Family Matters: O Israel, for Those Who Don't Hear

Sue Fishkoff
Hadassah magazine
December 2011

Naomi Brunnlehrman (left) and Alexis Kashar travel the country advocating for the deaf Jewish community. Photo courtesy of Alexis Kashar.

On a recent Friday night, some three dozen people gathered for Shabbat services in a synagogue north of Los Angeles. Rabbi Deborah Goldmann led the prayers, while temple administrator and interpreter Jan Seeley’s hands moved quickly, interpreting the rabbi’s words into American Sign Language for the congregation. Some of the worshipers sang along; others listened to what they can via cochlear implants or hearing aids while watching Seeley’s hands closely. A group of “oralists” sat in the front row, reading the rabbi’s lips.

Photo: Naomi Brunnlehrman (left) and Alexis Kashar travel the country advocating for the deaf Jewish community. Photo courtesy of Alexis Kashar

This is Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf in Northridge, California, the world’s first synagogue created by and for deaf Jews. Affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism, it was founded in 1960 by a small group of parents who wanted to give their deaf children a Jewish education. Some of those children went to a deaf school where they were taken to church on Sundays—no Jewish schools were available to serve them.

Fifty years later, though membership numbers have declined, TBS still provides a welcoming space for deaf Jews in the Los Angeles area who might otherwise not find their way into the Jewish community.

“There are rituals in a hearing synagogue that deaf people just cannot relate to, such as Hebrew, music, responsive readings,” said Seeley. “In a synagogue such as ours, everything is geared toward the needs of the congregation—the pace, making sure you have the attention of the audience before you start addressing them, the need to repeat things, realizing that if someone looks away or happens to sneeze or yawn while someone is signing at the pulpit, that communication is completely missed.

“When TBS was in its heyday,” she continued, “there were few resources for the Jewish deaf. The understanding of deafness and its needs has improved over the years, but has a long way to go.”

It is estimated there are some 50,000 deaf Jews in the United States. Deaf advocates say most are not involved in Jewish life; the barriers to participation are simply too high. There are synagogues for the deaf, half a dozen deaf rabbis and several national and local organizations serving the Jewish deaf. But only in the past decade have normative Jewish institutions and synagogues begun providing ASL interpreters and/or assistive listening devices so deaf and hard-of-hearing Jews can take part in mainstream activities.

The numbers of such pioneering institutions are still quite small. “You can count them on one hand,” said Jeffrey Lichtman, national director of Yachad, the National Jewish Council for Disabilities, which operates under the auspices of the Orthodox Union.

Photo: Children at an Our Way/Yachad event

Traditionally, the Jewish deaf were not treated as full members of the community. Part of that perhaps stemmed from a mistaken perception that deaf people are mentally challenged.

“Just as Russians speak Russian and are not handicapped because they don’t know English, so too is it with deaf people,” explained Joshua Soudakoff, 20, a Jewish deaf activist who teaches Torah to deaf Jews in weekly online lessons.

Like other deaf Jews interviewed for this story, Soudakoff responded to questions via e-mail. Often, he wrote, hearing people do not understand the way he speaks, and they just nod along, which is very frustrating. “They do not understand that deafness is a physical condition, not a mental issue,” he said.

Along with the social challenges, there is a prejudice against the deaf within halakha. Judaism is an aural religion. Prayers are said out loud, and certain mitzvot depend upon hearing, such as listening to the shofar on the High Holidays or the Megilla reading on Purim. If you cannot hear, not only are you exempt from these commandments, which underlines your secondary status, but it is very difficult to follow what is going on.

Throughout history, deaf Jews were not taught Hebrew or called to the Torah. Their testimony was not accepted in religious courts. This is beginning to change, experts say, but very slowly.

“We don’t expect synagogues to have all their services interpreted, but maybe once a month, or for the holidays,” said Lichtman. “It’s no different from making accommodations for the physically challenged, or the blind. If you don’t, you are effectively saying these people are not welcome.”

In the past decade, a few Jewish federations including those in New York, Boston, the Greater Washington, D.C. area and Columbus, Ohio, have begun providing funds for ASL interpreters. The money is disbursed to synagogues, JCCs and other institutions upon request.

In Boston, the Jewish federation provides $1,500 a year for deaf interpreters at local synagogues and universities, funneling the money by way of the JCCs of Greater Boston. The funds come from private donors, said Judy Pearl, the JCC’s director of special needs services.

In Rockville, Maryland, the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning, part of the Board of Jewish Education, set up a fund for ASL interpreters using a federation grant. Sarah Miller, director of the PJLL’s community interpreter fund, said she now solicits for the fund from congregations and Jewish organizations, which then may request disbursements. The fund pays half of the interpreter’s fee, for up to four hours per event.

