Sam Gluckman walked down the hall at Congregation B’nai Israel between religious school classes, talking to a friend. Sam, 11, touched his friend’s shoulder. The other boy pulled Sam into a friendly hug before both went into their respective classes.

A few minutes later, in his class, Sam correctly answered a question about “sin.” He was the first to raise his hand, and afterward, he offered a radiant smile and held his head just a bit higher.

“Sammy is having a beautiful year,” said his mother, Randi Cohen Gluckman.

Sam, who is autistic, is part of a new program at the Millburn synagogue to accommodate children with special needs in the religious school. Key to the effort is Beth Giladi, a special education administrator, who was hired in September.

Giladi, a member of B’nai Israel, is a social worker in the Maplewood public schools; she has worked with the Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life (formerly the Jewish Education Association of MetroWest) as a special education consultant and with the SINAI Special Needs Institute. She also served a two-year stint as religious school director at Bnai Keshet, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Montclair.

Changes in the B’nai Israel program were immediately apparent when Giladi started meeting with parents. “She interviewed me; she interviewed Sammy,” said Cohen Gluckman. “She got to know him, to see what he’s like and his style of learning. We’re on the phone frequently, discussing what’s working and what’s not.”

That’s a transformation from what used to happen, acknowledged religious school director Janice Colmar. “I could hire tutors with special ed degrees. More than that, I had no idea what to do,” she said. “We needed to bring someone in who really is a professional and who could deal with the parents and the kids.”

The goal of the program is to keep children who are members of B’nai Israel in their home congregation and to integrate them into the community.

There are other religious-school programs for special needs children in Essex and Morris counties, but none that accomplish B’nai Israel’s goal. B’Tzelem, for example, was created in 2001 and runs in Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell and Temple B’nai Or in Morristown.

Additionally, Yaldeinu, a 22-year-old special education religious instruction program, is held at Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston.

Giladi says the B’nai Israel program differs by taking place in the children’s own synagogue. When they attend a program outside their synagogue, they don’t know anyone in the congregation, she said, “and that makes the parents uncomfortable.”

Cohen Gluckman agreed. Her son was doing “very well” in the Agudath Israel program, and they were very pleased with it, she said. But the family lives in Short Hills and belongs to B’nai Israel. And that created a disconnect for Sam, especially when his eight-year-old brother began attending religious school at B’nai Israel.

“Sammy had no sense of being part of this community,” said Cohen Gluckman. “He did not feel connected in any way.” She added, “Now, he comes on Shabbos and feels he belongs. He says, ‘Bye mom’ and goes off with his friends. That’s totally new for him. He’s part of the community now.”

B’nai Israel appears to be the only synagogue religious school in the local area that has its own special education administrator. According to Dr. Scott Sokol, director of the program in Jewish special education at Hebrew College in Newton, Mass., an individual synagogue hiring its own special education coordinator is a new trend, something that would have been unusual five years ago. Today, he said, “it is becoming much more common,” particularly among larger synagogues that can afford to hire an administrator.

The consortium model, followed by B’Tzelem, is the “predecessor” model, he said, one that had its beginnings in the 1990s.

At B’nai Israel, special education students make up more than 15 percent of the student body, according to Colmar. The figure is slightly higher than the 10 percent of students in the general population. The number of special ed students in religious schools is generally somewhat higher than in the general population, explained Sokol, because day schools commonly exclude special needs students. This skews the number in religious schools, so that as much as 40 percent of students in some of the afternoon schools may fall under the special needs category.

B’nai Israel’s program reflects a trend for “mainstreaming” in general education, according to Giladi.

“More and more of these are children now being brought into inclusion situations. They would have been in a self-contained, isolated, separate special ed class — they’re now back in regular classes,” she explained. “They’re in regular classrooms — with a one-on-one aide and with a tremendous amount of individualized support — but they’re in the regular classroom for part of the day. And the same model should apply to the Jewish education to the best we can provide.”