I am a frequent reader of “Or Am I?” a blog by Rabbi Paul Kipnes. Rabbi Kipnes. Rabbi Kipnes in the Senior Rabbi at Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, CA. I have read many posts about the congregation’s commitment to welcome people with disabilities and their families. This post was a opportunity for me to read more about Rabbi Kipnes and the congregation’s commitment to the full-inclusion of people with disabilities in the Jewish community there.

The congregation’s web site includes a number of wonderful resources for understanding the foundation of the congregation’s commitment to people with disabilities and their families.

Congratulations to Rabbi Kipnes and the Congregation Or Ami Family on their much deserved EP Maxwell J. Schleifer Distinguished Service Award.

I am inspired by the congregation’s efforts and I hope you are too.

Do you know about a congregation or a leader that is doing wonderful things like this?

Inclusion if people with disabilities in our congregational and community settings is a two way street. It opens up the possibilities that children with and without disabilities can learn together and challenge each other.

This morning I read a post from Dave Hingsburger at Chewing The Fat. Dave is one of the most observant bloggers I have encountered. He seems to be intentionally present to the lives of the people he encounters each day. This post is no exception. (Read it ready to be moved!)

I have often encountered families, unaware that I am hearing their conversations, who are not prepared to use the presence of a person with a disability as a teach-able moment. The parents in Dave’s story do an amazing job answering their son’s questions and giving him information to begin to remake his image of what it means for his neighbor to live with disability.

If we are to remake the world and our communities to include people with disabilities in powerful, life-giving ways we must begin by paying attention to the opportunities around us. We must engage those opportunities as experiences that can dispel ignorance and fear. I was moved by the simple, loving, educational interaction between the members of this family and the role that the presence of the stranger turned friend played in opening up possibilities.

Sometimes the power of inclusion is simply in the showing up! Showing up is helping to create the next generation of advocates and allies.

Have readers who live with disabilities had experiences with children that opened up possibilities?

Have family members been able to find language to help children dispell myths, fear and ignorance around the presence of people with disabilities?

Does anyone have other suggestions about speaking to children about disability?

American Jewish World Service is taking the opportunity that Jewish Disability Awareness Month provides to make the public aware of the ways their organization supports the work of people with disabilities in the developing world. Read the feature from American Jewish World Service titled: Taking Jewish Disability Awareness Month Global.

The past twenty years have witnessed much progress for people with disabilities here in the United States, so I think it is easy to overlook the life situations of people with disabilities in other parts of the world. Please take a moment to read the article and consider supporting the work of American Jewish World Service to support self/advocacy in other parts of our world.

I came across an essay about how, for one Rabbi the Inauguration was a reminder of G-d’s power to break into history and change circumstances.

I found the piece originally on The Jspot. The piece is written by Rabbi Shai Held, a Conservative Rabbi and seminal Jewish thinker:

I have said countless times before: the meaning of the Exodus is that anything is possible, that there is no status quo that cannot be overturned. Imagine a world in which you are a slave, and your father was a slave, and his mother before him, and so on for generations. And then, seemingly suddenly, God intervenes and you are no longer a slave. To be sure, the journey ahead will be long and arduous. Indeed, there will be moments when things seem so frightening and unsettling that you will even find yourself longing for the way things were before. But there is no returning to the way things wereâ?? not ultimately, anyway. The Exodus is a rupture, a break in history, a moment after which all things are new, a moment in and through which all things are possible.

I have a very personal confession to make: over the past couple of years, as my struggle with chronic illness has continued and in many ways intensified, I have found myself less able to talk about the Exodus in this way. Is there really no status quo that cannot be overturned? I have asked myself. What about the pain and fatigue that wrack your body each day? What about the degradations and devastations that pervade the globe and seemingly make a mockery of human dignity and of lifeâ??s meaningfulness? Perhaps all this talk of the Exodus as paradigmatic for human history was just loose talk, just so much Pollyanna nonsense. I have wondered, and lamented the depths to which life seems resistant to, indifferent to, the stories we tell and the narratives we strive to live by.

This morning I feel something I have not felt in quite a long time: I believeâ?? but really believeâ?? in the Exodus again. That which was utterly impossible, indeed unimaginable, will become a reality in just a few short minutes. The United States of America, the great beacon of freedom and democracy, has always been tainted by the monstrous legacy of slavery and the ways it denied that black men and women, too, were created in the image of God and were thus every bit as infinitely valuable as their white counterparts. Today these same United States will swear in its first black president, a black man who will occupy the very house that slaves built so long ago. The status quo has been overturned, repudiated, one might even say redeemed. (This, I hasten to add, remains true regardless of oneâ??s political commitments or affiliations.)

We ought not be deceived. Just as the Israelites faced a long and torturous road to the Promised Land, so also do we Americans face a long and difficult road ahead (and on more fronts than I can begin to list). The Hasidic masters teach that each year we are obligated to re-live the Exodus, to tap into the liberatory energy that the Exodus represents, to reclaim and deepen our own freedom and dignity as Godâ??s creatures. I cannot help but feel that the Exodus is being re-enacted and re-experienced in our day, today.

