Welcome to the Jewish Disability Inclusion News!

We're so glad you're part of the community

In 2013, editors of The New York Jewish Week created The New Normal: Blogging Disability, a groundbreaking space to bring voices of and issues related to disability in the Jewish community to mainstream readers. In 2014, I was brought in as the blog’s editor and worked in that capacity until the publication ended in March 2020.

I never liked the name of the blog–but it had been decided on before I came on and was preferred by the publishers. When I consider disability, I think of it as part of the human condition–a fact that we know to be true. One in four of us has some kind of disability. I have a few, if we consider disability as a spectrum that includes chronic illness and mental health disorders like depression and anxiety that can impact daily functioning. I don’t consider a baseline of ‘normal’ to be helpful for us in any way in terms of our understanding both of disability and more broadly, to the meaning of the human condition.

Rather, I’m interested in greater appreciation of the lived experience of disability and how we as a Jewish community can work together to remove barriers that still exist despite decades of activism: the removal of stigma, the lack of educational and social access across Jewish educational and cultural programs for folks with disabilities, the literal lack of access in many of our physical structures, and the lack of accommodations for full participation and to develop a sense of belonging in community.

I’m excited that we now have a new publication, the Jewish Disability Inclusion News, where we can explore these issues together. The name isn’t fancy or catchy–maybe we’ll change it at some point. But it says what we’re all about: this is a forum for diverse voices at the intersection of disability inclusion and Jewish life. We share first-person essays, reported articles and essays focusing on all aspects of disability related to Jewish culture and life. We want to include you; please read here for submission info.

Our plan is to share new articles and resources every Monday and Friday. Today’s content includes A Blessing for Healing Ableism, a memorial tribute to Judy Heumann and an essay called Using Art and Advocacy to Repair the World, We also have a feature called Around the Web where we’ll post stories, essays and videos from other platforms that we think you’ll want to read.

While I’m honored to return to my role as editor, the Jewish Disability Inclusion News is brought to you on behalf of an incredible advisory board. We are grateful for the support of the Covenant Foundation, allowing us to launch our new publication.

My friends and colleagues Howard Blas and Meredith Polsky have worked tirelessly to make sure that the Jewish Disability Inclusion News could come to life–and I’m grateful for them.

Please be sure to share your ideas, comments and perspectives and please do share our publication! Word of mouth is the fastest way that we can grow our readership so do send along to friends and colleagues who would like to join the conversation.

L’shalom,

Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer, Editor