February 8, 2008

Looking forward and giving back

Leave a Comment / Special Sections, Weddings / Sharon Schatz Rosenthal

When Richard Weiner and Judith Forman geared up for their November nuptials last year, they didn’t register at Crate & Barrel, Macy’s or Bed, Bath & Beyond.

“We’re 65 years old,” chuckled Weiner, a Philadelphia lawyer who has become bicoastal since marrying his Manhattan Beach bride. “We’re at an age when you start getting rid of stuff, not getting new stuff.”

Both already had wine goblets, linens and fine china from previous marriages — so the couple decided to do something to reflect their commitment to tikkun olam (repairing the world). They asked their guests to donate to the Judith Forman and Richard Weiner Family Fund for the Advancement of Interreligious Dialogue, which supports lectures and scholars-in-residence on interreligious issues sponsored by their respective local Philadelphia and Los Angeles American Jewish Committee (AJCommittee) chapters.

Weiner and Forman are particularly passionate about intergroup relations, and the two met on the AJCommittee’s Adenauer Exchange Program, an annual event organized by the AJCommittee and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation of Germany. The two organizations exchange lay leaders for the purpose of building bridges of understanding between the Jewish community in the United States and Germany.

The couple’s wedding plans were not as unique as one might think. The notion of repairing the world and helping others in conjunction with weddings is something that many Jewish couples are opting to include in their big day.

Sarah Dakar, owner of Under the Chuppah, a wedding and event production company in the Pico-Robertson area, often fields clients’ requests to include philanthropy in their simchas.

“By attaching some kind of charity to their wedding, I have seen it only enhance the couple’s joy by helping others,” Dakar said.

There are countless ways that couples can incorporate philanthropy into their weddings. Some sponsor a meal at a soup kitchen on their wedding date, donate leftover food to a charitable organization, donate a percentage of their cash gifts to charity, donate their floral centerpieces to a local hospital or donate money or even a wedding dress to local organizations that help brides who can’t afford their own.

For her February simcha, Jennifer Bilovsky, 30, plans to donate leftover food from the event to Global Kindness, a small family-run organization in the Pico-Robertson area that helps feed a base of 75 needy Jewish families in Los Angeles. In addition, she and her fiancÃ(c) will donate money to a local hachnosas kallah (bridal assistance), which helps less fortunate couples pay for their weddings.

“Traditionally, Jewish weddings were a way to give back to the community and to open doors to the needy,” said Bilovsky, a writer who lives in Encino. “[Making these donations] is a way that we could continue that mitzvah within the context of the modern wedding.”

Historically, there has also been a long-standing tradition of Jews helping poor Jewish couples pay for their weddings.

“It is a mitzvah to help out a needy bride and enable the wedding to occur and be a joyous affair,” said Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe Bernhard of Adat Ari El in Valley Village.

But while the act of charity is selfless, isn’t a wedding supposed to be about the bride and groom?

“Even though the focus is naturally on the couple, no wedding takes place in a vacuum but always within the context of a larger community,” Bernhard said. “Being philanthropic reminds us of that and instills within us a sense of gratitude for what we have been blessed with and our obligation to help others in need.”

Coming from two very philanthropic families, Sasha Strauss and Leerone Milstein grew up believing in the importance of helping those less fortunate. When planning their December 2006 wedding, the Los Feliz couple immediately knew they wanted to include a charitable aspect to their big day. But rather than simply asking guests to donate to a worthy cause, the couple wanted something more.

“We wanted a program where [our guests] could participate hands-on in a philanthropic cause to feel like they have already affected someone when they left,” said Strauss, the chair of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles’ marketing and communications committee and the owner of a brand consulting firm.

A few days before their wedding, the couple and about 40 of their guests spent several hours assembling food baskets at the SOVA Food Pantry in Los Angeles. Strauss, his wife and their guests were deeply affected by the experience.

“That type of direct exposure changes people,” Strauss said. “It makes you look at writing that check [for charity] in a whole new way because you envision the person whose life is changing from you writing that check.”

Preparing for one of his frequent trips back to Philly, Weiner, too, reaffirms his dedication to making a difference. He and Forman will continue to make donations to the AJC fund they created.

“We wanted to do something that was meaningful to us and reflects our commitment to the principles that AJC advocates,” said Weiner. “I feel really good about the choice we made.”

For more information, visit

Hachnosas Kallah

(310) 552-2446

Global Kindness
(310) 286-0800

http://myglobalkindness.org/

Under the Chuppah

(310) 728-6020

http://www.underthechuppah.com/

Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles

(323) 761-8800

http://www.jfsla.org/

American Jewish Committee

(310) 282-8080

http://www.ajc.org/

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Film shows Down syndrome no obstacle to prayer

Leave a Comment / United States / Rebecca Wolfson

Lior Liebling davens everywhere: in the backyard, in school and on the swing set. Some congregants at his synagogue, Mishkan Shalom of Mount Arie, Pa., call him the “little rebbe.”

