Rabbi Judith Edelman-Green is bursting with ideas for a project she anticipates will become a reality within a few years.
Rabbi Judith Edelman-Green [Frances Kraft photo]
Rimon Village – an outgrowth of the Rimon Community, a non-profit organization that the rabbi founded in 2006 – will house and serve special needs adults in Kvar Sava, north of Tel Aviv, including deaf adults who are also developmentally disabled. The city has granted it two acres of land.
Ground-breaking for the $11-million campus is expected to take place in December. Plans include a synagogue, a sports centre with a therapy pool, bicycle paths for adult tricycles, a room where residents can invite their parents for Shabbat dinner, and a tallit-making workshop that will provide employment to residents.
Because the Israeli government provides operating costs for adults with special needs, only the building needs to be funded, Rabbi Edelman-Green told The CJN on a recent visit to Toronto that included a series of informal parlour meetings. About one-third of the cost has been raised so far.
From 1995 to 2004, Rabbi Edelman-Green was national director of the Masorti Movement’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah for the Special Child program, which she founded. That work ultimately led to her involvement with adults who have special needs. The Rimon Community has 70 people on its books, she said.
The name Rimon, which means pomegranate, is symbolic in part because of the 613 seeds said to be in the pomegranate, representing all the mitzvot, she explained in an interview at the office of Kolel: The Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning.
As well, the pomegranate is one of the seven species of the land of Israel. “That’s a statement,” the rabbi said. “You may not be a date or a fig, but you can be a pomegranate and be part of it. It’s also red, vibrant and very beautiful.”
Ordained in 2009 from Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, the 52-year-old Wisconson native has lived in Israel for 26 years. Her husband, a physician, is British. The couple, who have three children, met as high school students when her father took a sabbatical in London.
Rabbi Edelman-Green, who considers herself above all a Jewish educator, has always been passionate about Jewish studies, she said.
With two master’s degrees – one in Jewish studies from the Masorti movement’s Schechter Institute for Judaic Studies, and one in Jewish thought from Ben-Gurion University – Edelman-Green decided to study for the rabbinate because she felt the special needs community “needed a rabbi as their advocate.”
The rabbi – who was ordained Reform, but considers herself non-denominational – works with families from haredi to secular.
She said she prefers to focus on abilities, rather than disabilities.
Rabbi Edelman-Green envisions a place built around Jewish values. To the best of her knowledge, it will be the only one of its kind in Israel.
“We’ll have a beit midrash for people who can’t read. How do you teach Torah to someone who can’t study books? As well as having a physical place to study, we’ll take people out to our little strip of land and do agriculture.”
While working the land, residents will learn appropriate blessings, and about Jewish values like setting aside crops for the poor.
Among the types of work she plans to offer is the opportunity to befriend the elderly. She noted that Meir Medical Center is nearby, and said that residents would bring therapy dogs to visit elderly and sick patients.
As well, the rabbi would like to run a certificate course at a local technical college on befriending the elderly. “Very often, adults with special needs have never graduated from anything.”
Rimon Village “will be a place to live, a place to work with dignity.
“We want to run a very healthy, delicious coffee house where we grow our own fruits for juices, and we grow herbs outside, where you can go pick them for omelets. Mint for teas. Healthy, delicious food served with a smile.”
“In my head, it’s already there.”
About two percent of the Israeli population are "mentally challenged," according to Haim Gurfinkel, general manager of Ami, an organization in Be’er Sheva that serves adults with developmental disabilities.
To read full story, please see story in our March 10 Toronto print edition, page 42
