Inclusion: Leaving Our Comfort Zone

 My wife,  Denise Sherer Jacobson , had this blog published in the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) website.

Inclusion: Leaving Our Comfort Zone

I remember the day I first entered the Temple Sinai sanctuary. At once impressed by it's amphitheater-like magnificence, complete with dome ceiling and stained-glass windows, I was, at the same time, totally overwhelmed by the sizable throng of adults along with their noisy, rambunctious children attempting to settle in the pews waiting for Religious School orientation to begin. With my seven-year-old son David beside me, I maneuvered my power wheelchair through the human 'sea of reeds' and found an empty spot on the aisle where David could sit and I could park alongside him, leaving enough room so that I wouldn't block the slanted pathway. While parents chattered with other parents, and children with other children, no one seemed to pay my son and me any mind. Although I must have engaged David in some kind of chit-chat (as the conscientious good mother I always tried to be), I felt my skepticism growing. Was this really a good idea? Why did I think it was so important to give David a Jewish education and be part of a Jewish community when I never had that sense of belonging? In that moment, in that beautiful sanctuary, I was way out of my comfort zone!

Having grown up with cerebral palsy, I had the life-long experienced of being seen as “the other” by a nondisabled society. My disability was obvious—my arms and legs affected by incoordination, my speech, slow and labored. Most people assumed I also had a cognitive impairment. Only when they got to know me did they realize I was pretty self-reliant, easy to understand (if the room was quiet and they exerted some patience), and I had a wicked sense of humor and could easily slaughter them in a game of Scrabble, to their chagrin! By the time I was in my thirties, I had become a successful disability advocate, writer, peer counselor, and teacher. I had given disability-related trainings and lectures throughout the country and the world to college and medical students, educators, social service professional.

But I stayed away from Judaism, the religion and culture of my birth. The few times I ventured into a synagogue, I felt unwelcome. People stared or looked aside. I never saw a warm smile or a friendly face. I came away feeling disappointed and rejected.

I could make sense of the aloof reaction from society in general, but I expected more from the Jewish community. Jews, of all people, knew first hand about oppression and prejudice. Almost every Jewish holiday I celebrated as a child, Pesach, Chanukah, Purim, reminded us how we struggled for our freedom and right to exist. Although the men in my family were mostly High Holiday Jews and their sons became B'nei Mitzvahs, Judaism was central to my family's tradition. I remember hearing nightmarish stories about the horrors of The Holocaust from my American-born relatives, and my mother would talk about the restrictions Jews faced—barred from joining social clubs, the unfair quotas limiting Jews entrance into medical schools. We were a people who championed the Civil Rights Movement. I had thought that because of our Jewish legacy, welcoming me as a Jew with a disability would be a no-brainer, but that was far from my experience. So, if the Jews didn't need me, I certainly didn't need them!

And then I became a parent, a Jewish mother, if you will. With my husband's family, as well as my own, living 3,000 miles away, I wanted David to learn the richness of his Jewish heritage, which led us to the Temple Sinai sanctuary that morning.

Twenty-two years later, David has long since graduated from religious school and Midrasha, yet I'm entrenched in my Temple Sinai community. It's where I've learned and studied Jewish texts and values, had my Bat Mitzvah, served on committees, chanted Torah, and formed friendships. I've also educated our congregation about disability and access, sometimes getting into heated debates about the importance of having integrated seating in the sanctuary (so those of us in wheelchairs don't stick out in the aisle like a sore thumb and can sit with people we know) and the need for Braille prayer books, among other things.

I've also learned that not everyone in the congregation has to accept me or be comfortable around me, just as I won't feel warm and fuzzy toward all of them. But by allowing ourselves to experience individuals who our different from us, we are challenging ourselves to be better human beings. Had I given in to my temptation to return to my comfort zone that morning twenty-two years ago, I would never be writing this article.

Judaism, as a religion, teaches us the values of rachamim, chesed, tzedek, Tikkun Olam (compassion, kindness, justice, bettering the world). It encourages us to venture outside our comfort zones. Inclusion give us a chance to practice what we are taught, to go out of our comfort zones, but within the safety of our very own backyard.

Strive for Ideals – Torah Reflections – Feb. 2016

I presented this at Temple Sinai on Saturday February 13th 2016.

T'rumah

“Let them make me a sanctuary so that I may dwell among them” comes from this week's Torah portion. It is also inscribed on the front of the ramp on Webster Street. The Torah portion goes into great detail as to how the tabernacle should be built. Indeed, one can wonder, how can anything be built so grandiose and beautiful so that God could and would want to live in it? If God is one and we are all part of God, what does it mean to build a sanctuary for all of us?

