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Judy Heumann, Jewish disability advocate who spurred a movement, dies at 75
(JTA) — In Judith Heumann’s 2020 memoir, the lifelong advocate for people with disabilities describes feeling shocked upon being invited to read from the Torah at her synagogue in Berkeley, California. Not only were women permitted to carry out the sacred task, unlike in the Orthodox synagogue of her Brooklyn childhood, but the bimah, or prayer platform, had been made accessible just for her.
“Oh my God, I thought, I’ve never been asked to do an aliyah,” Heumann wrote, using the Hebrew word for the ritual. “I learned how to do it.”
The moment was just one of many when Heumann, who died Saturday at 75, charted ground that had previously been off-limits to wheelchair users like her. Since contracting polio as a toddler, Heumann broke down barriers for disabled children and educators in New York City schools, protested until federal legislation protecting people with disabilities was passed and advised multiple presidential administrations on disability issues.
A cause of death was not immediately given for Heumann, whose website announced her death on Saturday in Washington, D.C. Heumann had lived there for 30 years, since being tapped by the Clinton administration to serve as assistant secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services.
Heumann was born in 1947 to two parents who had separately fled Nazi Germany as children in the 1930s; all of her grandparents and countless other family members were murdered in the Holocaust.
She said she believed it was her parents’ experience that led them to reject doctors’ advise to have their daughter institutionalized after she contracted polio and lost the use of her legs. “They came from a country where families got separated, some children sent away, others taken from their families by the authorities and never returned — all part of a campaign of systematic dehumanization and murder,” she wrote in her memoir, “Being Heumann.” “Their daughter, disabled or not, wasn’t going anywhere.”
Instead, her parents and in particular her mother, Ilse, set about to advocate for her. When the city school system said Judith could not attend her neighborhood school, Ilse got a rabbi to agree that she could attend his yeshiva if her daughter learned Hebrew. Judith did, but the rabbi did not keep his word. Instead, Ilse lined up an array of activities for Judith, including thrice-weekly Hebrew school classes accessible only if her father carried her in her chair up a flight of stairs, until the city opened a program for children with disabilities.
Judy Heumann attends the 2022 Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization Summit at United Nations in New York City, May 20, 2022. (Chance Yeh/Getty Images)
There, Heumann wrote, she first encountered “disability culture” — what she described as “a culture that has learned to value the humanity in all people, without dismissing anyone for looking, thinking, believing or acting differently.” She would experience and then help craft this culture during a decade at summer camp, in a movement captured in the 2020 documentary “Crip Camp,” and then throughout a lifetime of advocacy that earned her the moniker “mother of the disability rights movement.”
One notable win came in 1970, after Heumann graduated from college with a degree in speech therapy. Told that she could not teach in New York City schools because she could not help children leave in case of fire, Heumann sued. She was represented in part by an attorney who would argue Roe v. Wade in front of the Supreme Court, and the case came before Judge Constance Baker Motley, the only woman on the NAACP legal team that argued Brown v. Board of Education. The city quickly settled and Heumann ultimately got a job at her old elementary school.
The public fight propelled Heumann into the leadership of an inchoate disability rights movement. Two years later, she participated in New York City protests in favor of federal anti-discrimination laws that President Richard Nixon ultimately signed. In 1977, she was one of dozens of disability advocates to occupy a federal building in San Francisco in a demonstration calling for enforcement mechanisms. Their advocacy led to Section 504, a federal statute that requires entities receiving government funds to show that they do not discriminate on the basis of disability.
The episode was dramatized on Comedy Central’s “Drunk History.” Heumann was played by Ali Stroker, a Jewish actress who was the first wheelchair user to perform on Broadway. Heumann was also recognized as Time Magazine’s 1977 Woman of the Year in a 2020 retrospective.
Heumann was a cofounder of the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley before returning to the East Coast and the government advisory roles. Through it all, Heumann remained involved with the Jewish communities where she lived, including by having a bat mitzvah ceremony as an adult. In Washington, she was a member of Adas Israel Congregation.
In 2016, she cited tikkun olam, the ancient rabbinical imperative to repair the world, during a 2016 White House event during Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month. “The Jewish community has an obligation, I believe, to be leaders,” said Heumann, then special advisor for international disability rights in the State Department.
She also traveled as an adult to her father’s hometown in Germany, Hoffenheim, where she was taken to the site of the synagogue that the Nazis destroyed but noted that no one there spoke openly about what had happened to the local Jews.
In “Being Heumann,” she connected the experience to her own efforts to bring people with disabilities into the mainstream. “What a pervasive influence silence and avoidance have had on my life,” she wrote. “Why wasn’t I in school? Silence. Why aren’t we allowed on buses? Silence. Why can’t disabled people teach? Silence. Where are all the Jews going? Piercing silence.
