Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler, MAEd., LPC (she/her/hers) serves as a psychotherapist in private practice in the Chicago area. She was ordained at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (LA, 2006), having also earned a master's degree in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2002 and subsequently a graduate degree in counseling psychology from Adler University in 2022. She draws strength from Jewish texts and tradition, existential psychology, and - often most significantly - her lived experience navigating disability, health, and healing for the last 20 years.
July is Disability Pride Month. I’ve been living with disabilities for more than 20 years, but I’m just beginning to imagine being proud of my disability.
Throughout the Torah, we are instructed to move through the world with an extraordinary degree of mindfulness to the experience of others; we, too, were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt. We, as Jews, are implored by the divine to notice that which others might not observe and to advocate for one another because we know what it is to be somehow exceptional.
This morning I received a text message from my Aunt Linda saying, “I am doing well… love being home after three weeks in the hospital and rehab.” I almost replied, as if on rabbi auto-pilot, “I’ve been praying for your recovery” but instead wrote, “I’ve been
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The Union for Reform Judaism leads the largest and most diverse Jewish movement in North America.