Writer: Kenneth Rothschild
JDCC
Born in a snowstorm, the second night of Hanukah and raised in Chicago, Illinois, this month’s featured installment on the Jewish Deaf Lawyers who were sworn in to practice before the United State Supreme Court is about Rachel Arfa.
Her hearing loss was diagnosed at 18 months of age of unknown origin. Rachel has a fluctuating, profound loss and is profoundly deaf. She now wears bilateral cochlear implants.
Rachel graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Culture, and then obtained her Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Wisconsin School of Law, with a Juris Doctorate.
Her thoughts about going to law school were for the following reasons: first, as a deaf person, she learned early on how to advocate for herself, as she wanted to be treated equally and that she would have to speak up for herself. As Rachel developed these skills, she realized she wanted to be able to use these self-advocacy skills to advocate for others. She was not always confident that law school would be the right fit for her and decided to get some work experience. After college, she moved to Washington, D.C. and worked on Capitol Hill on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for Senator and Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont. She loved the fast pace, high profile work of being on Capitol Hill. In order to open up more opportunities for myself, Rachel knew she needed to obtain an advanced degree. She then evaluated her work experience up to that point and realized that her work experience had been in working for lawyers; this gave her the confidence that she had a strong understanding of what attorneys do, and that she was capable of doing the work. Since becoming a lawyer, her work has focused on representing the low income, vulnerable clients at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, and in representing people with disabilities who experience discrimination, at Equip for Equality. Currently, she does disability rights work at Equip for Equality, Illinois’ protection and advocacy agency, which represents people with disabilities in Illinois. Rachel’s work focuses on employment discrimination cases and civil rights violations. She has been working as an attorney for nine years!
She grew up attending a reconstructionist synagogue, and had a bat mitzvah. Her favorite holiday, for obvious reasons, is Hanukkah and how the holiday brings families together to celebrate. The story of the Hanukkah menorah burning for eight days is a story of perseverance.
Some interesting tidbits about Rachel and her family:
At her bat mitzvah in 1990, real time captioning was projected on the wall, a form of access well ahead of its time! Her family wanted to make sure that she as well as other attendees who are deaf and hard of hearing could understand what was being said at her bat mitzvah.
Her father’s side immigrated from Pultusk, Poland, and her paternal grandmother from Latvia. Her grandfather, Sol Arfa, had a dream of coming to America at 12 years old as he recognized the great opportunities that were available in the United States, and earned his boat ticket to the U.S. by doing odd jobs including selling extra flour from his father’s bakery. He embarked on the boat, and only had enough money to reach Havana, Cuba, and once he arrived, he opened up a surplus store where after six months, he earned enough money to reach the United States. Unfortunately, Rachel’s great-grand parents did not want to come to America because they said, “the streets of America are not kosher.” They were murdered during the Holocaust.
Sol Arfa later settled in Benton Harbor, Michigan and opened a bakery. Her father, Sid Arfa, settled in the Chicago area and worked as a trader at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Her mother, Nancy Bellew’s family immigrated from Lithuania and Russia. Rachel’s maternal grandmother was one of thirteen children born, in Portland, and her great-grandmother had twins at the age of 52, in the year 1908!
Nancy had an successful career working in leadership roles in City of Chicago government, and one of her accomplishments was working to pass the visual fire alarm law in Chicago requiring all hotels to install visual fire alarms in 1986. Rachel’s brother, Michael works at Abt Appliances and Electronics, an upscale electronics store in the Northern suburbs where he teaches computer training classes and is an expert on answering computer questions.
