Birthright opens circle to include special needs

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

March 27, 2008

Avi Saunders 18, of Livingston and Eric Kaye, 20, of Parsippany just returned from their once-in-a-lifetime Taglit-Birthright Israel trip.

Just thinking about being at the Western Wall made Avi clap his hands and sigh in contentment. Eric recalled how happy he was when they landed in Israel and emerged into the warm weather.

Those were highlights of a trip their parents never thought their children would be able to take. Avi and Eric both have autism.

Hosting youngsters with special needs was a first-time experience for Mayanot, a trip provider for Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program that provides free or heavily subsidized Israel tours for young travelers to Israel.

“There’s no reason people should miss Birthright Israel just because they have a disability. Every young Jew should be able to go,” said Avi Weinstein, director of Mayanot’s Birthright programming.

“I first thought, ‘no way,’” said Avi’s mother, Lori, when she found out about the trip last August. “I’m not letting him go 6,000 miles away without me. I couldn’t do it; he couldn’t do it.”

But as she heard more about the trip, she said, she warmed to the idea. “What better place for him to spread his wings and become a little more independent?” she said.

Linda Kaye was excited about the trip from the beginning.

“On the day he left, I burst into tears of joy that he could have this opportunity,” she said.

The trip was far more complicated to arrange than regular trips, Weinstein acknowledged. It included a thorough interview process, conducted with the help of two doctors who would also accompany the group. The staff-to-participant ratio was kept low, and the trip was conducted at a slower-than-usual pace.

“Birthright is famous for fast-paced, lack of sleep, zipping through Israel. We slowed it down for this trip, but they’ll still get to see many of the same attractions,” he said, interviewed by phone from his office in New York before the end of the trip.

“We’ve always had people asking if we do trips for people with special needs,” said Weinstein. “But this year we had way more than the normal amount of people asking.”

Avi, the oldest of three siblings, attends the Children’s Institute in Verona, where he takes senior-level classes. With his family, he is a member of the Synagogue of the Suburban Torah Center in Livingston. Eric attends ECLC, a special education school in Chatham for students ages six through 21. In addition to his classes, he receives vocational training there. He is the third of four siblings and with his family is a member of Temple Beth Am in Parsippany.

Avi and Eric, like about half of the trip’s 25 participants, participate in the Friendship Circle, a program for special-needs youngsters run by the Chabad-Lubavitch hasidic movement in communities throughout the country.

Friendship Circle made a concerted effort this year to work with Birthright Israel to organize such a trip, according to Rabbi Zalman Grossbaum, executive director of the Friendship Circle of MetroWest NJ.

On this first go, Mayanot limited the trip to individuals with no physical disabilities and chose applicants who were very high-functioning.

“Most were independent in terms of eating and getting dressed,” Weinstein said.

They plan to continue the trips. “It’s been a beautiful, beautiful trip. There’s definitely a big motivation for us to do it again,” he said.

Avi and Eric, longtime friends, departed from JFK on March 12 and returned March 24 in the early morning hours.


Avi Saunders, far right, with friends on day five of their trip to Israel.
Later that same day, they gathered around the Saunders’ kitchen table, munching leftover hamantaschen, chocolates, and popcorn and reliving the high points of their visit to Israel.

Exhausted and jet-lagged from their overnight flight, the two friends were nonetheless exuberant about all they had seen. They talked about milking goats in Caesarea, taking cable cars to the top of Masada, swimming in the Dead Sea, seeing candles being made in Tzfat, and taking a boat cruise on the Kineret. They watched goat cheese being made, celebrated Purim, rode on camels, and slept in a Bedouin tent in the desert.

“We had to walk a long way to get to the bathroom!” said Avi.

“I liked looking at the buildings in Tel Aviv,” said Eric, who was also surprised at the farmland he saw in Caesarea. “I was expecting it to be more city-like,” he said.

Asked how he felt when the time came to board the plane and head back to the states, Eric said, “I was sad and happy at the same time.”

Upon seeing Avi return from Israel “so happy,” Lori said, “It just elevated me.”

Chabad on the Avenue one of four new Toronto centres

By FRANCES KRAFT
Staff Reporter

Rabbi Menachem Gansburg and his wife Chana have brought Chabad to a trendy section of Avenue Road north of Lawrence Avenue, causing some initially confused reactions from people who wonder why they’re not on nearby Bathurst Street, with its many Jewish shops and institutions.

