representation to see that person through a lens of various stereotypes and preconceptions, we struggle to see ourselves in the Other. With few opportunities to know Others on a deep and personal level, we find ourselves in a self-perpetuating cycle of distance from the Other: He or she is unfamiliar, so we separate ourselves, so he or she becomes even less familiar.

Allowing ourselves to live in this increasing spiral of isolation has obvious practical ramifications in decreasing mutual understanding and sympathy but also has profound ethical ramifications for Torah-observant Jews, effectively preventing us from living the Torah’s injunctions toward the Other. As Jews, we understandably and necessarily separate ourselves from Others in order to maintain religious community and a sense of identity that is, in some ways, part of the national and universal whole and, in other significant ways, quite separate from it. These choices put us in a logical bind, though: If we are indeed to live the mitzvoth related to the ger toshav, (technically, a non-Jew who observes the Noahide Laws, but now more often simply considered an ethical non-Jew), we have a responsibility to overcome certain aspects of the particularistic lifestyles we have chosen and learn to see ourselves in the Other as well as the Other in ourselves, a task made more difficult by our separation from these Others.

For high school students, just on the cusp of adulthood, the struggle may be even more pronounced. First, high school students are still young and, developmentally, are just emerging from an age at which they naturally see themselves as the center of the universe. For those who can conceive of the larger world, they may feel themselves to be relatively powerless and therefore not implicated in ethical decision-making. Perhaps most importantly, though, our students tend to have even less practical experience with people who are not like them than Jewish adults do. Especially for Jewish Day School students, whose lives revolve around an Orthodox community, the Other may be fully hypothetical or exist in their lives only as a bit player: the Haitian security guard at school, the Filipino housekeeper, the Catholic family down the block, the strangers at the mall or on the city bus.

Jewish Day School students, more than students of other backgrounds, are isolated from cultural difference. To some degree, most American school systems are broadly polarized by race, religion, and class because of historical and current realities of racial and class segregation, but the Jewish Day School system uniquely encourages a separation from others. It does so for valid and valuable reasons, including the basic practicalities of Torah learning, but also because of the strength that comes from community and from being surrounded by those with similar values and beliefs. As a minority faith, Jews have done well to separate themselves and create pockets of safety and security, something we understandably want for our children. Even as we may value diversity on certain levels, we recognize the importance of learning about one’s own culture in a meaningful and ongoing way, and, for those of us with children in Jewish schools, we have determined that self-knowledge—a deep understanding of Torah, Jewish history, and Jewish culture—is more important than the diverse friendships and intimate relationships with others that would come from a more integrated education.

And yet, as the Torah teaches, we must still genuinely value understanding the experience of the other. The obvious place in the Day School curriculum to compensate for this loss of diversity is the literature classroom, and I believe that a robust literature curriculum should be considered an ethical, religious imperative in Jewish schools. Rather than being seen as a potential site of undermining or conflicting with Jewish values, as is sometimes the case, English class is a site for reinforcing the very values that may be neglected by having a Jewish Day School in the first place.

Torah teaches that we must understand and even love the Other; the Jewish Day School model removes our students from contact with the Other (and, conversely, the Other from contact with our students). Literature class, while perhaps an insufficient substitute for real-life interactions, nonetheless allows students who, in service of other necessary values, are removed from the broader community to recognize a universal humanity and therefore provides them with a complete Torah education that would otherwise be incomplete. Literature in Jewish Day Schools should not be regarded as existing in service of eventual job seeking, nor about preparing students for college or offering them Western cultural literacy, although those may be tangential benefits. Instead, the study of literature makes a fuller, truer observance of Torah possible; it provides access to the sensibilities and sensitivities toward which Torah guides us. Torah wants us not just to “do” things but to become something better than our current selves, and literature provides steps toward that lofty goal.

To fulfill the religious and ethical purpose of studying literature, we must therefore read texts that delve deeply into the lives of people who are distinct from us, whose values and experiences and choices differ profoundly from ours. Understandably, this effort may feel initially antithetical to Jewish education, which may wish to protect students in every way from too much encounter with the outside world. But we are already protecting them by providing physical and cultural isolation; too much of this sort of protection will prevent them not only from understanding the world but from fully living the Torah’s commandments in regard to the Other. Our tendency toward maintaining comfortable distance is certainly understandable, especially when it comes to our youth, whom we want to protect in every way. But a true engagement with Torah consistently involves facing uncomfortable truths about the world, truths that challenge our perceptions about our own place and offer us insight into others’ experiences and perspectives.