“The Zohar tells stories of miracle children who were spiritual geniuses,” one synagogue member said. “Well, that’s what Lior is.”

Lior is the 13-year-old featured in the new documentary, “Praying With Lior,” which highlights the bar mitzvah of a Jewish child living with Down syndrome. The character study of this boy tells of how Lior’s community successfully integrates him into communal life — a challenge many Jewish communities face with mentally and physically disabled members.

Several Jewish institutions, including the Union for Reform Judaism, run programs to improve service to the Jewish disabled, but experts say most Jewish institutions do not do enough to meet their physical, religious and social needs.

“There are people sitting on the outside who desperately want to come in,” said Shelly Christensen, the co-chair of a Reform task force that creates “inclusion committees” for disabled Jews in synagogues, community centers and other Jewish institutions.

While the Jewish community has made progress in recent years, Christensen said, it still has a long way to go in providing disabled members with places to pray, learn and participate.

Down syndrome is of particular concern to Ashkenazim, who are predisposed to the disease; approximately one in 27 carries the gene for Down syndrome.

In “Praying With Lior,” producer-director Ilana Trachtman follows the teenager from his pre-bar mitzvah haircut to the bimah and beyond, checking back with him two years later.

Though he struggles with baseball and schoolwork, Lior is able to pray with sincerity, a feat encouraged by those close to him. Like Lior’s Reconstructionist community, the children and teachers at Lior’s Orthodox day school admire and accept him.

“There is no such thing as a disabled soul,” said Besie Katz, principal at Lior’s school, Politz Hebrew Academy.

Katz said the students at Politz accepted Lior because while they understood that he had certain limitations, he also had strengths.

“God makes every person with a different test in this world,” one of Lior’s classmates says in the film. “We don’t know what God’s doing. When God made it that Lior has Down syndrome, it also became a test to us — how we treat Lior, if we do things with Lior.”

Politz was able to accommodate Lior in part because of Orot, a special-education initiative that places children with disabilities in Philadelphia’s Jewish day schools. Orot participants typically begin in a special learning environment, and in time, they experiment with integrated classrooms.

“It is geared for the children to be successful in the mainstream environment,” said Beverly Bernstein, the program’s educational director.

Orot is modeled on a program called Keshet, which was started 26 years ago by a group of parents frustrated by the lack of Jewish opportunities for their disabled children. Now those children are adults, with some participating in Keshet’s transition program for 18- to 22-year-olds. It sets up participants with jobs if they are able to work and provides recreational programming for young adults.

Orot and Keshet’s biggest challenge, like many Jewish organizations dedicated to inclusion, is funding, organizers say. They have been helped somewhat by Americans’ growing awareness of people with disabilities, which in turn has raised the consciousness of the issue in the Jewish community.

Birthright Israel and the National Jewish Council for the Disabled, which is part of the Orthodox Union, run a free trip to Israel for disabled Jews. The council also runs summer and work programs for special-needs children and adults.

In the Reform movement, Christensen’s task force encourages synagogue leaders to include disabled members. About half the synagogues in the Minneapolis area, where Christensen lives, now have inclusion committees, she said.

And Jewish communities in Toronto, Los Angeles, Houston and elsewhere are prioritizing the issue by designating staff members to make their institutions more welcoming for people with special needs.

Rabbi Dan Grossman, who spoke on a panel that followed a screening of the film in January at the New York Jewish Film Festival, said he has worked to make his Reconstructionist synagogue, Adath Israel of Lawrenceville, N.J., welcoming by offering seeing-eye dogs, a wheelchair-accessible bimah and half a dozen reserved wheelchair spots in the pews — and not in the back.

Providing a welcoming physical environment is only half the battle, said Grossman, whose hearing impairment made it a struggle for him to become a rabbi.

“Whoever takes the lead role in the congregation needs to take the position that this is important to the identity of the community,” Grossman said of the need to accommodate special-needs members. “Moses stuttered; Isaac was blind; David was probably hyperactive.”

While the Jewish community has made progress accommodating special-needs children, as Lior’s community did for his bar mitzvah, Lior’s father, Mordechai Liebling, who is a Reconstructionist rabbi, worries that his son will face a tougher environment as he becomes an adult. Judaism places a high value on scholarliness and education, Liebling said, but it’s equally important to value people with other abilities.

“I really have a lot of hope,” he said, “that the community will take responsibility and do the right thing.”

“Praying With Lior” is scheduled to open on March 14 in Los Angeles.

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