Sarina Roffé
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Special To The Jewish Week
Overcoming attitudes and stereotypes that pervade the Jewish community can be an uphill battle. Just ask Jay Ruderman and others who attended the recent Jewish Special Needs Funding Conference that he helped sponsor. All of them want to get past the community-created obstacles to their vision of inclusion for Jewish individuals with special needs.
Unfortunately, the philosophy of separate but equal, similar to the platform of many pre-civil rights segregationists, is stubbornly in place throughout Jewish communal life.
Despite some advances and weak attempts at educating special needs children, stereotypes prevail and the very culture of the Jewish experience does not allow for inclusion. Instead, we see a few Jewish schools popping up for autistic, Down and learning disabled children, and even the Virtual School House, a charter school in Cleveland for special needs. The idea of separate but equal ends up lowering parents
