HOLY KID IN THE HOLY LAND - THE SCREENINGS

I’ve just returned from 17 days in Israel, screening Praying with Lior in four cities. Even though we’ve had hundreds of successful screenings here in the US, I was nervous. First of all, the phenomenon of “hippie Jews” – the kind of liberal, egalitarian, musical community Lior belongs to – isn’t well known in Israel. Second, for financial reasons, the movie wasn’t subtitled in Hebrew.

The great news is that Israelis do “get” Lior, and he plays as charmingly to an Israeli audience as to an American one. After each screening, countless audience members expressed gratitude for the experience of “getting to know” Lior. And while there were plenty of questions about the Reconstructionist community featured in the film, there was a sensitivity to disability, its challenges and its gifts, perhaps deeper than what I’ve experienced in the United States.

Beth Steinberg, an American woman who moved to Israel two years ago with her family, including her son Akiva who has Down syndrome, concurred with my sense that Israel has a greater level of tolerance, and more services, when it comes to children with disabilities. (Except in the summer. Beth and Miriam Avraham created Camp Shutaf, www.campshutaf.org to provide a summer camp experience for children with disabilities. Based on the Ramah model, the program expanded from 10 children its first summer to 40 this past summer, and 25% of the campers are neurotypical. Shutaf is open to children of all abilities, and all manner of religious observance. The Jerusalem screening was a fundraiser for Shutaf, with a largely American audience.)

The lack of Hebrew subtitles was an issue. At the Haifa International Film Festival, there was silence where I’m used to hearing laughs and gasps. The questions following the screening made it clear they understood the film, but the audience had to work hard to take in the English, and were probably afraid a laugh would obscure the next line.

In Ra’anana, we had a sold-out screening. The audience, largely South African, generously offered up every laugh. The screening was sponsored by Beit Issie Shapiro, (http://www.beitissie.org.il/eng) an extraordinary rehabilitation center/ therapeutic daycare/ professional research and training center for people with disabilities. I was profoundly impressed by the state-of-the-art technology, (you must, at least once in your life, see a Snoezelen Room), the dental clinic, recreation centers, and counseling programs – all housed at Beit Issie, serving several thousand people, and presided over by the indomitable Naomi Stuchiner.

A truly mixed audience, Israeli and American, screened the film at the Tel Aviv Cinemateque. An excellent Q &A session transcended questions about the film itself, and became a sort of Israeli-American dialogue about notions of community, prayer, and inclusion. This chemistry was due, in no small part, to the screening’s sponsor, Beit Tefila Israeli, a liberal egalitarian synagogue in Tel Aviv with ties to New York’s Bnai Jeshurun and Buenos Aires’ Beit El. Check out http://www.btfila.org/en/onepage.htm.

In Israel I met countless disability activists, parents of children with disabilities, and organization leaders who are trailblazing. More about them in the next installment.

LIOR DOES DALLAS

9-10-08
I never thought I’d have enough to say to blog. But I never counted on the journey of the past five years with Praying with Lior.

I made this film because I fell in love with Lior, his family, and his community. And along the way I learned about disability, about inclusion, and the extent of our society’s loss due to widespread exclusion of people with disabilities. I like to say that I’ve become an “accidental activist,” and I truly feel privileged to have been the medium through which Lior’s story got told. But what’s been extraordinary, and the reason for this blog, is seeing the incredible efforts that individuals and communities across the country are making on behalf of inclusion. This blog is an attempt to share some of the amazing things I’ve seen, to salute these efforts and to offer a model to be duplicated.

I’ve just come back from Dallas, which is exploding on behalf of special needs. It’s a story I’ve seen many times before, but I’ve never seen it happen so fast.

In this case, a family who were 5th generation synagogue members were told that their son, who has Asperger’s syndrome, couldn’t have a Bar Mitzvah. Louis Zweig, David’s father was appalled. But he never considered looking for a new shul, because “I’d been in those same seats on the high holidays since I was born.”

When Louis decided to make sure David had a Bar Mitzvah, he also kindled the spark that led to the event I keynoted. The event was the kickoff of the Special Needs Initiative, which marks a city-wide effort on behalf of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas to respond to the needs of people with disabilities.

The Zweigs co-founded a foundation called the Gladys Golman/Faye Dallen Education fund, that provided the training of 200 religious, day and preschool school teachers to work with children with disabilities. At the event, federation announced, and introduced, their first part-time special needs coordinator, Wendy Narzem. The Gladys Golman/Faye Dallen Education Fund is also funding a federation library collection of books on special needs.

The kickoff welcomed 600 people in two movie theaters. Under the tireless effort of the Jewish Education Department’s Assistant Director Melissa Bernstein, the Federation partnered with local agencies such as, Jewish Family Service, the JCC, residential facilities for adults with special needs, schools, congregations an many others. Materials were shared, funds were raised, and a huge, multi-faith, mutli-generational audience left the event charged and encouraged. After having the experience of “attending” Lior’s Bar Mitzvah, Dallas has a shared vision, which they will adapt and shape in their own image, of what is possible.