A STANDING OVATION

The Arnold family — Philip, Sam, Wendy,
Shoshana and Adam — celebrates.

A Special
I
Day

Jewish families with
special-needs teens
“make it work” for their
bar or bat mitzvah.

MAAYAN JAFFE JNS.ORG

t was a day filled with light, joy and hope,” says Adina
Levitan, recalling the bar mitzvah of one of her favor-
ite Camp HASC students. The New York-based camp,
which each summer serves more than 300 children and
adults with intellectual and physical disabilities, provides
13-year-old boys with summer birthdays the chance to
study for and celebrate their bar mitzvahs on premises.
Levitan worked with many of the students, including a
young man with Down syndrome whose name she chose
not to disclose. She says the man’s counselors helped him
prepare for the big day by teaching him to put on tefillin
and working with him to say several Jewish blessings.
“It was a very special day. His simchah was all of our
simchah,” Levitan says.
Levitan’s experience is becoming more common, as
the Jewish community strives to welcome, include and
serve anyone regardless of race, affiliation, ability or dis-
ability. Yet a recent poll by RespectAbility and Jerusalem
University found that, time and again, the Jewish com-
munity still shuts its doors to people with disabilities.
According to the study, people with disabilities are dra-
matically under-represented within the ranks of engaged

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Like most little sisters, Shoshana Arnold loves noth-
ing more than to keep up with — or beat — her older
brothers Sam and Adam at anything they are doing.
Which is why it’s really not surprising that she cel-
ebrated her bat mitzvah last year. Shoshana, the daugh-
ter of Wendy and Philip Arnold of Farmington Hills, has
hypotonic cerebral palsy, which means she has low
muscle tone, but it also affects her speech and ability to
process information.
When her oldest brother, Sam, had his bar mitzvah,
tutor Linda Jacobson told Wendy, “Let me know when
Adam and Shoshana are ready.”
“I was shocked,” Wendy says. “I didn’t know if that
was an option and that Linda was able to do it.”
It turned out that Jacobson had worked with other
special-needs kids in the past. Because Shoshana and
Adam are only 10½ months apart in age, their parents
asked Adam if it was OK to share his bar mitzvah with
his sister.
“He thought it would be a good idea,” Wendy says.
Shoshana and Adam met with Jacobson for a half
hour each, once a week, for 13 months.
They also studied with Assistant Cantor Leonard
Gutman at their synagogue, Congregation Shaarey Zedek
in Southfield, where they both attend religious school.
“Philip and I made the decision years ago that we
wanted Shoshana to be able to learn whatever the boys
were learning,” Wendy says. “I feel like the people at
Shaarey Zedek think of my kids as their kids. They’ve
grown up there. It’s really one of the only places where
I’ll let go of Shoshana’s hand because I know she’s in a
safe space.
“Plus,” she says, “Cantor Gutman has a relationship
with my kids that is beyond anything I could ever hope
for. He will come up to Shoshana and give her hugs. He
taught her Ashrei.”
On the big day, Wendy says, Shoshana read her whole
maftir, in trope, and five lines of haftarah with trope. She
also led Ashrei by herself, before reciting the closing
prayers with her brother.
And she received a standing ovation. *
—Lynne Konstantin