The unease that accompanies a novel such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, for instance, might make teachers want to avoid it. Fears around parents’ and administrators’ reactions, students’ discomfort, and our own difficulties talking about the novel make it easier to sidestep. However, this is one of those foundational novels that provides students with precisely the difficult insights into our shared humanity that the Torah requires.

I have heard people wish for a more “palatable” text that still introduces us to the painful reality of slavery—one that does not include rape, vivid descriptions of beatings and scars, bestiality, murder, and the many other degradations of slavery—but that nonetheless could show students something of the slave’s experience. Of course, even a cursory thought about this wish reveals its impossibility. What we need to know about slavery is precisely this reality; a sanitized version does not serve its purpose. When I teach this text, I preface it by discussing the history of slavery and the Middle Passage, about which many students are largely unaware. I also warn them about the difficulty of the text, not only in its language and use of the supernatural but also in its emotional difficulty. I encourage students to take breaks as they read, to talk with each other about what they’re learning, and to face the pain in manageable ways, surrounded by a community of readers.

But reading the novel feels absolutely necessary to me, as it exposes students to a world with which they are not familiar, in which white men are the feared enemy and every person’s trauma is permanently written on his or her body. To remember what it means to have been a slave means, in this case, to face the more recent memories of slavery in America and to understand in this visceral way what slavery meant and continues to mean for black Americans, not only as Others whose experience matters to us but as human beings who are us. Experiencing slavery, even vicariously, helps us to think of ourselves as having been slaves; but this principle applies not only to literal slavery but to any experience of having been a stranger. We have to experience it to know it, and literature helps us to do so.

This foundational history can, of course, be taught in history classes, but hearing the voice of a character who lived the experience is both more emotionally powerful and more humanizing. Naturally, literature must be taught in conjunction with history because knowing the fuller picture of an individual’s experience—its geopolitical import, how power shapes choice—is crucial to a complete understanding of any situation. But history must also be taught in the context of extended (rather than merely excerpted) narrative in order to emphasize the humanity of the individuals involved in larger historical events. In learning about slavery in history class, for instance, students are often taught that slaves were dehumanized or treated like animals. But in Beloved, the character Paul D talks about the experience of being held in chains and watching a rooster, Mister, strut past him:

"Mister, he looked so… free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher…". Paul D stopped and squeezed his left hand with his right. He held it that way long enough for it and the world to quiet down and let him go on.

"Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn't no way I'd ever be Paul D again, living or dead.... I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub."

Paul D’s musings offer students an entirely different insight into the feelings of dehumanization, an emotion-driven sense of what “dehumanization” means when applied to individual human beings. Hearing Paul D’s voice shows them some tiny portion of his pain and, simultaneously, makes him into a real person. We can know that slaves were treated as animals, but hearing what that means to an individual who experienced it provides a more profound, more lasting understanding of what that historical fact meant to the individuals who lived it. In other words, it allows students not just to know but to feel that we should love the stranger as ourselves and to recognize the ramifications of withholding that love.

Interestingly, Day Schools tend not to shy away from extreme depictions of violence and degradation in one area, and that is the Holocaust. Our students are painfully aware of the physical and emotional traumas wrought on Jewish families in 1930s–1940s Europe; even very young children know about the death camps, the cattle cars, the tattooed numbers, the family separations, the starvation. Certainly by the time they reach high school, our children know about the human lampshades and soap, the piles of shoes and gold fillings left behind, and Mengele’s unthinkable experiments. These inhumanities may feel more important to teach in a Jewish context because they happened to us; they are the stories of many of our students’ own great-grandparents. Knowing these stories is a way of showing love and care for our own people. But if we believe that our students are capable of hearing these stories, just as we believe they are capable of reading the kinnot on Tisha B’Av or learning about the Crusades or the Inquisition or the blood libel or anything else that was done to the Jews, so should they be able to learn about the inhumanities practiced on African Americans or Cambodians or Japanese Americans. Knowing these stories is a way of showing love and care for the Other. And both of these—loving both the neighbor and the stranger—are central to living a life of Torah.

