The original article is published on Jewish Disability Inclusion News

In 2010, I had the privilege of participating in the inaugural cohort of the Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows – Leading Educators Online.  During one of our Israel training trips, I made a comment which caught the attention of our program directors.  I made the bold statement that, in my experience, the ONLY place in the Jewish world where people of diverse backgrounds regularly meet and engage meaningfully is in the Jewish disabilities world.  I cited a story I had heard of a woman Reconstructionist rabbi and a Chabad rabbi sitting around the table—not discussing practice or ideology, but rather sharing the experience of parenting autistic children.  

The program director encouraged me to “say more” and write an article for the Lookstein (Jewish Education) Journal.  In the process of writing “Special Needs Brings People Together” (a title that I would change in 2024), I began thinking of places where the Jewish community has historically come together.  I considered the Soviet Jewry movement, Hillel on campus, Chabad early childhood programs, and the biblical notion that we were ALL Standing (Parshat Nitzavim) and that we were ALL at Sinai (for the receiving of the Ten Commandments and torah).  

I proceeded to focus on one compelling, modern day example–the Shefa School in Manhattan, a community Jewish day school which attracts Jewish students with learning disabilities from every possible background.

In recent years, Jews with disabilities and professionals committed to Jewish disability inclusion have come together in two spaces–conferences sponsored by the Ruderman Family Foundation and in the pages of the New Normal, a former publication of the New York Jewish Week.  Subscribe

When both of these important pillars of the Jewish disabilities community ceased to exist, a number of us–people with disabilities, advocates and people working in the disability field–got together to brainstorm ways to keep bringing all of us together and ways we could share our messages with the rest of the world.  

a graphic showing different kinds of accessibility with physical, heaing, vision and other disabilities

Happily and proudly, the Jewish Disability Inclusion News (JDIN) was born!  And many of those original thought partners are now contributors and members of our advisory board.  We are pleased to celebrate our FIRST anniversary this July.

In one short year, with the help of contributors with and without disabilities, and thanks to the efforts of our amazing editor, Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer, we have managed to share dozens of articles on our Substack focusing on disability advocacy, education and awareness in the Jewish community and beyond.

We now have over 50,000 readers across 35 states and 35 countries. We are grateful that you are one of them and hope that in our second year, we will reach even more readers.

Some of our most viewed articles this year include:  “Why we should not wish everyone a meaningful fast,” written by a professional and person with a disability, Jason Lieberman, “My daughter is my best teacher,” by Dr. Len Felder, parent of a child with a disability, and “Four March Musts for the Jewish Disability Community,” by Rabbi Michael Levy, a disabilities professional and advocate, who has written numerous articles for our publication.  A piece that I wrote about Israel gearing up for more people with disabilities given the current war was our 4th most read piece with some very moving follow up posted recently.

We invite you to join us on our JDIN journey!  We are always looking for new and repeat contributors—as well as new subscribers. Every rabbi, cantor, Jewish educator and Jewish organization should know about us—and we are free!  We are also always seeking support of donors and foundations.  We operate independently of any organization and are therefore free to truly share the widest possible range of perspectives.  Feel free to contact me with if you have interest in supporting us or know of foundations aligned with our mission:  howardblas@hotmail.com.

Thank you for being part of our growing efforts!

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The original article is published at JPost.com

Nate Fish, heading to the 2020 Olympics with Team Israel, filmed their journey. Now CEO of Israel Baseball Americas, he continues to support Israel baseball, fostering talent and resources.

When Nate Fish was about to head off to Japan with Team Israel for the 2020 Olympics (played in 2021 due to the COVID pandemic), Jeremy Newberger, CEO of Ironbound Films, handed him six camcorders and asked him to give them out to players to film their experiences in the Olympic Village and at the Games. Fish was instructed to send the memory cards back when they returned from Tokyo.

‘Israel Swings for Gold’

“I had no idea if we got enough footage or even if the cards were received,” said Fish, who has worn many hats for Israel baseball. Fish has served as the Olympic team’s third-base coach, a member of Team Israel for three World Baseball Classics, and head coach of the Israel National Team.

