Bar mitzva is a role model for kids with special needs

by Enid Weiss
NJJN Staff Writer

Jonathan Goldfarb’s mother calls him a “regular dude,” and his recent bar mitzva service at Congregation Beth Ahm of West Essex in Verona was much like other kids’— Jonathan led the service, gave a speech about the genocide in Darfur, and partied with guests in a room decorated with reminders of his fascination with guitars.

But Jonathan is also autistic, and when he became bar mitzva on Sept. 2, it reminded his parents, friends, and teachers of the limits — but mostly of the possibilities — of accommodating special-needs families within Jewish life.

“He’s a remarkable boy,” said Beth Ahm’s Rabbi Aaron Kriegel, who conducted private lessons with Jonathan. “He wrote most of his speech himself. He’s very different. We started with one line. When we started I could work with him only 15 or 20 minutes. I’ve learned how to give him breaks once in a while.

“Limits shouldn’t be set by the teacher but by the student,” said Kriegel. “My belief has always been people should do what they can and want to do. He’s a role model for all kids with autism.”

To a visitor at the family’s Livingston home, the only obvious symptoms of autism Jonathan seemed to display were his focus — when he wants to do or say something it’s difficult to redirect him — and a social awkwardness that seems more a misunderstanding of social mores and nonverbal communication than a matter of shyness. He chatted about the two guitars he owns and explained that although he can’t play them, “they’re great, interesting instruments.”

According to his mother, until he was about 18 months old, Jonathan seemed like any other toddler. “Then he began slipping away,” Madeleine Goldfarb said. “You would call him and he wouldn’t respond…but his hearing was fine. After a while there were a lot of red flags —things that didn’t seem right. But the pediatrician said he was ‘just slow’ or ‘the second child.’ It reassured me.” But months went by, and Jonathan didn’t improve. She sought out specialists and had her son tested.

Eventually she learned he was autistic, prompting her to research the condition that the National Institute of Mental Health estimates affects 3.4 out of every 1,000 children. Autism symptoms range along a spectrum that includes several different types of disorders characterized by varying degrees of impairment in communication skills and social interactions and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior, according to the NIMH.

“As time went on, you realize what you’re up against — it was very devastating,” Goldfarb said. “It was a long process of learning, of therapy, and a tremendous amount of money. The whole family was impacted by it. Jonathan did a very strict behavioral therapy course — the therapists came to the house.” The family includes father, Ahmi, and 15-year-old Jacob.

By the time Jonathan was in preschool, he spent part of each day in a program for special-needs children and part of the day in a mainstream preschool with an aide by his side. He also received behavioral, speech, and other therapies. His parents — who are both artists—continued to learn about autism. In fact, while she still does some artwork and her husband works on their batik prints (many with Judaic themes), Madeline Goldfarb now works as director of autism and outreach at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey’s New Jersey Medical School. “Ahmi is Israeli and we’re Hebrew speakers in the house, but Jonathan was struggling with language,” she said of their decision to forgo formal Hebrew school for him. She added that he was too academically advanced for many of the special-needs Jewish education programs. “We’re not religious, but observant, and we taught him” the basics of his religious education, she said.

Before joining Beth Ahm, the family had belonged to another synagogue where they made plans with the rabbi for Jonathan to become bar mitzva. But that rabbi left, Goldfarb said. “The new rabbi didn’t know us and didn’t honor our plans. It was a horrible experience for us. It was a devastating blow for us.

“I am the ultimate glass-half-full person,” she continued. “We said the worst that would happen is that we would take him to Israel and to the Western Wall, say a few prayers, come home, and have a few friends over. In [Jewish law] you become bar mitzva when you’re 13 and can be called up to the Torah.”

But, she said, Jonathan really wanted the kind of service and party he has seen other kids have.

So she and her husband called friends and other parents, including those with special-needs children, and learned about Beth Ahm.

Kriegel was warm and understanding, Goldfarb said. They also bonded on other levels —Kriegel’s wife is Israeli and before coming to Verona he lived in the Los Angeles area. The Goldfarbs had lived in California years ago.

“We joined [Beth Ahm], and they’ve been wonderful to Jonathan,” Goldfarb said. “They’ve welcomed him in — he’s become a shining example of the possibilities” special-needs children can achieve.

Speaking after his bar mitzva, Jonathan was proud of his big day.

“It’s a big deal,” he said of the bar mitzva service and the party afterward. “Studying the Hebrew was the hardest part. I told the rabbi I want to learn it.”

Kriegel said Jonathan did a wonderful job, despite a slight glitch — the storm that hit the area that day caused the lights to go out briefly during the ceremony.

At the ceremony, Jonathan recited most of the Hebrew text from memory and read some prayer transliterations rather than reading the original text in Hebrew.

That didn’t make it any less meaningful, said Kriegel, who told the famous hasidic story about a man who could recite only the alef-bet. As the story goes, the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, quieted scoffers by saying that the man’s faith was so pure that the letters formed the prayers by themselves.

Jonathan, said Kriegel, “had to put more work into it than most people.” He said that he not only taught Jonathan, but gave him “the confidence to know he can do it.”

“This is one of the great bar mitzvas of all times,” Kreigel added, “a person who’s struggled to be a man, and that’s what its all about.”