Rabbi for the deaf combines her passion for Judaism, signing
WHIPPANY, N.J. — Although she herself is not deaf, Dena Bodian developed a fascination for American Sign Language during her childhood in New Jersey.
“I was in Florence Heller’s kindergarten class at Morristown Jewish Center, and she taught the Sh’ma with sign language,” she said. “Later, when I attended the Hebrew Academy, we used to bentsch [say the grace after meals] in sign language.
“I signed the Sh’ma to myself at night for 10 or 15 years. It didn’t seem strange to me at the time, but I guess it was quite unorthodox.”
Unorthodox or not, it stuck.
“Having been exposed to sign language at a very young age — before I could even read — I guess I always equated sign language with Judaism,” Bodian said.
In June, Bodian was able to combine both passions when she was ordained as a rabbi by the Hebrew Seminary of the Deaf, a Chicago-based institution that trains clergy and teachers to serve the needs of the Jewish deaf and hearing-impaired. Bodian, 31, and two other women rabbis were ordained by the 13-year-old institution, which is associated with the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary.
Ordination marked the latest peak in a lifetime of involvement and early leadership in Jewish life.
“I grew up in a kosher home and we made Shabbos every week. I remember as a kid every Friday night my father took me to shul,” Bodian recalled. “Now that I look back, it was probably a way to give my mom a break — other people took their kids to the park; we went to shul. I was the only kid there.”
She decided herself by fourth grade that she wanted to attend day school, and her parents, Louis Bodian and Helen Kloder, enrolled her at the Hebrew Academy of Morris County. At that time, it was affiliated with the Conservative movement and had not yet adopted an egalitarian approach.
“When I was there, girls did not have a part in services. Having that as a contrast forced me to become really active in the shul environment,” she said. She dropped out after sixth grade, she said, because she would not be allowed to chant from the Torah.
But Bodian took on leadership roles from a young age at her synagogue. These activities, Bodian said, “forced me to take ownership in a positive way — it was a great model.”
After getting a master’s degree, Bodian moved to Leesburg, Va, where she served as a lay leader for a small synagogue, worked for an educational video company licensing images and took night classes in ASL translation. A night school classmate told her about the Hebrew Seminary of the Deaf.
“I thought, Wow!,” she recalled. She dropped out of the night classes, quit her job and moved to Chicago.
Signing has always held a certain fascination for Bodian. “It has a fantastic aesthetic,” she said. But even after receiving ordination from HSD, she said, she is “not super-fluent.”
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a significant skill set. She gave her commencement address in both English and in ASL.
She also has a deep understanding of the barriers people who are deaf face in joining Jewish communal life.
“Deaf Jews are a demographic that frequently go unheard. It’s hard to find a synagogue that is not wheelchair accessible, but they often fail to address the linguistic issues deaf people face,” Bodian said. “The deaf community not only don’t hear the prayers, they can’t hear the sermons, they can’t shmooze during kiddush. It’s not a handicap issue you can solve with a hearing device; it’s much more a linguistic issue.
“It’s like speaking Spanish or Russian — except Hebrew is no longer the universal equalizer.”
Bodian said she doesn’t plan to focus her rabbinate exclusively on the deaf community.
“That’s not a job I think I’d be good at,” she said, pointing out that she might not even fit a deaf community’s requirements. In Washington, for example, a deaf community decided it wanted a rabbi but expressed a preference for a hearing-impaired signer.
“But I will know how to make my community more accessible through providing the right resources and offering education for the broader community regarding what it is deaf Jews need to be part of the community,” she said.
And Bodian will be able to work with a hearing family with a deaf child, for example, in a way that another rabbi couldn’t.
Following ordination, Bodian is continuing to work at her student pulpit, Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago. For now, she has no plans to return east. After spending her fourth year at JTS, she said, “I learned that I can’t stand the pace of Manhattan.”
Currently, she spends much of her time offering adult education classes, working with the synagogue’s burial society, and running a conversion program.
“I have the best job,” she said. “All I have to do is make people fall in love with Judaism!”
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