He is currently CEO of the newly created Israel Baseball Americas, a non-profit organization that aims to create a pipeline of talent for the Israel National Team program, and provide human and financial resources to the Israel Association of Baseball.

“18 months later, I was invited to the premiere of the ‘Israel Swings for Gold’ film in Atlanta. It was awesome!”

Israel baseball swag is on display during last week’s New York premiere of ‘Israel Swings for Gold’ (credit: HOWARD BLAS)

Daniel A. Miller, along with Newberger and Seth Kramer, also co-directed and produced “Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel,” the 2018 documentary about the underdog Israel National Team competing for the first time in the World Baseball Classic. Miller recalls the camera hand-off story and the ongoing collaboration differently.

Miller emphasizes the confidence he and his team had in Fish to deliver under unique circumstances.

Capturing the moment

“It was COVID at the time and the Olympic Village was secure and there was no media allowed, and we were thinking of how we could follow the team. We knew that Nate was a big social media type and was media savvy. He got exactly the right things from the team. They captured everything!”

Fans of Team Israel and those who love a good Israel and Jewish story packed the Carole Zabar Center for Film at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan last Tuesday to view the recently released 77-minute film of the footage.

Through their skilled camera work, viewers witness the players flying to Japan – on the same flight as rival Teams USA and Dominican Republic. The film shows team members giving each other haircuts, eating in the Olympic Village dining room, and waiting in a long line for much needed pre-Opening Ceremonies alterations to their uniforms.

The players film themselves jumping on the carefully constructed Japanese cardboard beds to see how many players it would take to break the bed. 

The film takes the audience through each game, sharing footage of exciting wins, and disappointing losses. Players try to maintain a sense of normalcy on and off the field, though it quickly becomes clear that their experience as Israelis is anything but normal.

Munich olympics 1976

Footage of Munich’s 1976 Olympics incorporated into the movie helps viewers appreciate the significance of the Israeli flag display in the Olympic Village for the first time since 1976. In addition, the 2020 Olympics paid tribute to the murdered Israeli athletes at the Opening Ceremony for the first time since 1976.

Viewers learn the painstaking process of how players are kept safe throughout their stay in Japan. They wear tracking devices at all times, they pass through facial recognition machines, and their bus is searched regularly by dogs and security officials.

The film shows the audience firsthand how Israeli athletes were regularly rebuffed by athletes from other countries. When athletes regularly exchange pins from other countries, most refuse pins from Israel. Israeli players frequently encountered Palestinian flags and chants of “Free, Free Palestine” in their travels.

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The original article is published at JPost.com

EyeControl improves clinical outcomes, prevent cognitive decline, and enhance the patient and family experience.“We are honoured to be able to support every patient – but especially our soldiers.”

When Yoav Tzivoni, a combat soldier seriously wounded in the northern Gaza Strip, awoke after six months in the intensive care unit of the Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital, he shockingly asked the nurse for his favorite heavy metal music. 

“I was shaking from excitement when the nurse texted and said Yoav is asking for his music!” recounts Michal Finkelstein, product specialist, and speech and language pathologist by training, in charge of customer relations and success at the Israeli company EyeControl. 

“What? Is he awake?” Finkelstein wondered, saying that she was “shaking from excitement.”

Tzivoni and his fellow wounded ICU soldiers are benefiting from a recently discovered additional and potentially internationally game-changing use of EyeControl, a wearable device that enables patients – including those on ventilators – to communicate with medical staff and family members via eye gestures and a bone conduction headset, to hear the recorded messages of loved ones – and to listen to one’s favorite music.

EyeControl helps improve clinical outcomes, prevent cognitive decline, and enhance the patient and family experience. It is currently being tested in prestigious university hospitals in and out of Israel to see if it reduces delirium in ICU patients.