The Jewish Federation in Columbus earmarks $3,000 a year for ASL interpreters. The money is shared by local synagogues, which rotate deaf-friendly High Holiday services. There are “eight or nine” deaf Jews who are regular community members, said Elaine Tenenbaum, executive director of Temple Israel in Columbus. Some of them read lips, and some take advantage of assistive listening devices provided by the temple.

One is a deaf man in his eighties who showed up at services a decade ago. The temple found a donor who paid for an ASL interpreter at events the man wanted to attend. “When we had Shabbat dinners, we’d have an interpreter so he could converse,” Tenenbaum said. “It was important to him.”

Eight years ago, the man celebrated his bar mitzva. The ceremony was interpreted into ASL. “He told me that when he was growing up, there was not a place for him in the Jewish world,” Tenenbaum said. “There was no place for him to learn, no one to teach him.”

Columbus is not unique, Tenenbaum pointed out. Just as Jews used to think there were no Jewish poor in this country, they now seem to think there are no deaf Jews.

“There are deaf people in every Jewish community,” she explained, “[but] they have stepped away from the community because it doesn’t provide for them.”

Sometimes, even when there is funding, other barriers arise. Miller recalled a deaf woman who received funding for an ASL interpreter so she could take a class on women in Judaism run by a local outreach organization. But the rabbi teaching the class didn’t want an interpreter in the room, saying it would be “too disruptive,” Miller said. He told the woman she would have to sit in the hallway.

Needless to say, the deaf woman did not take the class. Miller was appalled. “Attitude is the most important thing, and it’s free,” she noted.

More and more often, deaf Jews themselves are stepping forward and demanding their rights to full access.

Alexis Kashar, 44, has been deaf since birth. Her parents and grandparents were also deaf. Like many in her generation, she was mainstreamed for most of her schooling, sitting at the front of the class so she could read the teacher’s lips. She went on to college and law school, working as a civil rights lawyer before marrying and moving to Westchester County, New York.

Six years ago, she said, she was “ready to quit the Jewish community” out of frustration at the lack of access when she met ASL interpreter Naomi Brunnlehrman, cofounder of the Jewish Deaf Resource Center. The two teamed up to raise awareness of the needs of deaf Jews, persuading UJA–Federation of New York to subsidize ASL interpreters for Jewish communal events.

Kashar, current JDRC president, and Brunnlehrman now travel the country advocating for increased Jewish funding for deaf services, not just for the deaf themselves, but in the name of Jewish continuity. Kashar has three hearing children, and was concerned about their Jewish future.

“I realized if I don’t have access, my children won’t either,” she said. “Why would I take them to synagogue when I have to sit there and have no idea what’s going on?”

Her efforts are already bearing fruit. Three years ago, her oldest daughter was preparing for her bat mitzva and Kashar was invited to a parents’ Shabbaton. Her instinctive reaction was not to go.

“But Naomi said, ‘Are you crazy? You have to go. We’ll make it work,’” she recalled. They attended together, and Kashar learned the ins and outs of her daughter’s upcoming ritual. To top it off, her daughter’s bat mitzva portion included Leviticus 19:14, “You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind.”

Even as funding for inclusion is increasing, the Jewish deaf community, like the deaf in general, is in transition. There is a growing divide between those who are more comfortable in deaf-only settings, usually older people who grew up signing and comprise the bulk of membership in deaf congregations, and younger deaf Jews more at ease in hearing society.

The change is largely due to technology, notably the development of cochlear implants that permit limited hearing. “Ten years ago, the deaf community...wanted their own, separate community,” said Lichtman. “Today, people who were not interested in inclusion in the past are now much more interested, especially for their children.”

Avi Jacob, 21, is typical of his generation. He wears hearing aids and does not sign. “We wanted to get him to speak so he could be included in the typical Jewish world,” said his mother, Batya Jacob, program director at Our Way, Yachad’s department for the Jewish deaf.

Avi attended Jewish day school and Yeshiva University in New York, where an assistant provided by state funding took notes for him in his secular classes. For Jewish courses, where public funding is not available, he borrowed friends’ notes. “He does not consider himself disabled,” Jacob said.

Congregation Bene Shalom in Skokie, Illinois, joins TBS as one of the country’s few synagogues founded to serve deaf Jews and their families. Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer finds that more young deaf Jews attend hearing synagogues than their parents did. If there is no interpreter, they may go with hearing friends. They also might get together with a few other deaf Jews and hire their own interpreter. “They’re asserting their rights more,” he said.

However, the divisions are not hard and fast. Some older deaf Jews had parents who insisted on mainstreaming them, and some younger ones support the “deaf culture” movement, which prefers signing to speaking and lip reading.

