Jewish Center Puts the Disabled on a Journey Toward Inclusion

With the flick of a switch, 20-year-old Refaya Lowinger pulls her motorized wheelchair to a stop. The slight young woman, one of several teachers’ aides with the Etta Israel Center on L.A.’s Westside, is taking a break from her Sunday school lessons to talk about the spiritual needs of young people with disabilities.

Taking the chair next to her is 15-year-old Rivka, “almost the oldest” of nine children being raised in an Orthodox Jewish home.

Together, the two are teacher and student and the topic of the moment is Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, which begins at sundown tonight.

Words do not always come easily for Rivka, who is mildly retarded. She looks to Refaya for help in articulating the lessons she has already learned.

She knows that in class they light the menorah, play with the dreidel and eat latkes.

And she knows that because of the Etta Israel program, she has learned more about Hanukkah so that she can participate in her family’s celebration at home.

How does that make her feel?

“Happy,” Rivka said, flashing a smile filled with exuberance and orthodontic hardware. The smile is contagious, and like a proud parent, Refaya smiles back.

The two young women are both beneficiaries of the Etta Israel Center, a 4-year-old program designed to bring Jewish religious education to young people with developmental, emotional and educational disabilities. It is one of the few programs in the Southland religious community that tries to ensure that a fourth “R” is included in the educational diet of physically and mentally challenged young people.

For the students, programs such as Etta Israel’s offer a chance for full inclusion, for participation in their family’s religious life.

For the teachers, some of whom also face physical challenges, it is a chance to share their cultural heritage with an enthusiastic, and sometimes neglected, audience.

“It’s very challenging to watch them learn and blossom,” said Refaya, who contracted polio when she was 14 months old and spends much of her time in a wheelchair. “They want to learn. They love it.”

Sunday morning classes in the Etta Israel program are held on the campus of the Maimonides Academy, a Jewish day school in the shadow of the Hotel Sofitel. The center also offers programs for students with learning disabilities and for Jewish Iranian families.

On Sunday, it was party time for the Etta Israel youth--a pre-Hanukkah fete where the young people put into practice lessons learned over the past several weeks.

It was damp outside, but indoors the air was crisp and alive with song. Rivka and her classmates sang about Hanukkah and the the candles on the menorah:

”. . . One for each night, they shed a sweet light to remind us of days long ago. . . .”

In some respects, Hanukkah is one of the easier Jewish holidays to teach--with its emphasis on action and activity.

Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC (Hanukkah means “dedication”). It is also a celebration of liberation, commemorating the victory of Judas Maccabaeus and his small army over the Syrians who had taken over the temple and commanded the Jews to worship Greek idols.

After their surprising victory, the triumphant Maccabees needed to reclaim and cleanse the temple but had only enough consecrated oil for one day of light. But, according to legend, the flame burned for eight days, leading to the current practice of lighting one candle on the menorah on each of Hanukkah’s eight nights.

Several instructors involved in religious education for people with disabilities noted that in some cases, the theology behind the symbols may be lost on the youths.

“They may light the menorah, but they don’t always know why,” said Ari Stark, who heads Etta Israel’s program for students with developmental disabilities.

Said Refaya: “We teach them not [so they can] be tested, but to have them involved in our life on whatever level they can be.”

Michael B. Held, Etta Israel’s executive director, said it is one of the few centers in the country specifically devoted to Jewish youth, 10 and older, with special needs.

For 20 years Veronica Gray directed a similar program for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The program at a Brentwood parish was successful but had the unintended drawback of leaving participants estranged from their home parishes, said Gray, who heads the ministry for people with disabilities for the archdiocese.

Today, the emphasis is on attempting to equip catechists in individual parishes to work with students with special needs, Gray said.

These are just two of the efforts established to address the spiritual needs of Southern California’s young people with disabilities. (There are about 4,500 young people with some form of mental retardation in the Los Angeles Unified School District alone.)

Held lamented that not enough is done communitywide to further the religious education of these youths. Still, he acknowledges, over the years there has been improvement.

Historically, Held said, the attitude among many about providing religious education for youths with disabilities was “Why bother?”

But over the past 20 years, he said, “There’s been an evolving awareness in the larger society in understanding how people with mental retardation are capable of learning.”

Even if the youths don’t understand every theological nuance, they still have a right to know God, said those who minister to young people with disabilities.

“They need to learn math and science,” said Rosaria Marin, former chair of the state’s Council on Developmental Disabilities, whose son Eric, 12, was born with Down’s syndrome. “But you can’t rob them of the opportunity to understand God and what he means.”

Though there can be challenges in communication and understanding, instructors in this type of religious education said they find their students to be eager to learn.

Rarely, they said, do they find students who reject the notion of God based on their own physical challenges.

“They find God as someone who accepts them for who they are and loves them for who they are,” Gray said.

“In God’s eyes, [they’re] not a mistake. That’s what they really want to hear.”

When problems do arise, she said, it is often during the teenage years when young people of all stripes grapple with issues of identity and self-worth.

She recalled in particular one 16-year-old with Down’s syndrome who, when going through an especially bad period, declared that his mother “should have just had an abortion” when she was pregnant with him.

In situations like that, she said, the students are reminded of their family’s love, and beyond that, of God’s love.

The key in working with the disabled, Gray said, is to start with ideas they can readily understand.

“We establish the concept that everyone is part of God’s family because everyone understands family,” she said.

“Basically, what we work toward is that God created the world and all the people in the world, but God is someone you can’t see.”

Shlomie, a 19-year-old student at Etta Israel, has his own notions of the Supreme Being.

“God is good to us,” he said unequivocally. “He created trees so we could grow fruits so we can eat.”

“I know God,” he added, pausing to admire an infant playing nearby. “He created the world.”