The Torah said it best: “Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind.” That mitzvah from Leviticus typifies the noblest of Jewish ethics, but in practice it has not always been stringently observed.
As demonstrated in our cover story on special needs education, however, the Jewish community is working hard to bring every Jewish child into the fold. All across the Bay Area, synagogues and key social services agencies have adopted the operative phrase: No child left behind.
Children with special needs — i.e., those living with physical, mental or emotional disabilities — present challenges to Jewish educators. Without proper training, teachers may lack the skills to help these children learn. Without specially equipped facilities, important tools may be lacking.
That’s why we applaud organizations like Chabad’s Friendship Circle in the North Peninsula, the Center for Jewish Living and Learning in the East Bay and the Bureau of Jewish Education in San Francisco. Those, and others, have done the prep work, found the funding and recruited good people to help special needs kids get the Jewish education we owe them.
Not long ago, special needs children were essentially cast aside, with few options for accessing Jewish life outside their own homes. Parents felt intense frustration and sorrow. Clearly the tide is turning, at least locally.
But let’s not get carried away patting ourselves on the back. While the programs cited in our story truly merit admiration, we need to do more. The Bay Area covers a lot of real estate, with the Jewish population spread far and wide. Parents should not have to drive many miles to give their special needs kids a Jewish education.
Thus we hope existing programs, and the people who run them, will expand their reach. We hope more synagogues will learn from San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El and Burlingame’s Peninsula Temple Sholom, and offer similar opportunities to the special needs kids among them.
Would that prove expensive? No doubt. But if there’s one refrain most often heard in the Jewish world here and elsewhere, it’s that education is the top priority. Here’s a chance to prove we mean it.
Not only do special needs children benefit from these efforts — its volunteers do, too. So do mainstream Jewish kids, who learn from our example and from their peers. So do the Jewish people as a whole, as we demonstrate that every Jewish life has value and purpose.
We have begun removing the stumbling blocks. Now, let us make the path even smoother.