By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
There is a beautiful passage in tractate Megillah quoted in the name of Rabbi Yossi:
“For a long time I was perplexed by the verse, ‘And you shall grope at noonday as the blind gropes in the darkness.’ (Deuteronomy 28:29)
Now what difference does it make to a blind man whether it is dark of light? I didn’t find out until the following incident occurred: I was once walking on a pitch-black night when I saw a blind man walking in the road with a torch in his hand. I said to him, ‘My son, why are you carrying this torch?’
He replied, ‘As long as I have this torch in my hand, people see me and save me from the holes and the thorns and the briars.’
Some who are disabled know how to let people know that they need help; they can let themselves be seen. Other disabled people need help from loving people to put the torch in their hands so they can be seen. With that assistance we enable our community to respond with love and compassion to help a disabled person avoid the holes and thorns and the briars in life.
– Read by Rabbi Dov Gartenberg at his son Moriel’s Bar Mitzvah
For the New Year, a new experiment will bring together members of the community that have not had a chance to worship together before. Shaareii Tikvah, organized by Rabbi Dov Gartenberg with Marjorie Schnyder and Don Armstrong at Jewish Family Service, is a Rosh Hashanah service for families that have members with special needs.
“I have a severely disabled child,” said Rabbi Gartenberg, “and I know from my own personal experience the isolation and the special needs that families who have disabled children go through. Because of expectation around decorum and so forth, it was hard for him to fit in for any period of time.”
Having left his position at Congregation Beth Shalom this past summer, Rabbi Gartenberg saw an opportunity to gather families together for the first time, and he took it.
“It seemed like it would be nice experience to have a short but religiously meaningful service,” he said.
Shaarei Tikvah is open to everyone, but will be structured for disabled adults and children based on their levels of functioning, not age.
“The service is going to be appropriate for all different levels,” said Schnyder, who has been working to coordinate many of the details as well as field inquiries from attendees. The short service will be led by Rabbi Gartenberg and Cantor David Serkin-Poole of Temple B’nai Torah, with refreshments to follow.
“We’ll blow shofar, we’ll do some of the key tefillot and prayers, and then we’ll have food afterwards for people to network,” Rabbi Gartenberg said. “There’s a lot of networking where people don’t know each other.”
Because there hasn’t been programming like this in the Jewish community, he said that networking is an important aspect of the service.
“What happens when you have a special-needs child [is] you feel isolated until you meet someone who has similar types of issues,” Rabbi Gartenberg said. “There are a lot of real possibilities for friendship and fellowship when you bring people together like this.”
Though Rabbi Gartenberg said he hoped to attract unaffiliated members of the community, much of the interest has been from families who have been affiliated but felt uncomfortable bringing a disabled child to services.
“I have parents who have said to me, ‘We wanted to go, but my daughter can’t keep quiet, and the more you ask her to keep quiet the louder she gets, so we just stopped going,’” Schnyder said.
At this service, “no one’s going to get upset or judge them about their child or an adult who has special challenges,” Rabbi Gartenberg added.
Schnyder said that with members and families of Seattle Association for Jews with Disabilities – some live in the assisted-living Shalom House and others live independently – and the many enthusiastic e-mails in her inbox, at least 65 people have already committed to be at Shaarei Tikvah. Also, several professionals in the Jewish community have expressed their desire to be there.
“Response has been phenomenal,” said Schnyder. “We’re really getting a lot of interest and support.”
Rabbi Gartenberg would like to see events like this in the future. “If there’s interest in doing this around holidays and the occasional Shabbat, we’re very open to it,” he said.
Schnyder echoed those sentiments, noting that a need exists for bringing developmentally disabled people together. “We would love to be able to do more things year-round, and several of the people responding to this feel the same way,” she said.
Although the service is meant to cater to people with special needs, anyone is welcome to join. “The more people can spend time with all of the members of the Jewish community, the more they’ll feel comfortable,” Schnyder said.
Rabbi Gartenberg said he is looking forward to the service, largely because he knows what it will mean to his son.
“I know he’ll be happy because he loves to come to services of any sort,” he said.
The Shaarei Tikvah afternoon service will be held at Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 1441 16th Ave. in Seattle, Thursday, Sept. 16, 4 p.m. Interested in more information or volunteering? Please call Marjorie Schnyder at 206-861-3146.