February is Jewish Disabilities AwarenessAcceptance, and Inclusion Month (JDAIM), and to honor this time of bringing disability awareness and inclusion into our communities, we are thrilled to gather at Great Expectations Together – GET Cafe – a coffee chop in Narberth with a commitment to th gainful employment of individuals with ALL abilities. Lior Leibling, an amazing young man with Down’s Syndrome, will be co-leading music and prayer for Shabbat with Rabbis Simcha and Shawn Zevit. Featured many years ago in the award winning film “Praying with Lior“, when he was preparing to become Bar Mitzvah, Lior is now twenty eight years old, still loves to pray, and has an infectious joy and presence that is a gift to us all.
The purpose of JDAIM is to create a sense of urgency for sustained action for serious issues of inclusion and belonging for people living with disabilities and mental health conditions. Fittingly, we gather at GET whose mission is: to provide a community space where individuals with disabilities, learning differences and special needs, their family/caregivers and community members can experience social, education and community involvement in an inclusive way. We strive to eliminate the stigma, separation and discrimination against individuals with disabilities and special needs. Through a well-developed use of long-standing behavioral support for individuals with disabilities, we have developed a novel infrastructure of trained staff and specialists to support SUCCESSFUL community inclusion.