Clearly, Temple Sinai is beautiful! When we planned the new building, a great deal of thought went into trying to make it accessible to all people. The preschool area was designed for small children. The quiet room in the chapel was designed for children unable to sit through an entire service. There are no steps or pews in the chapel that prevent those of us who use wheelchairs from sitting wherever we like. We have prayer books in braille and we have hearing devices for people who are hard of hearing. We will soon have an adjustable height lectern in the Chapel that will enable some people to more easily lead services and chant from the Torah. Yet undoubtedly there are people who are not comfortable being in our community. I imagine people with intellectual disabilities may be very alienated attending services here. I know that people with environmental illnesses (EI) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) have difficulty being here especially when people come here wearing perfumes and colognes. People with print disabilities, including people with visual disabilities and people who have difficulty handling books and paper, do not feel very welcomed by our continued reliance on paper handouts.

However, knowing that it is impossible to ever build a sanctuary that everyone can dwell in is no excuse for not continually trying. Indeed that is one of the Jewish values I treasure the most – the idea that just because a goal may seem unattainable is no reason not to try to get as close as you can towards the goal. For me, this Jewish value can be summed up as 1) appreciate what you have, 2) be proud of what you've done, 3) know what your priorities are and 4) work as hard as you can to attain your goals even if they seem impossible.

February is Jewish Disability Awareness Month. This year, as I thought about disability awareness, I was struck by the overlap of the Jewish values I just described and the lessons disability teaches. As a person with a disability, I am very appreciative of all that I have, especially all the great people in my life without whom I literally wouldn't be here. I am proud of what I've done. I have a beautiful, wonderful family, home, friends and community. I'm even proud of having designed the 1^st 24 by 7 banking system in the U.S. for Wells Fargo. I've always been clear about my priorities. Currently, I'm focused on getting a program called CareerACCESS tested. Career ACCESS programs will be created by changes in federal policy aimed at significantly increasing the employment rate of people with disabilities by expecting young adults with disabilities ages 18 through 30 to work. CareerACCESS will provide required support and services recognizing that disability benefits are offsets to the high costs of disability rather than subsidies for the inability to work. I'm not sure I'll be able to change the entire Social Security disability program in my lifetime, but I am definitely trying!

Often, as I sit in our sanctuary, I am awed by its beauty. When I look at the ramp to the lower part of the bima, I am proud of what we did. As I look at the steps to the upper part of the bima, I am disappointed that we were not able to make that accessible, but I believe that some day someone will figure that out. As I look at the steps leading to the ark, I wonder what it will take to enable God accessible to all people and to truly have a world that we can all dwell in.

Please join us on February 23^rd for a mini film festival that will show 3 short films about different aspects related to disability. Please note that on February 24^th and 28^th, there will be a very exciting program for our religious school students which includes a recorded Skype interview with Judith Heumann, a longtime disability activist and presidential appointee currently working on disability issues worldwide for the U.S. State Department. Judy is one of the most acclaimed people with disabilities in the world who I have been friends with since I was in kindergarten.

For the last few months I have participated in a Temple Sinai task force that is looking at the Temple's mission statements and the need for a vision statement. As I prepared for the task force meeting Thursday evening, I wondered whether the quote inscribed on the ramp may be the basis of the vision statement. Imagine building a community where everyone is welcomed, included, needed and wanted!

Shabbat Shalom and Go! Go! Go!

The 40th Anniversary of the Computer Technologies Program (CTP)

 The 40th Anniversary of the Computer Technologies Program (CTP)

Let's get it together!

Forty years ago several executives from IBM went to the California Department of Rehabilitation with the idea of starting a program in California to train people with disabilities to be computer programmers. IBM had started such a program several years before that in Virginia. In that program, people with disabilities lived in a rehabilitation hospital for 9 months where they learned programming and then returned to their home community and tried to find a job. The California Department of Rehabilitation thought it was a good idea, but to their credit, they thought it would be better for the students to live independently rather than an institution. They decided to give the Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Berkeley a grant to start the CIL Computer Training Program.

Ed Roberts was the Executive Director of CIL. He wanted to hire 2 people with disabilities to run C T P. Scott Luebking, and I were the only people with disabilities he could find that had any kind of background in computers, so we were hired. I was 22. Scott, who was 23 years old, was my elder, so he became the Executive Director, and I was his deputy. We had 90 days to put the program together. This included finding and renting space, finding students making sure they had housing and transportation, finding equipment including a keypunch machine and a business to allow us to run student programs on their computer, and working with the Business Advisory Committee preparing the curriculum and ensuring there would be jobs for graduates. It was 90 days. that I'll never forget!