DR. AMI MAYO, ICU director at Assuta Ashdod. (credit: ILAN ASSAYAG)

Tzivoni is one of the lucky ones. Following months in the hospital and extensive rehabilitation, he is living with his girlfriend in Tel Aviv, attending twice-weekly outpatient therapies and he successfully petitioned the army for permission to rejoin his elite combat unit (as a volunteer) – he is now in charge of logistics.

Fellow soldier Tzvika Lavi, 30, was not as lucky. The religiously observant father of three young girls from Eli died on December 12 after sustaining extensive wounds on November 20, 2023. While Lavi was in the hospital, Finkelstein said his family treasured the opportunity to communicate with their husband and father via the EyeControl device. 

“When his wife, an occupational therapist, learned about the device, she said, ‘Yalla, let’s go!’ She and the girls had already recorded messages to go on to the device. His wife told me that Tzvika was very religious. She told me it calmed her down to know that, even on Shabbat, he could listen to her voice and the voice of his kids and parents. I almost started to cry…”

Success using EyeControl on patients

Dr. Ami Mayo, director of critical care at Assuta Ashdod’s ICU, is pleased with the success they are observing in the use of EyeControl with patients in the ICU. Mayo explains some of the issues and complexities in caring for patients in the ICU. While the team is able to monitor such vital areas as blood pressure, oxygen levels, and heart rate, he notes that monitoring cognition and awakening of the patient are more difficult. 

“In critical care, we have obstacles in communicating with patients.” He points out that it is therefore difficult to monitor sedation, which sometimes leads to over-sedation. 

“Sedated patients in the ICU are in a state of artificial sleep, not good sleep.” Mayo explains that the brain then proceeds to “invent all kinds of stories and fables to fill in the gaps, which can lead to nightmares, PTSD, and delirium, a state of confusion a patient may experience when waking.” When this happens, they may even begin to remove critical tubes and monitoring devices.Mayo explains some potential benefits of EyeControl. 

“When I play familiar sounds to sedated patients, it provides their brains with raw material to fill in the gaps and reduces the bad side effects.” 

In addition, observing patient responses to “playing music, hearing hello and goodbye messages and beloved voices tells us if it is too much sedation- – and we can control the dose.”

Mayo notes that “by sending messages – even to a patient who is sedated – some penetrate. We see that many soldiers who were connected [to the device] really remember voices and their beloved music.”Mayo is hopeful that the use of EyeControl for ICU patients will continue to expand globally as disorientation and inability to communicate can lead to delirium and post-ICU post-traumatic stress disorder. “My hope is that every patient in the ICU will get this device.”

But, had it not been for a meeting with EyeControl co-founder Or Retzkin, the device may have never expanded beyond its intended use as a communication device for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. ALS causes loss of muscle control and progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain and leads to trouble breathing. “When Or told me about the ALS project, we thought together and realized it could be applied to all patients in the critical care unit.”

The EyeControl website reports that the company “was established by co-founders who all have personal connections to locked-in individuals,” referring to people who have locked-in syndrome (LIS), a rare and serious neurological disorder that happens when the brain stem is damaged, and they have total paralysis, yet are still conscious and possess normal cognitive abilities.” People with the syndrome can communicate with eye movements.

Retzkin, 38, the company’s co-founder and CEO, joined together with Itai Kornberg, CTO, and Shai Rishon, an ALS patient who died in 2018 at the age of 52. While EyeControl was useful in patients with ALS, Retzkin says “ALS was too small as a business.” After his meetings and subsequent collaboration with medical teams like those of Dr. Mayo, supporting soldiers and others, in intensive care units, he notes playfully and proudly, “Now, people don’t remember us as an ALS device!”

Interest in EyeControl’s potential has taken off in Israel and around the world. Retzkin reports that, with the support of the Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development fund (BIRD), EyeControl is currently participating in a multi-center clinical trial at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston as well as at Assuta and Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva, together with another clinical trial, funded by an NIH AI program, which will soon take place at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

The company is aiming to demonstrate the reduction of the phenomena of ICU delirium, which is considered to be very costly.

