Big Tent Judaism

Lowering the Barriers to Participation

Thank you Sharon Shapiro for opening Yad HaChazakah (The Strong Hand) to the entire Jewish community! Yad HaChazakah-The Jewish Disabilities Empowerment Center seeks to empower Jews with disabilities and to teach the entire Jewish community how to make our institutions accessible. In a recent article in The Jewish Week, titled “Setting the Wheelchairs in Motion,” founding director Sharon Shapiro quotes the latest U.S census stating that “one out of five people report being disabled” as part of her inspiration for starting the organization. Shapiro, who is confined to a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy, recalls seeing hardly any disabled people at the synagogues, yeshivas or community centers. Shapiro wanted to know where all the Jews with disabilities were. “It couldn’t be that no Jew except me and a handful of people had a disability,” she said. After working for 17 years in the independent-living movement, she brought her knowledge and skills of advocating for those with disabilities to the Jewish community. Yad HaChazakah board member Rabbi Michael Levy states:

“Jews with disabilities should be included not as an afterthought. If you’re building a synagogue, build it with Jews with disabilities in mind. Make facilities accessible, including educational institutions, wedding halls, and community centers. It should be as natural as putting computer cables in a building because you know you know you’ll have a computer.”

Here at JOI we advocate for those who are on the periphery through our Big Tent Judaism initiative. As Shapiro mentions in the article, those with disabilities are indeed on the periphery since they are barely seen in our institutions. According to Big Tent Judaism’s Principle #6, we need to “Lower Barriers to Participation.” We need to put in wheelchair ramps, accept service dogs, and offer texts in Braille. We also need to educate our community leaders on how and why this needs to be done. For more information on how to make your community more inclusive to the entire Jewish community, please visit BigTentJudaism.org. If you have a disability and you would like to find out how to empower yourself to manage your home, handle daily living activities, and live a full Jewish life, visit Yad HaChazakah’s website at: yad-jdec.org.

Taking our Message on the Road: Outreach in Los Angeles

On the invitation of our friends at the Valley Jewish Alliance, part of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, Eva Stern (JOI’s senior program office) and I just returned from a week of working closely with the communities in the five valleys of Los Angeles. While we were initially planning on developing a conference in one location for the entire valley, we decided to walk the walk of our own ideology and brought our training session to three locations in three different valleys, including Santa Clarita which purports to be the fastest growing Jewish community in Los Angeles. This session, by the way, was held in a hotel—all part of our efforts to lower the barriers to participation.

Eva and I led these Jewish communal professionals and volunteer leaders through JOI’s philosophy and how it applies to our best outreach practices. What is always most heartening about these experiences is the response—best shown in what is applied immediately thereafter and in the months that follow. We had started working with one particular congregation in Santa Clarita who “got it” even before we arrived. We had been working with this synagogue and its rabbi on their plans for a Purim Carnival at the valley’s well-known Magic Mountain. What we offered most was guidance in unobtrusive name collection and follow-up, two key practices for effective outreach.

All of this work emerged from an environmental community outreach scan that we did about two years ago for two of the valleys. We helped them identify the areas where outreach could be most improved, presenting the community with a baseline upon which it could build the inclusive community that it so desires.

Celebrities Choosing Judaism

We have been busy these last weeks developing an articulated curriculum for our Empowering Ruth program—designed for women who have converted to Judaism. We piloted this program a few years ago in New York City, thanks to a grant from the Jewish Women’s Foundation in New York. And now, thanks to the generosity of the Jim Joseph Foundation, we are able to transform that pilot and what we learned from it into a formal curriculum so that we can launch the program throughout North America. Look for it soon in your community—or if you are interested in bringing it home, please be in touch with us.

When I read the news that “Wedding Crashers” star Isla Fisher recently converted to Judaism and is marrying observant Jew Sacha Baron Cohen (of “Borat” infamy), I thought that maybe she would be a great celebrity spokesperson for the launch. But she is just one of many in Hollywood who have been attracted to Judaism. We would like to invite every female celebrity who is a Jew-by-choice to consider becoming a spokesperson for Empowering Ruth.

So if Mrs. Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor, Connie Chung, or any of the other women who have proudly cast their lot with the Jewish people are reading this blog, we would welcome the opportunity to work with you. With your help, we could lend a powerful voice to women all over America who have decided to embrace Jewish life. And to all women who have recently converted, welcome. We’re thrilled to have you with us.

We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Tent!

We have often wondered about the development of the ubiquitous rainbow as a way of identifying an institution or an organization, or even a commercial enterprise, as “gay-friendly.” Could we do the same for Big Tent Judaism, JOI’s advocacy platform for fostering an inclusive Jewish community? What are the words and images that would indicate an open Jewish community, particularly for those on the periphery, where everyone will feel welcomed and embraced?

Since we use the following text a lot in our work, we debated whether its application for this purpose would be appropriate: “The stranger that lives with you shall be to you like the native, and you shall love him [or her] as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:34). We even considered just using the reference “Leviticus 19:34” and thereby encouraging others to check out www.BigTentJudaism.org for more information. In the end, we decided on “All are Welcome” since it really expresses what we feel and what we wanted to communicate. And it is working. How do we know? We see the sticker that we developed and give members of the Big Tent Coalition on the doors and windows of institutions, as well as on their websites. BBYO, Beth El Synagogue of Baltimore, and Congregation Knesset Israel of Bound Brook, NJ are just a few of the organizations that are now proud members of the coalition. And we are thrilled.

If your institution wants to become part of the Big Tent Coalition, click here for details. We look forward to hearing from you!