December religious holidays and celebrations are natural opportunities for houses of worship to embrace practices that welcome and support people with disabilities in all aspects of the community. One of the most common questions we get is, “Our congregation wants to include disabled people, but where do we begin?”
My answer comes in the form of a question. “Belonging is at the heart of inclusion. So, what gives you a sense of belonging in your faith community?” [continue reading…]
Written by Faith Inclusion and Belonging Fellows Hannah Roussel and Sara Sharma
Disability Rights Activist Kitty Cone
On April 5, 1977, in San Francisco, disability activists occupied a federal building for 26 days, until Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act – granting new rights to disabled people – was signed into law. This protest came with many challenges, and faith and spirituality played a significant part in sustaining the activists. The 504 sit-in was an inevitable event given that it had taken four years for President Carter and his Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joseph Califano, to sign and enact the Rehabilitation Act. Due to the intentional negligence of Joseph Califano, Judy Heumann and the other activists (more than 100 people) felt that it was time that they initiated a change to speed up the process. [continue reading…]
Hannah Roussel
October is celebrated as National Disability Employment and Awareness Month (NDEAM). This month provides employers with the opportunity to reflect on ways to increase accommodations and foster inclusion for their employees. It also serves as a platform for job seekers to receive support in finding inclusive jobs, and for employees to advocate for necessary workplace accommodations.
I observed NDEAM by attending RespectAbility’s NDEAM summit (click the link for recordings and resources). I received training by disabled people for disabled people on professional development and career searches. This summit was motivated by a desire to make the world a better, more inclusive place, and it prompted me to think about the Jewish concept of Olam Haba.
Olam Haba, meaning the world to come, refers to a peaceful and holy afterlife and/or the new world that God will build after the coming of the Messiah. Olam Haba isn’t something we have to wait for. Jewish tradition teaches that Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, is meant to be a taste of Olam Haba, a sneak peak of a better world. This concept of tasting a better world has simultaneously intrigued and eluded me for most of my life. [continue reading…]
Shelly Christensen
“How can my faith community become better at including people with disabilities?”
This question, raised by people with disabilities, clergy, lay leaders, and community members, is why Faith Inclusion and Belonging is one of RespectAbility’s four pillars. Spirituality and faith are incredibly important to many disabled people. The Faith Inclusion and Belonging team recognizes that it takes more than a willing heart to foster a culture of belonging, where disabled people feel they are respected, valued, and included. [continue reading…]
Theresa Soares
In celebration of our newsletter edition on disability and religious education, my colleagues, Shelly Christensen and Ben Bond, invited me to share a brief reflection on my own personal experience, from being a young Catholic with a reading disability in both public and private school, and through my journey of becoming an advocate for disability inclusion in college and now into my career. This opportunity to share my story among our community is not only a privilege, but also a beautiful reflection of the strong culture of belonging that is at the core of our work at RespectAbility. I’m grateful to my colleagues for their invitation and am happy to share my story with you in this special newsletter.
My story begins as a kid growing up in the occasionally sunny, but more often foggy, beachside town of Pacific Grove, California. I had the opportunity to attend public elementary school where I first experienced difficulties learning to read. This challenge came as a surprise to my teachers and family who had otherwise observed that although I was struggling to read, I was bright and enthusiastic about learning, especially having displayed an expansive vocabulary and conversational aptitude for a young person. Through early intervention and the support of my teachers, I was tested through my district, and diagnosed with dyslexia. With the diagnosis came the opportunity to have accommodations and support services for my disability which I desperately needed in order to learn to read and write at grade level and keep up with my peers. School was challenging, and as a young student I remember long hours at the kitchen table after school, struggling to read through my homework, sometimes, I would close my eyes and imagine as a youngster, a place where reading wasn’t so challenging, where I could read like the other kids. [continue reading…]
Victoria White
Have you ever been at a staff meeting to plan an event, class, service, or project, and one voice spoke clearly at just the right moment: “Have we thought about how this will affect [insert name of particular individual or group you are thinking about]?” Perhaps you have been that voice. In seeking to include students with varied abilities in Christian schools, WITH Ministries has pioneered inclusive education for forty years, and inclusive worship in congregations for ten years. There are many great ideas from the world of educational inclusion that can be used to welcome, include, and support full participation of people of all abilities in the body of Christ.