Having grown up in a segregated school program just for children with disabilities, I saw myself as an advocate against segregation. It was strange finding myself as the director and teacher of a program for people with disabilities. I knew that the technical part of computer technology students could get from books, college or trade schools. My focus as a teacher was more on the human side, learning how there's always a way to accomplish anything one sets their intent on. I used computers as a metaphor for this. With computers, there's always a way to make that machine do exactly what you want it to do. When it works, you feel great and proud of yourself. When it doesn't work, you know there's always a way to make it work. There are always multiple ways of doing anything and everything. I think I was a hard teacher. Besides having to listen to me lecture 90 minutes a day 5 days a week for 9 months, students had to work on their assignments 5 to 8 hours a day or more. I hoped that they believe that if they could survive C T P, they could do anything!

After 4 years at C T P of telling students about how great it was to work in the quote the real world unquote, I thought it would be good for me to go out there for a few years. I intended to return and be able to say unequivocally that the business world is a great place. My assistant at C T P, Terri Davis, had gotten a job in the Wells Fargo H R department. She helped me get hired as an assembler / COBOL programmer. Planning to be there just a couple of years, I stayed for over 29 years, climbing the corporate ladder slash elevator to being a Senior Vice President.

Today Wells Fargo will be giving CTP a check. Wells Fargo has been a great supporter of CTP from the very beginning. Besides providing financial support, people from Wells Fargo have served on the Business Advisory Committee, lecturers, reviewers, mentors as well as members of the Board of Directors. I am very proud to tell you that the current president of C T P's Board of Directors, Tali Bray, is someone I hired at the Bank, and is one of the best things I did for Wells Fargo.

Along with all these great things, are the lessons we learn from Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo reinforced my belief that it doesn't matter what you look like or where you come from or even what you sound like. If you can get the job done, there's a need for you. Wells Fargo taught me that if people need the skills you have, people are very adaptable. Computer operators quickly learned to ask yes and no questions when one of my systems crashed in the middle of the night. Before they had online access, Wells Fargo sent an armored truck in the middle of the night to transport me to its data center. Wells Fargo reinforced the idea that anything and everything is possible. Given the opportunity to architect the very first 7 by 24 banking system was difficult but lots of fun. Designing and implementing one of the first mobile banking systems was a real kick. These and many other projects proved again and again that there's always a way to accomplish your goals. Wells Fargo also taught me that failing is OK, as long as you don't do it too often. These are the kind of essential lessons that partnering with a great company like Wells Fargo can provide for C T P and its students.

So here we are forty years later. C T P is still thriving. We have wonderful laws like the A D A that protect the rights of people with disabilities. We have a beautiful building here at the Ed Roberts Campus. Technology, like the app I'm using to speak to you with today, is making life easier for people with disabilities in many ways. What is next? Don't worry. There's plenty left to do. The reality is that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is no better than it was 40 years ago. Many young adults with disabilities are unable to go to work for fear of losing essential government benefits including Personal Assistant Services. We must change antiquated laws preventing millennials with disabilities from reaching their potential. Forty years ago, accessibility was easy to see and fix. Steps, curbs, narrow bathrooms, inaccessible buses are all apparent. Today, although advances in technology are wonderful for people who can access it, for many, advance technology have created new barriers. Most websites, for example, do not pass accessibility standards. Even Personal Assistant Services are changing. We understand that people with physical disabilities need Personal Assistant Services to eat, dress, drive, etc. Do we know how Personal Assistant Services may help people with intellectual disabilities or people with mental health disabilities be employed? These are some of the challenges facing CTP today.

To the graduates, get out there, find great jobs, work hard and stay connected to C T P. To Alex and the great staff, keep up the wonderful work and create tomorrow's environment that will enable more people with disabilities to work. To the Board of Directors and the Business Advisory Committee, be there for Alex and CTP and continue assisting them in creating tomorrow's environment. Most importantly, whatever you do, have fun and Go! Go! Go!

Exploring an Alternative Definition of Disability

Here is the speech I gave on Aug.4,2015 at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's Conference on SSDI Proposal Initiative.

Exploring an Alternative Definition of Disability

On behalf of my co-writers, Barbara Butz, Anita Aaron, Aya Aghabi, and myself, thank you for considering our paper re “ Exploring an Alternative Definition of Disability.“ I want to start by telling you a little about me because I think it's relevant to our paper.