Perhaps we feel that high school students are simply too young to be exposed to these issues, but high school seems to me the optimal time; if we do not reach students while they are developing their understandings of the world, we miss a significant opportunity. In particular, while they remain sheltered in the safety of a Jewish school, they are most in need of this contact with the outside world. Without it, these students, fully obligated in mitzvoth, are largely prevented from understanding the Other in any deep and meaningful way. Importantly, when we recognize that we do share disturbing images and ideas in reference to Jewish oppression but not (or certainly not as much) in reference to others’ oppression, we may come to realize that our squeamishness is not only about violence or sexual assault but about whether we were the victims or the bystanders or even the perpetrators. A narrative that presents us as victims is more comfortable, if not less upsetting, because it maintains a narrative we wish to perpetuate, not of our own victimization but of our own innocence. Recognizing the ways in which white people, some of them Jews, may have benefitted or continue to benefit from racism in America is a much more difficult conversation.

Torah demonstrates for us the centrality of narrative in our understanding of the Other, and we might even begin each year’s study of literature with a literary study of a biblical text. The kind of study I suggest here is what might be termed “The Bible as Literature,” but in a far different way from the more controversial understanding of that term. Generally, when religious Jews hear “Bible as Literature,” they think of the documentary hypothesis and a study of Torah as having human authorship. However, that definition of “as literature” only holds true if one believes that the study of literature focuses on authorial intention and the writer’s role in the text. As Reader-Response Theories teach us, though, there are many other approaches to literary interpretation that do not involve probing the author’s intentions or the history of the text’s creation and publication. “Bible as Literature” can instead involve a close study of the characters’ motivations and thought processes as well as the perspectives from which their stories are presented.

We can easily see that the Torah’s reliance on complex narrative itself constantly pushes us towards these difficult conversations. One of the most impactful narratives for me is the story of Hannah, not because I affiliate myself principally with Hannah in her suffering but because I recognize myself in the flawed character of Eli, who judges too easily and believes too quickly that he understands the entirety of a situation by seeing certain behaviors that seem, wrongly, to point to a firm conclusion. When Eli critically asks, “How long will you remain drunk? Remove your wine from yourself” and is subsequently put in his place by Hannah, who fills in for him the pieces of her story about which he had made false assumptions, I am reminded of the many ways in which I have made similar errors. That lesson can be so powerful and important, but this biblical story is only a starting point for students (and all of us, really) to engage with the dangers of judgment and assumption. To understand the Other, in this story, is to feel Hannah’s pain and to feel Eli’s guilt, both absolutely essential to being a fully empathic, Torah-observant Jew.

One might ask, then, why Shemuel I or other biblical narratives are not sufficient for this sort of work since they present precisely the kind of character insight that can help readers see their own flaws and consider their treatment of others. But the kinds of Others our students encounter are broader than those discussed in Torah narratives, and while empathy and understanding may be transferrable skills, understanding the specific details of a range of experiences is work begun in Shemuel and continued in a vast array of texts that approach different time periods, types of people and experiences. Seeing Hannah’s story as a starting point to understand more contemporary experiences of Others can powerfully reinforce certain values: the dangers of pre- or misjudgment, sympathy for others’ pain, avoiding assumptions based on insufficient knowledge, and the genuine depth of others’ feelings. Similar lessons can be garnered from a range of biblical narratives, staging the groundwork for similar but more contemporary or wide-ranging approaches to narrative interpretation.

This kind of interpretive work requires recognizing that the reader’s affiliation with Yaakov rather than Esav is intimately connected to the narrative voice and the perspective from which the story is presented. When we read throughout Bereshith Chapter 27 of Rivka’s plan to obtain Yitzhak’s blessing for Yaakov instead of for Esav, we remain in the home with Rivka and Yaakov. We hear their planning and recognize them as the central characters of the narrative. We become privy, in the Torah’s spare prose style, to their emotions and thought processes, and we feel ourselves affiliated with them. Of course, we feel that affiliation from external factors too, including our outside awareness of Yaakov as one of the avot and ourselves as descended from his line and commentaries that present Esav as crafty or even villainous, but even aside from that knowledge, the narrative itself—its use of voice and perspective—establishes Yaakov as the character intended to win the blessing and demonstrates the lengths to which he and his mother go to achieve a divinely ordained outcome.

We are briefly made aware of Esav’s feelings in the heart-wrenching line: “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father.” But we quickly move away from Esav’s narrative and return to following Yaakov’s development, making clear to readers that Yaakov was our intended subject all along and should be the focus of our interpretation. A literary reading of this story asks us to identify and articulate our affiliation and recognize the ways in which that affiliation shapes our understanding and interpretation of the narrative. Were the narrative to leave Yitzhak’s house and follow Esav outdoors as he worked to hunt for his father and fulfill his father’s desire, we would potentially have quite a different impression of the characters’ choices and decisions.[3] By considering other perspectives as we read, we can recognize our own fallibility as readers and the ways in which perspective shapes our interpretations. I would argue that a very similar process takes place when we read any literary text, and learning how perspective functions can help us to become not only more sensitive readers but more sensitive human beings.

