February is Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month, a unified effort among Jewish organizations worldwide to raise awareness and foster acceptance and inclusion of people with disabilities and mental health conditions and those who love them. Established in 2009 by the Jewish Special Education International Consortium, JDAIM is a call to action to act in accordance with our Jewish values, honoring the gifts and strengths that we each possess. 

Each week this month, we will share with you a story about how Stephen Wise Temple and Schools have put those values into action as we strive to become an even more inclusive, welcoming, and accepting community for all.

Jewish Disabilities Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month: Uplifting Organizations in Israel
by Rabbi Ron Stern

As we enter Jewish Disability, Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month, our connection with two amazing organizations in Israel reminds us of what a robust commitment to supporting people of all abilities provides for the recipients as well as for the community that sustains them.

Wise has long supported Beit Issie Shapiro and the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled (now the Israel ParaSport Center). Our Aaron Milken Center’s Cycles for Smiles program and Farmer’s Market have raised money for and awareness of Beit Issie. Our Wise School students have welcomed IPSC athletes to campus for presentations, and have been wowed by the amazing skills of IPSC’s basketball athletes at several demonstration games held in our own Katz Family Pavilion.

One of my priorities during my trip to Israel this past summer was to visit both organizations and see their work firsthand.

Beit Issie Shapiro is Israel’s leading developer and provider of innovative therapies and state-of-the-art services for children and adults across the entire range of disabilities. The organization also works to promote social change through a three-pronged approach: development and provision of cutting-edge services, changing attitudes in society and advocating for better legislation, and sharing knowledge throughout Israel and the international community through research, consultation, and training.

[READ MORE: Wise Receives Next Generation Award From Beit Issie]

From the moment my taxi dropped me off at Beit Issie, it was clear that this facility excels on all levels. Set in a lovely residential neighborhood, the parklike grounds and welcoming facility provide the perfect setting for the life-transforming work that occurs there every day. Once inside, the buzz of the clients and the professionals working with adaptive equipment is palpable. Each room reveals a different setting to meet the needs of a particular constellation of client needs. The halls are lined with equipment that allows a level of mobility to people that would otherwise be far more limited. That Beit Issie’s reach extends throughout Israel and serves a broad client base of Jews and Arabs is equally inspiring.

[READ MORE: Wise School Welcomes ISCD Athletes]

The Israel ParaSport Center offers another equally uplifting encounter with Israel’s commitment to serve her disabled community. As I watched disabled swimmers exalt in the weightlessness of water and heard the hoots of joy, it was clear that the pool serves an invaluable role as a central facility at the center. I took out my phone and recorded one of IPSC’s premier wheelchair tennis athletes as he returned shots that I only dreamed of hitting in my tennis days. Then, I was astounded by the hard-hitting exploits of the Center’s rugby team—complete with wheelchairs specially designed for the sport. Once again, witnessing the efforts devoted to providing the fullest expressions of athleticism to people of all abilities engender pride in what the citizens of our Jewish State can achieve.

As our weekly Torah readings now take us through the Book of Exodus, I recently had occasion to teach our second, third, and fourth graders about the Torah’s story of Moses’ speech impediment (“I am not a man of words … for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue,” he says in Exodus 4:10). I taught our students about how Moses strengthened his adaptive abilities and also relied on his brother Aaron to sometimes speak for him. We realized that all of us are differently abled and the capacity of our environments to reinforce our strengths and strengthen our weakness allows us all to achieve in this world.