In 2008, after 29 years of working for Wells Fargo as a disabled IT professional, I retired as a Sr. Vice President to start a disability-focused employment company that specializes in consulting on staffing and placement issues. While at Wells Fargo, the project I was most proud of was the one where I designed and was responsible for the first 7 by 24 online banking system in the United States.

My disability has always been obvious. I use a powered wheelchair. My speech has always been impaired. I use Personal Assistant Services for many of my activities of daily living. In the '70s, shortly after starting work, I received a letter from Social Security telling me I was no longer disabled. My friends quickly reassured me that I need not go through an identity crisis. My Cerebral Palsy remained intact. It took me over 5 years to earn as much working as when I received government benefits. If I had needed as much assistance then as I do now, I could not have afforded to have gone to work.

Changing the Social Security definition of disability is not a new idea. Our research revealed that in the 1950s the founders of the Social Security Disability Program wrestled with the definition. The wrestling has continued for 6 decades! In 2006, the Social Security Advisory Board emphatically recommended the definition be changed.

We suggest the new definition be, “A disability is a medically determinable physical or mental impairment(s) that has resulted in a substantial impediment to employment and is expected to result in death or has lasted or is expected to last for a continuous period of at least 12 months.”

This definition is very similar to the current definition, except there is no reference to the ability or inability to earn above the Substantial Gainful Activity (S G A) amount. With this new definition, the Social Security Disability Program can and should restructure itself. The restructured disability program should enable and encourage people with disabilities to seek assistance to stay at work as soon as impediments to employment due to disability appear. Hopefully, the concept of 'going out on disability' will be eliminated. The newly structured Social Security Disability Program should put the focus on Coordinated Employment Services and must be much simpler to navigate than today's program.

This definition will enable Social Security to set up a 2 phase approach. Phase 1 allows beneficiaries to receive support services. People with disabilities should be eligible for phase 1 if they have the required number of Social Security work credits and if they have a disability as newly defined, and as soon as their disability imposes impediments to their employment. Phase 1 beneficiaries receive health care services and Coordinated Employment Services as needed. People remain eligible for phase 1 support services until they reach retirement age, or are no longer disabled, or no longer need or want support services, or die.

Phase 2 enables beneficiaries to receive cash benefits. To be eligible for phase 2, people with disabilities must be eligible for phase 1. To begin receiving cash benefits, and to avoid induced entry, applicants should be expected to earn below a given wage for a given amount of time. These cash benefits should be viewed as offsets to the high cost of disability. Our paper refers to studies documenting that the cost of disability is high. You can also take it from me. Having a disability is expensive! We recognize the need for an upper earnings limit above which beneficiaries should be able to pay their own expenses. We suggest SSDI beneficiaries keep their full cash benefit until their total earnings plus stipend exceed 250% of the federal poverty level. After reaching that earning-level, stipends will be reduced by $1 for every $3 earned. Earnings will be reevaluated annually. Participants experiencing intermittent unemployment can request earnings re-evaluations more frequently.

The emphasis of the restructured SSDI program should be on providing Coordinated Employment Services. Professional career coaches should work with beneficiaries to create, monitor and maintain their Individualized Career Plan (I C P). I C P's should clearly outline tasks to be accomplished to stay-at-work or return to work. Tasks may include;

     Completing a rehabilitation program.

     Finishing a school, training or retraining program.

     Assessing and modifying the workplace environment.

     Obtaining benefit and financial planning services. 

     Acquiring self-employment and business start-up services.

There are many employment services available to people with disabilities today. We are not suggesting new services need to be developed. Today, however, there is a very complex, complicated maze that people with disabilities must go through to find, qualify for, and take advantage of these services. There is a dire need for beneficiaries to work with career coaches to coordinate services.

Social Security should take the lead and fund the full development and piloting of the restructured program including Coordinated Employment Services. Social Security should administer Coordinated Employment Services outsourcing the work to local agencies. Social Security should also evaluate the effectiveness of pilots and modify the program as needed.

In the development stage, a complete definition of Coordinated Employment Services, as well as the roles and responsibilities of career coaches, must be agreed upon. How Individualized Career Plans will be created, monitored and maintained must also be decided. Consensus and cooperation from affected government agencies, the vocational rehabilitation community, the disability advocacy community, and the employer community must be obtained. In the development stage, federal waivers must be obtained, and cost-benefit analysis must be conducted. This analysis must determine what percent of beneficiaries must stay-at-work/return to work to ensure the program will be financially sustainable. The program should be piloted in 3 to 5 states. A complete evaluation should occur after the first 5 years and every three years after that. The program should be modified as lessons are learned from the evaluations.

