Best Practices
Below, you’ll find resources from some of our Reconstructionist communities, as well as guides and websites from the larger Jewish community, that can help you make decisions around all-ability inclusion and accessibility in your space.Â
Learn how other Reconstructionist communities guide their greeters towards greater inclusivity.
- Congregation Dorshei Tzedek’s Guidelines for High Holiday Greeters
- Welcoming each other at Kol Tzedek Synagogue
- Creating a Welcoming Community guide from Dorshei Derekh
- Kadima’s Evolving Derech Eretz – Ways of the Land/Community
Guides and Websites for Best Practices
Hineinu: An Inclusion Resource Guide for Congregations
Leaders of the Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform Movements brought their wisdom and resources together for disability inclusion in Hineinu: An Inclusion Resource Guide for Congregations. This thorough guide provides congregational leaders and educators with practicable inclusion tips for every facet of communal Jewish life, from building accessibility to b’nai mitzvah prep, from the sacred to the everyday. It also lists helpful resources for further learning.
Disability Belongs’ Inclusive Congregations Guide
This helpful guide offers practical changes faith communities can make to be more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities. The Inclusive Congregations Guide was spearheaded by Shelly Christensen, the Senior Director of Faith Inclusion and Belonging at Disability Belongs and the co-founder of Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month (JDAIM) in 2009.
The Social Model of Disability
The social model of disability is a non-medical framework for thinking about and working with disability. What shifts when people understand disability not as a deficit, but as a difference? How does this model promote our values? RRC rabbinical student Raphael Morris created this brief and informative primer specifically for Reconstructing Judaism.