The point in not restricting this kind of study to biblical narratives but extending it in the broadest possible way is to take biblical narrative as a starting point and recognize that there are countless other narratives in the world that also deserve our attention. Every person has a story, and every person’s story needs to be heard, not just to validate their experiences but to shape our understandings. When we learn about the experiences of someone who is like us, we begin in a small way to move outside of our necessarily limited perception of the world: other people, even those like us, interpret the same experiences in different ways. But when we branch even farther out, we begin to see that different entire worldviews exist in legitimate ways; the more of these stories we know, the more meaningfully connected we can become to all of humanity, and the more we can recognize our God-given shared humanity. Without knowing the stories of others, we can begin to believe, mistakenly, that our lives and perspectives matter in a way that others’ do not. When we remind ourselves that others have compelling lives and perspectives too, we can align ourselves with this most conceptually difficult of Jewish values: that we are all created in God’s image. Literature is a primary means of internalizing this central Jewish truth; without it, believing ourselves to be uniquely godly is far too easy and can lead us to decisions antithetical to those the Torah demands of us.

            To some degree, then, the study of literature is a constant exercise in perspective. To demonstrate the value and potential danger of being absorbed into another’s perspective, I often use the extreme example of The Godfather in my classes (although, as the years pass, I may have to choose something more contemporary). Any mafia film or text focused on the criminal’s perspective, from The Sopranos to Ocean’s Eleven to Breaking Bad, chooses to present the human side of mobsters, thieves, and criminals. Readers or viewers are captivated by the mobsters’ internal politics, relationships, sense of virtue and retribution, and views of the world. At the same time, stepping back from those texts can help us to move outside the topsy-turvy world in which these thieves and murderers seem to make ethical choices, and reorient ourselves to the disconcerting experience of having felt aligned with criminals. Accepting such narrative wholesale is potentially morally problematic, but recognizing the ways in which we can be unintentionally manipulated by such use of perspective can help us to become more attentive readers of text and of the world. Doing so requires some level of sophistication, but helping our students to hone that analytical ability is precisely the teacher’s role in literature courses.

            Just as we see that a narrative from Esav’s or Hagar’s perspective would drastically alter our understanding of those stories and our affiliation with or empathy for the characters, so too we see that the perspective in secular literature must be firmly viewed through Torah values. Catcher in the Rye, a work I teach every year to 11^th graders, has frequently been banned for its central character’s vulgarity, disrespect of authority, and misanthropy. My students believe almost unanimously that, were they to meet Holden Caulfield in person, they would dislike him immensely. Indeed, he is externally deeply dislikeable. But what they see from reading a story told entirely from his perspective is that he is a troubled young man, suffering from the loss of his brother to cancer and wounded by his parents’ inattention. His unpleasant behaviors become more understandable in the face of our entry into his head, and a number of students have expressed their increased willingness, after “meeting” Holden, to give others the benefit of the doubt when they behave in socially inappropriate ways. If reading that narrative gives students even a moment of pause in considering how they judge another, then Catcher in the Rye serves an ethical purpose. Those who wish to ban it imagine that readers are so unsophisticated that they will envision every protagonist as a role model. As my students demonstrate year after year, though, they do not see Holden as an aspirational figure but as one who can help them to recognize the fundamental humanity of even a difficult and unpleasant person. He can, in other words, make them kinder.

            The danger of such a reading is to lead readers towards a kind of moral relativism, which can feel frightening or, at least, destabilizing. If, for example, we begin not only to root for criminals or “bad guys,” but to understand and sympathize with their motivations, do they in some ways become too understandable? Will every behavior seem permissible if it has a rationale, even a corrupt one? From decades of teaching literature with ethics at the forefront of conversations, I can say with some confidence that this is not a risk. On a continuum of “us” on one side and “them” on the other, the experience of hearing the Other’s perspective can begin to move a character from fully Other to at least comprehensibly human. He or she is still not me, and never will be, but I can begin to understand his or her motivations not as those of a monster but as those of a person—a person who has made bad choices, perhaps, or who has been misinformed or traumatized or raised with a different set of values—but a human being nonetheless.

