May 30, 2001
OU
PROFILES
This is the second profile
in the OU’s new series that focuses on the diverse and interesting lives
of our employees. Most of us
are unaware of the tremendous accomplishments that some of our co-workers
have achieved in the past or are providing for their communities today.
If you work with someone whose story would be of interest to
everyone, please email the Department of Public Relations at update@ou.org,
or call Sharyn Perlman at 212.613.8321. You may suggest anyone in your, or
any other, department. You may not, however, nominate yourself.
Our
featured employee is Rabbi Eliezer Lederfeind, director of NJCD’s Our
Way for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Rabbi
Eliezer Lederfeind – Champion of the Deaf
We
are taught from an early age that actions speak louder than words.
For the deaf community, this is particularly true.
By sight alone, it is difficult to distinguish the hearing from the
non-hearing. It is not until
an attempt to communicate is made, that the walls that separate the two
groups arise and often prevent further interaction.
The Director of the OU’s Our Way for the deaf and hard of
hearing, Rabbi Eliezer Lederfeind, has spent the past 30 years working to
tear down those walls through inclusion programs that systematically
unravel the stereotypes of incompetence and the inability to communicate,
so often attributed to the deaf community.
Rabbi Lederfeind not only has a
professional investment in the deaf community, but a personal one as well.
Born in Brooklyn in 1949, Rabbi Lederfeind, the youngest of four
hearing children, was raised by two deaf parents, along with his three
older sisters. He attended the Yeshiva of Rabbi Chaim Berlin in New York for
high school and college and later received his semicha from the
Yeshiva Gedolah of Pittsburgh. Rabbi
Lederfeind and his wife, Annie, have six children — four hearing boys
and two deaf girls. Despite
the fact that only his daughters are deaf, he says that deafness does not
have a greater propensity to manifest in girls more than boys.
While studying in Pittsburgh, Rabbi
Lederfeind volunteered as a teacher at the Western Pennsylvania School for
the Deaf where once a week he would spend an hour tutoring the Jewish deaf
students. In 1969, when Rabbi
Lederfeind returned home to New York, he approached the leadership of the
OU and NCSY, and asked if he could start a program for the deaf and hard
of hearing. For many years,
he divided his time, teaching at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School in Staten
Island as well as running the OU’s program for the deaf.
In 1990, Our Way was officially recognized as a branch of the
OU’s National Jewish Council for the Disabled and, in 1999, Rabbi
Lederfeind began working full time at the OU.
Rabbi Lederfeind recalls that
growing up with deaf parents was often a challenge.
From the time he was old enough to speak, he served as his
father’s interpreter. On
one occasion, at the age of six, the two visited a repair shop to have
their toaster fixed. When the
storeowner told a young Rabbi Lederfeind that there was a short in the
wire, he signed to his father that the problem was that the wire was too
short. “How can the wire be
too short?,” his father signed angrily at his son and then at the
repairman. It took some time before the adults realized that the
misunderstanding lay with the six-year-old’s interpretation of the
technical malfunction.
Thirty years after beginning his
work at the OU, Rabbi Lederfeind’s Our Way division now offers a variety
of programs and services for the deaf as well as for family members,
friends and anyone who interacts with the deaf and hard of hearing.
Our Way is the only Jewish movement reaching out to the deaf and
hard of hearing across the country and bridging the gap between the
hearing and non-hearing worlds.
According to Rabbi Lederfeind,
there are several basic issues that the Jewish deaf community face:
Intermarriage and isolation from both the Jewish community -- because of
an inability to perform basic Jewish mitzvot -- and from the
general population, because of the communication gap.
Intermarriage for the deaf is a
particularly prevalent and pressing dilemma.
Statistics show that 90 percent of deaf people marry other deaf
people, but there are only about 10,000 Jewish deaf in the world.
Finding that perfect someone to spend the rest of your life with is
a daunting task, all the more so when trying to draw from the narrowed
pool of Jewish deaf singles.
To combat the growing trend of
intermarriage and the targeted attempts of missionaries to enlist the
Jewish deaf community, Rabbi Lederfeind helped to establish the Jewish
Deaf Singles Registry (JDSR), a program that provides a host of services
for the single Jewish deaf community in America and around the world.
JDSR singles events continue to draw men and women not only from
communities in the New York metropolitan area, but also from lands as far
away as Israel and France. "People fly in for our events simply
because there's nothing else," said Rabbi Lederfeind.
“The Registry brings couples together who might otherwise never
meet. Imagine our excitement
when a deaf man from Australia found his beshert in Israel thanks
to the JDSR. They are married
and currently live in Israel.” The
JDSR is now under the leadership of Samuel and Rochelle Landau.
