Spirit!, a magazine which explores Family Issues and Developmental Disabilities by Yedei Chesed has printed an article mentioning about the Jewish Deaf Community. Excerpted from the Spirit! Magazine, Fall 2006 Vol 5 No. 1 The Power of Belonging written by Batya Shava Brenner. The complete article can be viewed at www.spiritmag.org/v4n3/power.html Can you imagine a world devoid of people in wheelchairs and absent of the blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, and hearing impaired? Easy – visit most synagogues, mikvaot, and Jewish community centers in North America. According to the 2000 US Census, 49.7 million people (nearly one in five) have some sort of disability. This statistic applies to the Jewish community as well. It makes one wonder – where are all the Jews with disabilities? Blame it on ignorance and insensitivity, but the fact remains: Too many intellectually and physically challenged Jews live lives behind closed doors, shut away from the joys of Jewish communal life. Over the past two decades, the Jewish community has made tremendous strides in integrating people with disabilities. This is especially true of the Jewish community’s educational system. “Of the 700 or so yeshivot and day schools in America, you would be hard-pressed to find an elementary school that does not have a resource room program,” says Dr. Jeffrey Lichtman, director of OU’s Yachad/National Jewish Council for Disabilities (NJCD), which is dedicated to addressing the needs of individuals with disabilities. Yet, integrating Jews with disabilities into other areas of communal life has not been the Jewish community’s focus. “Disability awareness is really the newest area of social activism for the country and for the Jewish community,” says Dr. Lichtman.