Ari Ne’eman grew up in New Jersey. He attended Solomon Schechter day school and has remained involved in the Jewish world, despite that world not being nearly as inclusive as it should be, given what we learn about Jewish values.
Ne’eman has Asperger Syndrome, which is a variant of Autism. But Ne’eman has made it his life’s cause to help revolutionize the approach to dealing with Autism, from others, by researchers and within the autistic community itself. He is also very involved in the neurodiversity movement, which he sees as part of the larger disability rights movement, which is also a part of the larger still civil rights movement.
Ne’eman, whose parents are Israeli, was appointed by then New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine to the New Jersey Special Education Review Commission. That Commission developed recommendations on the educational needs of New Jersey students with disabilities.
Immediately upon graduating from the University of Maryland, Ne’eman co-founded and remains the president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN). ASAN is an advocacy organization run by and for autistic adults who seek to bring about greater accommodation and, just as importantly, acceptance of neurological diversity in our society. Self-advocacy is essential and ASAN firmly ascribes to the slogan used across the broader disability advocacy world: “Nothing About Us Without Us.”
At the age 23, Ne’eman became the youngest presidential appointee in history when he was nominated to sit on the National Council on Disability in 2009.
And today, Jan. 26, the Ruderman Family Foundation (RFF) announced that Ne’eman is the winner of its annual Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion. The $100,000 award recognizes an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Jewish world and the greater public and is based on past achievements and the potential for future contributions to the field.
“Our foundation has long advocated that the rights of people with disabilities be respected and that they deserve to be fully included in all aspects of our society – work, housing, religious and community life,” said Jay Ruderman, President of the Ruderman Family Foundation. “Ari Neeman’s selection is recognizing his advocacy as a person with a disability by which he says that people with disabilities have the right to be included as full citizens in our society. His stance is in direct opposition to those in our society that believe that people with disabilities should be ‘cured’ or dealt with through segregated services.”
The Jewish Press spoke with Ne’eman about his goals for the neurodiversity movement, and for his hopes regarding the Jewish community as it slowly, painfully, begins to make some strides in accommodating, and thereby welcoming, Jews with disabilities.
“There was slowly developing an ongoing public conversation about autism in the late ’90′s and early aughts,” he says, “but that conversation did not include the people with autism.” Instead, it was about them. As a result, much of the early focus on autism had to do with focusing on “cures” and “causes,” rather than accommodation and inclusion. And to this day, only a tiny percentage – less than four percent – of federal money for autism research goes towards the needs of adults or services for people with autism.
Ne’eman is a force for changing that kind of early approach. Imagine what it must feel like to see that the vast majority of all funding for autism is still directed towards eliminating people like you, instead of embracing and including you.
In this regard, Ne’eman is incredibly grateful to the Ruderman Family Foundation, not simply because of the prize he has received, but because it is a Jewish funding source that is dedicated precisely to Ne’eman’s vision of where the focus must be in the world of funding around disabilities: inclusion.
Ne’eman explained that other than the Ruderman Foundation, most Jewish funders who even think about funding for people with disabilities are still stuck on the bricks and mortar approach to philanthropy. In other words, if you can’t lay a plaque on it, they tend not to want to support it. And the kinds of programs that get plagues are ones that segregate people with disabilities, rather than integrate them.
“It’s very frustrating,” Ne’eman said. “the conversation of inclusion within the Jewish world is long overdue. From a moral perspective, what has been happening is contrary to Jewish values.
“And it’s in the Jewish community’s interest to ensure connection within our broader community, it is in the moral and strategic interest of the Jewish world to to welcome Jews with disabilities, to remove those barriers and, in particular, show the younger generation of Jews that ours is a welcoming world.”
But Ne’eman says it is still unclear where Jewish communal life is going, with respect to this issue. What he has observed is the mindset that ensuring accommodation and inclusion of people with disabilities is “a nice thing to do if there is enough money and enough interest.”
“But the approach should be that these changes must be made because it is ‘a right,’ it is something to which all Jews are entitled,” Ne’eman said. “The answer cannot be that ‘we can’t afford’ to make the necessary changes.”
Ne’eman points to the analogy of a large mid-western state university which began to hire women professors in the hard sciences several decades ago. When faculty members realized they would have to create women’s restrooms for these new faculty members, they balked at the cost. “One could look at that and conclude that being inclusive is expensive,” Ne’eman said, “or you could look at it and say that having been exclusionary at the outset is what caused the expense.”
The Ruderman Family Foundation is providing the kind of leadership that is so essential to kickstarting major changes in all avenues of life, and that is precisely where people with disabilities are found. It offers life-altering financial prizes and awards to individuals and organizations who are making the necessary changes for the Jewish world to catch up with its obligation to include all its members.