Teachers learn from students just as students learn from
teachers. Sometimes the process can change the world!
Everyone has one
person in his or her life who has touched the core of the soul.
As a Judaic special educator, I am privileged to watch my
students grow and attain their life cycle goal of becoming a
Bar/Bat Mitzvah.
One such teen is
Sara. Interestingly, Sara is faced with dealing with CHARGE
Syndrome. Her abilities are plenty; her disabilities are
multifaceted. But Sara has an incredible desire to learn, an
insatiable ability to cut to the core and ask for the bottom
line, and an uncanny way of gathering information.
Sara has spent the
last year learning to read her Torah portion, Genesis 37:5-11,
the story about Joseph's dreams. Week after week, month after
month, Sara has painstakingly practiced her lines in
anticipation of her Bat Mitzvah. About three months before the
simcha, Sara told me that she no longer desired to have a Bat
Mitzvah -- the anxiety of what was about to happen had clicked
in. For Sara, this is a real fear -- she has difficulty dealing
with the unknown. I explained to her the normalcy of feeling
anxious -- she then asked me if we could replace her with a
robot!
During our many
discussions, I talked to Sara about mitzvot and the commandments
of giving oneself in unselfish ways. Sara came up with an idea
-- that of being able to twin with a child who couldn't have a
Bar/Bat Mitzvah because of illness or possible death. Sara had
spent a great deal of time in hospitals when she was younger and
she knows what that is like. To think of a way, a very special
way of sharing her moment, her triumph, with another individual
is, indeed, a caring and compassionate mitzvah.
In honor of Sara,
and all the Saras of the world, I hope that "Sara's
Sharing" with children unable to have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah
will spread throughout this nation and the world.
