At last my family feels truly part of the Jewish community

As a parent carer of a severely autistic, fast-growing young man, it’s easy to feel sceptical when the word “inclusive” or “accessible” is used. So often, it’s a tick box, tokenistic, an afterthought or (worse still) a whitewashing of the precisely opposite experience that awaits.

We’ve seen it all, and the older my son gets, the more exposed I am to the very real risks (emotional and otherwise) of believing invitations to join in when we see them.

Something is different this time, however. A personal touch from our shul. Rabbi Nick Kett and Rebbetzin Shira Kett, new to Radlett United, picked up on who we were immediately, though as members of the shul, we hadn’t attended as a whole family in a decade, to our shame.

They reached out to us. They asked me what they needed to do to make synagogue more accessible? What was our son / family like? How could they make changes happen, rather than talk about community while excluding an entire chunk of families living with disability from what that really means?

So, I told them everything I could think of to make shul accessible, not just by introducing adequate spaces and fidget toys etc but by going much deeper than that. I said that we needed a shift in attitude encouraged across the entire synagogue experience, so people see families like mine and welcome us, see us as interesting for the RIGHT reasons, and not as “less than” other families.

As my son approaches his bar mitzvah with limited speech and little idea about what Judaism or being Jewish really means, something has now started to shift. I’m excited by it – and so is he!

So, we took a deep breath (yes it took actual courage), and we went to shul. Just the two of us on two consecutive Friday nights – both swift visits, but what a difference we could already see.

We found a warm welcome and smiles. Awkward silences and accidental stares were replaced with wishes of “Shabbat Shalom”. There was a large pop-up sign about welcoming disabled community members (mentioning “invisible” disabilities), part of an inclusion programme being run by the US in five shuls.

We immediately made a beeline for a large box in a room straight ahead brimming with fidget toys, ear defenders and a bit of room to move.

I heard Rabbi Kett had been to my son’s special school to meet the children and let my son’s profoundly disabled cohort of remarkable friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish, enjoy the sensory feedback from his velvet tallis bag, hear him say words in Hebrew and enjoy the new sounds. Rabbi Kett blew the shofar for us, going (very) red in the face, at pains to repeatedly bring my son delight. Great work!

And so, we plan my son’s unique version of a bar mitzvah, feeling somewhat like trailblazers. We want to take our experience and turn it into a powerful moment, not just for him, but to show others something very special is happening – and we are all in it together.

While we have a long road ahead, and we will always seek inclusion at the perimeters, where adjustments can be made, to know the doors are opening that little bit wider, that genuine affection for the broadest sense of what community means is being acted upon fills us with optimism.

We now feel firm footed in what it actually means not just to feel part of the Jewish community in the United Synagogue network, but to be part of it. Well done Radlett United Synagogue – we are “in”.