“I refuse to give in to the pressure of the silence,” she concluded.
Heumann’s allies in the Jewish disability advocacy community mourned her death.
“So sad to learn of Judy Heumann’s passing,” tweeted Jay Ruderman, whose family foundation has been a leader in supporting Jewish disability inclusion. “She was one of the preeminent disability rights leaders in our country’s history and her accomplishments made our world a better place. I’ll miss you Judy and may your memory be a blessing.”
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The post Judy Heumann, Jewish disability advocate who spurred a movement, dies at 75 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Jon Stewart, Here Is Your Chance to Be a Mensch
Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on April 8, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
There is no doubt that Jon Stewart has great comedic ability and the gift of gab. In a sneak attack many years ago, he had a mic drop moment where he destroyed Tucker Carlson’s show CrossFire, telling him to stop hurting America. At that time, all Carlson did was have an aggressive political debate show — he wasn’t spewing Jew-hatred and conspiracy theories.
Stewart, who must know something about antisemitism because he felt a need to change his name from Leibowitz to Stewart, raised The Daily Show to great heights and came out of retirement ostensibly to try to make sure that President Trump is lampooned.
I know Jon Stewart is a person who cares about justice, because he fought very hard for the rights of 9/11 firefighters. The passion Stewart showed and his ability to speak truth to power was unrivaled. Some even thought he even had the potential to be a president one day. If Ukraine can have a president that was a comedian, why not America?
Of course, Stewart would be good if his focus was justice. It isn’t always. Sometimes, it’s only about haranguing Trump, no matter what. How about a few shows against antisemitism. He took on Tucker Carlson once. Why not do it again? While Tucker’s no longer wearing a bowtie, he’s saying he was attacked by a demon and Candace Owens is making claims about time machines. What about a one-hour Netflix or Apple TV+ show lambasting them both. It would be monumental.
But Stewart is hoping that Carlson and Owens continue to wreak havoc, and benefit the Democratic Party. And with only a few more years of Trump, those who want to vilify him want to get their last shots in and may not want to divert to something else. I believe that Stewart is against antisemitism. But he should call it out on all sides, and not mock Israel, a country that faced genocidal terrorists who would kill every Jew if they had the weapons to do so.
Jon Stewart is 63 and mentally sharp. He is capable of much better jokes than about physical appearance, which he recently used to attack Sid Rosenberg. Stewart would be better off criticizing Rosenberg’s positions, or perhaps that’s a bit more difficult these days.
If Stewart really wants to advance justice, he could start by attacking antisemites and racists, on both the right and left. He has the rare talent to do it in an impressive way.
Jon Stewart was the greatest mensch when he fought for firefighters. This is his time to do it again.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Fatah Glorified Munich Olympics Massacre Ahead of 2026 Winter Olympics
An image of one of the Palestinian terrorists who took part in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
While the world was preparing to celebrate the Olympic Games in Italy, Fatah celebrated Olympic blood in Munich.
Just two weeks before the opening of this year’s Winter Olympics, Fatah — the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s ruling party — chose to revive and celebrate the most infamous act of Olympic terrorism in history: the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered.
On its Facebook page, Fatah’s Commission of Information and Culture posted a segment from its Awdah TV channel, glorifying the massacre as “a surprise Israel had not experienced before” and recounting how terrorists, whom she called “self-sacrificing fighters,” infiltrated the Olympic Village, seized Israeli hostages, and issued demands.
Responsibility for the murders was subtly shifted away from the terrorists, while the operation was presented as daring and historic:
Fatah-run Awdah TV host:“In September 1972, Israel was about to receive a surprise it had not experienced before. Eight self-sacrificing fighters [i.e., terrorists] invaded the quarters of the Israeli sports delegation that was participating in the Olympic Games in the German city of Munich. They captured nine Israelis and demanded to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners [i.e., terrorists] who were in the Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of the hostages. Israel refused to negotiate, and the hostages were killed.”
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Jan. 22, 2026]
On the same day, Fatah’s Commission of Information and Culture also lionized the architect of the Munich massacre, Ali Hassan Salameh, as “The Red Prince.”
Fatah described him as a brilliant “security mind” and strategic genius whose operations allegedly “embarrassed Israel:”
Text on screen: “The Red Prince, the commander whom the Mossad pursued for years. Ali Hassan Salameh was not a shadowy figure, but rather a security mind who created a secret battle …
He joined Fatah in the mid-1960s and was among its first security personnel. He quickly stood out for his organizational wisdom and ability, and sensitive missions were entrusted to him … He led the security activity of the revolution outside Palestine and built a complex defense network that embarrassed Israel. He became a central target of the Mossad, and his name topped the assassination lists.
