Voices in Disability and Spirituality from the Land Down Under

Outback to Outfront

Christopher Newell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780789026071
• eBook ISBN: 9781317955191
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Anesthesiology & Pain Management

An excellent source of information and ideas on the relationship between disability and spiritualityand how to improve it

This one-of-a-kind collection explores the relationship between spirituality and disability from a variety of Australian religious and spiritual viewpoints. Authors from a wide range of backgroundssome with disabilities, some withoutdraw remarkable insights from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist (and even non-religious) spirituality. These uniquely Australian perspectives provide practical and spiritual lessons that can be applied in any part of the world.

Voices in Disability and Spirituality from the Land Down Under presents an unflinching look at the shortcomings of many established church ministries when it comes to serving people with disabilities. There's also an extraordinary interview with a severely disabled nonreligious woman in the final stage of her life and her caretaker, which presents a very revealing look at the essence of human spirituality as it exists even in the absence of religious dogma. In addition, you'll find a revealing case study focusing on the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA), which looks at the gap between its official theology and its actual policy and practice, and outlines a project designed to move the Church forward to more inclusive practices.

Additionally, Voices in Disability and Spirituality from the Land Down Under: Outback to Outfront examines:

• why platitudes that are intended to give comfort, like God has chosen this for you, It's a test of your faith, or We all have our crosses to carry are at best problematic, and at worst damagingwith suggestions for pastoral responses that offer alternatives to God-is-on-your-side clichés
  
• the spiritual meaning and importance of community for people with disabilities, and the impact of community on their vitality and resiliency
  
• the Buddhist teaching called sunyata, or emptiness, and its potential to positively impact the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and those who know them
  
• wisdom contained in the ancient Jewish system of laws called Halachaand its potential for empowering people with disabilities today
  
• how a pastoral care program that is flexible, accommodating, and relevant for disabled people was created at a small metropolitan school in New South Walesand the effect of the program on the community
  
• the work of the Personal Advocacy Service, which recruits volunteers to be companions to people with intellectual disabilities
  
• the role of religion and philanthropy in the creation of educational programs for blind or vision-impaired students
  
• and more

Judaism, Spirituality, and Disability:
An Australian Perspective

Melinda Jones, BA, LLB

SUMMARY. Judaism teaches that the wisdom to resolve current issues can be found in ancient texts. While there are many references in the written and oral law pertaining to disability, these are not well known and, being taken out of context, are at risk of misinterpretation. This article draws on Halacha, the ancient Jewish law which literally means “the way on which one goes,” to demonstrate that the principles of Judaism and rules for daily living have the potential to empower people with disabilities. It argues that Jewish spirituality involves the recognition of the role of Hashem in the way we live our lives and involves adherence to ethical standards, the most important of which is “choose life.” Because all lives are of infinite value, all must be treated with dignity and respect. Yet Judaism as practiced in Australia and elsewhere has often excluded people with disabilities or simply ignored our need for inclusion. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <htt­p://w­ww.Hawo­rthPres­s.com> © 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved]

KEYWORDS. Judaism, Jewish law, disability, religion, spirituality

In the ancient Jewish text, the B’raita, Rabbi Yossi is recorded as saying:

Once Iwas walking in the darkness and I saw a blind man who was walking with a torch in his hand. I asked him, “My son, why do you need this torch?” He told me, “As long as this torch is in my hand people can see me and save me from thorns and ditches.” (Talmud Bavli, Megillah 24b)

A significant aspect of disability is the failure of the community to see and respond to the difficulties confronting people with disabilities. This passage suggests, however, that once a torch is lit and the individual is made visible, those in the broader community will take responsibility for removing obstacles that interfere with the full participation of people with disabilities.

