‘No Cookie-Cutter Bar Mitzvahs Here’

Elani Hillman plays with a Jewish star toy as he prepared for his bar mitzvah with tutor Aliyah Cheskis-Cotel.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Waiting for his teacher to begin his first bar mitzvah lesson, 12-year-old Jacob Mussen made handprints in a special bed of movable metal pins and then watched colored droplets creep down the sides of a liquid motion toy.

Jacob, who has graphomotor dyslexia as well as obsessive- compulsive disorder, is taking private classes with Aliya Cheskis-Cotel, a New York Jewish educator who provides bar and bat mitzvah lessons to students who might otherwise opt out of this rite of passage. After working full time at a Jewish day school, Cheskis-Cotel first tutored a child with Asperger’s syndrome 17 years ago, and from then on began working individually with special needs students, reluctant adults and overachieving tweens. 
Cheskis-Cotel is by no means alone in her efforts, as educators focus more and more on accommodating special needs in Jewish communities all over the country. In New York, tutors like Cheskis-Cotel and institutions like the JCC in Manhattan, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun and Congregation Habonim are among a growing number of resources for special-needs youngsters seeking a Jewish education.

Nonetheless, the beginning of the school year, when other parents face an array of choices, can be a particularly challenging time for parents of special-needs children, who frequently are turned away from Jewish day schools and congregational schools that lack the resources to serve them properly. While awareness of special populations’ needs has grown, particularly with recent films like “Praying With Lior” about the bar mitzvah of a Down’s syndrome boy, supply of appropriate programs is a long way from satisfying the increasing demand, experts say.

“There is a big proliferation of kids with Asperger’s and learning disabilities,” Cheskis-Cotel said. “Twenty years ago people just told those kids that they should just sit in the back of the classroom, and nobody helped them.”  Continue reading…