New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature
In Caldwell, a custom prayer book for an uncustomary bat mitzva girl
Hannah Herbert stared intently into the pages of her
custom-made prayer book. She chanted from the Torah and haftara flawlessly. She read her parts of the service confidently and followed the cantor’s choreographic directions. And after the reading, she marched around carrying one of the Torah scrolls, stopping to let each person kiss its velvet mantel.
For any bat mitzva, it would have been a special day. But for a child with pervasive development disorder, an autism spectrum disorder, it was remarkable.
In another era, Herbert would have had little opportunity to learn Hebrew and no hope for a bat mitzva. Today, however, as religious schools offer greater accommodation for special needs students, such events are happening with increasing frequency. A simple Web search turns up dozens of sites offering how-to tips for b’nei mitzva of children with autism and other disabilities. The Autism Society of America, which marks April as National Autism Awareness Month, provides resources on autism and religion.
Locally, Hannah took part in B’Tzelem, a special needs religious school track begun in 2001 and held jointly at Temple B’nai Or in Morristown and Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell. Originally in a mainstream religious school class at B’nai Or, Hannah enrolled in B’Tzelem two years ago.
B’Tzelem provides special needs students with their own classroom, small groups, one-on-one attention in some cases, a special education teacher with an assistant, and teen aides. The program is sponsored by the Jewish Education Association of MetroWest, a beneficiary agency of United Jewish Appeal of MetroWest NJ.
Although Hannah has autism, she functions at a relatively high level. She’s a visual learner and has a very good memory. But she has difficulty with abstract concepts, as well as with social interactions. She also often repeats phrases and says things that are completely off-topic. She attends the Children’s Institute in Verona.
From the beginning of her religious school experience, Hannah revealed an affinity for Jewish study, particularly Torah and Hebrew language. Working with her tutor, Bonnie Rosenthal, who has acted as Hannah’s loving “shadow” since 1999, she embraced Torah stories. Although at first she had some difficulty comprehending the narratives, Rosenthal developed a solution that helped make the details more tangible. “We rewrote the story, in different colors,” she said. In the creation story, for example, Hannah chose two colors, one for herself and one for her tutor. Rosenthal would write incomplete phrases in a blue composition book (“God created ______”) and Hannah would fill in the blanks. “We did this for 18 Bible stories and she loved it,” said Rosenthal. “If we came [to school] and there was no Hebrew or Bible, she’d get aggravated and say, ‘Can I do my blue Bible?’”
By the time she reached second grade, Hannah had mastered reading Hebrew, in part due to her tutor’s creativity. Rosenthal helped Hannah trace letters and offered physical activities like jumping while her student was learning her letters, or standing up and pretending to be a particular letter. By the third grade, Hannah was able to help her peers, which also enabled her to interact with them appropriately. Even today, she tells a visitor she prefers reading Hebrew to English.
By the middle of that third-grade year, Rosenthal understood that Hannah would be able to do a significant portion, if not all, of a traditional bat mitzva service with little accommodation for her autism. She went to the religious school director and said, “Hannah’s going to have a bat mitzva.” Rosenthal recalled the director’s agreeing, but without fully understanding. “I said, ‘You don’t get it. She’s reading Hebrew proficiently.’ He came down, and Hannah read for him, and he said, ‘Oh my God, she’s going to have a bat mitzva.’”
Hannah stayed in the mainstream class until fifth grade. At that point, it became too difficult to facilitate social interaction with the other children. As Rosenthal put it, “When they’re young, no kids seem different, and I was able to promote interaction. By fifth grade, the kids were getting older.”
Hannah and Rosenthal spent fifth and sixth grade preparing for the Feb. 25 bat mitzva, learning prayers and other aspects of the service. “Hannah was 100 percent capable of leading the service, but her behavior was sometimes a problem,” recalled Rosenthal.
As the study became more intensive, Rosenthal realized that the regular siddur was causing Hannah some difficulty because of all the extraneous material it contained, and she decided to create a special prayer book for Hannah. It includes only the prayers to be said at the service, as well as all directions. It opens with a “social story,” a descriptive passage that reminds special needs children of the setting and appropriate behavior — in this case, the bat mitzva service and Hannah’s role in it. Subsequent sections were color-coded according to who reads what and when: Hannah, the congregation, and clergy.
The actual bat mitzva preparation, which included learning the traditional trope, or Torah cantillation, lasted about three months. Cantor Shira Nafshi of B’nai Or, who led the lessons, said they could not have gone better. “Hannah was a phenomenal child to work with,” said Nafshi. “She was better at trope than some of the other kids. She caught on very quickly…. Most of our kids, well, at least once we have to say, ‘You have to work harder.’ I never had to say that to Hannah.” Hannah’s mother agreed. “Even after she had learned the prayers, she would keep working on them.”
At the service, Nafshi acknowledged that she stood a little closer to Hannah than to other b’nei mitzva; she offered some basic choreographic directions and helped keep Hannah focused.
The key to her success, according to Nafshi, was the personalized siddur. In fact, Nafshi said, she was so impressed with the siddur that she is saving it in computer format to use again with other special needs students.
For Hannah’s parents, Miriam and Richard Herbert, the bat mitzva service was “magical.” “She amazed us,” said her mother. “I just never expected her to stay so focused. Parents of a typical child are very proud [on an occasion like this.] But when parents of a special needs child watch them make such an achievement, your feelings of pride are so much more intense. When the rabbi told her she did a good job, she had such a sweet smile on her face. She was proud of herself. It did wonders for her self-esteem.”
Hannah has her own impressions of the day. Several weeks later, she recalled, “We went in the sanctuary. There were lots of people there.”
She recalled using the silver yad, or pointer, as she chanted from the Torah. “Not allowed to touch the Torah with writing,” she said.
She also commented on the tallit her father placed around her shoulders. “It is so nice and I wear a prayer shawl.” And she remembered the cloth she placed on her shoulder where the Torah rested as she carried it around the sanctuary. The cloth — “blue from great-great-grandma Golda” — had been used by her great-great-grandmother to cover her head when lighting Shabbat candles.
And Hannah also conveyed her sense of pride in her accomplishment that day. “Torah aliyas — I know how to do them all.”
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