The range of experiences included in the category of ‘disability,’ and the types of barriers confronted by people with disabilities, is broad. Disability includes physical disabilities (such as mobility impairment), intellectual disabilities (referred to as ‘mental disabilities’ in the US), sensory disabilities (vision, hearing and speech impairments), psychiatric disabilities (including the full range of so-called mental illnesses), and chronic illness. While, historically, disabilities have been seen as limitations resulting from the medical or pathological state of the ‘disabled individual,’ today the limitations experienced by people with disabilities are seen to be context-specific–to the extent that what is disabling in one environment may be enabling in another. Just as the ability of the blind man mentioned above depended not just on his visual impairment but also on the willingness of others to remove barriers and to make the environment friendly, it is now accepted by people with disabilities, activists and scholars that much that is disabling is socially constructed.¹

In modern industrialized societies such as Australia, people with disabilities have been, until very recently, both out of sight and out of mind. Most people with disabilities, including Jews with disabilities, have been hidden away, segregated from the mainstream of society, sent to different schools than their brothers and sisters, and/or sent to live out their days in institutions. In the exclusionary process, the very existence of people with disabilities has been privatized, relegated to the realm of domestic and family affairs. Being Jewish does not exempt people with disabilities from the attitudes and treatments generally accepted in the society in which they live as legitimate ways of dealing with people with disabilities.

Issues for people with disabilities in Australia are similar to those of people with disabilities all around the world. For example, people with disabilities are often seen as abnormal, aberrant, strange, ugly disfigured things that should be kept away from ordinary people.² Further, people with disabilities have been the objects of scorn and hatred, and are rarely treated with the dignity and respect to which they are entitled.³ They have been placed in institutions where they have been starved, subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment, locked in small rooms, denied any stimulus and hidden from the wider community.⁴ In Australia, as elsewhere, a high percentage of women with intellectual disabilities have been involuntarily sterilized for reasons of eugenics or because of the fear of pregnancy from widespread sexual assault.⁵ What’s more, children have been segregated and schooled in inferior ‘special schools,’ even though significant research has been undertaken which has shown that excluding children from the ordinary school system is harmful to all concerned and cannot even be defended on economic grounds.⁶ Beyond this, people with disabilities have been denied access to many of the goods of the society that the non-disabled population takes for granted. This includes shopping centers, cinemas, restaurants, university classes, employment, and leisure activities.⁷

In the 1980s, disability activists around the world began to demand equal rights for people with disabilities. A grass-roots civil rights movement led to the enactment of the Americans With Disabilities Act in the USA and legislation designed to achieve a fairer society for people with disabilities being passed through the Federal Parliament in Australia.⁸ The Australian law, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, says nothing about religion per se, but places the rights of people with disabilities clearly on the agenda of all Australian organizations and institutions.⁹ It is in this setting that the community has slowly become aware of the problems facing people with disabilities, and there have been some attempts to improve the situation. This is not the place to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the law or the social or political changes of recent times.¹⁰ Instead, this article explores the way in which Judaism may play a positive role in the lives of those Australian Jews who are affected by disability.

JUDAISM AND SPIRITUALITY

Judaism teaches that the wisdom to resolve current issues can be found in ancient texts such as that cited in the opening paragraph (p. 56).¹¹ While there are many references in the written and oral law pertaining to disability, these are not well known, and being taken out of context, are at risk of misinterpretation. Further, there has been relatively little research pulling together the relevant texts and ideas on the subject of disability.¹² However, at the very center of Judaism there is an approach to the world, from which we can derive a Jewish perspective of disability. While it is hoped that this will be empowering to Jews with disabilities wherever they live, it may not be Jewish spirituality per se that is of help.

Before investigating this, however, the question of the relationship between Judaism and spirituality must be addressed. Ellen Umansky (1992), in her preface to Piety, Persuasion and Friendship: A History of Jewish Women’s Spirituality, writes: “Jewish spirituality, like many other forms of spirituality, could be seen as an expression of individual and/or communal yearning towards the divine and a life of holiness” (p. 1).

Despite this definition, the concept of spirituality is employed throughout the book to describe the search for Jewish identity, undertaken by women over four centuries.¹³ For the most part, spirituality is seen as a journey of discovery for those who have grown up in a secular culture, which they had assumed to be their own. Awakened to their Jewish roots by experiences such as anti-Semitism, the contributors to the collection describe how a renewed commitment to Judaism gave new meaning to their lives and reunited their split identities.¹⁴

If we are to understand Jewish spirituality as the search for, or fulfillment of, Jewish identity, a person with a disability is as likely, or unlikely, as any other to engage in the process of resolving what it means for them to be Jewish. However, the search for a Jewish identity may take a number of forms. It may be that the search relates to family history, to new social associations, to engagement in adult education, or in a commitment to the State of Israel. None of these paths is of a religious nature per se, and none could be thought of as relating to spirituality. Further, it is possible for a person to want to become more religious without engaging anything that could be thought of as spiritual. For example, one may decide to keep Kosher (the Jewish dietary laws) or follow the rituals associated with Jewish festivals for entirely social reasons; being ‘more Jewish’ is not the same as being ‘more spiritual.’

