The Many Ways Jewish Institutions Hurt…Jews

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about this. But only if you can handle an honest reckoning. If you’re a rabbi, a board member, a donor, a staff member, I’m not here to flatter you. I’m here to offer you a reality check on the ways in which your efforts, from inside your institutions, can cause impressive amounts of harm, pain, stress, and disillusion.

I’m writing from a very particular vantage point. The ways in which various Jewish institutions have disappointed me are NOT the topic of this blog post. The many ways they have hurt my child are.

I am the village idiot who actually pays attention to what we Jews like to claim about ourselves, to the words we endlessly, endlessly, endlessly repeat in synagogue, around our holiday tables, in our published writings, etc. We were once slaves in the land of Egypt, so we must be extra sensitive and welcoming toward the stranger.  Moses had a speech impediment, yet was one of our greatest leaders. We believe in tikkun olam, in healing the ruptures in our world. We are exquisitely tuned to the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan. We rush in to help everyone: migrants, the homeless, poor kids, victims of natural disasters. You name it: we Jews are on it.  BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT OUR VALUES DEMAND OF US.

The only problem with this litany of goodness is that it’s built on a lie. Or perhaps more accurately, on a selective truth. We are good–maybe even great–when it comes to flattering ourselves about our many contributions out in the world. But especially for Jews who’ve climbed the ladder of success and affluence, we cherry pick what those contributions are and who benefits.

Now you might be thinking: Of course we do. It’s impossible to do it all. As a practical matter, that’s absolutely true. The problem with leaning into that practical truth is that it lets too many of us off the hook for our bold, proud, staggering hypocrisy. Let me unpack that for you, from decades of personal experience.

Let me rewind the clock of our lives a bit, to the rabbi who didn’t blink or offer even the meekest apology when I confronted him about our synagogue’s firing of the extraordinary teacher, Norm Kerman, who taught my autistic son to chant Torah, so he could become a bar mitzvah. It was the prima donna cantor who fired Mr. Kerman, ostensibly because he wanted to hand pick someone else. Yet the rabbi offered not even a thimbleful of empathy for what a kick in the face that felt like for us. Never mind that Mr. Kerman was literally the only person in that entire institution who could pull off the miracle of teaching my disabled son Torah trope.  Never mind.

Let’s move from the suburbs where that heartbreak played out, to New York City, where we promptly joined another conservative synagogue, the kind whose committees have committees, but one in which no one like my son was visible at any of the services I attended, but where college students were asked to stand up when home on break and tell everyone where they were attending school. Because, well, you know why.

There was the time I brought my autistic son to a Thanksgiving package delivery event at that synagogue, where volunteers assembled items to be distributed at a later date. I emailed the young staffer in charge, in advance, to tell her that I wanted to bring my son. I described him, made sure she knew I’d be there with him, and asked if there was anything I needed to know to make it all run smoothly, from my end and theirs. All seemed in order, so we went, my son and I. And not one person bothered to say hello to us, including the rabbi who was in attendance at the event.  Want to feel small, unwelcome? Bring your disabled child to a synagogue event full of other young people and have no one even acknowledge his presence, much less offer to affirmatively include him.

Let’s keep going. My son has been volunteering to do the same mind-numbing task at another prestigious NYC synagogue for three years. And not because the synagogue invited him, but because after a short-term “internship” organized there by a local JCC expired, I asked if my son could stay on, with staff support provided by me (as it was during his internship).

My son puts together baggies with sugar and creamer packets for a lunch program for local homeless folks (or as the do-gooders at a place like this might say, “the unhoused”). He does this for hours at a time, by himself, reliably each week, and without a word of complaint.

Last month, his direct support worker told me that a woman from a group of volunteers who work nearby assembling the sandwiches, complained about Noah’s vocalizing. Just days ago it escalated to her asking if he could be moved outside of the space he was working in because he was interfering with her group’s ability to have their conversations.

To my great relief and deep gratitude, my son’s support worker refused, and this woman threatened to escalate to the higher ups in the synagogue, to which Noah’s helper offered up, “Be my guest.” Reading his text message to me, I had blood pouring out of my eyeballs. I called the rabbi who ostensibly oversees the other volunteers and did not hold back. To her credit, she went and spoke with this woman, along the way offering up how sorry she was. Problem is, I don’t think the woman who saw fit to treat my son like a moveable piece of furniture, rather than a human being created in God’s image–as we are endlessly told we all are–was the slightest bit remorseful. Embarrassed? Probably. Remorseful, not a chance. How do I know? Because if she were, I would have heard from this rabbi, and/or from my son’s helper. And neither said a thing.

So here’s the problem. You have this network of Jewish institutions–and I’ll single out synagogues, for obvious reasons–that claim to be the place where Jewish values come most robustly to life–through prayer, teaching, volunteer activity, etc. And yet, my family’s experience with a number of these institutions has been stunning.  And not in a good way. Not one of these places has offered a welcoming home to my family, or to families like mine in plural, ALONGSIDE their “typical” members. They feed hungry strangers; give donated prom dresses to poor girls; organize to help migrants and protect abortion rights; encourage people to vote; pack turkeys for Thanksgiving; go to rallies for Israel; go on missions to Israel, Ukraine, Spain, and everywhere in between. But what’s the one thing they don’t do? Offer even crumbs of inclusion for families like mine, as families. You know why? Because that work is hard. Damn hard.

It’s much easier to virtue signal through advocacy for abortion rights, migrants’ rights, handing our turkeys, giving out prom dresses, etc. etc. than it is to do the grueling work of finding ways to make people who have deep and life-long challenges feel welcome in a community that can’t stop preaching and patting itself on the back for its ancient, righteous values, for its belief in human dignity for all, and that all humans are created in God’s image. What they forget to say is that there’s an unpublished asterisk to all of that. And it has my son’s name–and the names of so many others like him–embedded in it.

Just the other night, my husband and I went to a lecture at Hadar. Why do I name Hadar here, and none of the other institutions? Because Hadar presents itself as an antidote, as the serious counter-example to a kind of sclerotic Judaism and Jewish practice (my description, not Hadar’s). One of the many rabbis I admire among their faculty has even written a book called Judaism is About Love. The lecture my husband and I attended, given by another rabbi I very much admire, was about the possibility and challenge of unity. Put another way, it was about what klal yisrael means, and how and whether it plays out in our lives.

When we were asked to offer our thoughts on that, I was surprised to hear myself say out loud that it was hard for me to believe that klal yisrael meant much at all given the abject failures of  Jewish institutions to offer any kind of real belonging to people like my disabled son. My husband thought he heard a gasp, that I might have shocked or even offended people with my comment. Good, was my thought. I can’t think of people more in need of being shocked or even offended than Jewish community members who are way too comfortable with who they leave out, all while, as my eldest firmly reminds me, preaching about how Judaism is really about love. Is it now?

(If you want another window into how this plays out in our lives, you can access via video or in writing a talk I gave–yes, at a synagogue–for Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month, in February 2019. And don’t be impressed by my being invited to do that. One-offs are easy; they are entirely disconnected from actual change in institutional and human behavior. My talk is entitled “God Can See My Son. Can You?” Just google my name. The video’s on you tube.)