A few years ago, Chava Willig Levy went to a concert at Carnegie Hall. Having contracted polio at the age of 3, the 62-year-old lecturer and writer uses a motorized wheelchair. “Let the wheelchair pass,” a man a few steps in front of Levy and her friend said to his companion, as the former two…
When Eric Rosenthal, 49, won this year’s Charles Bronfman Prize, which recognizes the work of Jewish humanitarians under 50, he was stupefied, and not just because it came with a $100,000 stipend. “I never really brought my personal and professional life into such close connection,” he told the Forward in July. “The idea that this…
The Israel Sports Association for the Disabled banned a table tennis player from representing Israel for two years, saying that she played in a tournament last Yom Kippur. Yael Elbag, in her fifties, was accused of participating in a doubles match on the Day of Atonement, thus ignoring a Culture and Sports Ministry directive banning…
My father saw his older brother, David, only once in his life. He was 10 years old, and David, then 13, was living at the Willowbrook State School for the intellectually disabled in Staten Island. This brief visit occurred shortly before my grandfather’s military career took his family overseas for several years. Maybe the visit…
Berlin has laid the foundations for a memorial to a largely neglected group of Nazi victims – hundreds of thousands of mentally and physically disabled people murdered by Hitler’s regime under its “euthanasia” programme. A 30-metre blue glass wall will stand on the site of the former headquarters of the “euthanasia” scheme in the heart…
A study released by the Foundation for Jewish Camp showed overnight camps are growing increasingly aware of the needs of children with disabilities. The organization on Wednesday said the study showed a greater number of retreats for Jewish youth offered unique services to a larger number of children with special needs than previously expected. “Camps…
As executive director of The David Project, a pro-Israel advocacy group, David Bernstein has spent years urging Jews to raise their voices and take a stand. Recently, though, Bernstein felt isolated when he was told that his 7-year-old son, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, no longer fits into the plans of the Washington-area Jewish…
In the coming weeks and months, Congress will enact sweeping reductions in federal spending, finalize the 2013 federal budget and raise the debt ceiling. The cuts that will come with these decisions are not merely numbers on a ledger; they will decimate programs that directly impact the lives of the most vulnerable among us and…
