Religion

Remaking Jewish education for kids with special needs

Posted

One day not long ago, Merokean Susan Saban was sitting in a holiday service at Temple Beth Am of Merrick-Bellmore. A mother of a child with developmental disabilities kept getting up to attend to the boy, who was disrupting the service.

Saban’s heart sunk. She knows well the challenges faced by children with disabilities and their families. She is the assistant director of pupil personnel services in the Herricks School District, and is charged with providing services for children with special needs.

After the holiday service, Saban started to think about to what extent children with disabilities are included in temple life. In the Herricks district, she said, “I’ve had parents of many faiths say that it’s difficult for their whole family to be part of the religious community because it’s difficult for them to participate.”

Religious services require listening and reading skills that children with special needs often do not have, as do religious education classes.

Saban, who grew up in Searingtown and attended the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn as a child, started looking into how Temple Beth Am teaches the fundamentals of Judaism to children with disabilities. That inquiry led to a proposal for an entirely new religious education program geared toward children with special needs, which will encompass every temple and synagogue in the Bellmore-Merrick area.

Temple connections
Rabbi Ronald Brown, Temple Beth Am’s spiritual leader, said he has long offered individualized religious instruction for children with special needs. Before he was approached with the question of how they could be taught, he said, he had not deeply considered the question. In the past, he prepared children for their bar or bat mitzvah ceremonies. Typically, he started their instruction when they turned 12, after he was approached by their parents.

Classes leading to a child’s bar or bat mitzvah, though, usually begin in third grade and can start as early as pre-school.

Page 1 / 3