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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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Apple TV’s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ just gave us a stunningly authentic Jewish episode
(JTA) — Matzo is not something I typically give much thought to in the days following Passover. Yet I cannot stop thinking about a piece of shmura matzo I recently encountered.
The encounter came on Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” where the handmade round matzo (that always tastes a little burnt) just had a major cameo — perhaps its debut on a national TV series — in the episode that dropped on Friday.
“Your Friends & Neighbors” stars Jon Hamm as a suburbanite who takes to theft, roiling his community. The entire show is packed with rounds of golf and all-you-can-eat buffets at a WASPy country club — I hadn’t gotten the sense that anyone was Jewish. Until I saw that the fourth episode of the second season was called “The Bread of Affliction.”
Perhaps I should have known: The show is based (and filmed) in Westchester County, just north of New York City, where I work as a rabbi and where many secular families include Jews. And there was a “L’chayim” in the previous episode, but that phrase has practically entered the English lexicon. I never saw the matzo coming.
I’ve carved out a social media niche critiquing portrayals of Judaism in pop culture. So I have to give credit where credit’s due — what transpired on “Your Friends & Neighbors” was no less than a modern miracle: Judaism done right.
I was sold at “Good yontif,” the words recited by Hari Sahni (played by Manu Narayan), one of the hosts, as guests entered his gorgeous, towering home for the seder.
What soon transpired was not your traditional hodgepodge of a Passover table: no scattered Hebrew school projects or random plastic frogs. We viewers got an aspirational seder, with an aesthetic somewhere between cottagecore and, well, upscale Westchester. The seder table was a canvas filled with floral arrangements, votive candles, and beautifully scripted place cards. For those playing insider Jewish baseball, there was even a place card for Elijah (no last name).
There was also drool-worthy matzoball soup being stirred in a giant, seder-sized pot, and caviar on matzo, an atypical yet perfectly kosher combination.
And then, the kiddush. Gretchen Reagan (played by Miriam Silverman, a Jewish actress and Broadway star), who is married to Hari, recited a full version of the Passover blessing — not the one-liner everyone knows from Hebrew school — and with the right nusach (tune). That tune, that beautiful, trembling holiday version, is one that most traditional households don’t even quite land as well as she did.
All of the guests at the table held (in unison) a classic yellow-and-maroon haggadah, first published in 1949. This nostalgic haggadah, which also appeared in the Passover episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” back in 2005, is still used at many seders today. It’s known for its simplicity, black-and-white drawings and helpful directions.
Following that epic kiddush, Mel and Coop’s teenage son, Hunter, struggles to sing “Ma Nishtanah.” Honestly, an all-too-accurate portrayal, too — he probably hadn’t practiced since Hebrew school. He was soon backed up by another Jewish actress and Broadway star, Rebecca Naomi Jones, who plays Suzanne Haber, a neighbor in the series’ fictional Westmont Village community.
Yet what blew me away the most was that shmura matzo. Square matzo famously occupies supermarket kosher sections year-round, but shmura matzo tends to appear only right before the holiday.
Where did the props department find an intact piece? Most boxes of shmura matzo come cracked. And once they had one, how many tries did it take for Amanda Peet to break it neatly in half? The notable Jewish actress plays Mel Cooper, the Jewish ex-wife of Andrew (Coop) Cooper (Hamm), who is not Jewish. Peet’s role has been central across both seasons, as she navigates challenging family dynamics, many of which play out at the seder.
As the seder continued, guests dipped pinkies in wine (ever so daintily) for the Ten Plagues. They went around the table, each reciting one plague in English — a genuinely engaging idea. And of course, there is an epic afikomen hiding spot. I won’t spoil details about its discovery, but let’s just say the afikomen was located exactly where it gets hidden in most households.
This episode was like manna from heaven. It literally just dropped. No hype, no press conference, no rounds of Jewish podcasts that project Jewish pride, sometimes a little too hungrily.
This may be the best thing that happened to Passover since 1995 — i.e., a “Rugrats Passover.” That episode still has the edge because it not only portrayed the seder and intergenerational family drama accurately, but it actually told the story of the Exodus in a way that felt new: accessible, funny and memorable. (Plus, it gave us the line “Let my babies go!”)
I wonder whether my excitement is simply because the standard is just that low for Judaism on-screen. It is. But this episode went above and beyond — even explaining that “Shanah Tovah” is not the appropriate greeting for Passover, or that afikomen means “dessert.”
The episode comes in stark contrast to another trending “Jewish show”: “Nobody Wants This.” I’m still not over Rabbi Noah Roklov (played by Adam Brody) trying to make “Mazel” a greeting. It’s not. Nor is Tu Bishvat a mourning holiday (thank you, Rabbi Neil, played by Seth Rogen).
Where does that leave the future of Judaism on TV? The bar has certainly been leavened, and I’m here for it.
From a material culture perspective, we’ve been living in an era where it has been dayenu — enough — just to have something on the shelves for Hanukkah or Passover, even if it was riddled with errors that could have been fixed by asking one person familiar with Hebrew or Jewish symbols.
And at a time when many people fear being Jewish in public, seeing Judaism on screen as a given — and portrayed correctly — is so affirming. At a moment when I, as a Jewish content creator, am flooded with antisemitic comments, direct messages, and screenshots of my “Jewish” nose, seeing Judaism in the wild is a reminder that they have not “won.”
This episode makes me hopeful that Judaism can be once again celebrated and talked about — not hidden. Now, I’m ready for a Rosh Hashanah episode in Season 3!
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Apple TV’s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ just gave us a stunningly authentic Jewish episode appeared first on The Forward.
