During rabbinical school, I traveled to a college campus to lead High Holy Day services. I arrived early, took a deep breath, gathered my notes — and then discovered that I couldn’t physically get into the room where I was scheduled to lead. There was no accessible entrance. My legs, already unsteady from symptoms I didn’t yet understand, simply wouldn’t manage the stairs. 

As I sat on the staircase, trying to figure out what to do next, the Hillel student president came over and I asked her for help. She gathered a group of students to carry the chairs and the Torah down the steps and set up a sanctuary for us on the lawn outside the building. Our outdoor Rosh Hashanah service that year brought not only the Hillel regulars, but also various other students who stopped by on their way to class, drawn in by the sound of familiar melodies. Students commented that it was their largest gathering in years. 

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This moment clarified something important: If I was going to keep pursuing my dream of serving the Jewish community, I was going to have to get creative, ask for help and advocate for myself in ways I hadn’t imagined. And doing so not only only benefited me. Sometimes it could also bring new possibilities to those whom I serve. 

At the time, my neuromuscular disease was still undiagnosed. My speech sometimes slipped, my vision blurred when I was tired and walking any distance required concentrated effort. I was learning to balance the long, often irregular hours of rabbinic work with a new rhythm of medical appointments and treatments — treatments that, thankfully, slowly helped me regain my mobility and my voice. In the middle of it all, I also learned something surprising: because of the “ministerial exemption,” rabbis are not clearly protected under the ADA in many pulpit roles. It was one more reminder that the profession I loved had not been fully designed with bodies like mine in mind. Our community unintentionally left many stumbling blocks in my path. 

As I completed rabbinical school and began my career, what made it harder was the absence of visible examples. The number of rabbis who have navigated disabilities like mine openly is quite small. I needed to be able to see and speak to others who could help me imagine what my path might look like as a young rabbi who was eager to serve and to have a real impact on the community that I love so deeply — all while coming to terms with my new reality. When we can’t see people like us, our imagination shrinks. It becomes harder to dream. 

In December, Matan released a new study on disability inclusion in Jewish communal life, and reading it felt like a confirmation of what so many of us have experienced privately. The report points out that while our awareness of disability is evolving, our structures and culture in the Jewish community still have a long way to go. Disability is still too often imagined only as physical. Stigma continues to silence families. And the results shape not only who participates in Jewish life, but who sees themselves as capable of leading it. 

The data is sobering. Across the regions Matan studied, 20–25% of people identified as having a disability, a proportion that mirrors national averages. We are losing participants, not because they don’t want to engage, but because our systems were not built with them in mind. Fewer than 1-in-5 American Jews with disabilities say Jewish institutions are doing “very well” at inclusion. More than 20% have been turned away from community activities due to lack of accommodations. Synagogues are frequently cited as the least accessible spaces. And only 15% of Jews with disabilities can name a disabled leader in their Jewish community. 

These numbers don’t just measure exclusion. They measure what we, as a Jewish community, are missing. When Jews with disabilities are kept at the margins, we lose the leadership, wisdom and Torah we bring. We lose the spiritual depth that comes when experiences of vulnerability, adaptation, resilience and interdependence are part of the voices shaping our communal path. 

Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month invites our community to widen its imagination
about disability and leadership. This is part of why I choose to tell my story publicly. I want others who are navigating disability in Jewish life to know that they aren’t alone, and that leadership does not require a body that cooperates perfectly. If even one rabbinical student, educator or emerging leader can imagine a place for themselves because they see someone else doing it, then the vulnerability of sharing is worth it. 

But storytelling alone isn’t enough. A truly inclusive Jewish future requires structural change. 

Rabbinical schools need clear, proactive accommodations processes and to help students navigate the additional challenges that come with being a student with a disability. Fieldwork and curricula must be accessible by design. 

Synagogues and organizations can build disability training into leadership development, create flexible job descriptions and distinguish between what is truly essential for clergy and what is inherited convention. Assistive technology, modified schedules and collaborative staffing models shouldn’t be seen as exceptions — they should be expected tools of a modern rabbinate. 

And, crucially, we must elevate disabled leaders into visible roles; not as symbols, but as the deeply capable, insightful, spiritually grounded contributors they are. When disabled Jews see leaders who share parts of their reality, entire worlds of possibility open. 

I imagine a Jewish community where disabled children grow up seeing rabbis with canes and wheelchairs and service dogs; where neurodivergent teens see educators who openly speak about their own brains; where families no longer apologize for their needs, because they know those needs help guide us toward a more just and compassionate whole. 

Because when we take away the stumbling blocks that have been placed before too many of us, we open the path to the unique Torah each of us carries — and our community becomes stronger for it. 

Rabbi Madeline Cooper serves as director of learning and practice at Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation.