Bloom Celebrates Bar Mitzvah In Maryland

The ‘Coming of Age’ magazine reported on Jason Bloom’s bar mitzvah at Temple Oheb Shalom in Park Heights last March. Born profoundly Deaf, “he was able to embrace both his Jewish and deaf identities with two recitations of the prayer,” writer Melinda Greenberg writes, “Jason -J.B. to his friends – first recited the Shema in Hebrew. Then, in a show of support and deference for the deaf friends who gathered around him on his special day, he signed, ‘Pay Attention O Israel’. Temple Oheb Shalom is a reform congregation. “When he’s an adult, ” says Sheryl Cooper, director of Towson University’s sign language program, “I think Jason will look back on this day and realize how important it was for his family and the deaf community. A lot of deaf children have token services for their bar mitzvahs. Jason had a real bar mitzvah…”