Related Blog Posts on Living with Disabilities

Supporting Colleagues with Disabilities

Stephanie Gertz
Each February, we observe Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month. Up to 25% of people live with a disability, which means many of your colleagues have visible or invisible disabilities.

Thriving Like Isaac

Rabbi Deborah Goldmann
Living most of my life in a hearing world – as a not-fully hearing person – has been my “normal” living experience. I don’t know any other way of being. I suspect there is a different way of living because everyone around me tells me so – they imagine that my life must be so hard, how I must cope (what are my choices??). At one point, I tried to connect to the Deaf community. Between not being fluent in American Sign Language and being able to live in the hearing world, I didn’t feel welcome – although I learned a lot about myself as a less-than-fully-hearing person in a hearing world. A few years ago, when I went from hard of hearing to deaf, I decided that I would be just that, “deaf” without the capital “D”. I am now a deaf person living in a hearing world (as opposed to a Deaf person with connections to the Deaf community).

Reflections of Disability: Making Visible the Invisible and Raising Up Difference

Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler
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.