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NATO Alliance Considers End to Annual Summits
US President Donald Trump holds a bilateral meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
NATO is considering ending its recent practice of holding annual summits, six sources told Reuters, a move that could avoid a potentially tense encounter with US President Donald Trump in his final year in office.
Trump‘s administration has engaged repeatedly in scathing criticism of many of the US-led defense alliance‘s 31 other members, most recently berating some for not providing more assistance to US military operations against Iran.
The frequency of NATO summits has varied over the alliance‘s 77-year history but its leaders have met every summer since 2021 and will gather this year in the Turkish capital Ankara on July 7 and 8.
But some members are pushing to slow the tempo, a senior European official and five diplomats, all from NATO member countries, told Reuters.
NATO MEMBERS LOOKING FOR LESS DRAMA AND BETTER DECISIONS
One diplomat said the 2027 summit, to be held in Albania, would likely take place that autumn and NATO was considering not holding one at all in 2028 – the year of the US presidential election and Trump’s final full calendar year in office.
Another said some countries were pushing to hold summits every two years, adding that no decision had been taken and Secretary General Mark Rutte would have the final say.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal NATO deliberations.
In response to a query from Reuters, a NATO official said: “NATO will continue to hold regular meetings of Heads of State and Government, and between summits NATO Allies will continue to consult, plan, and take decisions about our shared security.”
Two of the sources mentioned Trump as a factor but several said broader considerations were at play.
Some diplomats and analysts have long argued that annual summits create pressure for eye-catching results that distracts from longer-term planning.
“Better to have fewer summits than bad summits,” said one diplomat. “We have our work cut out for us anyway, we know what we have to do.”
Another said the quality of discussions and decisions was the true measure of alliance strength.
TRUMP CASTS LONG SHADOW OVER NATO MEETINGS
Phyllis Berry, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote: “Reducing high-profile summitry would allow NATO to get on with its business and dial down the drama that has marked many recent transatlantic encounters.”
In an article published on the think tank’s website last week, she noted that NATO held only eight summits during the decades of the Cold War. She described Trump’s first three NATO summits in his first term as “contentious events, dominated by his complaints about low allied defense spending.”
Last year’s summit in The Hague was also largely shaped by Trump’s demand that NATO members boost defense spending sharply to 5% of GDP – a target they accepted by agreeing to spend 3.5% on core defence and 1.5% on broader security-related investment. The mere fact that it ended without major drama was considered a success.
This year’s gathering also looks set to be tense.
After NATO allies refused to give him the support he was demanding in the Iran war, which he had begun without consulting or informing them, Trump openly questioned whether the US should stand by NATO’s mutual defense pact and said he was considering leaving the alliance. Months earlier, he had laid claim to Greenland, an autonomous territory belonging to fellow NATO member Denmark.
At the 2018 summit, Trump threatened to walk out in protest at other NATO allies’ low defense spending.
“Had he made good on his threat to leave in protest, we would have been left to pick up the pieces of a shattered NATO,” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general at the time, wrote in a memoir published last year.
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When a Jewish Icon Moves to Israel for Her Safety: A Warning Sign for the Netherlands
A view of the Concertgebouw building in Amsterdam, Netherlands on Aug. 26, 2024. Photo: Jakub Porzycki via Reuters Connect
The reported decision of Dutch singer Lenny Kuhr, a beloved cultural figure and winner of the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest, to relocate to Israel should prompt serious reflection across the Netherlands.
When a Jewish public figure feels compelled to leave because of hostility, intimidation, or fear, it is not merely a personal decision. It is a warning sign about the health of Dutch society.
For generations, the Netherlands has cultivated an international reputation for tolerance, openness, and civic decency. It is a nation admired for democratic values, free speech, and social stability. Yet no society is immune to the resurgence of antisemitism, and recent years have shown that the Dutch exception is not guaranteed.
Across Europe, Jews are reporting increased harassment, threats, vandalism, and social isolation. The Netherlands is one place where this is happening. What often begins as political hostility toward Israel can quickly spill over into open hostility toward Jews. Online abuse becomes street intimidation. Campus activism becomes exclusion. Political rhetoric becomes a license for prejudice.
This is especially dangerous because it often hides behind respectable language of “anti-Zionism,” “human rights,” or opposition to Israel. But usually, this goes much deeper and becomes (or reveals itself as) a hatred of Jews.
Dutch directness is often celebrated as a cultural virtue. But there is a profound difference between candor and cruelty. When “speaking plainly” becomes an excuse for abuse, society loses an essential moral boundary. Free expression must never become a shield for threats or dehumanization.
The same is true in politics. Consensus culture has many strengths, but it can also create hesitation in moments that require clarity. When antisemitism rises, leaders cannot afford ambiguity. They must name it, confront it, prosecute it, and isolate those who spread it.
Jewish citizens should never have to wonder whether their future is safer elsewhere. They should never need to hide symbols of identity, avoid public spaces, or explain away hatred as the cost of living in a pluralistic democracy.
The departure of a well-known Jewish Dutch figure should therefore be seen not as an isolated story, but as a national test. If even prominent, admired Jews feel unsafe, what message does that send to ordinary Jewish families, students, and elders?
The Netherlands still has time to choose a different path. It can reaffirm that antisemitism has no place in Dutch life. It can protect Jewish institutions, enforce existing laws, educate younger generations, and draw a bright line between legitimate political disagreement and hatred toward Jews.
If it fails, more Jews may conclude that their future lies elsewhere. And that would not only be a tragedy for Dutch Jewry. It would be a tragedy for the Netherlands itself.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of the NGO Time To Stand Up For Israel.