Here are some questions we receive most often. Will the proposed new Social Security definition of disability fix the near term SSDI financial problem? No. How will beneficiaries who can't work be affected? They should experience no different from today. Why now? 25 years after A D A, there has been no significant employment improvement for people with disabilities. Every program, like every business, must periodically reinvent itself. The time for innovative change is now. Why will this work? We propose setting measurable, attainable employment goals based on consensus from affected communities and cost-benefit analysis and pilot the program to determine the feasibility of reaching the goals.

One of the most important things I've learned in my professional career and from being a person with a disability is that if you don't start, you will indeed never succeed, and you must always Go Go Go!!

Technology and Disability

On May 2nd 2015 I used my new text-to-speech app to present the following to 60 Fulbright Scholars from 40 different countries.

Technology and Disability 

Hi, I'm Neil Jacobson. I am extremely honored to be able to address you today. As a person with a significant disability entering my golden years, it is wonderful seeing young people excited about taking on tomorrow's challenges. I was asked to talk about technology and disability. Because I seldom do exactly as I'm told, I'm also going to speak about employment of people with disabilities. After Rolf and I speak, I hope you have lots of questions. I love questions! Be forewarned that if you have no questions,I have questions for you!

As background, after 29 years of working at Wells Fargo, I retired to start a disability-focused employment company that specializes in consulting on staffing and placement issues. I quickly realized that there are systemic problems which intrinsically inhibit people with disabilities from working and being productive. Our society holds very low expectations for individuals with disabilities. Our government's defining of disability as the 'inability to work' in order to receive disability benefits is an inherent disincentive. I am dedicating the rest of my retirement to see that these antiquated policies do change. I am doing so by working with The World Institute on Disability (WID). To learn more about my work now, please see Our Career ACCESS dot org.

At Wells Fargo, I was a Sr. Vice President in their I T department. In the 80's, I was the architect responsible for designing the first 7 by 24 banking system in the U.S. My last assignment at the Bank was to manage the design and implementation of mobile banking. I love I T! Especially software. Software proves that there is always a way to accomplish what you want to accomplish. At the Bank, I often drove my development staff crazy. I would insist that any feature the user wanted to put into our application, there was always a way to do so, and indeed there was. I must admit, I live my life as a person with a disability in a similar fashion. Whatever I really want to do, there's always a way!

We'll talk more about Wells Fargo in a moment. I want you also to know that before working at the bank, I co-founded Computer Technologies Program (C T P). It was 1975. The co-founder was a 24 year man, named Scott Luebking, who had a spinal cord injury. At the time, I was 22 years old and my speech was a bit better than it is now. Scott and I set up the program, wrote the curricula, found the students, taught classes, ran the labs, found internships and found jobs for the graduates. Students were in class or in the lab 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week. My idea was to convince the students that if they could survive me and CTP, they could do anything! I always told my students how wonderful it is to work as a computer programmer in the 'real business world'. After doing this for 4 years, I thought it might help if I actually went into that 'real business world' for a year or two so that when I returned to C T P I could indoctrinate the students even better! To my surprised, I found that the 'real business world' is great. I stayed at Wells Fargo almost 30 years.

My experience at Wells Fargo leads me to believe that corporations are more ready for people with disabilities than we are for them. Focusing on making a profit can be a very equalizing activity. Focusing on doing a great job rather than focusing on ones disability can be liberating. At the Bank, I found that if you did a good job and added to the Bank's bottom line, it didn't matter what color you were or what religion you practiced or what disability you had. Focusing on the bottom line also leads to creativity. There were many nights when there were system problems. Support personnel from the Bank's computer centers would call me and inevitably find a way to understand what I was saying – because they needed to! One of my favorite stories happened near the beginning of my career, before there was online computing, The system crashed at 1AM. My van was in the shop, Trains in the Bay Area don’t run all night. Wells Fargo sent an armored van to transport me and my 300 pound powered wheelchair to the data center.

Assistive technology has always been an amusing concept for me. My own disability, Cerebral Palsy, is quite significant. I cannot drink without a straw, but are drinking straws considered assistive technology? I also have very limited use of my hands, and use a word expansion application to help me type faster. Many people with disabilities I know use a speech recognition system to verbally navigate their computer and the Internet and create documents. These applications have been called assistive technology, but when people without disabilities use them they are just seen as mainstream conveniences and aids to productivity. Would anyone call Siri an assistive technology? What about speakerphones? Gadgets and applications seem to be classified as assistive technology only when they are used by people with disabilities—and only until the general public realizes how universal that gadget or app can be. When people ask me what assistive technology I like the best, I answer it is my Wells Fargo Visa Card. It's surprising how much easier it is for people to understand me after they see that card!

