I wanted to thank the paper and its writer, Howard Blas, for the wonderful article in the Jan. 27 issue (Local News, “Chai Lifeline’s New Mid-Atlantic Director: Role Fills ‘Need to Give Back to Community’”). We have received positive feedback, and I wanted to share that with you. You did a masterful job weaving the Kovacs’ family story and experience into the Chai Lifeline support story. Thank you for your creativity and hard work in helping us spread our message.
Howard made the daunting and insurmountable task of teaching our son Hebrew from scratch and his Torah portion in less than a year look like a breeze. He made the lessons fun and appropriately challenging and managed to do it all with humor, curiosity in our whole child, and love. Our son grew in his confidence, love of learning and acquired a new teacher and friend in Howard. Howard is incredibly patient, easy to work with, and has an overall calming presence. Our son likened Howard to ‘Ted Lasso ‘- in that he was always smiling, energetic, and the ultimate champion and believer in our child and his abilities. I could not imagine a more kind, humble, and devoted person to have walked M into this precious transition to manhood.
Like my brother said after our magical Bar Mitzvah weekend, “We could use a few more Howards in this world!”
Max Beede
Max was introduced to Jewish Special Needs programming through the Camp Ramah Tikvah program. He was mentored by legendary Jewish inclusion king, Howard Blas, who helped Max discover his next adventure—a live-in position supporting an adult with disabilities.
Adam & Graham
THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of your dedication and time and flexibility and patience and caring and acceptance and overall presence for Max and for us during these past 2 years. We are very lucky to have met you and to have you become part of our whole Bar Mitzvah experience. You are quite a special human and surrounding all of our anxiety and crazy busy lives, we want to take a moment to acknowledge YOU. You have been a true blessing in our lives.