Sharon Ann Dror, founder and president of the Jewish Deaf Community Center in Los Angeles, is Josh Soudakoff’s mother. Also deaf, she grew up with hearing parents who didn’t want her or her hard-of-hearing sister segregated in a deaf-only world. “They were very much against sign language,” reported Dror, who was interviewed via online chat. “They threatened to chop off our hands if they saw either one of us spelling the alphabet.”

Dror did not learn ASL until college. She then realized how much she had been missing. “Instead of getting a few sentences in the hearing world from my friends, I can have a real, meaningful dialogue with my deaf community,” she wrote.

She reads lips and speaks well, she noted, but her three deaf children, including Soudakoff, “don’t speak at all, and lip read O.K., but they sign beautifully.”

For his part, Soudakoff says he “feels comfortable” in both hearing and deaf settings. But he is more at ease in the latter.

In the summer of 2010, Soudakoff traveled with another deaf yeshiva graduate to Rochester, New York, as part of the Chabad movement’s Roving Rabbis project. The young men ran a Shabbaton, a halla-baking class and children’s activities for the region’s significant community of deaf Jews (the city is home to the well-known Rochester School for the Deaf).

Soudakoff returned to lead Sukkot services that fall, and a Purim Shabbaton in March 2011. Rabbi Asher Yaras of Chabad Lubavitch of Rochester, organizer of both events, says deaf Jews came all the way from New York City to attend.

“The response was tremendous,” he said. “These two students opened up a world to me.... I have hearing students who told me they learned about the parasha from watching one of Josh’s videos.”

While experts agree that it is easier for deaf Jews today to navigate in the hearing world, there is still a need for services catering to this population.

In 2010, the Jewish Federations of North America was a key sponsor of a conference on disabilities in the Jewish community. The JFNA’s Rabbinic Cabinet is bringing together the leadership of all the Jewish streams to work on inclusion issues, said Joe Berkofsky, a federation spokesman.

In 2010, JFNA paid for Kashar and Brunnlehrman to address the International Lions of Judah conference in New Orleans. Kashar feels the increased focus is a good start, but more needs to be done. “It is our mission to take this nationally,” she said. “We need to bring the deaf Jews back home.”

Listening in Zion
More than 1 in every 1,000 babies born in Israel has some form of hearing impairment, making it the country’s most common birth defect. Three percent more suffer later hearing loss, mainly through infection. In all, there are 10,000 profoundly deaf people in Israel, and 200,000 with mildly to severely impaired hearing.

Despite these figures, Israel has only one school for the deaf. Early detection enables the majority to be mainstreamed. “All Israel’s hospitals screen hearing at birth,” said Tirza Toledo, deputy codirector of Hadassah’s 55-year-old Institute of Language, Speech and Hearing Disorders. “Problems detected can be confirmed by two months, allowing immediate habilitation and the best possible speech and language development.”

Early detection and cochlear implants have changed the world for Israel’s deaf, with attitudes toward them experiencing a parallel transformation. Israel’s health ministry contributes to purchasing hearing aids and covers one cochlear implant. The Education Ministry mandates FM Listening Systems in classrooms with hearing-impaired children—teachers talk into hand-held microphones that transmit directly to the child’s hearing aid. The Israel Broadcasting Authority subtitles half its programming. The welfare ministry and the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command distribute red alert beepers to deaf people in areas under rocket fire.

As in the United States, Israel’s rabbis have reversed the centuries-old discrimination of the deaf, and many actively reach out. The Council of Young Israel Rabbis in Israel, for example, runs the Judaic Heritage Program for Israel’s Deaf and Hearing Impaired, training youngsters for bar and bat mitzva and adding signing to its Purim Megilla readings.

National organizations for and of Israel’s active deaf community address issues from navigating medical emergencies to documenting testimonies of deaf Holocaust survivors. The Micha Society for the Education of Deaf Children’s focus is the hearing-impaired from birth to 6 years, and the Shema Center for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired’s responsibility are kids in the school system. Auditory Verbal Israel was brought in by American immigrant Elaine Matlow Tal-El after learning that her 2-year-old twins were profoundly deaf. Today, both girls speak and serve in the IDF.

“With implants, hearing aids, lip reading and habilitation enabling once unattainable levels of functioning, Israel’s deaf now face the penalties of success,” said Toledo. “They integrate so well into hearing society that others forget they must see a speaker’s lips to ‘hear’ and can’t keep track when many people speak together. But this is a small price to pay.” —Wendy Elliman

Good Reads
A Family’s Quest to Hear and Be Heard is the subtitle of a moving book by Jennifer Rosner in which she describes her struggle to deal with her two daughters’ deafness. Rosner discusses the book, If a Tree Falls ( Feminist Press), in Bringing Sound into the Silence.

Source: http://www.hadassahmagazine.org/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=twI6LmN7IzF&b=6725377&ct=11519049&notoc=1