So is it assistive technology, or a mainstream technology product that has accessibility features? The technologies themselves have no such categories, and the differences only seem to arise in terms of who is using them in what context. Most, if not all, developers and companies I know, want to build accessible technologies. Who wouldn't want their product to be usable by as many potential customers as possible? At Wells Fargo, I always ensured the Bank had at least 1 team member actively engaged with the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (W A I). Their web accessibility standards are quite good, which is why they’re being implemented in law and practice worldwide. The main issue was, and continues to be, how to educate thousands of developers on the standards and how to ensure an ever-changing system continuously conforms to the standards. I look forward to when changes can quickly, if not automatically, be tested and reconstructed to meet W3C W A I guidelines. I look forward to companies proudly displaying an icon depicting their alliance with accessibility guidelines.

Universal Design is a 2 way obligation. I encourage assistive technology designers who are designing products and services for people with disabilities to consider how their inventions can be used by the general public. Just last week, a small hardware firm sent a designer to my house to find out what kind of hardware might better enable me to use my smart phone or tablet from my wheelchair. I applauded them for considering the needs of people with disabilities. I explained how I'd really like a stand mounted on the wheelchair that would hold the IPAD steady and that could recharge the IPAD using solar energy. I urge them to design the stand for bicyclists and people pushing strollers. Marketing to the general public usually leads to a better product at a lower price. Marketing to the general public helps ensure that people with disabilities are aware of the product and removes the stigma often associated with using assistive technologies. Marketing to the general public is also more lucrative, ensuring companies will be around to build the next great product.

The Americans with Disability Act has been an incredibly wonderful civil rights law. The world, especially here in the U.S. is extremely more accessible to and accepting of people with disabilities. Technology, including assistive technologies have progressed well beyond anyone's expectations. There is plenty left to be done. Expectations of people with disabilities are still extremely low. Well over 75% of people with disabilities in the U.S. are not working. To receive disability benefits from the government people with disabilities must prove they are not able to work. Think about that. When I first went to work, I received a letter from the government telling me I was no longer disabled. I went through an identity crisis!

Now is the time to take the next step. Now is the time to expect people with disabilities to take full advantage of the progress made to date and to be active and productive people. We are counting on you, the young scholars and the young people to define the new policies and technologies that will enable all people to be as active, productive and fulfilled as they can and want to be. Go out there and do your thing. Go Go Go! And whatever you do, have fun doing it! Thank you!

Torah Study re Noah

I'm on the Temple Sinai Board of Trustees. Every board meeting starts with a board member presenting their thoughts on that week's Torah portion. Here is what I presented on 10/22/2014.

Temple Sinai Board of Trustees Meeting

10-22-14

Noah

My Hebrew name is Noah. Many of the Board members know I usually do my annual d'var Torah in December around my birthday about Joseph. I was quite surprised to get Jenny's email saying I had 2 weeks to do a d'var torah about my namesake.

The story of Noah comes near the beginning of Genesis and shortly after the High Holy Days. It is widely accepted that the High Holy Days is about renewal. I often wondered whether the Flood may be a continuation of that theme. Granted, the Flood may have been an overly extreme way for G-d to tell us to start anew. G-d also promised that s/he would never again do anything as drastic as the Flood. Nevertheless the Flood did give us the chance to rebuild ourselves.

I spent most of my career in the private sector in the Information Technology field, I quickly learned that while systems should be updated and maintained, there comes a point that all systems should be retired and replaced by new ones. I admire companies like Apple that are not afraid to re-invent themselves and develop new products that make their old products obsolete. My all-time favorite prayer is the one that asks whether we would like to live forever if we knew there would never again be babies or first loves or new ideas etc. This prayer reminds us of the importance of letting go of yesterday to make room for tomorrow.

I've spent the last couple of years developing and promoting CareerACCESS. The Career ACCESS Program will be created by changes in federal policy aimed at significantly increasing the employment rate of people with disabilities by expecting young adults with disabilities ages 18 through 30 to work. CareerACCESS will provide required support and services recognizing that disability benefits are offsets to the high cost of disability rather than subsidies for the inability to work. Like the Flood, a new program like CareerACCESS has to happen The government has to stop asking young adults with disabilities to prove they cannot work in order to receive disability benefits,and then wonder why they don't go to work. The government has to stop telling young adults with disabilities that if they go to work they will no longer afford goods and services they need to manage their disabilities. The government must stop insisting that people with disabilities not accrue assets but plan to always live in poverty. We must stop giving lip-service to the idea that people with disabilities can work and start insisting that they do work. This week CareerACCESS is being presented to the URJ RAC Social Action Committee meeting in Atlanta Georgia. We're hoping they will adopt CareerACCESS as one of the RAC's official projects.

