By Rabbi Yonah Berman
I recently spearheaded an online adult education program called Changemakers. This program brought together 30 Orthodox synagogues across North America to share in a four-part Zoom lecture series under the auspices of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, where I am the Director of Alumni Engagement and Chair of Professional Rabbinics. Each lecture in the Changemakers program focused on Jewish figures who have made a difference in the world, including Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Sarah Schenirer and Rabbi Avi Weiss. One particular session, led by YCT’s President and Rosh HaYeshiva, Rabbi Dov Linzer, focused on how the traditional Jewish understanding of deafness and deaf people has evolved over the last century due to the revolution in accessibility and availability of educational resources to those who cannot hear.
We were receiving hundreds of registrations from around the US, Canada and beyond. I was very excited to get the program running without a hitch, when I received the following email:
Hi,
Can you please tell me if your upcoming Zoom session on the status of deaf people in halakha will be accessible to deaf and hard of hearing participants? If it is, I would like to register.
Name withheld for privacy
DEAF
And it hit us like a ton of bricks: How could it be that we were running a program speaking about a sensitive topic that relates to the inclusion of a group of people, without providing the basic mechanisms to include those very people? With the encouragement of Rabbi Linzer, whose lecture motivated the letter-writer to reach out to us, I spent the next week hustling to find a solution.
I reached out to various Jewish organizations which assist those who are deaf or hard of hearing and pondered how to solve this problem of accessibility. Was hiring an American Sign Language interpreter the way to go, or should we explore hiring a closed-captionist? An ASL interpreter would have greatly benefited certain members of the deaf community, but he or she would have had limited utility for those who cannot understand ASL. A quick query on Facebook led three people to recommend a local woman who professionally transcribes Torah content in real-time.
With the interpreter in place, we began to ask our registrants if they would benefit from closed-captioning. To our surprise, around 20-25% began requesting it, including not only members of the deaf community, but also many members of the hearing community who normally follow lectures on Zoom with difficulty. The night of Rabbi Linzer’s lecture, I watched with amazement as our transcriber deftly kept up with Rabbi’s Linzer’s words and moved back and forth in her live closed-captioning between Hebrew textual references and his English-language commentary.
As a yeshiva whose values rest on the understanding that Torah is meant to be shared by all Jews, we learned a humbling lesson through this experience about our own blind spots, and I believe, ultimately lived up to our intentions to live our values. We were reminded of the importance of removing barriers to learning from those who can be left behind as we enter the brave new world of Zoom learning during the current pandemic and beyond. We have committed to creating an accessible environment to those who are deaf and hard of hearing in our future public programs, and have already done so for our recent Climate Conference and upcoming Yemei Iyun in Bible and Jewish Thought.
It behooves all Jewish institutions to consider their own steps toward inclusion, and invest in the resources to make their Torah as accessible to as many people as possible. The return on investment is high, and the knowledge that we are living up to our values is priceless.
Rabbi Yonah Berman is the Chair of Professional Rabbinics and Director of Alumni Engagement at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in New York.
I was one of the participants who benefited from the closed captioning at YCT’s Zoom events. It was truly a pleasure not to stress about how I was going to clearly follow conversation. YCT took an amazing first step and hopefully created a precedence that everyone–not just Jewish affiliated organizations–would do well to follow. I would like to press the point that captioning isn’t the only aspect of keeping DHOH (deaf, hard of hearing) included. Jewish schools (and other Jewish affiliated places) MUST implement the use of transparent PPE for students and staff. Not only is it essential for all teachers to see faces but for students as well whether they have hearing loss issues or not. Visible expression is crucial to not only teaching but maintaining personal connection. It’s disappointing the ADA hasn’t been more vocal in insisting on accommodations for this population. Lastly, closed captioning can be very costly for non-profits and schools. This puts everyone in a difficult position between expense and inclusion and many people must opt to quit their jobs for lack of accommodation. Thank you, YCT, for starting a much needed conversation.
This is the degree of openness and inclusivity that I have come to expect from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Rabbi Linzer and Rabbi Berman. How simple and smart! Let’s continue looking for new ways of making our communal programs available to more people and exploring the new technologies that can assist us. Kol Hakavod!
My name is Rachel Chabin, and I’m the captioner described in this article!! It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Rabbi Berman and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah to provide these services! If anyone is interested in learning more about this, please do not hesitate to contact me at rchabin@gmail.com. Thank you so much!
Hi! It’s the author here. Wanted to offer to help brainstorm with other institutions about how to work toward inclusion, especially if it includes the deaf and/or hard of hearing communities. Feel free to reach out to me via YCT’s website!