Special Holidays for Special Needs

Tchia Kastor knows what it is like to observe a silent Hanukkah. This year, though, the 20-year-old deaf Baltimore resident is helping bring some of the joy of the Festival of Lights to Jews who have similar problems. She's produced a transliterated-Hebrew sign-language chart containing the Hanukkah candle blessings and describing holiday rituals and customs.

"The chart is important because deaf people want to enjoy the holiday through the use of sign language for Hanukkah blessings," Kastor said via e-mail. "They feel good and closer to Hashem [a Hebrew term for God]."

The chart, sponsored by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (Orthodox Union), is one example of holiday-time outreach to Jews with special physical needs. Around the country, Jewish school and synagogue groups will light Hanukkah candles and distribute holiday gifts to the infirm, frail, and impaired in hospitals and senior citizen centers and homes.

On each night of Hanukkah, Jews light candles in a special candelabra called a "Hanukkiah," or menorah. Starting with one candle, a new one is added each night, until eight, plus a "shammash," the candle used to light the others, are lit on the holiday's final evening.

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple following the military victory of the Jews, led by Judah Maccabee, over their Syrian-Greek occupiers in about 165 B.C.E. American Jews celebrate the holiday with social gatherings and synagogue programs geared toward children and families--making Kastor's chart an important tool for inclusion.

However, despite the chart and the many other attempts to involve larger numbers of hearing-impaired and disabled Jews, rabbis and others involved in this work say not nearly enough is being done on behalf of Jews with special needs.

"There's large-scale neglect," said Rabbi Evan Jaffe of the Flemington, N.J., Jewish Community Center, who is also a chaplain at a nearby psychiatric hospital with severely disabled patients. By and large, it's an ignored community."

Jaffe never planned to focus his attention or efforts on the developmentally disabled. But, several years ago, he was asked to serve as chaplain at the psychiatric center 10 miles from his synagogue.

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