To be sure, many of the worldâ??s problems will remain as intractable tomorrow as they seem today. On a personal note, my own battle with illness is not likely to disappear soon. Iâ??m still not sure about every status quo being overturnedâ?? at least not before the Messiah comes and enacts a kind of cosmic Exodus for us all. But what Iâ??ve learned this morning is that much of what we take as given and immutable is in fact neither. So I go back to what I have said and taught over and over again: to take Judaism seriously is to believe that the world as it is is not yet the world as it must be, and to know that we are implicated in the sacred task of closing the gap between them. May all of our faith in the possibility of redemption and transformation be renewed and revitalized by this extraordinary day.

â??This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and delight in it.â?

God bless all of you, and God bless the United States of America.

The bold emphasis has been added by me.

I appreciate the point of Rabbi Held’s writing because I sense something new in the air, but I find myself intrigued by the paragraph I highlighted.

The onset of chronic pain and disability can affect a person’s ability to believe in one’s G-d and in oneself!The onset of chronic pain and disability can and does alter our experiences of community. Chronic pain and disability can and does change those who live with it in so many ways.

This raises several important questions for our congregations, I think.
1. Are we asking people how we can help them?
2. Are we willing to be present to the pain and grief without trying to explain it?
3. Are there ways our congregations can support people in their journeys of questioning and discovery?
4. Do our congregations have care teams and other support mechanisms in place to remain connected to people who are struggling with the onset of chronic pain and disability?

Are there other questions I am forgetting?

It is my hope and prayer that our congregations begin and continue to offer love, support and connection in the difficult and pain-full times in the lives of the members of our communities.

I would love to know what you think?

Please take the time to read This and This.

Each of us possesses the power to offer possibility and hope or wield fear and hopelessness. In this New Year, may each of us choose hope in our relationships and interactions.

“When heart is not small, all things are possible.”

I just read this post from Dave Hindsburger at Chewing the Fat and it made me think.

The question Dave is asked for the survey is: As A Person with A Disability, what do you wish for the world for Christmas? Dave offers a wonderful answer about that everyone should have accessible minds. Please go an read what he wrote if you have a second.

Now this is a blog with a multi-faith audience so I want to change the question a bit to fit the audience..

My question would be: What is your hope for the world in 2009?

Here is my first answer:

I hope for a world that operates out of just a little more hope and a little less fear.

I hope for a world with a little more connection and a little less isolation.

I hope for a world where we make new bonds that help us recognize that each of us has a story to tell and gifts to share.

I hope for a world were we give and receive life-giving love and discard our impulses toward death-dealing hate.

I hope for a world where we cultivate justice with people whose lives often are devoid of the peace that justice brings.

I hope for a world where we create opportunities to cutivate places to face our fears and cross boundaries that seperate us from each other?

I hope for a world where we continue the journey toward eradicating the barriers that too often separate people from each other and those same people from G-d?

I hope for a community that will join with me to turn some of these hopes for the New Year into “hope-filled realities.”

What are your hopes for 2009?

Click here to check it out.

I especially appreciate her discussion of tools that she and her nephew can employ when they experience vulnerability.

It seems to me that this post provides the seeds of a larger conversation about self-advocacy.

I am grateful for the writing and story-telling that I have come to expect from Wheelie Catholic.

One of the “must read” blogs that shows up in my feed reader is written by a man named Reverend Gordon Atkinson. The blog is title Real Live Preacher. I read the blog because it is consistently thoughtful and well written.

When I opened my feed reader this morning I encountered this wonderful post on CCblogs by Gordon titled:3D Miracle. The reason I mention the post here is because it has a great deal to say about perceptions of disability.

The post begins with a father’s grief about what has been lost. It continues through an understanding about the reality of a child who literally and figuratively sees the world differently. From there something ordinary like going to see a 3D movie provides a common context from which to experience life together. Finally Gordon’s daughter tells him that she prefers her world the way it is.

There are many angles to approach this story from. I will just say that having experiences that open us to each others realities from time to time really is the stuff of everyday miracle. When we have experiences where the “light bulb goes on” and we perceive
reality in new way those are indeed holy moments.

I would love to know what you think?

Read this from Rabbi Lynne Landsberg about the victories for the Disability Rights Movement during the Jewish year just completed. (Posted from The J Spot)

Praying with Lior contiues toeducate an inspore it audiences to work for the full-inclusion of people with disabilities in the full life of faith.

I posted previously about the movie here and here. I saw the film during its screening at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival in January of this year. I was moved by the content of the film and deeply impressed by the filmmaker Ilana Trachtman and Lior’s father, Rabbi Mordecai Leibling.

The film is currently showing in venues across the United States and in israel too.

Ilana Trachtman has started a blog about the impact the film is having in communities.  Please go and read it and if you have an opportunity go and see the film.