[Then Israeli Prime Minister] Golda Meir gave the order to eliminate him, and the pursuit after him crossed continents … On Jan. 22, 1979, the Mossad assassinated him in Beirut using a car bomb. His assassination did not put an end to his presence, rather it established his status as one of the most dangerous minds of the revolution. Ali Hassan Salameh, a security commander and one of the symbols of the hidden strugglewith the occupation.” [emphasis added]
Posted text:“The Red Prince Ali Hassan Salameh, the commander whom the Mossad pursued for years”
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Jan. 22, 2026]
Even more than 54 years later, the PA’s ruling party still treats the Munich Olympics massacre as a legacy to be celebrated.
By deliberately highlighting this massacre just before the Milano Winter Olympics, Fatah yet again shows how it is proud to promote terrorists and terrorism.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a researcher at Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article first appeared.
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How NPR Whitewashes the Palestinian Authority’s ‘Pay-for-Slay’ Program
Stuart and Robbi Force (left), parents of Taylor Force, with Reps. Doug Lamborn and Lee Zeldin. Taylor Force was killed by a Palestinian terrorist while visiting Israel. Photo: Algemeiner.
Even for NPR, the latest segment on its popular “All Things Considered” program crossed the line.
Headlined “Palestinian Authority tries to reform, but one measure is sparking a backlash,” the segment focused on the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s controversial “pay-for-slay” program, where imprisoned Palestinian terrorists and their families, or the families of Palestinians who were killed while committing acts of terrorism or trying to harm Israeli security forces, receive financial stipends.
However, instead of taking a critical look at “pay-for-slay,” NPR provided cover for the insidious PA program.
To begin, NPR immediately whitewashed the program in the subheading, referring to it merely as “payments to families whose relatives are killed or jailed by Israel.”
There was zero mention of the fact that this program incentivizes violence and terrorism by paying out more to families of terrorists than the PA’s regular social welfare pay-outs. In addition, there was no mention that these payments are based on the length of prison sentences rather than actual financial need.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
No, @NPR, this isn’t the reason the PA program is “controversial.”
The recipients of the cash are families of TERRORISTS – not Palestinians who committed minor crimes or were innocently caught in the crossfire, but bona fide terrorists whom you appear to be whitewashing. pic.twitter.com/WH0q1AkOBj
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 10, 2026
Throughout the story, NPR’s Emily Feng downplayed the vile nature of “pay-for-slay.”
“Pay-for-slay” wasn’t presented as a dangerous incentive for the murder of innocent Israelis, which was the target of American legislation (The Taylor Force Act).
Instead, the program was merely characterized as “controversial.” But using public funds to incentivize terrorism is something much more grave and consequential.
Along with this false characterization, NPR also portrayed the truth about the program as Israeli criticisms that “the PA pushes back against.”
It would be hard to find a more watered-down depiction of “pay-for-slay.”
Further on in the segment, Feng interviewed a Palestinian woman named Inaan who was receiving a monthly payment of 1,400 shekels ($440) since her son had been killed by the IDF.
This doesn’t seem like a lot of money. However, Feng failed to inform her audience that this is only the payment for family members of those killed by Israeli security forces (after a one-time payment of 6,000 shekels).
Terrorists in Israeli prisons can receive up to 12,000 shekels (roughly $3,900) per month.
This presentation of the monthly payments being inconsequential and of limited value is further emphasized by Feng’s next interviewee, Qadura Fares, who is quoted as saying, “The money — it’s mean [sic] nothing for those have believed [sic] that this occupation should be ended and to fight the occupation.”
Fares is the former head of the PA’s prisoners’ affairs commission. In passing, NPR also informed its audience that Fares served time in Israeli prison for “trying to kill Israeli soldiers.”
That’s right, NPR platformed a convicted terrorist.
Perhaps the words of someone who used to target Israelis should be taken with a grain of salt when discussing payments for imprisoned terrorists.
Fares resigned from his position after PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced an end to the “pay-for-slay” policy, stating that the only recipients would now be those who require economic assistance. Many groups, including Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), have provided documentation that the PA is still continuing “pay-for-slay” — though the PA is trying to hide the payments.
Along with Fares, Feng interviewed a couple of other Palestinians who were upset with this alleged reform and complained that the new system is not working properly.
What Feng failed to inform her audience is that this “reform” is alleged by analysts like PMW to be a ruse, with Abbas promising a Palestinian audience that imprisoned terrorists and the families of “martyrs” would continue to receive funds, and that the “reform” is more of a restructuring than an outright end to “pay-for-slay.”
Nearly a year after this “reform” was announced, many beneficiaries were still reportedly receiving their payments.
Perhaps the cherry on top is when Feng referred to the alleged reform as “trying to please outside powers.” As if the program didn’t require serious reform, but rather that the PA capitulated to foreign interference.
A whitewash indeed.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.