Matan, a national nonprofit co-founded and led by a Gaithersburg resident, is taking the next steps to bridge “major accessibility gaps” in Jewish life.
The effort, known as the Matan Alliance for Disability Inclusion, follows a December report by its researchers encompassing evidence of said accessibility gaps across Jewish life. A significant data point featured in the report include survey results which found that one in five Jews report “having been turned away from activities” due to inaccessibility.
The report, “Closing the Inclusion Gap,” led to Matan’s analysis that Jewish communities — synagogues and Jewish organizations — have “good intentions without the systems to sustain them.”
“One of the things that we have found in our work is that organizations and synagogues really do have good intentions when it comes to being welcoming and inclusive,” said Meredith Polsky, Matan’s executive director. “They want everyone to feel welcome. What we also found was that when it comes to disability inclusion, there are good intentions, and people don’t always know what actions are associated with those good intentions … There’s kind of a gap between intention and action.”
Matan found that more than 80% of Jewish institutions lacked a designated office for disability oversight and 70% don’t have “formal policies” for educating about disability awareness and accessibility.
Because disability inclusion is largely siloed, there’s a lack of consistent training and shared data, which leads to poor implementation. As a result, people are excluded, illustrating a need for systemic change.
The nonprofit responded with the launch of MADI in April, a first-of-its-kind national framework for Jewish organizations committed to building inclusive communities for people with disabilities.
“It’s the result and the culmination of so much of the work that we’ve been doing over the past 20 years in trying to figure out how to move the needle a little bit more quickly when it comes to Jewish disability inclusion across North America,” Polsky said.
The alliance allows Jewish organizations to participate in a tiered model with three levels: Ally, Partner and Leader.
“They pay according to the size of their own organization,” Polsky said. “So we’re looking to make it really financially accessible as well to any organization or synagogue that wants to be a part of it.”
At the first level, institution leaders attend Matan’s virtual onboarding training and receive an evaluation of their organizations’ existing practices. The nonprofit provides coaches, learning modules and other avenues of development. The third and final level recognizes affiliates as Matan Leaders, who can model disability inclusion to the wider community.
One of the commonalities across all levels is an asynchronous, interactive course titled, “All In, All Together.”
“It’s a way for Jewish professionals and lay leaders to really form a common language and a common understanding around disability inclusion,” Polsky said, adding that a major lapse in inclusion is its often “siloed” nature.
“There might be one person in the organization whose responsibility it is to think about disability inclusion, if they’re lucky, or one lay leader or person who has taken on advocacy around this,” she said. “Most organizations don’t have that. But it doesn’t really work unless the whole organization is bought into the idea of inclusion and understands what the values of the organization are when it comes to inclusion and what’s possible.”
The 25- to 30-minute course takes professionals and lay leaders through a process of understanding what inclusion can look like in the Jewish community, according to Polsky.
“[‘All In, All Together’] approaches [inclusion] from the idea that even if you’re not a decision-maker in the organization, even if you’re not the primary leader of the organization, there are things that each one of us can do every day in our regular work to promote inclusion,” Polsky said.
Available resources to Matan affiliates include a comprehensive event planning guide, a baseline accessibility survey and training videos not publicly accessible online.
Matan is working on constructing new asynchronous courses specific to various institutional roles such as marketing and communications professionals, program directors, event planners, “so that people can get more tailored support within their roles.”
With each ascending level of MADI, Matan provides more professional support.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington was among the first organizations to sign on with MADI, alongside the Hillels of Georgia and synagogues in New York City; White Plains, New York; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Durham, North Carolina.
“It seemed like a natural fit,” said Lisa Handelman, the Federation’s director of inclusion and belonging. “We had this long relationship with Matan. This is one of our priorities.”
In an earlier conversation, Polsky and Handelman wondered, “Wouldn’t it be great if there were some tool that helped everybody — every staff member, every lay leader, everybody within our community — have the basic knowledge of how to be welcoming [and] accommodating to people with disabilities?”
Handelman and the Federation’s advisory committee provided feedback on the first draft of “All In, All Together.” The course is now back in the committee’s hands, who will review the material and devise a game plan.
“In terms of the onboarding course, what is interesting to me is Federation and a lot of agencies already have a lot of basic knowledge [of disability inclusion], but it doesn’t mean every single employee knows everything,” Handelman said. “So I think what we’ll do is smooth out any gaps.”
She added that those gaps aren’t big, given that inclusion has been a Federation priority since at least 2014.
“I’m more excited for us as the convener and a central agency, to be able to then share [our newfound knowledge],” Handelman said. “Because part of our deal with Matan is we’re sharing it with our community. And I’m very excited about this leveling of language, the leveling of experts, of knowledge throughout greater Washington.”
