Today marks the first day of February and the official start
of the sixth annual Jewish Disability Awareness Month. JDAM is
designed to be a unified initiative to raise disability
awareness and support efforts to foster inclusion in Jewish communities
worldwide.
But I have to be honest. I struggle
with the concept of disability awareness. When we look around us we can readily
notice that people come in all shapes and sizes, each one of us different than
every other. I really do not think that we need people to become more aware of
disabilities, but rather to learn how to be genuinely accepting of one
another's differences. And I am not alone. I recently read a great post by
self-advocate Emily Ladau in which she writes, “My deepest passion as a disability
rights advocate lies not in the act of “raising awareness,” but in promoting
acceptance…Dr. (Martin Luther) King did not want to achieve “black awareness,”
and I can guarantee that if anyone tried to campaign for black awareness, there
would be more (rightfully) angry and offended people than you’ve ever seen in
your life. Why doesn’t the same logic apply for disabilities? Just as being
black is part of a person’s identity, so too is disability a part of a person’s
identity.”
And yet, we have entered Jewish
Disability Awareness Month. For me, the key distinction is that we work
to raise awareness that, yes, there are Jews with disabilities; but more
importantly, many of those Jews with disabilities are not yet meaningfully included
in synagogue and Jewish organizational life. The value of this month lies in raising
the awareness that there is so much more we can and should be
doing to include those with disabilities in our Jewish communities. (The
JDAM tagline: from awareness to inclusion, supports this notion.)
At the bottom of this post you will
find a place to link up your blogs. This will allow readers to find one
another’s posts, spread the word about their own and generally serve as an
online gathering space for JDAM blogging efforts. Feel free to come back often and link each of your #JDAMblogs
posts.
Tag every post with #JDAMblogs. The
purpose of the hashtag is to help us to find and share one another’s posts via
social media. I encourage you to tweet
at me and tag me on
Facebook so that I can share your content. (#JDAM14 is the other hashtag
being used for general JDAM information, resources and events.)
As a Jewish Special Educator, I
realize that the vague nature of “join me in blogging” might be overwhelming
for some. While you are free to blog on anything that relates to
disability, accessibility, inclusion, etc., some may appreciate prompts to get their
creative juices flowing:
- Week 1: Personal/professional stories or experiences of Jewish disability inclusion
- Week 2: The value of inclusion, the meaning of inclusion, the importance of inclusion
- Week 3: Barriers to inclusion, challenges to overcome, frustrations, goals yet to be met
- Week 4: Success stories
And if writing is “not your thing”,
share a photo or artwork or a quote or a video. Honor your own expressive style
and do what is most comfortable and most accessible for you. Don’t shy away from sharing your voice!
Together our voices will be loud and we can move the
Jewish world from awareness to inclusion!
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