What a great day!   We are almost 2 hours in to 12 hours of free video coverage of Fare Thee Well!

This weekend marks the 5^th anniversary of the famous Fare Thee Well Grateful Dead reunion in Chicago.  As Relix associate editor, Raffaela Kenny-Cincotta noted in her recent “3 from the 7” podcast, “the videos of the shows have been living in Peter Shapiro’s vault.”  Today, the videos of the 3 shows are being livestreamed for all to enjoy, free of charge, from noon til midnight today.  There is full concert footage as well as parking lot, Shakedown Street and more.

 I was lucky enough to be there—to see the historic shows, and to write an article for JTA and other publications about Jam Shalom and their crew who love traditional Jewish observance as much as they enjoy music festivals.  The editor chose the clever title, “Touch of Pray:  Celebrating Shabbat and the Grateful Dead.

My biggest challenge for today?  How to get in as much concert watching as possible during a day of tutoring and other meetings.

Enjoy!

I come from a family where birthdays are nice but they aren’t the absolute biggest deal in the world.  A meaningful birthday would be receiving some nice handmade birthday cards, perhaps a nice sweet treat, and most importantly, secretly telling the family chef what we’d like for our “special Shabbat dinner” on the upcoming Friday.   In contrast, there are people and families where each and every birthday is HUGE!  Everyone for miles knows about it, brings gifts, calls and emails, decorates doors or even puts up lawn signs.

Some people also enjoy people acknowledging their birthdays on Facebook.  For years, I smiled happily when people wished Happy Birthday on Facebook.   I was happy when I got over 100 birthday wishes on an average year.  But I didn’t personally write back to each person, and I didn’t check daily to see who was celebrating a birthday that day.

This year, I vowed to do better.  Every day for the past three months—since my last birthday—I have made my first appointment “FB Bdays.”  As soon as I turn on my computer early each morning, I go to Facebook, check birthdays, and wish each friend a happy birthday. 

I assume it makes them happy.  I have found it a wonderful way to check in with each and every Facebook friend throughout the year—1 or 2 or 6 at a time—nearly every day of the year.  It is heartwarming to connect with very old friends, and sometimes just a drop embarrassing when we can’t exactly remember who a certain person is.  While making it through an entire year of wishing friends Happy Birthday may not be as big of an accomplishment as making it through the entire Talmud in 7 years, it sure is a good feeling. 

So friends, if I haven’t wished you happy birthday yet, chances are I will—in the next 9 months.

Happy Birthday!

At 7:30 pm tonight, I expect to see 40 plus excited Tikvah participants from across the US and Canada on Zoom, ready to participate in our 2^nd of 12 virtual vocational training sessions.  The National Ramah Tikvah Network is pioneering a program for participants and alum of our job training programs, known in various camps as Ezra, Atzmayim and Voc Ed.  We will be meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 pm to learn job skills, soft skills of a job, to do hands-on projects, and to hear from alum of our programs who describe their current jobs, living situations, Jewish involvement and social lives.  The participants will also have time at the end to socialize—and sing the “wind down the day song” of each camp, Rad Hayom.

In our first session, participants and staff introduced themselves, learned about Zoom, and learned about goals and goal-setting.  Tonight, we will experiment with breakout room so we can have smaller group discussions and more individualized instruction as we make cards for front line workers.

From our discussions with colleagues at the Foundation for Jewish camp, at other camps and at Task Force on Disabilities for the UJA-New York, it seems we are perhaps the first to move our robust in-person summer training programs online. We are taking careful notes and look forward to sharing “lessons learned.”      For now, off to prepare for an animated, action-packed hour with awesome young adults from Toronto, Chicago, Boston, New York, Los Angeles and lots of other cities and towns!

I am embarrassed to admit that as I child, I remember people using the term “deaf, dumb and blind.”  I am also embarrassed to admit that I only heard of “Deaf-Blind Awareness Week 2020” a few days ago, when it was just ending—and only thanks to a chance interview I saw on Facebook with Haben Girma, the first deaf-blind graduate of Harvard Law School.

