No Illusions About Inclusion

Sermon Shabbat Zachor 5773:  No Illusions About Inclusion

Some of you may remember an inspiring feature of our Denver Jewish Film Festival a few years ago, entitled Praying with Lior. The winner of numerous Audience Awards for Best Documentary, the film asks whether someone with Down syndrome can be a “spiritual genius.” Many believe Lior is close to God -- at least that's what his family and community believe -- though he’s also a burden, a best friend, an inspiration and an embarrassment, depending on who is asked and when. As this moving and entertaining documentary moves to its climax, Lior must pass through the gateway to manhood - his Bar Mitzvah.

As phenomenal as Lior's story may seem to us, it should not lead us to take the inclusion of those with disabilities and behavioral challenges for granted.  The following story illustrates the continued challenges ...

LEAVING MY FAITH IN SEARCH OF COMMUNITY

I was literally asked to leave Shabbat services at a Boulder synagogue when my two children, both on the autism spectrum, were young. At that time, my son couldn’t sit still. He was rocking and made a thumping noise when he hit the back of his seat. Someone came by and asked me to "quiet my son" so I stood in the back with him while e spun in circles. Finally a man asked me to leave with my children. He said we were "bothering people."

I didn't give up. I was a young single mom, and I had lived much of my life in Israel. I was hungry for a Jewish community. So, when the high holidays came around and I barely had money to survive, I called the synagogue and asked if we could attend services without purchasing tickets. I was told to "ask a friend or neighbor to buy me a ticket.” So, that was the end of that. I hope that by now (it's about 10 years later) this synagogue has adopted a more compassionate stance, and I hope that the next young single mother of two special needs children is not turned away when she’s at her most vulnerable.

Unfortunately, we had a similar experience with a second Boulder synagogue. It's a little funny and slightly weird, but I ended up taking my kids to church. I just told them, "Listen you guys, we're Jewish, but we're going to church because it's cheaper and more accepting.”

What would have been helpful is if the synagogue could have treated us more in the way the church did, actually. The church embraced us fully. When my son was loud, fidgety, etc., congregants offered to help. The pastor sometimes addressed my son directly by smiling at him or placing his hand on my son's back. We were invited to dinners, given gift cards to grocery stores, and the congregation even helped me move when I needed to lower my rent. All the while, the church understood that we are Jews, and we do not accept Jesus as our G-d. It didn't matter. They truly acted out of love, and love alone. It was a tremendously beautiful experience.

Today, we live in outside of Boulder, and we attend both a local congregation and a Shabbat Group. Here, we are not judged and it doesn't matter whether or not we can pay for tickets. We are always welcome. In the past, it was a great joy for me to have a community of Jews where I could speak Hebrew, discuss Israeli life and politics, express my spirituality, feel at home, etc. The Judaism I grew up with was centered in tzedakah (charity) and was sometimes loud and chaotic, but it was always steeped in love, and was for ALL Jews.

Inclusion is a term used by people with disabilities and other disability rights advocates for the idea that all people should freely, openly and without pity accommodate any person with a disability without restrictions or limitations of any kind. Although disability rights has historically existed as a relatively cohesive movement, the movement centered around inclusion has only recently begun to take shape and to position itself in the eye of the general public.

The concept of inclusion emphasizes universal design for policy-oriented physical accessibility issues, such as ease-of-use of physical structures and elimination of barriers to ease of movement in the world, but the largest part of its purpose is on being culturally transformational.

Some say that part of the reason for resistance to inclusion in the United States may be that the older architecture of its more prominent cities makes structural adjustment for disabled people costly and supposedly impractical, leading indirectly to a high measure of hostility towards disabled people lest they end up feeling 'entitled' to receive such adjustments automatically and unquestionably. Others tend to blame the attitude of Social Darwinism more generally, accusing it of corrupting the attitude of able-bodied people in the U.S. in particular towards disabled people — often to the point that it prevents that country's culture from readily accepting disabled people in aspects and venues that are not directly legality or law-related, e.g. theater, film, dance, and sexuality.

FEBRUARY 2013 MARKS the fifth annual Jewish Disability Awareness Month (JDAM), a unified initiative to raise awareness and foster support for the inclusion of people with disabilities and their families in Jewish communities worldwide.

Jewish tradition teaches us our obligation to ensure equal access for all people and to help facilitate the full participation of individuals with disabilities in religious and public life.

We are taught, “Do not separate yourself from the community” (Pirke Avot 2:5). Accordingly, we must prevent anyone from being separated against their will.

The experts in this field counsel communities of faith such as ours to begin a dialogue on the expectations about personal behavior that go along with a commitment to Inclusion. Unattainable expectations confuse good people and fragment efforts for change into factions organized around hurt feelings.

We who care about Inclusion can reduce this drain on the energy necessary to work for justice by being clear about three delusions which are common, but mostly unconscious among advocates for Inclusion. When we replace these false and destructive beliefs with simpler expectations of decency and working constructively in common, we will all be better able to live out the real meaning of Inclusion by honoring and growing from our shared struggle with our diverse gifts, differences, and weaknesses.


Delusion 1:  Inclusion means that everybody must love everybody else or "We must all be one big, happy family!" The real challenge of Inclusion is to find common cause for important work that cannot be done effectively if we isolate ourselves from one another along the many differences of race, culture, nationality, gender, class, ability, and personality that truly do divide us. Educating our children is one such common task. The reward of Inclusion comes in the harvest of creative action and new understanding that follows the hard work of finding common ground and tilling it by confronting and finding creative ways through real differences.


Delusion 2: Inclusion means everyone must always be happy and satisfied or "Inclusion cures all ills." Real community members get over the wish for a cure-all and look for ways to focus on promoting one another's gifts and capacities in the service of justice. They support, and often must endure, one another's weaknesses by learning ways to forgive, to reconcile, and to rediscover shared purpose. Out of this hard work comes a measure of healing.

Delusion 3:  Inclusion is the same as friendship or "We are really all the same"

The way to Inclusion calls for more modest, and probably more difficult, virtues. We must simply be willing to learn to get along while recognizing our differences, our faults and foibles, and our gifts.

This begins with a commitment to decency: a commitment not to behave in ways that demean others and an openness to notice and change when our behavior is demeaning, even when this is unintentional. This ethical boundary - upheld as a standard in human rights tribunals around the globe - defines the social space within which the work of Inclusion can go on. This work calls on each of us to discover and contribute our gifts through a common labor of building worthy means to create justice for ourselves and for the earth through the ways we educate each other, through the ways we care for one another's health and welfare, and through the ways we produce the things we need to live good lives together.

In this common labor we will find people we love and people we dislike; we will find friends and people we can barely stand. We will sometimes be astonished at our strengths and sometimes be overcome by our weaknesses. Through this work of Inclusion we will, haltingly, become new people capable of building new and more human communities (excerpted from The Ethics of Inclusion: Three Common Delusions by John O'Brien, Marsha Forest, Jack Pearpoint, Shafik Asante & Judith Snow).

This, the Shabbat before Purim, is known for its reading of Parshat Zachor. In this special Maftir reading, we are commanded to remember what Amalek did to us: "Remember what Amalek did to you on the way coming out of Egypt. How he met you and struck (lit. 'tailed') your weakest, and you were weary and worn out, and not fearing God." (Deuteronomy 25: 17,18) Amalek - an inexplicable primal force seeking to weaken us. In our long history, we, the Jewish People, have known many Amaleks. On Purim, Haman continues Amalek's legacy. Paradoxically, we are commanded both to remember and wipe out the memory of Amalek.

In his commentary, Rav Abraham Isaac Kook writes that we live in a many-layered world. What is true on the national level is also true on the communal and individual level. Amalek, the primal force which attacks the weakest point and drains us of energy, exists in each and every individual. We all have gifts, skills, and have had our share of victories. We all have had many positive moments throughout our lives and in each day. But the force of Amalek does not allow us to dwell on these high moments. Our strengths and victories seem to fade while we vividly remember our disappointments.

The aforementioned verse tells us that Amalek "tails" us. He keeps wagging the lowest part of our lives. He doesn't destroy us, he just wears us out. The force of Amalek makes us weary, depleted, and pretty much useless. Amalek is the force within each of us that makes us obsess on our weakest moments and failures. He keeps "wagging the tail" of our defects, reminding us of our imperfections, eclipsing the memory of our strengths and victories.

Here is where we might discover some realization of the great merits of Inclusion. Amalek only allows us to see the night, our weaknesses and defeats. He continually "wags" them, nagging us into oblivion. A full relationship with God accepts our full personality. A full relationship with God accepts our many gifts, skills, and strengths and also our "shadow" moments. These ideas should galvanize us to understand Inclusion as a means toward achieving that full relationship with God, by living harmoniously with all living human beings.

Allow me to conclude with some "attitudinal bullet points":

a. Inclusion is about ALL of us

b. Inclusion is about living full lives - about learning to live together.

c. Inclusion makes the world our classroom for a full life.

d. Inclusion treasures diversity and builds community.

e. Inclusion is about our 'abilities' - our gifts and how to share them.

f. Inclusion is NOT just a 'disability' issue.

My dear Rodef Shalom Friends, let us make no illusions about our mandate for Inclusion.