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BAR MITZVAS FOR SPECIAL KIDS
by Abigail Radoszkowicz
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 10, 2003
The creator of a program preparing children with special needs for their bar and bat mitzvas will be awarded the Liebhaber Prize for Religious Tolerance on Sunday.
Judith Edelman-Green’s national program, created and financed by the Masorti (Conservative) Movement, has facilitated the bar and bat mitzvas of thousands of children with mild to severe mental retardation, cerebral palsy, autism, behavior disorders, and deafness since its 1997 inception. American-born Edelman-Green oversees a team of 20 teachers trained in both Jewish and special education who meet with the children over a six-month period at 36 schools across the country.
Special needs children in Israel tend not to be mainstreamed, according to Edelman-Green, so that children from families across the religious spectrum attend the same school and the bat/bar mitzva program.
“Some parents choose not to join the program, and that’s their right. But everyone who has joined - all the way from ultra-Orthodox to the many secular - has been extremely satisfied,” said Edelman-Green. “The prize is being awarded on the basis that so many families across the religious spectrum have exhibited tremendous openness.”
Before the program was initiated no one had previously been responsible for the children’s Jewish education or for their bar mitzva, moving her to fill the niche. Most of the children can’t read and many can’t speak. “This is another kind of pluralism - we work with all kinds of disabilities. To help them learn to say the blessing over the Torah, we use alternative forms of communication, such as sign language, communication charts, picture symbols, or a VOCA (voice output communication aid).”
The children learn about mitzvot, and even those with severe palsy are brought to army bases and cancer wards to distribute presents. “We treat them as people who can give back to other people, and that’s part of being bar or bat mitzva.” Five to 15 children are called up to the Torah at each of the 25 group bat/bar mitzva celebrations every spring - some 300 children altogether. “Everyone gets their individual call up. Every child is celebrated. School staff, grandparents, and other relatives – it’s a happy event that takes place on weekdays so that everyone can come.”
Edelman-Green recalls that it was her experience preparing a small group of children with cerebral palsy for bar and bat mitzva when she was director of education for the Masorti Movement that gave her the impetus to create the program. “Because they have to work so hard to say the blessings, it teaches the rest of us their deeper meaning.”
Asked if there was any opposition to the initiative, Edelman-Green replied that while school principals sometimes had been threatened by municipal religious factions, who object to their cooperation with a Conservative program, to have a new school building or school transportation withheld, the principals have stood their ground, noting that no one beside Masorti has offered them any serious religious education program.
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