WJW Intern

The third annual conference aimed at opening up the Washington Jewish community to people with disabilities has a new element this year: workshops specifically designed for able teens.

Spearheaded by the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning and the Jewish Foundation for Group Homes, the Dec. 4 "Opening the Gates of Torah: Including People with Disabilities in the Jewish Community" is being co-sponsored by 30 synagogues. More than 200 are expected to attend the program at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church.

Local Jewish institutions have taken big steps toward accessibility in recent years, but conference planners are determined not to let the Washington Jewish community rest on its laurels.

"Parents [of disabled children in the Jewish community] don't have to beg and plead for programs for worship and education overall. Instead, it's being offered as a matter of course," says Ginny Thornburgh, director of the National Organization on Disability's religion and disability program, who is participating in the event.

But, cautions Thornburgh, "We always have to think about what leaders are coming after us and how we are influencing the future."

That's why this year's gathering will include a teen track.

"Teens with disabilities often feel very isolated from their peers, but would prefer to be friends with them," says Lenore Layman, director of the special needs department for the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning. "And often teens without disabilities feel fearful or uncomfortable or that they have nothing in common with people who have disabilities."

One essential goal of the teen track, she emphasizes, is to dispel some of these notions.

Layman, who has played an intricate role in planning past conferences, hopes that given this year's emphasis on teenagers, each participating synagogue will bring at least two able teenagers. The conference also will offer teenagers community service hours.

"Teens with disabilities are just like regular people, but they have some special needs," Layman says. She also notes the conference plans to show that disabled teens share similar interests with other teens, such as sports, computers and playing with siblings.

The teen track will feature two sessions designed exclusively for teenagers. The first workshop will be a hands-on disability awareness lesson to allow participants to see the world from a completely different perspective. One exercise, for example, involves people trying to read a passage while their mouths are filled with marshmallows, explained Sara Portman Milner, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington's director of camp, youth and special needs. "No matter how hard they try, they can't make people understand what they say," she says, noting that people with articulation disabilities "can't ever take the marshmallows out."

In another exercise, she says, teens will don rubber gloves with some fingers tied off and attempt such everyday tasks as tying their shoes or buttoning a jacket, giving them a sense of what it's like for someone who has cerebral palsy.

The second workshop will provide a discussion forum for the audience to listen to and interact with a panel. Panel members will talk about having a disability, or a sibling with a disability, and working with teens with disabilities.

One panelist is 17-year-old Leah Tanen, a senior at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, who will describe living with her autistic brother, Jeremy, 19.

Tanen is committed to integrating disabled teenagers like her brother into the community. She says that the conference's teen track is a great opportunity to promote awareness and relate disabled teens to their able peers.

"The teen track is about making disabled teens feel normal and striving to create the same social life for them," Tanen said. "We want them to feel more comfortable around other teens who are not disabled."

This year's conference aims to build on the momentum generated by the past two symposia and make a longer lasting stamp on the Jewish community.

Perhaps the most significant outgrowth of the first two area conferences, organizers say, was the institution of "inclusion committees" in a number of synagogues throughout the Washington Jewish community.

At the Orthodox Beth Sholom Congregation & Talmud Torah in Potomac, for example, the congregation's accessibility committee has made its members more receptive to the disabled by holding a "disability awareness" Shabbat service and by promoting understanding in each of the synagogue's monthly newsletters.

Many other synagogues have removed the physical barriers to inclusion of their disabled congregants by adding ramps and lifts in select areas such as the bima.

Regardless of the advances, Naomi Yadin-Mendick, lay chair of the Special Needs Entry Point at Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning, said there is still a need for improvement in the community's ability to include special needs. The parent of a handicapped 14-year-old, Yadin-Mendick also said that some of the problems stem from a lack of special needs training and a lack of awareness.

Layman hopes that not only teenagers but all attendees of the conference will assume greater responsibility for the disabled.

"We hope people will walk away from this conference with specific ideas," she said.

Conference registration is due by Nov. 27. For more information, call Lenore Layman at 301-255-1952.