T here are transformational people in everyone’s life. Whether it’s a sibling parent friend or professional colleague we each have a person we admire and look up to as a role model. Still no one will ever qualify for that position quite like a personal rebbi. Chazal hold such a rebbi in the highest esteem because while parents deliver us into This World the rebbi will bring us into the World to Come.
Our first child Yedidya was born 12 years ago with Down syndrome. Soon after his birth in Israel we moved to New York. So much of the focus for a child with special needs is on services and therapies — basic functional needs. Understandably but embarrassingly a Torah education will often play second fiddle. While we certainly wouldn’t have considered sending any of my “typical” children to public school this is exactly where Yedidya landed for grades one through six.
My wife to her credit always wanted Yedidya in yeshivah insisting that her son have a Torah education. But when that didn’t pan out due to financial considerations we decided to supplement Yedidya’s public education with a private rebbi. As we inquired through our various special-needs networks one name consistently came our way: Rabbi Yehoshua Fulda of Washington Heights.
When we spoke to Rabbi Fulda he told us that although he has worked for years with children with learning disabilities he had never worked with a child who had a developmental disability like Yedidya’s. His disclaimer was clear: He had no experience in this realm and couldn’t guarantee any measure of success. He wasn’t even sure of what methodologies to use and he told us that he’d do some research and then get back to us.
