Thursday, October 1, 2026
It looked like any Sunday-morning service at St. James Jerusalem Episcopal Church in Long Beach. The pastor, Susan Bock, dressed in white robes, read prayers to a small congregation seated before her in a lush green garden outside the chapel. Instead of the predicted rain, a yellowing sun bathed the garden.
But there was a marked difference: A woman in dark clothing stood beside Bock, waving her arms as if she were conducting a symphony. And in fact, she was — a symphony for the deaf.
Long Beach’s only Episcopal church employs a sign language interpreter once a month for those who cannot hear the prayers and songs of the service — a more popular feature in religious institutions that once paid scant heed to the deaf. The service with the interpreter is streamed and made available on Facebook for the hearing impaired who cannot attend in person.
The interpreter, Judith Rackovitch, 62, of Long Beach, works for an agency, Mill Neck Interpreting, and on other Sundays, she is busy at other churches as well as at funerals and other religious services.
Bock, soft-spoken with a ready smile, has been the pastor at the Episcopal church for the past three years. One of her goals from the beginning, she said, was to make services more inclusive, particularly for people who could not attend, or could not hear if they did. Attendance at religious services of all faiths has been declining for years, she said, and she has searched for ways to make the church more open and available.
“There’s a lot of disinterest” in organized religion, Bock said. “People have become turned off.”
She decided to make use of a sign interpreter amid discussions with her bishop and others. The church is halfway through a one-year-contract with Rackovitch.
“When people come to church, we want everyone to have access to all that’s happening there,” Bock said. “I really want that word out there.” Making use of an interpreter, she said, “opens us up to the reality that there are deaf people for whom the church isn’t doing enough.”
Rackovitch said that her oldest brother was born deaf. Sign language, she said, “was my first language, because we were close in age” and wanted to communicate. Twenty years ago, when she was 40, she enrolled at LaGuardia Community College to study interpreting for the deaf.
Using American Sign Language, she said, does not involve repeating every word a speaker is saying. Rather, she said, it is like composing music on the spot, giving emotion and emphasis to the spoken word so that the deaf understand not only the sentence, but also its nuance.
Even if only a few deaf or hearing-impaired people attend in person, Rackovitch said, “This is being streamed, and I know a lot of deaf people are watching.”
Wendy Goldstein, a parishioner at St. James and a public-relations professional, said the use of sign interpreters at religious services is growing. “It’s growing because the deaf community has been underserved,” Goldstein said simply.
St. James isn’t the only religious organization in Long Beach that uses interpreters. At Temple Emanu-El of Long Beach, a reform synagogue, Sandy Schumer, who worked as a speech pathologist for 30 years, does the interpreting at some of the services — and she did so as well at a recent rally the church hosted in support of Ukraine in its war with Russia.
“It’s another way of communicating with God,” Schumer, who serves as the greeter at the temple, said. “It serves as a lesson to learn that not everybody hears the way you do.”
Rabbi Jack Zanerhaft, Temple Emanu-El’s spiritual leader, said he hoped sign language could be used more frequently during services and other events.
At St. James, the presence of an interpreter even once a month has given the services a more cohesive feeling, said Betsy Hill, the church’s treasurer. “We’re looking for all ways to reach people who have trouble hearing,” Hill said. “I hope this is something that continues to grow. You see it more and more in theaters and on TV. This is growing in our church.”
