Chana Rothman: (singing) Jay Ruderman: Charity regarding disability can often mean segregation. You can try to do the right thing and say, "Listen, I want to set up a group home," but it's really keeping people in a forced environment that may not be of their own choosing. Chana Rothman: (singing) Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Hi, I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. My guest today is Jay Ruderman. He's the president of the Ruderman Family Foundation. Welcome, Jay. Jay Ruderman: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It's great that you're here. I want to let everybody know that we're recording in the midst of a pandemic, which means that Jay and I and Sam Wachs, our producer, we're all working from home. So I hope that the sound quality... I know that the quality of the conversation will be excellent and I hope you'll bear with us as we navigate this new reality. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Jay, do you want to talk about what it means for you that you're working from home? Who's with you at home? Jay Ruderman: Yeah, I think this is a new experience for all of us. Our office moved about a week ago to everyone working from home and we had an extensive office because part of our team is in Israel and part of them are in Boston and Washington, DC. Working virtually is not really a problem, but I have my four kids at home now doing virtual classrooms, and the dog. A few of us have been sick and so it has been a new experience. Jay Ruderman: I guess the Governor of Massachusetts just announced half an hour ago that he's closing all non-essential businesses. So I think we're in this for the foreseeable future. And this is sort of like a new normal. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: That's right. That's right. And Massachusetts is about 10 days behind Pennsylvania. We have been in that place for a while. We too have folks working in a lot of different places, but our largest concentration of people are here in the greater Philadelphia area. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: So a lot is going on, like this podcast, and a lot is different, like the way that we're making this podcast. I think some of what we're talking about, one of the reasons that I was excited to speak to you is because of the Ruderman Family Foundation's incredible commitment to a really inspiring vision of inclusion. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: For our listeners, I'll read the mission statement of the foundation. "The Ruderman Family Foundation believes that inclusion and understanding of all people is essential to a fair and flourishing community. Guided by our Jewish values, we advocate for and advance the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout our society, strengthen the relationship between Israel and the American Jewish community, and model the practice of strategic philanthropy worldwide. We operate as a nonpartisan strategic catalyst in cooperation with government, private sectors, civil society and philanthropies." Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I'm familiar with the breadth of your work, and it is your work on that first pilla,r for the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout our society, that really prompted me to reach out to you, because you have just been so powerful and so passionate in this work of including people with disabilities in communal life in the Jewish community and more broadly. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: That feels like an incredibly important conversation to have at any time. And I think, as you and I were discussing before we started recording, it is likely, it is inevitable even, that our communal structures, our society is going to be changed by this pandemic. I think that there's a lot to learn from the work that you have been doing from the community of disability activists, ways that the community and institutional structures should change in order to make it possible for all people to participate really robustly. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: So I would just want to start the conversation and invite you to talk about these commitments and how you came to develop and focus in on inclusion as such a critical strategy. Jay Ruderman: So I think we have to go back a little bit. Our first involvement was in the Boston Jewish day schools. Across denominations, we made a large commitment to Jewish education. This was back around 2000-2001. Jay Ruderman: Children with disabilities were not part of Jewish day schools by and large. So our first commitment was to allow children with disabilities to participate in Jewish education. Jay Ruderman: We moved beyond that in subsequent years to look at different denominations nationwide and internationally, the Reform movement, Conservative movement, Chabad, the Orthodox Union, to really introduce the right of people with disabilities to be part of Jewish life. Jay Ruderman: Since then, we've partnered with the Foundation for Jewish Camping, Camp Ramah, Jewish Funders Network, Hillel, most major Jewish organizations to increase the participation of people with disabilities. Jay Ruderman: I would just say that we know that people with disabilities worldwide, in our Jewish community and beyond, are 20% of our population. And yet they are the most segregated part of our population, the poorest part of our population and the most discriminated against. This is worldwide. There're many reasons historically how this developed, but we've always seen people with disabilities as an issue of civil rights and human rights and not as an issue of charity. And so we've been more on the progressive side of that. Jay Ruderman: I'd also just say that we are a foundation, a philanthropic organization, we are an activist organization. I strongly believe in the saying of "Nothing about us without us." We've always included people with disabilities on our staff, on our advisory council. Jay Ruderman: We started an organization that's been very successful both in the United States and in Israel called Link 20 which are activists with and without disabilities, which we are providing the resources to allow them to increase their advocacy. Jay Ruderman: Why Link 20? Because 20% of the population has a disability and that we're linking them together. We've been operating for two decades. There are many, many different things that we've done to try to move the agenda forward. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It's so fantastic. I want to make one really important observation and then I want to reflect a little bit about going to events that you and the foundation have organized. One is I think that raising up that statistic, that 20% of the population, is so important for people to hear, especially because of the segregation and then the invisibility that can arise from it. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: The other thing... This was a life-transforming teaching for me and you've heard me speak about it. When I was in my early twenties, I was at a conference and a speaker at that conference who was in a wheelchair, who had a disease that seriously affected her mobility, made the observation that everyone who was moving around with freedom of mobility, she called them, she called us TABs. She called us temporarily able people. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: She made the observation that it's the one minority group that any of us could join at any moment and some of us permanently and all of us at some time or another, we're likely to join the ranks of the people who are disabled, at least temporarily at some point. It was one of those paradigm shifts for me. It was a moment of grace that I am able at this moment in time and that is something that could change at any moment. Jay Ruderman: Right. Yeah. I think the keyword that you said there is could, because some of us will not develop a disability. For example, we could walk outside and get hit by a bus, but most of us as we age and live longer will develop some type of disability. Jay Ruderman: I've seen it in my dad, who developed a very rare disease... Which he passed away in 2011... Called alpha-1 antitrypsin, which is a reduced lung capacity. He had to be on oxygen and he was not able to walk. My kids, my siblings' kids that have ADHD, autism. I just think that if you would ask any family in the world, do they have a connection to someone with a disability, whether it's a family member, a friend, a neighbor, an acquaintance, everyone knows someone with a disability. Jay Ruderman: There's a book that I'd recommend people to check out written by Tim Shriver called Fully Alive. Tim Shriver is the son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. He's the nephew of President Kennedy and he's the Executive Director of Special Olympics. He talks about Rosemary Kennedy, which was one of President Kennedy's sisters who had a cognitive disability and was institutionalized, and then later in her life, brought out of institutionalization by his mother. But she became sort of the champion and the leading force in the United States for the inclusion of people with disabilities. Jay Ruderman: If you read this book, the first part of the book talks about the history of people with disabilities. So a few generations back, people with disabilities were institutionalized and segregated from our society in many cases, horrible institutions. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. Jay Ruderman: We've evolved from that to segregation, separate what we would call sheltered workforces where people are working for subminimum wage, separate schooling, segregated group housing. And now we're evolving into full inclusion that people with disabilities have the right to work, they have the right to live in our society in a place of their choosing. They have a right to be part of our religious and communal structures. Jay Ruderman: But that's a fairly new... Even with us in our work, I've seen a challenge to Jewish organizations about including people with disabilities. It was not something they traditionally had done. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I'm thinking about, I've been to a couple of events that the foundation has run. Some of them very large and some of them smaller, much more intimate. It takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of planning and it takes a lot of resources from access to not just ASL interpreters but also real-time captioning, to making certain... to foodstuffs, to slowing the pace down so that folks who can communicate but need more time to communicate can either get to the microphone or have it be brought to them or the time to make the comment or ask the question. It's a different way of thinking and it's a different way of planning and it's a different way of implementing. Jay Ruderman: There are many different accommodations that are needed to gather people with different abilities and disabilities. It's a task. Our events, since we are an organization especially that focuses on disability rights, we make those accommodations. Jay Ruderman: It's just a tremendous task that... There are always mistakes. You get an interpreter who's not good, the cart services don't work or whatever. Jay Ruderman: The other thing that is very important to point out is that the landmark legislation, civil rights legislation for people with disabilities in the United States is the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is going to enter its 30th year. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: 30th year. Right. Jay Ruderman: I do know a couple of the authors. One of them is on our council, Tony Coelho, who's the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives... Excuse me, the Majority Leader, and Senator Tom Harkin. They were both authors of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Jay Ruderman: Religious institutions were left out of this piece of legislation. So that's why you see synagogues, churches, mosques not having to be accessible for people with disabilities. I've asked them about why that was and they said that they believe that they had to make that concession in order to pass the legislation, but it was a mistake. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. Right. I heard Senator Harkin speak at Jewish Disability Advocacy Day in Washington, DC this year. He said that. He said that it wouldn't have gone through. The religious institutions would have put up such a forceful fight that the legislation wouldn't have been passed. And so therefore they cut us out in order to allow this transformative legislation to go forward. It's just devastating and mortifying as the leader of a religious institution to hear that. Jay Ruderman: Right. So I've heard so many anecdotes over the years of Jewish families who were turned away from their synagogue because they said, "Well, we have no accessibility for you," or "We're not set up to handle your children who have some sort of learning disability." Jay Ruderman: We made a difference in the Jewish world in terms of at least changing attitudes about the right and the ability to include people with disabilities. And then in Boston, we've really focused on synagogues ... Across the denominations, I think we have 50 to 60 synagogues right now in Boston that are participating in a program that we call the Ruderman Synagogue Inclusion Initiative. Jay Ruderman: I think it has transformed the community in terms of feeling that if you ignore it or exclude it, you're going to exclude a large part of the population. I was at a conference once, one of the biennials for URJ, the Reform movement, in which Rabbi Rick Jacobs used the term "audacious hospitality". Jay Ruderman: That's really what we have to practice and not, "You don't fit either because of your disability or because you don't fit into a certain model." It's just not what we're supposed to be about as Jews. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. In the Reconstructionist movement, sometimes the language we use is we talk about Judaism as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people. And for that last noun, for "people" to really take the pride of place in the center, that all of this exists to meet the needs of, to reflect, to help us be the best possible people in our wholeness and our fullness. So does that mean some of us are able bodied and some of us are not? But there's a mandate on the community to be responsive to the fullness of who we are and where we're at. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I'd love to dive down just a little bit deeper. So you had a foundation. Tzedakah, philanthropy, is part of it, but I'd love to just spend a little bit more time on the civil rights focus. Like what it means when you say we don't see this as tzedakah, we see this as about civil rights and human rights. Jay Ruderman: So I do think if you look at the world of philanthropy, Jewish philanthropy or general philanthropy, philanthropic organizations take on the character of their leadership. There's a saying that Jeff Solomon from the Charles Bronfman Foundation once said is, "Once you know one foundation, you know one foundation." None of us are exactly the same because we're all run differently and there are different people that are responsible for running them. Jay Ruderman: My background before I got into philanthropy was law and politics. I'm a graduate of Brandeis. I mean I think we pride ourselves on social justice and a history of activism coming out of the university. Jay Ruderman: I think what I've done is I've transformed our foundation into an activist foundation. So we do give money, but we're giving it often in programs that we're creating and we're bringing to organizations and saying, "Listen, we really think you should be inclusive. We're going to provide the funds, but we're also going to tell you how to go about doing this." Jay Ruderman: I think the other aspect that we have is that we work a lot with the media in terms of speaking out against discrimination. So that has been in politics and business and certainly in entertainment. If I would go back, I would say that "charity" regarding disability can often mean segregation. Jay Ruderman: You can try to do the right thing and say, "Listen, I want to set up a group home because I think that's the right thing to do and I think that's where my child belongs," and whatever. But it's really keeping people in a forced environment that may not be of their own choosing. Whereas sort of fostering civil rights and empowering people to speak out for themselves, I think that people will choose to be part of general society. Jay Ruderman: I don't think I'm going to meet many people... I do meet maybe some, but not many people are saying, "I'll choose to be segregated." Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Yeah. Jay Ruderman: Sometimes parents... There are some organizations and people who ---- there's a fight between people with disabilities and their parents because the parents want segregation. They feel that's the safer place for people, for their children. And the children are like, "No, I want to be part of society." So it's not clear cut, but we've always come out on the more progressive side as pushing society towards more inclusion. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. So it sounds like you're... One way to say it is you're working to mobilize the resources of the community in order to foster individual autonomy. Jay Ruderman: Yes. I think that people have the right to self-determination. They have the right to decide where they want to be, but if their only options are a segregated classroom, segregated housing... Jay Ruderman: Unemployment until this coronavirus hit in the United States was at a historically low point at under 4%. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. Jay Ruderman: People with disabilities at the same time were unemployed at the rate of over 70%. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. [inaudible] Jay Ruderman: So if you're not employed, you're often not part of society. You're at home; and that's another form of segregation. A lot of that has to do with stigma. I know enough execs of major corporations, those that are leading in hiring people with disabilities always have a personal connection with a person with a disability. They had a brother, a child, someone that they believe should be included in society. And those without often believe that people with disabilities are not a good, productive member of their business. But what we found by anecdotes and through statistics is that hiring people with disabilities always raises the workforce and makes it a better place. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. My partner is a professor of special education and she always says special education is good education. When you try to think through very, very carefully, all the different ways that people learn, you're going to come up with a classroom with differentiated learning that works for everyone. So I think that's right how this can be transformative. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: You mentioned the pandemic. Let's actually pause for a second because I do feel that if we get on top of the disease and the transmission of the virus, as we start to recover collectively, there are things that we can learn but changes that we'll need to make going forward that we can learn deeply from the disability rights community and that we can put in place going forward that could potentially move us more toward meaningful and substantive inclusion in a way that I think could move the needle a little bit. Jay Ruderman: Yeah. We will wait and see what happens. There are many ethical decisions that are being made in different countries right now that are affecting people with disabilities. Right before it came on your show, I read an op-ed by a friend of mine, Ari Ne'eman in the New York Times today. Essentially what he's saying is that decisions are being made to ask people with disabilities who rely on ventilators and different medical devices in order to live and sort of say to them or make a decision for them that their life may not be of the same caliber as a young person. Jay Ruderman: We're hearing stories in Italy about decisions being made that if you're over 60 years old, you're not going to receive medical treatment as if you were under 60. I think with people with disabilities who may rely on ventilators and other medical equipment in order to live, there could be ethical decisions about the value of a life of a person with disability. Jay Ruderman: These are real decisions that we have to think about as a society. We come down on the fact that a person with a disability has a life and their life is no less worthy than anyone else's life, but I don't know where we're going to go. I don't know how bad this will get and what directives either our government or medical providers will come up with. Jay Ruderman: I don't personally like to value someone's life over another person's, whether they are rich or strong or young or whatever. We all have a life and I think it's up to God to decide what our life is worth, not someone else. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. I think that's exactly right. It's not a human task at all. It is really beyond our... We don't have that wisdom. We don't have that; and yet, unfortunately, given scarcities there are ethicists and doctors who are facing those terrible choices. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It carries down to a less extreme level. I was talking to a friend of mine whose son has type one diabetes and there's a shortage of alcohol swabs that they use to clean his catheters. So she's worried about his health degrading. Her sister-in-law is shipping it from the middle of the country because she can't find any locally and she can't order them online. So I think the distribution of resources is the flip side of access I think... It's grim. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I was pointing more toward what I hope will be some of the more positive outcomes of this, now that we know what it's like, not necessarily to be able to get access to the communities or the places that those of us who are able bodied that nourish us. And so is the uptick in streaming... Does that create an awareness and will we equip ourselves to make these available to folks in the future if we're able to get back to a place of convening face to face more? Jay Ruderman: I think it's all good. I think what you're asking about, the ability to connect with each other remotely, is a good thing and will help a lot of people. And maybe some of us who are normally used to convening in a meeting or in person are now experiencing what maybe what some people with disabilities may experience on a daily basis. They are at home and their home is their existence. Jay Ruderman: This can be a tool that we can use... We've already been using it for a long time. You know, we do Zoom conferences for disability activists all over the place. So I think that is a good thing and I think that we'll see some good come out of it. Jay Ruderman: I also think in general, in terms of the pandemic, you're seeing both good and bad. You're seeing bad in terms of people hoarding supplies and looking out only for themselves and you're seeing people who are very altruistic and reaching out and checking in on neighbors and people that are elderly and people with disabilities, and realizing that this is the time that we have to step up. Jay Ruderman: So I think you see both. Governments are acting differently depending on where we live and as we know, Jews are spread out all over the world. A lot of us are sort of... We have to follow the directives of our government. Jay Ruderman: So I just hope and pray that everything works out for the best and that we try to keep positive, which I think is another thing. We can get drawn into a dark hole, especially if we focus on the media all the time and we have to try to keep ourselves healthy and balanced and in a good place for those around us. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: That's absolutely true, and that's actually one of the core teachings of this podcast. One of the core principles is in its orientation on resilience, as something that's baked into a Jewish approach that even in the hardest times, we find ways to turn toward joy. We find ways to orient toward connection and celebration. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: We know whatever's going on, we pause, we make Shabbat, we remember creation, we reset ourselves toward this possibility of a moment of perfection that can hopefully infuse everything we do. