Photo: Karen Schiller, an American Sign Language interpreter, signs prayers to Eli Silver, 12, during Suburban Temple-Kol Ami’s Sunday morning tefillah service. CJN Photo | Alyssa Schmitt
Suburban Temple listens, adjusts to needs of deaf child as bar mitzvah approaches
ALYSSA SCHMITT | STAFF REPORTER
Cleveland Jewish News
[email protected]
Feb 8, 2018
The phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” resonates with Suburban Temple-Kol Ami members Laurie and Rich Silver, who joined the congregation after their youngest son, Eli, was born.
Eli, now 12, is deaf and has trouble walking – but neither keeps him from being active and participating at the Beachwood temple. He uses a reverse walker to move around, and as his bar mitzvah approaches, Suburban Temple leadership has made adjustments to assist him in learning his prayers.
“(Eli) is their first deaf kid in Sunday school, so they had to rewrite how they were going to do this, but it didn’t feel that way to them, so it didn’t feel that way to us,” said Laurie Silver, adding she’s heard from other parents of deaf children who say not every organization handles such a situation as easily as Suburban Temple did for her son.
“If you have a community who is resistant to welcoming everyone, I think, what’s the point of having that community?” she said. “I think it’s really important to have a congregation that says, ‘We’re going to help you.’”
As Eli comes close to his bar mitzvah in April, Rabbi Allison Vann and Rabbi Shana Nyer changed the way prayers are typically taught to accommodate Eli’s bar mitzvah. Some of those changes, though, were already in motion.
“With High Holy Days, you don’t always know who’s in your community,” said Nyer, the director of lifelong learning at the temple. “We started with just having (sign-language) interpretation at High Holy Day services for children’s services, and for the last two years, we have had (sign-language) interpretation for all High Holy Day services, children and adults.”
About three years ago, the Silvers approached Vann and Nyer about beginning the planning process for the bar mitzvah. Laurie Silver was originally hesitant about Eli having his bar mitzvah, but she could see how comfortable the rabbis were with the idea.
“Because (the temple) made it so easy in the past, I think it was pretty seamless,” Silver said. “He was going to be 13, we have to get ready for his bar mitzvah. He couldn’t just get a Hebrew teacher, he needed someone who understands his language.”
Karen Schiller, an interpreter at Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center, has been interpreting for Eli for nearly four years at the temple’s religious school. Silver said she knew an interpreter had to be present from day one of planning the bar mitzvah and Schiller was the obvious choice.
“Karen had the best understanding of how to interpret the prayers so they made sense both Jewishly and in sign language,” Nyer said. “Because she is Jewish, she understood what the prayers mean and was able to put the appropriate sign with them.”
The prayers Eli will read have to be translated from Hebrew to English and then again to American Sign Language for Eli to understand, Schiller said. Yet, the translation from English to sign language doesn’t always agree with what the prayer means.
“If you just read the Shema, it’s our best example. It begins with ‘Hear O Israel,’” said Schiller, who belongs to The Temple-Tifereth Israel in Beachwood. “For Eli to sign the sign for ‘hear’ is just culturally inappropriate because it’s not just about hearing, it’s about paying attention to the message. So, even just the prayers as they are translated into English, for him to read that and sign the signs will not actually circle back to the actual meaning of the prayer.”
Much of the ceremony will be original, with Eli carrying a lighter version of the Torah and a prayer book made for him. Schiller, who created the prayer book, said she took the prayers and determined the proper signs, after which she cut out instructions on how to sign a word and glued it with the prayer. Once she was finished, she scanned the pages, and each page was formatted and compiled into a binder.
“I think it took a team because Eli’s parents had the best understanding of where he is academically, we had an understanding of his hopes and dreams and what we wanted to accomplish in the service, and Karen had the best understanding of how to interpret the prayers so they made sense both Jewishly and in sign language,” Nyer said.
Being accessible to all congregants carries over into Suburban Temple’s Our Tent program, which is open to congregants from kindergarten to seniors. It consists of a range of classes, one of them dedicated to teaching signs for prayers with Schiller and Vann.
When Schiller began teaching the class, she also would come in to interpret for the Sunday morning tefillah service for Eli, which is when Nyer started seeing others sign with Schiller.
“The incredible thing was – and they still do it to this day – we intentionally taught the Shema so that there was one prayer that everybody knew,” Nyer said. “I think it has given Eli a level of comfort that everyone is doing it. It’s not something that makes him different anymore, it’s something that makes him part of the group.”
Being part of the group has given Eli more confidence when signing during services.
“All those years I was in Hebrew school here, and even when we had started bar mitzvah tutoring, I would come for High Holy Days and (say to Eli), ‘These are the prayers we’re learning, let sign this together,’” Schiller said. “He was still hesitant to do it, but as soon as we started Our Tent, as soon as we taught the Shema, he has been engaged ever since, signing every prayer. Everyone came to his world and he feels it. The bridge has been built.”
