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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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Armed attacker arrested after lunging at Ohio Jewish gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton
(JTA) — Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, a Jewish Democrat, was unharmed following an attack by an armed individual at the sprawling Canfield Fair on Sunday.
Police arrested 38-year-old Patrick Havas, who had pushed his way through a crowd in a Democratic Party fairgrounds tent where she was speaking, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office announced on Sunday evening.
“While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people,” Addie Bullock, communications director for the Acton campaign, said in a statement.
“This kind of violence has no place in Ohio,” Bullock added. “Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”
Acton, who would be Ohio’s first Jewish governor if elected, is a former director of the Ohio Department of Health and completed residencies in both pediatrics and preventative medicine.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Acton’s opponent in the upcoming election, released a statement condemning the attack on Sunday. His communications director, Connie Luck, stressed that “candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence.”
“What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt,” she added.
Havas had at first entered the fairgrounds tent and began recording Acton’s speech on his cell phone, but when he began pushing, Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers confronted him, according to the sheriff’s office. During the confrontation, two people were knocked to the ground and Havas was taken into custody by Canfield Fair police.
Following Havas’s arrest, police said they found two handguns and a set of brass knuckles in his possession, although no weapons were ever brandished or removed from their holsters.
Detectives on Sunday night added that they’d be continuing the investigation and would be filing charges after consulting with the Mahoning County Prosecutor.
The Canfield Fair, established in 1846, describes itself as the third-largest county fair nationwide. The fairgrounds, located about 75 miles southeast of Cleveland, sits on 353 acres of land and houses more than 60 buildings.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Armed attacker arrested after lunging at Ohio Jewish gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton appeared first on The Forward.
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Far-right win in Germany regional race sends shockwaves through Europe
(JTA) — A victory for Germany’s far-right party in an eastern federal state has reverberated across the globe, exposing the widening rifts between alarmed centrist leaders and insurgent nationalist movements in Europe.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in an election in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, crushing the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party, which held 17.2% support, according to preliminary figures.
The AfD is now heading toward 39 seats in Saxony-Anhalt’s 83-seat state parliament. It’s expected to fall 3 seats short of an outright majority, leaving open the question of whether it can form Germany’s first far-right state government since World War II. The party has proposed a sweeping nationalist agenda that includes deporting immigrants, defunding “anti-German art” and teaching children less about the country’s Nazi past.
Merz told reporters in Berlin on Monday he was “deeply shocked” and “unsettled” by the results, which he said rippled through the rest of the country and the world. He added that it was impossible for Germany to “go back to business as usual” after so many voters in Saxony-Anhalt chose a party that “questions the democratic institutions in our country.”
The results dealt the CDU its “most severe defeat” in decades, conceded Merz, who leads the party once headed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merz said that he was searching for answers to “why far-right populism and far-right extremism was able to rise in such a rapid manner,” suggesting that his party may have underestimated the “fears of our population” amid economic crises and rapid technological change. He said that minorities in Saxony-Anhalt would be particularly vulnerable under an AfD government, but noted that the state would still have obligations to follow federal law, including regarding immigration policy.
Merz also directed his message to the rest of Europe, saying that Germany had a “special responsibility because of its history” to keep its political order “deeply anchored in Europe.”
Despite the scale of the CDU’s defeat in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz ruled out stepping down, saying, “Giving up is not an option.”
Though Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany’s smallest regions, home to some 1.7 million voters, its election results quickly sent shockwaves through other European countries whose leaders, like Merz, are fighting to fend off far-right, anti-immigrant parties in national elections next year.
French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad called the AfD’s regional win a “grave moment in Europe” and said that “nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution.”
“We cannot forget our history,” said Haddad, an ally of centrist President Emmanuel Macron. “That is the meaning of the choices made by France and Germany.”
France’s government faces its own fears of a right-wing populist wave. Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Rally, has dwarfed all other candidates in polls heading into France’s presidential election in 2027, when term limits force Macron to step down.
Across the Channel, British Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds said in an interview on Times Radio that the U.K.’s Labour government “will not be reaching out to a right-wing populist party.” She added that she put the AfD in “the same political bracket” as Reform UK, the far-right party that surged in local elections earlier this year.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also condemned the AfD’s victory. The far-right party has alarmed Poland, Ukraine’s neighbor, with its pro-Russia stance, as it seeks to halt Germany’s military aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
“In Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany,” said Tusk.
Meanwhile, the AfD was cheered by nationalist, anti-immigration party leaders in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, all of whom have sought to capitalize on economic and social grievances similar to those that contributed to the AfD’s victory Sunday.
Santiago Abascal, the head of Spain’s far-right Vox party, called the result “a great hope for Germany and for Europe.”
André Ventura, the founder of Portugal’s far-right Chega party, said that “the Germans too are opening their eyes against illegal and uncontrolled immigration, corruption, and the capture of our freedom and identity.”
And in the Netherlands, the AfD received a “Congratulations” from the far-right Party for Freedom’s leader, Geert Wilders.
While President Donald Trump has yet to officially respond to the Saxony-Anhalt election, he posted a screenshot of the results without comment on his Truth Social account Sunday night.
Trump’s post was shared by Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy and businessman, who said the AfD scored a “historic win” that would “put migration under control.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire and former Trump adviser who campaigned for the AfD last year, gave his support to the national party leader Alice Weidel on X, which he owns, writing “Well done” in German.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate in Saxony-Anhalt who hopes to become the state premier, responded by praising Musk.
“Thank you, @elonmusk, for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time — including here in Germany,” he wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Far-right win in Germany regional race sends shockwaves through Europe appeared first on The Forward.
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How synagogues and Southern Jews came to mourn Robert E. Lee
In October 1870, mourning covered New Orleans.
