February is Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month. In recognition of this special month, I spoke to several members of our community who have Down syndrome or who are the parents of children with Down syndrome. We discussed how they or their children are included in the community at home, at work, and at school, gaining greater perspective on the lives they live.
Elisheva Katz
Elisheva Katz is 25 years old. She attended Bais Yaakov starting from elementary school until she completed high school when she was 21. Now she works at Levindale and at the JCC preschool. I spoke to Elisheva to find out what it’s like to be a person with a disability.
WWW: When you attended Bais Yaakov, where you in a class together with the other girls?
Elisheva: No, I was a class of one and Ms. Cohen was my teacher.
WWW: Did you have friends in school, or did you feel left out because you were the only student in your class?
Elisheva: I did not feel left out. The other girls were my friends and treated me with respect.
WWW: Can you give us examples of this?
Elisheva: When people treat you with respect that means they care about you and include you. For example, my friends made me birthday parties. They brought in cookies, soda, and chips.
WWW: You graduated from Bais Yaakov four years ago. Do you still keep up with your friends from school?
Elisheva: Yes, my friends still keep up with me. Sometimes they visit me. One of my friends takes me to her house and we bake cookies. Every Shabbos my friends the Grosses come to my house and play Monopoly with me. Sometimes friends take me out to eat. I get invited to their weddings.
WWW: When your friends come to play Monopoly, do they also play with your brothers and sisters?
Elisheva: No, of course not. They are not interested in my siblings. They come to spend time with me because I am their friend.
WWW: Do you enjoy your work? Are the people at work respectful of you?
Elisheva: Yes, I like my work. The old men and ladies are very nice. They call me Eli.
WWW: What do you do for recreation now that you are finished school?
Elisheva: I go to Yachad. We have programs every month. Next month we are going to have a Shabbaton at Ner Tamid. I’ll sleep over at my aunt’s house because she lives close to Ner Tamid. We have other activities also. We make projects like besamim and greeting cards. Once a month we have a Torah and Dinner at Tov Pizza, and I say a d’var Torah that my father helps me prepare. Yachad’s staff posts pictures of us on Facebook.
WWW: I heard that you also go to your father’s parsha class on Wednesday morning. Do you enjoy that?
Elisheva: I like that class very much and I hate to miss it. I sometimes say my d’var Torah that I prepared for Yachad at that class. All the ladies in the class are nice to me. This week it was my birthday, so they made me a small birthday party. I bring along my notebook and I write in the notebook during the class. Afterwards my father takes me to Levindale.
Meira Goodman
Martha Goodman, a special education advocate who works for the Macks Center for Jewish Education, spoke about her daughter Meira, who is 12 years old. Meira attends a class in Bais Yaakov called 5G together with five other girls.
WWW: Tell me about the class that Meira attends in Bais Yaakov.
Martha: We are absolutely thrilled with it. The girls in the class are fourth through sixth graders, and this year they are mostly together with the fourth graders at Bais Yaakov. The teachers are excellent, as is the program. We are fortunate that a number of girls with special needs were born in our community at around the same time, so we were able to form this special class.
WWW: Is this called an inclusion class?
Martha: It is an inclusion class in that the girls are included in the general atmosphere of Bais Yaakov, although they aren’t in the classroom with typical developing children most of the time. They’re together with the other girls for lunch and recess. I think that as the girls grow into young adults, they will have a richer life when they are part of the community and that begins with being part of Bais Yaakov.
WWW: Is Meira included in other activities together with typically developing children?
Martha: Most of the activities that Meira is involved in are activities with other children that have special needs. She has been taking swimming lessons for many years, and as she becomes a stronger swimmer, I hope that she’ll be able to participate in swimming together with other swimmers. Meira does have some typically developing friends from the different schools she has attended. Recently, at her bas mitzva, it was great to see girls from all different schools with and without special needs all celebrate together with her. In fact, when I mentioned to Meira that some of the girls who were coming to the bas mitzvah wouldn’t know each other, she assured me that she would introduce them to each other, and she did!
WWW: Is there anything else you would like to mention to the community about children with special needs?