According to the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youth and Adults, Deaf-Blind Awareness Week has been observed for 7 days starting the last Sunday in June since 1984.  It was this year from June 21st to 27th.   The theme this was “Deaf-Blind and Thriving.”  

I am a big fan of Josh Kantor, the organist for the Boston Red Sox and his Facebook program “7^th Inning Stretch,” where he plays music every day at 3 pm, “until the baseball season starts.”  For some reason, I went to the Facebook page and he was interviewing Haben Girma.  There was an interpreter on the screen, and Haben’s friend, Gordon was transcribing what Josh said so Haben could read it in Braille.  Sally was captioning the discussion as well.   There is an audio/video recording of the interview here   

Haben Girma’s recent memoir is entitled, “Haben. The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law. A Memoir by Haben Girma.”   Her professional work is in several areas including accessibility of digital technologies.

The interview took place on what would have been Helen Keller’s 140^th birthday.  Girma is one of 30 people to win the American Foundation for the Blind's Helen Keller Achievement Award.   Girma spoke about Keller as adult and noted that Helen was often frustrated that most stories capture her as a 7-year-old, and very little depict her in her 40s, 50s or 60s.    Girma noted that Keller was a social justice advocacy.  “When she tried to inspire people fix racism and other inequalities, they tried to silence her. But she would keep writing. She wrote many books and did many speeches.”

Girma, who spoke in her own voice in the presentation, addressed the issue of people with disabilities and the police. “A lot of times when a deaf person is arrested or has any kind of interaction with the police, there's no communication access. There's no interpreter, there's no captioning. And, that's not justice. So, many are arrested and have no idea what's going on, why they are being arrested. They will go through a trial without interpreters or captioning or any kind of access or they will be put in jail without the ability to talk to a lawyer or family members. It's not justice. And, I know a lot of people say oh, I don't have to worry about that, because I follow the laws. We're not talking about guilt or innocence. We are talking about all interactions with the police. And, that's terrifying for me as a Deafblind person. If an officer shouts something at me, I'm not going to hear it. And there's a good chance they would interpret that as a threat.  A lot of police officers expect people to immediately comply. They walk into a situation expecting non-disabled people. And if someone can't move in a certain way, can't hear, can't see, or has an invisible disability like psychiatric disabilities, too many officers interpret that as a threat. And that's a widespread problem; about a third to half of those killed by police are people with disabilities. And a significant number of those are Black people with disabilities. It's extremely dangerous when ableism is multiplied by racism.”

Girma spoke a lot about developments in the tech world which may benefit the deaf-blind community and others with disabilities.   She offered important advice to the tech sector: “if you know anyone working on tech, remind them — make it accessible. Hire more disabled engineers to be part of the team. Where teams are diverse and include Black people, disabled people, women in tech, then our products and services will also be stronger and better.”

Kantor asked about Girma’s love for dance, and she spoke of attending a camp for the blind in California, where she had a blind dance instructor. “She showed us there are many different ways to engage with music. She verbally described the different moves, but also, allowed us to touch our feet and feel the different movements. And that's how I was introduced to swing, salsa and merengue. I dance many of the different dances. Guess what. Helen Keller also waltzed and fox-trotted!”  In the interview, Girma also shared stories of meeting Stevie Wonder—at the White House!

Girma is an amazing person, a great spokesperson for the deaf-blind community, and a person who has done a lot to help change perceptions of people with disabilities.  I hope we will all mark our calendars so we meaningfully mark Deaf Blind Awareness Week—and Helen Keller’s 141^st birthday—next year!

Links to General Information on deaf-blindness:

American Association of the Deaf-Blind: http://www.aadb.org/

Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths & Adults: www.helenkeller.org/hknc

National Center on Deaf-Blindness:  https://nationaldb.org/

World Federation of the DeafBlind: http://www.wfdb.eu/

National Family Association for Deaf-Blind (NFADB)  https://www.nfadb.org/