Praying with Lior - Screenings

RUBY PICTURES, INC, 646 WEST END AVE, #4A, NY, NY 10025, 646-489-4905

Who is Missing?
A Talk on Inclusion, Torah, and Community Transformation.

Growing up in a large, wealthy urban synagogue, filmmaker Ilana Trachtman never saw a person with a visible disability pray. Then she witnessed Lior Liebling, a twelve-year-old boy with Down syndrome, at a Rosh Hashanah service in upstate New York. Lior’s praying was so pure, so gifted, and so affecting of everyone around him that Ilana left her paying job in TV to make the feature documentary PRAYING WITH LIOR.

As Ilana learned how rarely people like Lior have the experience of being included, welcomed, and valued in Jewish communal life, she became an accidental activist, wondering how many people are missing from synagogues around the world. If 54 million people nationally identify as disabled, and over one million of them are Jewish, where are they? The answer, she believes, is “if we build it, they will come.” Speaking not just about physical access, but also emotional and spiritual access, Ilana educates audiences about the dirty secret of Jewish exclusion, sharing the beautiful irony that members of inclusive communities understand: praying alongside individuals with physical and cognitive challenges actually enhances everyone’s spiritual experience.

In this presentation (a little over an hour) audiences are encouraged to consider our disabled Jewish forbearers, who are interpreted to have endured blindness, leg injuries, and speech impediments, among others. Ilana asks: does your synagogue have a prayer book our matriarch Leah could read? A bima our forefather Jacob could climb? Would your community have the patience to hear Moses stutter through a d’var Torah?

Using scenes from PRAYING WITH LIOR, excerpts from the Bar Mitzvah speeches of children with special needs, pieces of Torah, and news from innovative synagogues who truly welcome everybody, Ilana teaches audiences to think differently about disability. Her presentation encourages communities to begin a process of becoming more whole, and therefore, more holy.

		RUBY PICTURES, INC, 646 WEST END AVE, #4A, NY, NY 10025, 646-489-4905 Who is Missing? A Talk on Inclusion, Torah, and Community Transformation. Growing up in a large, wealthy urban synagogue, filmmaker Ilana Trachtman never saw a person with a visible disability pray. Then she witnessed Lior Liebling, a twelve-year-old boy with Down syndrome, at a Rosh Hashanah service in upstate New York. Lior’s praying was so pure, so gifted, and so affecting of everyone around him that Ilana left her paying job in TV to make the feature documentary PRAYING WITH LIOR. As Ilana learned how rarely people like Lior have the experience of being included, welcomed, and valued in Jewish communal life, she became an accidental activist, wondering how many people are missing from synagogues around the world. If 54 million people nationally identify as disabled, and over one million of them are Jewish, where are they? The answer, she believes, is “if we build it, they will come.” Speaking not just about physical access, but also emotional and spiritual access, Ilana educates audiences about the dirty secret of Jewish exclusion, sharing the beautiful irony that members of inclusive communities understand: praying alongside individuals with physical and cognitive challenges actually enhances everyone’s spiritual experience. In this presentation (a little over an hour) audiences are encouraged to consider our disabled Jewish forbearers, who are interpreted to have endured blindness, leg injuries, and speech impediments, among others. Ilana asks: does your synagogue have a prayer book our matriarch Leah could read? A bima our forefather Jacob could climb? Would your community have the patience to hear Moses stutter through a d’var Torah? Using scenes from PRAYING WITH LIOR, excerpts from the Bar Mitzvah speeches of children with special needs, pieces of Torah, and news from innovative synagogues who truly welcome everybody, Ilana teaches audiences to think differently about disability. Her presentation encourages communities to begin a process of becoming more whole, and therefore, more holy. www.prayingwithlior.com Filmmaker Ilana Trachtman

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