Martha: I want to say how grateful I am for all the services and special classes that are available to my daughter that weren’t available in the past. But although services and acceptance has improved tremendously for children with Down syndrome, autism, or physical disabilities, there are still many children in our community with other kinds of disabilities such as emotional or mental health issues who are not accepted and included as they should be. There is still much work to be done in that area. At any given time, there are still about 100 children from religious homes in public school.
Rozie Givre
Rozie Givre is a six-year-old who is in kindergarten in Cheder Chabad. Elisheva, her mother, is a photographer and is very passionate about the power of positive visual images. Rozie has been on the cover of the Jewish Times and the N’shei Chabad newsletter, and she was offered a contract to model for a big corporation (although the Givres chose not to accept it).
Elisheva explains, “When I gave birth to Rozie, the staff in the hospital gave me a book about children with Down syndrome. The book was so depressing because all the images were sad. My daughter is a beautiful child and I take pride in creating beautiful photographs of her. It has become more common to see pictures of children with disabilities in advertisements for big stores like Target and Toys ‘R’ Us. A local store, Belle Bambini, has used Rozie as a model for their clothing.”
Rozie attends a regular kindergarten class in Cheder Chabad. “Cheder Chabad has a very inclusive environment,” says Mrs. Givre. “It is in the same building as Jewels, so she can get therapy through Jewels while she is in school. Children from the Jewels program are part of her class some of the time also. Rozie has been attending Cheder Chabad since she was two and a half, so she is part of the class and is included at all levels. She has playdates and is invited to birthday parties.”
Mrs. Givre told me about an organization that is working on this same concept on a much bigger scale. “Changing the Faces of Beauty is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to encourage equal representation of people with disabilities in advertising and media worldwide,” she explains. “They have 100 companies signed up to include models with a disability in their advertising. They also produce photography shoots to educate realtors on what their products will look like on models both with and without disabilities.”
Mordechai Cohen
Chaya Cohen is the mother of Mordechai, who just had his 30th birthday. She shared with me how happy she is with the opportunities available to her son in Baltimore.
WWW: Does Mordechai work?
Chaya: Mordechai works three days a week bagging at 7-Mile. He is part of a program from Chimes, and he works there under the supervision of a job coach, who is there for all the baggers. The other days of the week he is home with me. We learn together in a special program that we call Ima University. I used to be an assistant in a special ed classroom, so now I use my skills for my son. It keeps his mind occupied and he loves to learn.
WWW: What other activities does Mordechai do?
Chaya: Mordechai is the busiest one in our family. Between Yachad’s programs and the special needs program in the JCC, he’s busy three or four nights a week. For example, on Tuesday and Thursday nights he has a club at the JCC where they exercise, play games, or watch a movie. It’s very inexpensive and he doesn’t have to be a member of the JCC in order to participate.
WWW: Does Mordechai go to shul?
Chaya: We live right next door to Rabbi Heber’s shul, so he can go to shul by himself and he loves to go on Shabbos. He’s there for davening and he stays for shalosh seudos. The men are all very nice and friendly to him.
WWW: I often see Mordechai at 7-Mile Market. He’s so friendly, and he seems to be enjoying his job.
Chaya: Living with Mordechai is like living with a rock star. Whenever I go somewhere with him, people really enjoy him. People often comment to me about how much they enjoy seeing him. Sometimes when we get Shabbos invitations, I feel like I’m just tagging along with him. Once somebody invited us for Shabbos when Mordechai was away at a Shabbaton. I told the hosts that I would be happy to come, but Mordechai wouldn’t be coming along. Hurriedly, they answered, “Let’s make it another week then!”
Speaking to Mrs. Cohen, Mrs. Givre, Mrs. Goodman and Elisheva gave me a greater understanding of the vast improvement that the world has experienced in the last decades. Instead of hiding our children with disabilities; abandoning them, or keeping them a secret, families are now able to educate them in regular schools, proudly show of their portraits, find them productive jobs, bring them to shul, and include them in all aspects of life. But, as Martha Goodman mentioned, there is still work to be done and there is always room for improvement.
