Jewish Experiences, a collaboration of Jewish Federation and The J, is hosting artist and author Riva Lehrer as part of the Acclaimed Author Series on Wednesday, Feb. 9.
This event is sponsored in part by the Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City, the Jewish Book Council, and Kol Ami. Visit thejkc.org/jewishexperiences to learn more about Riva’s event and others as part of the Acclaimed Author Series.
Riva was born with spina bifida and has found a community of artists, writers and performers who work to build Disability Culture in our society. Lehrer’s story, told in “Golem Girl: A Memoir,” shines a light on physical identity and the socially challenged body with tenacity and creativity.
What was your experience like growing up in a Jewish home, and how did your experience differ from others your age?
Most of our neighborhood was Jewish when I was growing up. I had a fairly large, not immediate family, but a lot of cousins who all lived in the same part of the city. So on one hand, I had a Jewish community around. When we moved, we moved right behind the Jewish Community Center in Cincinnati. But at elementary school, (which) was a school for disabled kids, there was only one other Jewish kid in the whole school, and that was it.
Because I was disabled, I was never sent to Cheder, and I actually really wanted to go. My brothers were sent, all of my cousins were sent, I was the only kid in the family who didn’t go to Hebrew School, and that was upsetting. I think the feeling is still in some ways that Judaism is about producing more Jews. You get a Jewish education so you give your kids a Jewish education, and it was assumed even before that became an issue that I would never have kids, never be in a relationship, never have a family, so what was the point? So that was not a good feeling.
My brothers were bar mitzvah, my female cousins were bat mitzvah, so I felt like my religion had no use for me, even while I was feeling very culturally Jewish. I was in a Habonim (Dror) for seven years. It’s very mixed. I feel very Jewish, I’m actually doing Yiddish on Duolingo right now… But I do really wish I had a Jewish education. I’ve talked to other disabled kids, especially girls, who were treated the same way, that there was no point in sending them to Cheder. Even when it’s not said out loud, you kind of know, even when you’re a kid, you kind of know. So, mixed feelings.
One of the Jewish values we try to embody is v’ahavta, loving kindness, which is the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself, and it starts with loving ourselves. Can you describe your journey in loving yourself and how you have extended that love and acceptance to others?
I guess what I can say is I’ve spent most of my life definitely not loving myself because I was in a culture that gave me no reason to. Gave me every reason to hate who I was, and it’s not like that went away. I have some tools to deal with it now, but they don’t always work. But, what really changed my life was that I met, in 1997, Susan Nussbaum who brought me into a group of disabled artists, writers, dancers, visual artists, comedians, actors, that were all exploring disability in their own discipline. And they were people who were in the middle of building Disability Culture. And they had political terminology and they had theoretical terminology, and what happened was they gave me an ability to analyze and make sense and put in context my experiences instead of just carrying around this load of often traumatic, mostly confusing, difficult history.
In terms of loving myself and loving others, it’s more that I feel deeply aligned with people who deal with stigma for every reason, and that life is hard and you have to argue whether you’re queer or a person of color or disabled or an immigrant, whatever. You’re dealing with a hard life, and you’re dealing with it in a society that says you’re not worth the trouble.
So my form of love is fighting. It’s the struggle to get this recognized. This is what you guys are doing to us, why? And now the world is being flooded by right wing governments, and those are not compassionate governments. So I am very frightened by the future.
You talk about the activism and what you’ve done to make Disability Culture a more visible culture. What are some of those things that you’re most proud of in that fight so far?
A few things. One is having a career at all, because I was told for years and years that if I did images of disabled people, I would have no career. The first thing is, proud that anybody will show me, I have collectors. But also I work with curators. I’ve curated a number of shows, but I also work with curators. I work with granting organizations, I work with the NEA (National Education Association), I work with the Smithsonian, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, and not just as an artist but talking about the representation of otherness and trying to move them more towards showing images of people with impairments.
I work a lot with granting organizations, talking to them about hidden pitfalls in grants. For instance, a lot of grants only want the last two to five years of work to qualify. And for disabled people, you may have a great year and then lose a year where you can’t get anything done. And then you have another year where it’s partly.
When I did Circle Stories, it took me almost ten years, and I wanted to apply for things with that whole series. But I had been in and out of the hospital. The people I worked with had been in and out of the hospital, so early on when I wanted to apply for grants with the entire series, I couldn’t. So I started calling places and saying, “Can I talk to you about these accessibility problems in your grant structure?” I know I’ve had an effect there.
I never think of it as something I’m doing for myself. I think of it as, “I am part of my culture, I want to pull everybody with me.” So I try to think about, “what are the issues for other kinds of impairments?” and I’ll talk to friends. So it’s really about building a culture.
You are joining our Acclaimed Author Series in February, which happens to be Jewish Disabilities Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion month. Do you have any advice on how society can help champion the rights of all to be accepted and included in all aspects of Jewish life?
A friend once did a talk on disabled people in the Old Testament. It would be interesting to have your rabbi think about that and do a talk about it. But also, to think about tzedakah, the problem often is in models of charity, there is pity embedded in it. So it can be very hard to say, “You should do this, you should do that.” I can’t think of any way to put it other than, make sure that your worship and community spaces are fully accessible.
Make sure that you have a budget for ASL or closed caption, make sure that things like, when you gather, it should be a scent free zone, always. Really look at your practices in terms of accessibility and maybe question your community about issues they’ve had that maybe they’ve been reluctant to speak about. I think that, rather than going to the person and saying how can I help you, look at what you have already. Is it welcoming, is it accessible, and how can you reach out more to the disability community once you’ve made sure that if you’re reaching out, that you’re offering them something that’s going to work? I know that there are deaf synagogues, for instance, you could invite a group from a deaf synagogue or deaf worship group to come and do a presentation.