The body of Christ is not complete without each piece. At WITH Ministries, we quote 1 Corinthians 12, verse 18 (“God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted them to be.”) and verse 27 (“You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”) We even use a call-to-worship from Romans 15:7 (“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God,”) urging each one to “make Heaven a noisier place” by bringing praise to God through the acceptance of His children. All of His children, of all abilities. That means thinking about how worship and teaching practices will impact persons with varied abilities. It means thinking for neurodiverse people, people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, mental health disabilities, and sensory disabilities. [continue reading…]
Howard Blas
The profile of bar and bat mitzvah recently got a boost thanks to Adam Sandler’s 2023 movie You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. While the movie takes a playful look at how plans for a girl’s bat mitzvah unravel over a popular boy, the institution of bar and bat mitzvah has been around for generations and is quite natural, simple, and free from drama. There are many options for making bar and bat mitzvah “customized” to the needs of each learner.
Many bar and bat mitzvahs take place in a synagogue or temple on a Saturday morning. Since the Torah (biblical scroll) is read on other days including Mondays, Thursdays, Jewish holidays, and the first day of each Hebrew month, b’nai (plural for bar and bat mitzvah) mitzvah may be celebrated on a variety of days and in a range of settings. Reading from the Torah is not a requirement. I like to tell families that you don’t “get” bar mitzvahed or “have” a bat mitzvah—you “become” b’nai mitzvah”—even if you stay in your pajamas, under the covers when you turn 13 (12, traditionally, for girls) on the Hebrew calendar. [continue reading…]
Julian Gavino
Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, offers us a beautiful explanation for those who convert to Judaism. Conversion isn’t seen as a choice as much as it is a calling—specifically a calling from Abraham and Sarah who are considered the forebearers of Judaism. The souls of their children are thought to be dispersed throughout the world, some born to Jewish parents, and others not. When an individual converts, we believe their soul was Jewish all along, a long-lost soul that felt an intense pull toward the Jewish people destined to return home to their parents Abraham and Sarah.
This is what finding both a literal and spiritual space in Judaism felt like for me, coming home. [continue reading…]
Hannah Roussel
The Jewish High Holidays are a time of coming together. Many Jews return to their hometowns for traditional Rosh Hashana meals and to break Yom Kippur fasts with their families. Jews who attend synagogues frequently welcome people whose attendance is more sporadic. The latter group often includes people with disabilities, who find synagogue attendance difficult due to accessibility issues, but want to make something work for the holiest of days.
RespectAbility’s resources include the new 5784 High Holiday Guide to Inclusive Congregations to assist you in making your High Holiday celebrations accessible. But changing our physical surroundings is only one side of the accessibility coin. We need to consider how the texts we interact with and teach have been used to promote ableism and/or would be considered ableist if written today. [continue reading…]
Matan Koch
For me, the musical background of the High Holiday season is my friend Neshama Carlebach gently inviting us to “Return to who you are, return to what you are.” Modern ideas of Teshuvah tend to focus on repentance and on forgiveness. Literally, the Hebrew word Teshuvah means “Return.” Maimonides tells us we have accomplished Teshuvah when we have “the opportunity to commit the same sin, but [we] separate… [ourselves] from it and …[do] not do it.” Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik taught that the heart of Teshuvah is humanity’s correction of ourselves. This strengthens and rekindles our connection to the Divine, recreating ourselves and our communities in a righteous image.
How can we return to our inclusive ideal and create a community where all belong? [continue reading…]
