Put on phylacteries in sign language. With Rabbi Yehoshua Soudakoff (Photo: Claire Cassidy)
Yitzhak Tessler
Published: 05.11.18, 15:02 /
Israel Opinion
Ynet
Rabbi Yehoshua (27) and Heftziba (21) Soudakoff, on a mission from 2018
Rabbi Soudakoff and his wife are responsible for organizing Jewish activities for the deaf and hard of hearing from all over the country, while making them available to the Israeli sign language. “On the last Sukkot, we built a mobile hut, and we drove from Metula to Eilat,” they say. “Everywhere we went we made meeting points for deaf and hearing-impaired people, and during the week of the holiday we passed through about 50 cities, and we gave hundreds of deaf Jews the mitzvah of the holiday.
To be a deaf Chabad emissary
“When we arrived in the city of Rehovot, we stopped at a traffic light and spoke with my wife in sign language, and it turned out that there was a deaf woman on the street who saw us, and from the ‘talk’ between me and my wife she understood that we were the deaf messengers and asked us to stop.
Of course we stopped, and she was so excited to discover that special emissaries were concerned about the special needs of this population.
“It is important to understand that the deaf are often not interested in Judaism because of the mistaken notion that it is only a matter of hearing, and therefore our mission empowers them and brings them role models in observing the Torah and mitzvot, precisely because we are deaf like them.”