Like the Flood and like CareerACCESS, I feel that our Board, our Temple, and indeed the entire Reform Movement are about ready to re-invent ourselves. Unlike the Flood, I don't think we all need to perish in order for the next phase to occur. After Rabbi Mates-Muchin inspiring sermon erev Rosh Hashanah, I truly feel we have the desire, the talent and the gusto it takes to move to the next level. I look forward to the next phase, to see what lies ahead, and to be part of tomorrow.

Thank you and Go! Go! Go!

By the way, if anyone knows someone on the RAC Social Action Committee, please put in a good word for CareerACCESS.

All People Must Work

Here is a paper I wrote for The Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED).

All People Must Work

Every person needs to be needed. This has always been one of my strongest beliefs. The need to be needed may be as important as the need for food, clothing and shelter. The need to be needed may be even greater than our need for love. For many people, work is the primary way we get to feel needed. Work brings meaning to life, provides a social connection, can be a pleasurable and fun experience and, of course, is the linchpin to building an economic future for one's self and one's family. Yet most people with disabilities do not work. Many people with disabilities do not work not because of physical, mental or emotional constraints, but because we are literally not allowed to work.

To understand my passion for work, it’s important to know that my parents are Holocaust survivors. During the war, people with disabilities in ghettos and concentration camps who were unable to work, were instantly killed because they were seen as worthless; having no value. Work was the only way to survive. As a child with Cerebral Palsy, my parents were fearful for my life and did all they could to foster my self-reliance. My mother woke me at 5:30 each morning and would insist I dress myself, even though it took 2 hours to do so. At night, I’d get 2 dinners. One dinner I had to feed myself. I’d spend so much energy feeding myself that dinner, I’d be more hungry after I ate than before. Only then would my mother feed me the second dinner. Since walking symbolized normality, my parents did not allow me to use a wheelchair until high school. This forced me to walk, which was slow, difficult, laborious and consequently not very practical. These tasks may seem extreme today, and today I know that a key to independent living is knowing when and how to get assistance. However, through my efforts to succeed in these tasks, I learned the value of hard work. I also learned that determination and perseverance are the tools to achievement!

Throughout my work career, work has been the major way I defined myself. Regardless of whether it was my first job as a pool-hall cashier at my Alma-mater (Hofstra University), or my last job as a Senior Vice President, IT Manager at Wells Fargo, work is one of the main ways that I felt I contributed something to this world. Whether I was a security guard on graveyard shift at the dorms in college, or the Executive Director of the Computer Technologies Program (CTP), a computer training program for people with disabilities which I co-founded in 1975, working always made me proud. It gave me a sense of purpose.

Working is also one of the best ways to feel and be accepted. My disability is very obvious. I can’t sit upright (sitting in my powered wheelchair, I'd never be considered a role model for good posture). I have involuntary movements and my speech impairment is significant. At Wells Fargo, I loved rolling into meetings where people did not know me. The tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a knife. At first, no one would make eye contact, but as the meeting gained momentum, there was a great sense of relief when the team began to focus in on my ideas rather than my disability. At times, people struggled to understand my speech, but there was always someone in the group who could help interpret and communicate for me. Inevitably, by the end of the meeting, I always found myself chatting with folks and feeling like part of the team.

Having people with disabilities at work often results in innovation, creativity and an overall better work environment. As a teacher at CTP, my students gained confidence in understanding the subject matter by having to help each other understand my speech. At Wells Fargo, I often marveled at how quickly computer operators learned to ask good yes or no questions when they called me in the middle of the night. I still remember how, in the early ‘80’s, before online computing, Wells Fargo dispatched an armored truck at 2am to bring me, and my non-collapsible wheelchair, to the data center to fix a system’s problem. Work is also critically important to the economics of disability. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of having a disability is that it is very expensive! We are aware of the high cost of health care. We often forget about the high cost of Personal Assistant Services. The cost of hiring a personal assistant for varying levels of care adds up quickly. For a person with a “high-cost” disability who is unemployed, the government pays for the cost of the personal assistant along with other disability benefits and subsidized housing services.

