Tribune-Review reported that Gregory Pollock who is profoundly Deaf is set to recite the Hebrew readings for his bar mitzvah. Pollock of McCandless, PA who is a seventh-grader at Carson Middle School turned 13 on February 19th. His father, Sanford Pollock says that Gregory received a lot of special services, privately and through the North Allegheny School District. “He does phenomenally well,” Sanford Pollock said. “He has very, very good speech, and we’ve done a lot of Hebrew tutoring.” Sanford Pollock said hearing Jews have an advantage that a person with deafness would not have.

“If you go to a synagogue and you hear the same prayers over and over again, you just know them… (For Gregory) it’s all work. And he’s done it himself.” Gregory’s synagogue, Tree of Life in Squirrel Hill, has provided a sign language interpreter for his Hebrew class, and, through the years, he has attended summer camps for deaf children at Camp Ramah as part cf the Kesher Program for deaf children.) “All the staff are signing. All the counselors are deaf. It’s beautiful because it’s like a family,” Sanford said. Many of Gregory’s interpreter friends from the camp, some from as far away as Baltimore, are coming into Pittsburgh for Gregory’s service, he adds, finding interpreters who can sign from Hebrew is difficult. “There’s nobody really in this town who can interpret from Hebrew to American Sign Language.” Gregory explains that reading from the Torah was not as hard for him as people think. “The reading part is not the hard part. It’s kind of hard for me to hear and everything, but I learned it somehow. It took me a while, but I have some good interpreters,” he said. “I’m pretty proud. I’m really happy that I can get to be here this day.”