Spirituality is not often thought of as being central to Jewish thought or practice. Our scriptures, which comprise the Talmud, are about rules and statutes, commandments and authority. The greater tradition, which includes both the written and oral law, consists of stories and examples of how a Jew should live her life, and Jewish responses to the lived experience of joy and sorrow, of discrimination and suffering, of pain and the harsh reality of life. For a religious Jew, the solution to most problems is not found in an ethereal spiritual world, but in people and relationships.¹⁵ The key to spirituality in Judaism is not simply to be found in the relationship between man and Hashem (literally, the name, Hashem refers to the Jewish God) but, instead, is located in the relationship of man to the material world. Arthur Green defines Jewish spirituality as “life in the presence of God” or “the cultivation of a life in the ordinary world bearing the holiness once associated with sacred space and time, with temple and with holy days” (cited in Umansky, 1992, p. 1). As such, Jewish spirituality involves imbuing the material world around us with meaning, and seeking the divine in the ordinary.¹⁶ A ‘spiritual’ Jew is one who sees or, rather, finds the hand of Hashem in the objects and experiences of everyday living.¹⁷

For religious Jews, prayer and ritual are the governing forces of life. However, there is an unhappy tendency for observant Jews to be more concerned about acting within the letter of the law than appreciating its underlying spirit; thereby reducing Jewish religiosity to external behavior. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel recognized this tendency and commented that “there are Jews who are more concerned with a blood spot on an egg (which renders it unkosher; that is, unfit to eat under Jewish dietary laws) than with a blood spot on a dollar bill” (cited in Telushkin, 1991, pp. 417–18). What this means is that the way in which Jews behave is not necessarily a reflection on Judaism, and this is true whether the Jews in question are ultra-Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. The fact that Jews do not consistently live up to the ethical principles of Judaism does not detract from those principles.¹⁸ Nor does it change the expectation of the Torah that Jews fulfil the mission of Tikkun HaOlam–healing the world–through the performance of Mitzvot (literally, commandments; colloquially, good deeds), social justice, and the positive exercise of free choice.¹⁹

A Jew may seek meaning in the experience of disability, but it is more likely that he or she will see no connection between being disabled and being Jewish. If anything, committed Jews with disabilities are likely to be concerned about how to deal with the barriers that limit their inclusion not only in the general Australian community but also in the Jewish community. For many, the only connection with the Jewish community comes from the possibility of help from Jewish welfare agencies or from frustrated attempts to participate in Jewish education, youth groups, swimming clubs, communal activities or synagogues. In this case, being Jewish and being disabled are simply two facts of life.

The other side of the coin relates to those who have responsibility for a disabled person. In Jewish law, this is not only the parent or the carer but also the whole community. There are rules about visiting the sick...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: An Antipodean Perspective on Disability and Spirituality
• “God Has Chosen This for You”–“Really?” A Pastoral and Theological Appraisal of This and Some Other Well-Known Clichés Used in Australia to Support People with Disabilities
• Disability, Ethics, and Biotechnology: Where Are We Now?
• “Believe That a Farther Shore Is Reachable from Here”: Mapping Community as Moral Loving Journeying
• The Buddhist Insight of Emptiness as an Antidote for the Model of Deficient Humanness Contained Within the Label ‘Intellectually Disabled’
• Judaism, Spirituality, and Disability: An Australian Perspective
• The Human Connection: A Case Study of Spirituality and Disability
• Community Spirit: Making Space for the Spiritual
• Solitary Confinement in the Forgotten Ministry
• Giving and Receiving: We Enter a Faith Program Thinking We Are Giving of Ourselves … We Receive Much More
• Let There Be Light: Religion, Philanthropy, and the Origins in Australia of Educational Programs for Children and Youth Who Are Blind or Vision-Impaired
• Recognizing All Members: The Place of People with Disabilities in the Uniting Church in Australia
• Index