Since my childhood in the 1950's, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has always been above 70%. Laws including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 have made this country much more accessible and accepting. However they have done nothing to improve employment. As co-Vice Chair of the President's Committee of Employment for People with Disabilities during the Clinton Administration, I witnessed many staff and committee members work endlessly, but unsuccessfully, to get more people with disabilities employed. An enormous amount of time, energy and money have been spent by government agencies and NGOs in an attempt to improve employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, to no avail.

After 29 years of working for Wells Fargo, I retired to start a disability-focused employment company that specializes in staffing and placement. Abilicorp was founded to improve employment for people with disabilities in a business-like fashion rather than through charitable and government agencies. It was designed to be a contracting firm, finding people with disabilities to fulfill job demands, instead of an agency searching for places that would hire their clients. For various reasons, including unfortunate timing which coincided with the recent economic downturn, Abilicorp, also, was unsuccessful.

As a result of my experience with Abilicorp, I now believe, more than ever before, that there are systemic problems which intrinsically inhibit people with disabilities from working and being productive. Our society holds very low expectations for individuals with disabilities. Our government's defining of disability as the 'inability to work' in order to receive disability benefits is an inherent disincentive. The continual pleading with employers to hire people with disabilities who usually have less work experience than their peers, portrays us as needy individuals. The ever-present view that people with disabilities always need something while ignoring the basic need to be needed inevitably leads to poor self-esteem. These currently accepted mores and practices must change! I am dedicating the rest of my retirement to see that they do change. Towards that goal, I helped create The World Institute on Disability's Center on Economic Growth (CEG) in 2011.

WID’s CEG measures success as creating a level playing field where people with disabilities have the same employment rate, earning power and asset-building opportunities as their non-disabled peers. Those of us representing the CEG believe that until government invests in the success of people with disabilities, rather than continuing programs and practices that relegate people with disabilities to a poverty position, people with disabilities will remain unemployed, underutilized and undervalued. We believe that now is the time to change the paradigm of how we think about economic growth for people with disabilities. As entitlements continue to be questioned and their funding becomes more tenuous, we must embrace the belief and create the reality that people with disabilities are equal members in our society and full economic partners.  We must change our mindset from providing disability benefits and safety-nets, to providing what it takes to enable people to successfully fulfill their role in the economic growth of themselves, their family and their extended community. Economic success for people with disabilities should be defined exactly the same way it is for everyone. Economic success is taking full advantage of opportunities one can find or create that uses one's abilities to be as productive as one can be and as prosperous as one wants to be. The return on investment of this paradigm shift can be both significant and measurable. 

WID's CEG has been collaborating with the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) in developing the ACCESS Program (Adult Coaching, Counseling, and Employment Support Services). We will soon be working on getting Congress to pass legislation enabling us to demonstrate how the Access Program can replace the current Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) programs for young adults with disabilities, ages 18 to 30, in 5 states. The Access Program is being designed to eliminate work disincentives, promote employment and expect participants to be as productive as they can be. Instead of a check compensating them for their inability to work, participants will receive a stipend to offset their high cost of disability. Every participant will be expected to develop and follow an Individual Career Plan (ICP). Tasks on the ICP may include activities such as:

• being employed
• starting businesses
• attending school
• attending training programs
• internships
• volunteering
• attending rehabilitation programs
• attending day programs
• pursuing personal enrichment goals
• understanding what supports and accommodations are available

The Access Program will also coordinate all services the young adults with disabilities need to successfully perform their ICP. For me, the Access Program represents the greatest chance I have of completing the number one thing I have on my bucket list – to increase the employment participation
rate of people with disabilities to an equivalent rate of the general population.

The Disability Movement has historically been about changing paradigms. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, the predominant paradigm regarding disability was that people with disabilities had to “adjust to their environment”. Our goal was to look and sound and act as ‘normal’ as possible. It wasn't until the paradigm changed and we realized that ‘society should be accessible to all people’ that true progress began to occur. Surprisingly, the predominant paradigm in regards to employment of people with disabilities has not changed. We still hear “hire people with disabilities”, and “people with disabilities can work.” In this global economy, when employers know they can hire very qualified and experienced people anywhere in the world, expecting them to hire people with disabilities will only get harder. As a retired senior vice president of Wells Fargo Bank, hearing that ‘people with disabilities can work’, is demeaning and patronizing. The crux of the problem behind the employment of people with disabilities lies in these antiquated constructs. The paradigm for the 21^st century should be that everyone must be productive. Now is the time to raise expectations, to determine how we will be productive, and determine how we will create our own prosperity. This is how we can fulfill our need to be needed.