Another significant problem for the
deaf is low self-image. Rabbi Lederfeind explains that one of Our Way’s top
priorities is to instill a sense of deaf pride and Jewish pride in its
members. “Most people do
not understand how isolating and frustrating the inability to participate
in mainstream Jewish rituals can be for the deaf.
Though it is still important to recite the blessings aloud, if
possible, being able to sign the blessings enables deaf and hard of
hearing Jews to experience the beauty and meaning of the rituals in their
own special language.”
Take a moment to think about how a
young man, unable to recite the blessings over the Torah, can have a bar
mitzvah; how a deaf Jew can possibly fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the
shofar or listening to the reading of the ten commandments; or how a young
deaf woman can make the weekly blessing over the Shabbat candles.
To help address some of these issues, Our Way has released a series
of three sign language guides for the Jewish holidays.
The first project was a Shabbat candlelighting chart in sign
language; the second provided the blessings for the Chanukah
candlelighting ceremony; and the third was an eight-page supplement to the
Hagaddah that provided the blessing over the wine, the blessing for matzoh,
the four questions and other Passover related rituals.
The guides were created by Tchia Kastor with the assistance of
Rabbi Fred Friedman and a sign language committee.
Rabbi Lederfeind is currently
trying to find a way to help a 12-year-old boy, born in Russia, have a bar
mitzvah when he turns 13 next year. Rabbi
Lederfeind explains, “We do not always have resolutions for every
dilemma, but we try our hardest to advance the deaf cause as much as
possible, using as many resources and creative solutions as we can.”
One of the biggest controversies
within the deaf community is whether to train the deaf to communicate in
sign language or through oral expression.
The core of this debate addresses the very philosophy associated
with deaf pride -- the question of mainstreaming versus remaining a
separate group. Being oral
allows for communication with the larger community, while sign language
limits communication to other deaf people and those who have studied sign
language. For many deaf men
and women, sign language represents an acceptance of deafness and a pride
in being different. Advocates
see sign language as a deaf person’s first language and first culture.
Only later, should English be incorporated into the linguistic education.
Advocates of oral communication,
now bolstered by a technological advance called a cochlear implant (a
hearing prosthesis designed to help severe to profoundly deaf individuals
who gain little or no benefit from hearing aids), insist that
learning to speak allows for more effective communication with the larger
community, especially when started at a young age.
Rabbi Lederfeind says that there is
validity to both points of view and that each family must make a personal
decision based on its particular situation.
Both of Rabbi Lederfeind’s daughters have cochlear implants.
“With the cochlear implant, you can talk to my nine-year-old
daughter, Toby, face to face for several minutes and not even realize she
is deaf. But the true miracle of the implant is that Toby can actually
speak on the phone.”
The essence of the problem for the
deaf, says Rabbi Lederfeind, is that, “They have the same problems we
all have, they just have nowhere to go. The advent of the Internet and
closed captioning on television have done wonders for the more outgoing in
the deaf community. However,
for the most part, the deaf are uninformed and unaware of the
possibilities that exist for them within the larger hearing population.”
Rabbi Lederfeind gives several
examples of the lack of awareness affecting many deaf Jews. There is a
deaf woman whose husband refuses to give her a get (Jewish
divorce). When Rabbi
Lederfeind recently reached out to see how he could assist her, she was
astounded that there were options and outlets whereby she could appeal her
situation. During the
violence in Israel this year, there were several deaf families living on
the border of Gilo where the snipings and attacks were most deadly.
When shots were fired into the home of one of the deaf families, a
bullet miraculously only grazed the hair of the deaf father who was not
even aware that a shot had been fired.
The residents are amazed that Our Way and generous donors are
intervening and are planning to provide bulletproof windows for these
families, a provision the government is required to provide.
Rabbi Lederfeind, a champion of the
deaf, has dedicated his life to assisting and bettering the lives of the
deaf. Though asked to talk
about his personal accomplishments, Rabbi Lederfeind preferred instead to
discuss the issues that impact the deaf and hard of hearing community and
how he and Our Way have been able to affect change.
However, his efforts are greatly diminished if there is no
awareness among the hearing — particularly in the Jewish community —
about the plight of the non-hearing. Now, hopefully, the next time you see a deaf person, you
won’t turn a deaf ear.
www.ou.org
# # #
Comments?
Requests? Questions?
 Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
of America
Department of Public Relations
Sharyn Perlman, Director
Main Office:
11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004
Phone: 212-613-8321 Fax: 212-564-9058
E-mail: media@ou.org |
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