For many years, the Jewish deaf population had no choice but to live as a separate segment of the community, cut off from religious communal life. “Fifteen or 20 years ago there were few, if any, accommodations for deaf people in shuls,” says Shalom Lependorf, the principal of a boys’ school in Brooklyn and a counselor for deaf clients. In regard to communal awareness and services for deaf people, the non-Jewish community was way ahead of the Jewish community. Back then, Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser, noted lecturer and rav of Khal Bais Yitzchok in Brooklyn, was one of the few American rabbis to arrange to have an interpreter at his Wednesday evening classes. After years of interpreting and teaching deaf Jews, Lependorf says he’s beginning to notice a welcomed shift. “It went from a virtual midbar [desert], due to total ignorance and lack of community involvement, to people actively expressing an interest in providing services for deaf participants. I attribute this turnaround to the fact that the community is getting used to seeing interpreters and deaf people around.” The active concern of one congregant toward another is at the very heart of the accessibility movement. When Hillel Rosenfeld, a psychologist from Oak Park, Michigan, learned American Sign Language at the request of the clinic where he worked, he had no idea how far-reaching this skill would be. That is, not until he met Rabbi David Rabinowitz, a deaf man in his community. (The first deaf person to get semichah, Rabbi Rabinowitz is also North America’s first deaf rabbi.) Dr. Rosenfeld happily took on the job of interpreting the prayer services for Rabbi Rabinowitz at Bais Knesses HaGra, the local shul. “The congregants were very supportive of my signing the services,” says Dr. Rosenfeld. “Since Mrs. Rabinowitz [who is also deaf] is proficient in lip reading, my wife, Susie, would mouth a translation of the rabbi’s divrei Torah and point to where we were in the Torah reading,” says Dr. Rosenfeld. The Rosenfeld family recently made aliyah. “One of the hardest things about making aliyah was leaving behind the Rabinowitzes,” says Dr. Rosenfeld, who still misses his friends. “Our serving as their link to the speaking world was a wonderful merit for Susie and me. We are grateful for having had that opportunity.”