Recent investors include the European Bank through their European Council Fund and Google’s AI Fund. EyeControl is currently operating mainly in Israel under Clalit, the country’s largest health fund, and is in the implementation process of additional selected sites in the US. Noa Mintz, clinical & business development – US, speaks about the success she is already seeing in the US.

A rare health-tech solution 

“It’s rare that a health-tech solution is of value to virtually all stakeholders in the US healthcare system. We’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response we’ve received across the board – from hospital executives to bedside nurses. They recognize that EyeControl-Med is not just improving their care workflows; it is transforming the dynamic between clinicians, patients, and their loved ones. EyeControl provides a very tangible and profound opportunity for families to take an active and meaningful role in patient care. We’re operationalizing these human-centered, compassionate interventions that healthcare providers wholeheartedly believe in, but don’t always have the infrastructure and resources to facilitate. I think that at EyeControl we have really cracked that code and are catalyzing a person-centered approach even in the ICU and under the most life-threatening situations.”

Connecting between soldiers and their families

Even with EyeControl’s growth and evolution, they have not lost sight of the true purpose – to help patients and their families. Finkelstein, the product specialist, admits, “I generally don’t connect with families, but because it was warriors and soldiers, it became something else. I feel privileged to meet soldiers and their families and really connect.” 

She will never forget the day wounded soldier Yoav Tzivoni asked for heavy metal music, and when the head nurse asked her to bring four of the devices “ASAP.”

Yedida Tzivoni, mother of the severely wounded soldier, will never forget the moment Dr. Mayo approached her for permission to use the EyeControl device. 

“We recorded brachot [blessings] and songs he loved. It was very emotional to hear that after three weeks, he remembered listening to the music we recorded.” She made sure this reporter was sitting down when she said that EyeControl and the care he received at Assuta had led him to the point of returning to currently joining his elite combat unit for voluntary reserve duty. As a result, Tzivoni was unavailable for comment.

While CEO Retzkin expected the results the team has observed in terms of patient outcomes, he concedes, “We didn’t expect to see how huge the benefits would be to the families and for our clinical teams who are also part of the healing process.”

Retzkin concludes, “We are honored to be able to support every patient – but especially our soldiers. We are especially honored to help keep the memory of Tzvika Lavi alive through our taking in Itzhar Shay’s Next October Initiative. The initiative, proposed by Shay, an entrepreneur and former minister of science and technology who lost his own son on October 7, aims to establish a new tech start-up for each fallen soldier and civilian victim of October 7. Companies participating commit to ‘doing good’ as a core value.”

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The original article is published at JewishDisabilityInclusionNews

I have never been a big believer in miracles—until I started following the story of elite Israel soldier Yoav Tzivoni. I wrote about him in these pages after visiting him Samson Assuta Hospital in Ashdod back in December.

 I have known Yoav since he was a young child, attending Camp Ramah in New England with his mother, head of the Israeli delegation and his father, head of our boating department.  To be succinct—Yoav was close to death from injuries sustained fighting in Gaza.  He had a collapsed lung, shrapnel injuries and became a new below the knee amputee.  He had already endured dozens of surgeries when I visited him.  He was barely able to speak—but he managed to utter that his only regret was that he was not still in Gaza with his team. He expressed determination to return to Gaza.

He almost “fished his wish.”  When I called his mom to say hi during a June 2024 trip to Israel, I asked about Yoav. His mom asked if I was sitting down.  Yoav has received a prosthetic, attends twice-weekly outpatient therapy, lives with his girlfriend in Tel Aviv, and…..is currently on reserve duty with his elite unit. Yoav petitioned the army to rejoin as a volunteer.  His treatment team agreed that this would be an important part of his treatment and recovery.  Yoav is now with his unit in the north of Israel, in charge of logistics. He is also keeping sharp, as the photo above–which has essentially “gone viral” on social media”–shows!

You are a real hero, Yoav—and proof that having a disability is only one aspect of who you are!

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