Mail.Liberal-Judaism

• faigin

• faigin

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 91 12:26:52 PDT
From: faigin
Subject: Welcome to the mail.liberal-judaism Mailing List

Welcome to the Beta-Test version of the mail.liberal-judaism mailing list. I
view the list as a place where liberal jews (Reform, Reconstructionist,
Secular Humanist) can discuss issues without fear of attacks about the
legitimacy of their movements with respect to the Orthopractic point of view.
The only filtering of submissions that I plan to do is (a) removal of Orthodox
attacks, (b) removal of prostletyzing (Messianic)s, and requests for possible
rewording for clearly imflamatory or offensize material. I plan to model the
list after the excellent mail.jewish mailing list run by Avi Feldblum. I quote
from his welcoming message:

  Try to be gentle and tactful.  If you want to post an article mail it to me
  and state that it is for submission to the mailing list.  Anonymity will be
  preserved on request.

  Cross posting between soc.culture.jewish and mail.jewish is discouraged.
  [For those not on Usenet, soc.culture.jewish is a newsgroup on Usenet, and
  this mailing list was started by members of that newsgroup.] Publishing any
  of the mail.jewish digests or portions thereof on any other medium including
  s.c.j without asking me or the originator of the article represents a breach
  of trust as many of the people who write in wish their privacy preserved.

I feel the same rules apply here. I would like to thank Andrea F. and Dan B.
for helping me get this list going.

With that, let's get started...

Daniel

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Date: Tue, 9 Jul 91 12:35:55 PDT
From: faigin
Subject: Families with Disabilities


Last weekend, I was having a discussion about Judaism with my sister-in-law.
She has a 1.5 year old infant with a mild case of Cerebral Palsy. She was
pointing out the fact that the Jewish community doesn't go out of its way to
help families with disabilities, as is done in some of the Christian
communities (such as the Nazarines). For example, a Reform temple near her
charges on the order of $150 for Mommy and Me classes for normal children, but
on the order of $500-600 for those with handicaps. There seems to be more
concern about dues than getting families to participate in a congregation; if
you have large medical expenses, you can't afford to join.

My wife pointed out that this is not the case in the Orthodox community;
there, congregations are more like families. Personally, I know of Reform Jews
that have gone out of their way for children with disabilities (for example,
Camp Joan Mier in Malibu), but it is a rare case.

Being an engineer, I don't like to raise a problem without a solution. I think
this behaviour is wrong. What can we do to correct it. One solution I can see
is to have a volunteer network to provide the parents with respite time. The
problem with this is that many families in Reform congregations are dual
wage-earners; no one is at home to volunteer. So what do we do?

Daniel

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"It is not our task as liberal Jews to complain about the Orthodox attitude or to be bullied by it, but rather to choose our legitimate path according to the inner logic and development of liberal Judaism" (Rabbi Walter Jacob)

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