            Because this shifting of the Other’s place on that continuum can have such powerful effects, I go out of my way to share the voices of Others with my students. For instance, I relish the opportunity to bring Christian poetry into my classroom because that voice is so absent from my students’ understandings of the world. When they read the beautiful, moving, faith-driven work of John Donne or Gerard Manley Hopkins or Mark Jarman, they begin to understand how faith motivates the lives of these differently religious writers. Far from having a proselytizing effect as some might fear, hearing these voices allows students to say, “These poets believe in something completely different from what I believe, but their faith is as deep as mine.” Or they might say, “These Christians also struggle with or question their faith,” as indeed they do. That kind of understanding is the first step toward genuine conversation and understanding, and if it can be presented within the comfortable, Jewishly-oriented environment of a Jewish school, it can allow students to understand the Other within a framework of Jewish values. To avoid this kind of material only ensures that students will learn about it in some other way that will less effectively equip them to consider it within a Jewish framework.

            Ultimately, perspective and voice are central to our moral understanding. The more texts we can read from a variety of perspectives—and the more attuned we become to the way narrative choices shape our understanding of the world—the better off we are as actors in the real world. Given that most day schools include moral, Torah-centered behavior as among their stated goals, literature falls firmly within a curriculum that supports the Torah goals of a school. Far from being only a necessary skill for entering the work force or getting into law school, literature that includes the broadest possible range of voices and experiences itself fulfills a Torah value. Without it, we would be hard pressed truly to internalize the basic fact of God’s spark in every human soul. When we do not know the stories of Others—their travails and successes, their pain and joy—we create barriers that prevent our fulfillment of the injunction to love the stranger and to remember that we, too, were slaves. Importantly, those two statements are part of pair; the all-important “because” that connects them reminds us that our love for others grows from our understanding of our own history, and our understanding of ourselves comes from our love of others. We cannot separate these, just as we cannot remove others’ stories from our study of Torah. The two go hand in hand, and a Torah education that does not include stories written by, for, and about the stranger is incomplete.

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Making our Days Count: Thoughts on Counting the Omer
by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

We had a neighbor--an elderly widow--who was vibrant, intelligent and active. As she grew older, she became increasingly forgetful. Her condition gradually worsened, to the point where she needed full time help at home.

One day, several of her grandchildren came to visit her. They brought tape recorders and note pads. They wanted to know more about her life story. They asked her questions, but she gave vague or confused replies. First she told them she grew up in the Bronx; and later said she grew up in Brooklyn. She couldn't remember names, or dates, or places. She could not remember the facts that the grandchildren were trying to learn. They were frustrated; their tape recorders and note pads were useless, since the grandmother's memory had deteriorated so badly.

They had come too late. The grandmother had lived well into her nineties, but the grandchildren had never seemed to have found time to ask her their questions or to listen carefully to her stories. Now, when she was about to die, they realized that they had better interview her before it was too late. But, in fact, it was too late. Her memory was impaired. All of her stories and adventures were locked into her mind, and were forever inaccessible to them. They were unable to retrieve information that would have been meaningful to their own lives, that would have given them greater understanding of the grandmother's life and experiences. They must have asked themselves: why did we wait so long before asking her our questions?

When people suffer the loss of a loved one, they often ask: why didn't I spend more time, why wasn't I more attentive, why didn't I listen more and listen better? When people suffer a breakdown in their relationships, they often ask: why didn't I give more time and effort to the relationship? Why did I take things for granted, why did I assume that everything would just go on forever?

In relationships, small things are often the big things: kindness, attentiveness, giving extra time and energy, expressing love and respect and appreciation, not taking others for granted. To maintain good relationships, one needs to feel a sense of urgency; the relationship needs to be renewed every day. If we let time slip by, we may lose everything.

When I was a young boy, I heard a rabbi explain the importance of the mitzvah of counting the Omer--the 49 day period between the second day of Passover and Shavuoth. He said: "We count the days so that we will learn to make our days count!" By focusing on each day, by actually counting it out, we come to sense the importance of each day. We then learn, hopefully, that each day counts--each day is important and cannot be taken for granted. None of us knows how the future will unfold; we only know what we can do here and now in the present.

The Omer period is an appropriate time to remind ourselves of the importance of each day. We can make each day count by devoting proper time to our loved ones, to our friends and neighbors, to those activities that strengthen ourselves and our society. Don't wait for tomorrow or next week or next year. Life must be lived and renewed each day. Count your days to make your days count.