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Especially at this time, it's really important for us to be mindful about how we're navigating this and to try to raise up the things that turn us toward optimism and turn us toward our better selves. Jay Ruderman: I would just say that we all have to keep aware that there are people that we know that are losing their jobs and the ability to provide for their families. There are people whose businesses will not make it through this. Jay Ruderman: As a Jewish people, we've lived through some really, really terrible times and we come out of it. We will come out of this. It doesn't mean that there'll be a lot of people hurt by it. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. Jay Ruderman: And I think that when we come out of it, we'll be a different society. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I think that that's right. And I think actually the kind of conversation we've been having, and we will wind down now, but the conversation we've been having about the rights of the individual to live fully and the obligations of the community to foster that and to look out for the collective, that's going to be a really essential conversation going forward Jewishly in terms of inclusion of people with disability, in terms of recovering from the social and economic impact of this pandemic. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: A very powerful learning I had, and you really raised this up earlier in the conversation, a very powerful teaching I heard from Dr. Paul Wolpe, who's a professor of ethics, who runs the Ethics Center down at Emory University, is ethical decisions are not a choice between something that's right and something that's wrong. You draw on ethics when you're looking at two things that are right and you have to make challenging decisions. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: We are going to be called upon and we're going to have the opportunity, I think, to help to create a new way of going forward. And I very much hope your sensibility and your values are at the forefront of that. Jay Ruderman: Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm reading a book right now, which probably a lot of people read called The Tattooist of Auschwitz... A story about a couple that lives through the Holocaust at Auschwitz. And you know, people went through really, really horrible things. I think the difference was those who believed that they had faith, that something... That they would come through it and those that lost the faith. Jay Ruderman: I think that... I have faith in God. I think things will be better. I think sometimes we're tested. This is definitely a time when the world is being tested. We'll have plenty of time to come back and look historically and see what types of decisions were made that were right and that were wrong. Jay Ruderman: Right now, I think we have to try to do whatever we can to keep ourselves positive, to keep ourselves as caring individuals to support those around us, whether they'd be in our families or externally, and this will end, and we'll move on in history. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Right. I think it's really important, Jay, what you just said, those are practices, those are commitments. Those are things that sometimes they come easily and sometimes they don't. But if we are really committed to them, then we can push ourselves toward those become our natural and our instinctive stances. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: That's really essential at a time like this; for us to really take on those commitments and those practices and to enact the values so that we really are the people we want to be and able to build the society that we want to build. Jay Ruderman: Right. Historically, the Jewish people... We've started as a Jewish organization and we are at our heart a Jewish organization, but our reach has really gone way beyond that. I mean, we work a lot in entertainment about the authentic representation of disability and we've had a major impact on the entertainment world about authentic representation and how that impacts stigma and how that impacts millions of people and how they're treated. Jay Ruderman: I really believe that the Jewish people historically and can continue to be a light onto the world. And I think that that's a motivating factor that I look at. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Oh, that's great. That's great. Well, thank you so much for all you're doing and for this time, this conversation today. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: As I noted, we'll post on the website that supports this podcast ,hashivenu.fireside.fm, links to the foundation and especially to a whole host of white papers the foundation has commissioned. You can you see on the website some of the impact of that effort to reach out to the entertainment industry for authentic representation. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Listeners can also follow Jay both on Facebook and on Twitter search, Jay Ruderman and you should be able to find him on both sites and we'll post the links to the books and some of the resources that you've mentioned as well. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Thank you so much for joining me today. I want to thank Jay Ruderman, the president of the Ruderman Family Foundation for this rich conversation significantly on inclusion of people with disabilities and we've also really ranged beyond that as well. Thanks so much, Jay. Jay Ruderman: Thanks, Deborah. I want to thank you for doing this podcast because I think it provides a service to people, especially at this time that is so important and such a resource in people's lives. So thanks for doing it. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Oh, thank you. This is my greatest joy to be able to be in heart-to-heart conversation with people like you. It just gives me a tremendous amount as well. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: So as I said, for more information on inclusion of people with disabilities and on the Ruderman Family Foundation, you can look on our website and you can also find more resources on ReconstructingJudaism.org. We have a great article on how Reconstructionist congregations across North America are involved in trying to make their communities more accessible and also on our website ritualwell.org. Please subscribe and rate and review us in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish Teachings on Resilience. Chana Rothman: (singing)