Thirty years ago, large North American cities like Toronto typically had one Chabad institution. Today, “almost every zip code has representation,” said Rabbi Zalman Grossbaum, director of Chabad Lubavitch activities for Ontario.

“You have Chabad spilling into every community, every pocket where Jews are situated.”

In Toronto and the surrounding area, there are about 17 Chabad centres, including in Mississauga, Hamilton and Niagara Falls.

Typically, Chabad shluchim (emissaries) are young married couples who start their endeavour from scratch, creating programs and raising funds to become self-sustaining. “It’s challenging, because these rabbis come without being invited,” said Rabbi Grossbaum. “We create the demand.”

In Toronto, Chabad on the Avenue – as Rabbi Gansburg’s fledgling centre is known – is one of just four new Chabad centres that have opened in recent months, and plans are in the works to open one in the Beach area as well.

• Chabad Lubavitch of Downtown Toronto (jewishdt.com), run by Rabbi Mendel Chaikin and his wife Chanie out of their Queen’s Quay condo, serves the area south of College Street, between Bathurst and Yonge Street. They serve area residents, tourists, people who work downtown, and downtown hospital patients.

• Rabbi Moshe and Yehudis Steiner at Uptown Chabad Lubavitch (uptownchabad.com), cater to, for the most part, young families, many of whom are unaffiliated, who live in Bathurst Manor. The Steiners operate out of their home, but recently began holding Shabbat morning services at C.H. Best Middle School.

• York University also has a new Chabad, a student club run by former York student Vidal Bekerman, a 30-year-old ba’al tshuvah, and his wife Chanah Leah Medina. Bekerman, who is not a rabbi, said that there are about 300 students on his mailing list. He said he is on good terms with Hillel staff, who offer a variety of programs and services to York’s 4,500 Jewish students. However, noted Bekerman, there is still a large percentage “that needs to be reached.”

The Gansburgs have been on Avenue Road in a 6,000-square-foot former restaurant, across from the upscale food store Pusateri’s, since December. They are reaching out to Jews in the area bounded by Wilson Avenue and Eglinton Avenue, Yonge Street and the Allen Road.

On an initial visit to the area west of Avenue Road and north of Lawrence, where many small postwar homes have been replaced by newer, larger ones, the Gansburgs noted that a large percentage of the homes had mezuzot.

They introduced themselves to about 50 neighbours by going door-to-door with challah for Shabbat. Many residents told the Gansburgs they didn’t even know their neighbours.

The rabbi, a 25-year-old Toronto native who grew up in Thornhill, said he wants to “create a tight-knit community.” Typically, he said, residents of the area are young families with parents who are “very successful, but very overworked.

“We are here to service the local Jewish community in anything they need.” Programs include a “Kiddie Care” afternoon drop-in centre that features weekly challah-baking, evening Torah classes, a women’s program and the Avenue Road Synagogue, which attracts more than 40 people to Shabbat morning services – and almost double that when services are followed by a kiddush.

Most of the “members” (there is no membership fee) belong to other synagogues, the rabbi noted, referring to existing institutions that service area residents.

Although Chabad’s highest priority is outreach to unaffiliated Jews,“if someone happens to be a member [elsewhere] and wants to come to our synagogue,” they are welcome, he said. The shul, where men and women sit on either side of a row of artificial trees, offers Friday night and Saturday morning services.

Although Chabad is Orthodox, it’s “non-threatening,” said Rabbi Gansburg. There’s “no obligation” to become religious, but he is happy to help anyone who wants to “advance” in their Judaism.

Joy Kaufman, a 47-year-old mother of two who is affiliated with a synagogue that is not close to her home, describes the Avenue Road facility as “a great place to be.

“You’ve got to come on a Saturday. It’s magical,” she said, adding that she is “not the least bit religious.” She was at the centre to help organize last weekend’s Purim program that was scheduled to feature a smoothie bar from Pusateri’s and costume judges from Canadian Idol.

Chana, a 21-year-old teacher who grew up in Montreal, runs the children’s program and the “Jewish Women’s Circle,” which offers programs every six to eight weeks. For Tu b’Shvat, a local chef demonstrated fruit carving, and Chana talked briefly about the holiday.

“I wanted to show this neighbourhood, especially the kids, that Judaism can be as hip as anything else out there,” said Rabbi Gansburg.