Houses of worship should make allowances for members with special needs
August 12, 2010 in Special Needs News by Admin Dawn
An extraordinary religious service event took place recently at the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe, when 14-year-old Jesse Martinez celebrated his bar mitzvah. “There was not a dry eye in the house,” said Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky, director of the congregation.
Martinez is autistic, with limited communications’ skills that made it difficult, though not impossible, for him to speak the traditional Hebrew words at the ceremony, when, according to Jewish tradition, he became a man. At the bar mitzvah, he left his place with his mother in the sanctuary, moving to seats with the men, closer to the Torah.
