By Lisa Keys · June 13, 2012
JTA
NEW YORK (JTA) — It was an ancient sentence — a fragment, really — that changed everything for Alexis Kashar.
An attorney specializing in special education and disability rights, she has successfully argued high-profile litigations, including one against Los Angeles County for not making highway call boxes accessible to people with disabilities.
Yet despite her focus on the rights of others, Kashar, 45, has repeatedly encountered a roadblock in her own life: access to the Jewish community. As a deaf Jew, she could not understand religious services or participate in organized Jewish life.
Photo: Alexis Kashar has dedicated herself to activism and pro bono work on behalf of the deaf since moving to suburban New York in 2004. (Courtesy of Alexis Kashar)
An unlikely call to action occurred three years ago as the eldest of her three children — none of whom is deaf or hard of hearing — was about to become a bat mitzvah. Her child
