From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Michelle_Nevada
Sent: December 21, 2010 13:41
To: BetarZOA; ChozrimExiles
Subject: [ChozrimExiles] For deaf Jews, Jewish community only slowly opening
up

  
For deaf Jews, Jewish community only slowly opening up
By Sue Fishkoff 
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/12/21/2742248/deaf-jews-gain-access-but
-much-more-is-needed


WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (JTA) -- Alexis Kashar was listening intently to the
speaker at a recent Jewish federation event in this New York City suburb. 

A closer look revealed that her eyes were trained not on the podium but on
Naomi Brunnlehrman, who was seated in front of the speaker translating the
lecture into American Sign Language.

Kashar, 43, a longtime civil rights lawyer, has been deaf since birth. Five
years ago she and Brunnlehrman, co-founder of the Jewish Deaf Resource
Center <http://www.jdrc.org> ,  asked the UJA-Federation of New York to
subsidize ASL interpreters, so Kashar and other deaf Jews in the New York
area could take part in Jewish communal events.

In 2009, the federation began granting $5,000 a year to the center.

“I was ready to quit the Jewish community when I met Naomi,” said Kashar,
who lip reads and speaks but works with an interpreter.

Kashar is involved with the Jewish federation, she says, in an effort  to
increase services for the Jewish deaf and hard of hearing.

Kashar has three hearing children and was concerned about their Jewish
future.

“I realized if I don’t have access, my children won’t either,” she said.
“Why would I take them to synagogue when I have to sit there and have no
idea what’s going on?”

An estimated 50,000 deaf Jews live in the United States, according to
 advocacy groups for the Jewish deaf. Insiders say most are not involved  in
Jewish life, mainly because it’s just too difficult. There are a handful of
synagogues for the deaf and half a dozen deaf rabbis, and several national
and local social and cultural organizations serve the Jewish deaf. 

In the past decade, however, mainstream Jewish institutions and synagogues
have begun providing ASL interpreters and/or assistive listening devices,
allowing deaf and hard-of-hearing Jews to take part in mainstream Jewish
life instead of being segregated. The numbers of such pioneering
institutions, however, remain quite small, experts say. 

“You can count them on one hand,” said Jeffrey Lichtman, director of Yachad
<http://www.njcd.org> , the National Jewish Council for Disabilities, which
operates under the auspices of the Orthodox Union. 

Traditionally, the Jewish deaf were not treated as full members of the
community. Their testimony was not accepted in religious courts, and  they
were exempt from commandments that involve listening, which means they were
not called to the Torah or even taught Hebrew.

That is changing, experts say, but very slowly.

“We don’t expect all synagogues to have all their services interpreted, but
maybe once a month or for the holidays,” Lichtman told JTA. “It’s no
different from making accommodations for the physically challenged or the
blind. If you don’t, you are effectively saying these people are not
welcome.”

Funding for inclusion is increasing mainly because the Jewish deaf
community, like the American deaf community in general, is in transition.
There is a growing divide between those who are more comfortable in
deaf-only settings -- usually older people who grew up signing and comprise
the bulk of membership in deaf congregations -- and  younger deaf Jews who
are more at ease in hearing society. 

The change is largely due to technology, especially the prevalence of
 cochlear implants that permit limited hearing, according to Lichtman.

“Ten years ago the deaf community had a strong component that did not  want
inclusion. They wanted their own separate community,” he said. “Today,
people who were not interested in inclusion in the past are now much more
interested, especially for their children.” 

Avi Jacob, 21, wears hearing aids and does not sign. 

“We wanted to get him to speak, so he could be included in the typical
Jewish world,” said his mother, Batya Jacob, program director at  Our Way,
Yachad’s department for the Jewish deaf. 

Avi Jacob attended Jewish day school and is now a senior at Yeshiva
University, where a note-taker takes notes for him in secular classes. In
his Jewish courses, Batya says, public funding is not available, so he
borrows friends’ notes.

“He does not consider himself disabled,” she said. 

Congregation Bene Shalom in Skokie, Ill., is among a handful of synagogues
founded to serve deaf Jews and their families. Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer says
that services, meetings and his counseling sessions are voiced and signed. 

When the cantor sings in Hebrew, a choir “translates” the prayers into ASL.
Clergy don’t face the ark during prayers when it is customary to do so
because deaf congregants would be unable to see what they are saying. Some
liberal synagogues flash lights on and off to signal certain parts of the
service, but Bene Shalom does not use electricity on Shabbat.

Goldhamer says that more young deaf Jews attend hearing synagogues than
their parents did. If there is no interpreter, they may go with hearing
friends; young deaf people today tend to have more hearing friends. Or they
might get together with a few other deaf Jews and hire their own
interpreter.

“They’re asserting their rights more,” Goldhamer said. 

In Columbus, Ohio, the local Jewish federation gives $3,000 a year for deaf
services, with interpreted High Holidays services rotating to different
synagogues each year. The federations in New York, Boston and Washington
also give money for interpreters.

At Temple Israel in Columbus, which has eight or nine deaf regulars, a  deaf
member in his 80s celebrated his bar mitzvah seven years ago. The ceremony
was interpreted into ASL. 

“He told me that when he was growing up, there wasn’t a place for him  in
the Jewish world,” said the synagogue’s executive director, Elaine
Tenenbuam. “There are deaf people in every Jewish community, but they don’t
participate. They’ve stepped away from the community because it doesn’t
provide for them.”

The divide among signing deaf people and lip-reading ones is not always
generational.

Sharon Ann Dror, the founder and president of the Jewish Deaf Community
Center in Los Angeles, “grew up oral” with hearing parents who  didn’t want
her or her hard-of-hearing sister segregated. 

But when she went to college and learned ASL, Dror suddenly realized how
much she’d been missing, she told JTA via online chat.

“Instead of getting a few sentences in the hearing world from my friends, I
can have a real meaningful dialogue with my deaf community,” she wrote.

Dror reads lips and speaks well, but her three deaf children don’t speak at
all, relying instead on signing. Her oldest, 19-year-old Joshua  Soudakoff,
is a Lubavitcher who teaches Torah to other deaf Jews using ASL. Videos of
his weekly Torah lessons, conducted in sign, are at Jewishdeafmm.org
<http://www.Jewishdeafmm.org> . 

Soudakoff writes that he feels more comfortable within the deaf community,
and that hearing people often don’t understand what he’s trying to say and
just nod along. he finds it frustrating.

“They don’t understand that deafness is a physical condition, not a mental
issue,” he said.

In November, the Jewish Federations of North America paid for Alexis Kashar
and Naomi Brunnlehrman to address the International Lions of Judah
conference in New Orleans, held immediately after the federations’  General
Assembly. Kashar says that's good, but much more needs to be done.

“It’s our mission to take this nationally,” she said. “We need to bring the
deaf Jews back home.”
       

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