A feel good story for 2015.
Via JPost
Sitting down to coffee in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday, Rabbi Elyse Winick kept a watchful eye out for the 25 Taglit-Birthright participants in her charge.
To add to the usual difficulty of shepherding dozens of young people around Israel on a tight schedule, all two dozen participants who were on Shorashim Bus 230 present with autistic-spectrum or related disorders.
“I worry about him,” she said, spotting one participant who she said presented more difficulties than most. “But I see he encountered a staff member, had a conversation and kept going.”
The romp up and down Ben-Yehuda Street, the capital’s central tourist artery, is a staple for the thousands of young Jews who take part in the allexpense- paid, 10-day trip. But on this trip, during which leaders put special emphasis on keeping the group together, it offered a rare moment for the young adults to disperse, albeit within the confines of the short street.
So Winick was keeping alert.
For 10 years, the rabbi has been staffing Birthright trips catering to individuals with autism and related disorders; she shuns the term “special needs” to describe them.