last word
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
HONORED WITH COVENANT FOUNDATION AWARD
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
Courtesy of Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
T here’s not just one way to be
Jewish. It’s true for everyone,
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer believes, but
it’s the cornerstone of her work to make
Judaism more accessible to young peo-
ple, particularly those with disabilities.

As chief program officer of Jewish
Learning Venture and director of JLV’s
Whole Community Inclusion, Kaplan-
Mayer, 51, has spent the last decade pro-
viding guidance to synagogues, parents
and Jewish organizations on how to
increase accessibility in the Jewish com-
munity; championing Jewish Disability
Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion
Month programming in Philadelphia;
and writing and publishing multiple
books on disability inclusion.

On June 15, the Covenant
Foundation, an organization ded-
icated to honoring and supporting
Jewish educators, announced Kaplan-
Mayer as one of three recipients of the
Covenant Foundation Award for her
commitment to improving accessibility
in Jewish education.

“I felt excited that this honor could
bring more recognition to what our
mission at Jewish Learning Venture is,
both in terms of, specifically the work
I’ve led around the Whole Community
Inclusion, but also, I was aware that
it could bring that recognition to the
larger agency,” Kaplan-Mayer said.

Originally a merging of the Auerbach
Central Agency for Jewish Education
and the Jewish Outreach Partnership,
JLV has maintained its roots of giving
more young Jews the opportunity to
engage in a Jewish education, but it
has evolved to focus on ways in which
Jewish organizations can better pro-
vide opportunities for Jewish children
on the margins.

Though Kaplan-Mayer has focused
on children with disabilities during
her time at JLV since 2011, she hopes
to expand the organization’s reach to
better include Jews of color and young
LGBTQ Jews in upcoming jkidPRIDE
and jkidforall programs.

Kaplan-Mayer’s foray into the world
of Jewish accessibility was one of neces-
sity. Working at the Philadelphia-based
Reconstructionist synagogue Mishkan
Shalom in 1998 and the ACAJE from
2001-2003, Kaplan-Mayer realized
though well-intentioned, she lacked
the skills to fully address the needs of
children with disabilities with whom
she worked.

She remembers one child who strug-
gled with his sensory system being
overwhelmed. He would suddenly run
to the bathroom and run the water
to calm himself down. In hindsight,
Kaplan-Mayer understands that this
was a self-soothing activity. But now
she knows how to incorporate breaks
or provide weighted blankets or other
objects to help meet students’ needs.

Her son’s autism diagnosis after his
birth in 2003 further drove Kaplan-
Mayer to pursue accessibility in Jewish
spaces. “I was just like the typical Jewish
educator — I didn’t have knowledge!”
Kaplan-Mayer said. “And then after my
child was diagnosed with autism, and I
wanted him to have a Jewish education,
I suddenly realized, oh, let’s really give
people tools.”
She was able to give her son George
Kaplan-Mayer, 19, a bar mitzvah cel-
ebration catered to him, but she also
recognized the different ways in which
people find meaning in Judaism. For
George Kaplan-Mayer, spiritual mean-
ing came from the little moments in
between the big celebrations.

“The depth of his Jewish life is the
everyday moments of what Judaism is:
You sing a song; you say a prayer; you
light the Shabbat candles,” Kaplan-
Mayer said. “I knew that his intellec-
tual disability did not mean that he
didn’t have a spiritual life.”
The foundation of her and JLV’s work
is meeting people where they are. If a
young person wants to make challah or
latkes for five minutes or listen to just
one Jewish song, it has the potential to
be spiritually fulfilling to them.

“Our spiritual lives are not the same
as our intellectual lives,” Kaplan-Mayer
said. “Once you grasp that, you have a
much deeper access to, I think, spiri-
tual curiosity.”
Kaplan-Mayer graduated from
Emerson College in 1993 with a bach-
elor’s in creative writing and theater.

She got her master’s degree at the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
in Wyncote in 2001. Though a teacher
for much of her life, Kaplan-Mayer’s
training in divergent thinking through
creative writing and “reading the room”
through theater gave her the skills to
become a leader at JLV along with the
organization’s team of educators.

JLV’s focus on creativity allowed
them to be nimble throughout the pan-
demic; it’s what Kaplan-Mayer believes
is the key to keeping an open mind and
staying true to JLV’s mission.

“We as human beings put such enor-
mous limitations on what we can do,”
Kaplan-Mayer said. “Thank God that
creativity comes, or maybe creativity is,
through God.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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