The doors of the St. Charles Theater and Academy of Music were draped following the death of Robert E. Lee. Along St. Charles Street, saloons displayed signs of grief. Black and white cloth appeared on private homes, stores, banks and warehouses. The New-Orleans Weekly Times reported that “the rich and the poor vied with each other in their outward manifestations of grief.”
On Carondelet Street, the synagogue was draped too. Here at the Congregation Dispersed of Judah, the main door “presented a cloud of white and black draping.” Inside, the congregation’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs, delivered a eulogy for Lee. He turned to Zechariah 11:2 and compared the dead Confederate general to a fallen cedar.
In Galveston, Texas, another Southern Jewish congregation went further. At what a newspaper described as an “Orthodox congregation of Israelites,” a prayer was offered for Lee’s soul. It asked God, “who resteth in the highest heavens,” to grant Lee rest beneath the wings of divine providence.
“We pray to the Almighty that He shall keep him under His wings forever,” the congregation prayed, so that “at the resurrection” Lee’s soul would be among those “prepared to live again.”
The synagogue memorials were not isolated expressions of grief. Many Southern Jews had supported the Confederacy, served in its army and shared their neighbors’ admiration for Lee. Lee had also developed a reputation among Jewish soldiers for respecting their religious practice during the war. Their mourning reflected both a Jewish community deeply embedded in the society around it and a particular memory of Lee that would endure for generations.
Fighting for the Confederacy, observing Yom Kippur
For Jewish soldiers, loyalty to the Confederacy and religious observance could exist side by side. Confederate officers sometimes accommodated those needs, and Lee himself corresponded with a Richmond rabbi about allowing Jewish soldiers to observe their holidays.
In September 1861, around 40 Jewish soldiers stationed at a Confederate army camp in Pensacola, Florida, received permission from General Braxton Bragg to observe the Day of Atonement. Newspapers across the South reported that as the soldiers prayed “to the God of their fathers,” they “forgot not the Government for which they have taken up arms.”
That same year, Rabbi Maximilian J. Michelbacher of Richmond reminded Jewish soldiers that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were approaching. A Richmond correspondent estimated that thousands of Jews were serving in Virginia and wrote that “no class of our citizens have responded more liberally to the treasury and army of the Confederacy than the Southern Jews.”
Michelbacher also corresponded with Lee about allowing Jewish soldiers time away from the army for religious observance.
In 1864, he asked that Jewish soldiers be allowed to return to Richmond for the High Holidays. Lee declined to grant a general furlough but told the rabbi that he would “gladly do all in my power to facilitate the observance of the duties of their religion by the Israelites in the Army.”
Individual applications, he said, could be approved when circumstances allowed.
An account recorded in the 1887 work Christ in the Camp: Or Religion in the Confederate Army by Reverend J. William Jones, a Southern Baptist minister and Confederate chaplain, described a captain rejecting a Jewish soldier’s request to attend religious services. The captain wrote that if such applications were approved, “the whole army would turn Jews or Shaking Quakers.”
Lee overruled the decision. He returned the request with advice that the captain “should always respect the religious views and feelings of others.”
In 1870, Lee visited Norfolk, Virginia. Among those who came to see him was Emanuel J. Myers, an 89-year-old Jew who had served under Napoleon I and received the French Legion of Honor.
A report in The Israelite, a Cincinnati Jewish newspaper, described Myers approaching with a “full flowing, snow beard,” his medal shining on his breast. The old soldier greeted Lee with “a hearty shake of a soldier’s hand.”
The newspaper called Lee the “brave hero” and “great chieftain.”
The Almighty, the reporter said, had allowed Myers to live long enough to “grasp the hand of one whom we all delight to honor.”
Lee died five months later.
Remembering Lee as a friend to the Jews
Decades later, Lee was still being invoked as a symbol of religious tolerance.
In 1914, Rabbi Henry Barnston of Temple Beth Israel in Houston referenced Lee’s defense of a Jewish soldier’s religious observance while speaking about the persistence of intolerance. Others used the story similarly. In 1922, The American Israelite put it on its front page beneath a simple headline: “General Lee Respected the Jews.” Four years later, Vanderbilt University professor Edwin Mims invoked Lee while arguing against religious bigotry. His words, Mims said, “ought to ring out in America today.”
Nor were these accounts confined to the South. A story about Lee’s respect for Jews appeared in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle in 1928. In 1930, University of Wisconsin president Glenn Frank spoke about it at a memorial for Lee while condemning intolerance in the South. “You cannot fight for even one hour in the ranks of intolerance,” Frank said, “without turning traitor to the memory of the great Lee.”
The story took on new meaning after the October 1958 bombing of The Temple in Atlanta. The explosion tore through the synagogue building after Rabbi Jacob Rothschild had become an outspoken supporter of civil rights. One person claiming responsibility invoked a “Confederate Underground.”
In an op-ed published afterward in The Arizona Post and other outlets, David Schwartz, a writer with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, remembered the long history of Jews in Georgia and returned to the story of Lee defending a Jewish soldier’s religious observance.
“I don’t think Robert E. Lee would have liked to be associated with them,” he wrote, referring to the self-described “Confederate Underground” that claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Back in 1870, the synagogue memorials in New Orleans and Galveston had been part of a much wider response to Lee’s death. In Memphis, a newspaper remarked on the range of people who joined the city’s funeral procession, including Northerners, immigrants and “Hebrews,” writing that “none were found to show disrespect or even indifference.”
As plans emerged for an equestrian monument to Lee in Richmond, organizers proposed that on memorial days throughout the South, “every congregation, Christian and Hebrew,” make a contribution. The statue, erected in 1890, stood until 2021.
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