At 20 months old, David Unterman was stricken by polio. It was the beginning of a childhood riddled with prejudice, ridicule and isolation.
“I wore braces on my legs and kids called me names like `limpy.’ They would hit me and back away so I couldn’t run after them to hit back,” he said.
In the eighth grade, Unterman and 39 other disabled students from all over Brooklyn shared the same school bus, classroom and teacher. “We were herded into one class. We had to bring our own lunch and eat it in the classroom during recess.
“I felt like a freak and I was treated like a freak,” Unterman recalled.
Instead of being bitter, Unterman, who went on to become a cantor, uses his painful boyhood experiences to teach children the sensitivity he was rarely shown.
As a speaker for “I’m Somebody Too,” he regularly visits Bay Area Jewish day schools and synagogues to discuss issues surrounding disability. The project is coordinated by the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
“Now I have a chance to educate people how you treat somebody who has a disability,” said the 68-year-old cantor emeritus at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills “The main thing is people with disabilities want to be treated like human beings.”
Pnina Tobin, director of “I’m Somebody Too,” has created age-appropriate, Jewish-themed curricula for second- through seventh-graders.
The program involves four one-hour visits. Tobin leads the introductory session and the remaining three are show-and-tell engagements featuring Jewish speakers from a pool of about 18, who talk about living with such disabilities as Down syndrome, blindness, deafness, multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy.
Tobin’s discussion is designed to promote awareness of how people with disabilities are often excluded or ignored. “I talk about what it means to be different,” she said. “Everybody can relate to being left out of a clique or not being good at baseball and being the last picked on the team.
“We talk to them about kavod — to show respect to all people. We’re using Jewish values that they are already studying in Jewish day school. And they are meeting Jewish role models.”
When Unterman delivers his presentation, he refers to the holiness code from the Book of Leviticus, telling groups, “Don’t put a stumbling block in front of the blind and don’t curse the deaf. Don’t take advantage of somebody’s weakness.”
Unterman has post-polio fatigue syndrome, which, he said, means only 10 percent of his leg and arm muscles “actually work.” He shows students how he gets around on a scooter and explains how his van is adapted with hand controls.
“I tell them that in spite of my disability, I’ve been able to have a career,” he said. “I tell them that things people take for granted, like getting in and out of bed and using the bathroom, are not that easy for me. The point is to get them to really appreciate what they have.”
Unterman and the other speakers welcome questions, no matter how personal. Often, curious children are taught that it is rude to ask a person with motion impairment a question such as, “Why are you in a wheelchair?” or ask a blind person, “What’s that cane for?”
However, Unterman tells them “It’s OK to ask.
“A lot of times people will look at me and when they catch my eye, they turn away. At cocktail parties, it’s like being invisible.”
Tobin said the program addresses “awkwardness. We make it possible to ask any kind of question.”
Another speaker, Beth Berenson, who has been legally blind since birth, finds the program rewarding. “It’s been a great marriage for me. It was important for me to work with children in a Jewish context.”
Berenson, a sales coordinator at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel, wants to promote awareness within the Jewish community that there are Jews with disabilities.
“If I can stop a kid from teasing another kid who is just a little different, then I’ve done a great job,” she said.
Berenson had her own brush with feeling like an outsider when she belonged to a synagogue that had no adaptive equipment. Then she found Congregation B’nai Emunah in San Francisco, which proved to be a “more comfortable and welcoming community,” she said.
However, Berenson, 40, who shows students her large-print prayerbook during her presentation, has run into stumbling blocks trying to prepare for her adult bat mitzvah. She couldn’t find Hebrew type large enough to study on her own and she had limited funds to work with a private tutor. So her ceremony is on hold.
Following the presentations, younger students are encouraged to write letters to the speakers.
One wrote to Unterman, “I can’t believe that you had to have 10 whole operations! Oh, and I am very sorry a lot of people made fun of you, even the taxi person just because you have a physical disability!”
For the older children, director Tobin said the idea is not simply to raise consciousness. “We focus on being an advocate. How to make our Jewish community more accessible. That means more than just a ramp.”