Wednesday, September 2, 2009

This is an incredible video of Sam Cordell's Bar Mitzvah at Camp Yofi. The Cordell's are a wonderful and special family. As of now, children who reach the age of 13 age out of Camp Yofi. It is my next dream, mission, to create the post-Yofi graduate program. Anyone interested in helping make this dream come true - financially, with work, or with time - should please let me know. Even as a child with autism reaches 13, the need for community, for respite, for support, for Jewish connection, does not disappear either for the family or for the child. Help us do more! Thanks.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihfgrb2xJJo

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Rabbi Sykes,
I read with great interest your article in the Jerusalem Post of 4/9/09. We are the grandparents of Ben, an 11-year-old high-functioning PDD (he is in 5th grade at a Mamlachti school in Hertzliya). He will be Bar Mitzva in August 2011, and we are interested in maximum preparation for him before-hand.
We are Traditional (belong to an Orthodox congregation in Caesarea). Ben's parents are not religious (divorced) but are supportive of the Bar Mitzva; the father lives in Seattle and the mother here. Ben speaks some English (he spent a month at an English-only day camp in Seattle this summer) and of course fluent Hebrew.
Can you (or any readers) point us to some resources available here in Israel, or in the US, that would be appropriate for Ben? Is Camp Yofi a possible option for next summer? Can you suggest some other ways to proceed?
Thanks, Allen