Getting Ready for JDAIM--A Different Perspective
by Rabbi Michael Levy
We humans enjoy a variety of “New Year” occasions.
Whatever the outcome of the Super Bowl, the event will mark the end of the “old” football year. Fans and teams alike will concentrate on the “New Football Year.”
Let’s apply “Ring out the old and ring in the new” to January 1st, Tu Bishvat, the NBA and the NHL, Passover, graduations, and the World Series.
JDAIM is the Jewish Disability New Year.
The remainder of my remarks are addressed directly to my fellow Jews with disabilities. If barriers prevent you from accessing them online, I urge those who CAN READ IT to share it with you. If you are a service recipient who has never expressed yourself before, I urge your health provider, clergy, special camp, school and events directors to bring to your attention that YOU, not they, should be the ultimate spokespeople and decision-makers to whatever extent is realistically possible.
In the spirit of the Four Questions of Passover, here are provocative questions for you.
1. Did you like the Old Disability Year that just concluded?
2. Do you want the New Year, and the rest of your “disability lifetime” to be the same as it has always been?
3. The very sites that champion our inclusion contain communication and other barriers. Do you accept this situation, or are you prepared to advocate to change it?
4. Have you ever tried mingling with the non-disabled? I don’t mean at special events. I mean at typical camps, typical schools, typical bowling alleys, and typical chess clubs, to give a few examples.
5. Have you ever dreamed of being a leader and not a follower?
6. WE are thankful that JDAIM is a time when the media focus attention on us and sincerely aspire to make life better for us. How do you feel about focusing attention on others and making life better for the so that you become, like most people, a “giver” and not just a “taker”?
7. What identity do you want to choose? “Person with a disability?” “Special needs person?”” “Challenged?” If you have the courage to choose your own identity, how will you live it this Disability Year?
8. What’s the biggest dream you can dream? I’ll share mine with you:
One day, like blacks, women and nonbinary individuals, we will be so integrated that:
We WILL BE ACCEPTED AS THE LEADERS OF JDAIM, forgers of our own destinies, achieving power equity with those who currently dominate the decision-making in the disability field, and achieving the political and financial power to allocate the resources we need with the wisdom that we have gained through living, learning, earning, worshipping and raising families as articulate and valued individuals with disabilities.
Disability Shanah Tovah!!!!
A native of Bradley Beach, New Jersey, Rabbi Michael Levy attributes his achievements to G-d's beneficence and to his courageous parents. They supported him as he learned to travel independently, visited Israel, and became more Jewishly observant. For 65 years, JBI International supported him with braille and recorded Judaica material.
He received rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1981 and an MSW from Columbia University in 1982.
As a board member and now President of Yad Hachazakah, Rabbi Levy strives to make the Jewish experience and Jewish texts accessible to Jews with disabilities. In lectures at synagogues, camps, and educational institutions, he cites Nachshon, who according to tradition boldly took the plunge into the Red Sea even before it miraculously parted. Rabbi Levy elaborates, "We who have disabilities should be Nachshons--boldly taking the plunge into the Jewish experience, supported by laws and lore that mandate our integration.”
He applauds Jewish Disability Inclusion News’s ambition to give voice not just to those who work with the disabled, but also to people with disabilities themselves. “About us? Not without us” he is fond of reminding those eager to listen, and the media to whom the maxim may be out of their comfort zone.
For over 20 years, Rabbi Levy served as director of Travel Training at MTA New York CityTransit. Now retired, he is an active participant in Congregations Aish Kodesh and Young Israel in Woodmere, New York. Most of all, he relishes the company of his children, grandchildren, and large extended family.