D'var Torah by Rabbi Levin in Nebraska

This was sent to me by my cousin's wife Rachel Winthrop who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and still has ties to there.
 
The Potentially Limitless Sky: My Struggle with Learning  Disabilities
by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren

Remarks on receiving the Lab School Award for Outstanding Achievers  with Learning Disabilities

I've participated in  several wars in my life and, while serving as a secret Israeli emissary to  Soviet Jews, was arrested and interrogated by the KGB, but one of the scariest  moments in my life occurred here, in the United States, when I was  sixteen.

I grew up in your average  suburban New Jersey town-think Happy Days-the home of Thomas Edison's laboratory  and the backdrop to the first two seasons of the Sopranos.
The school system was  average, too. Like many suburban schools, mine had adopted the tracking system  popular in the 1960s. Under this system, successful students were placed in  classes with other successful students, less promising students with other less  promising students, etc. The idea being that these "tracks," as they were  called, would enable students to learn and advance at their own pace without  feeling left back to far behind or, conversely,  under-challenged.

Invariably, the smarter  tracks got the best teachers and who, in turn, gave out the highest grades. I  was an unsuccessful student, utterly unpromising. And I was put in the lowest  track. My teachers were generally the least qualified or motivated, their main  task being to keep a lid on the relentless chaos reigning in the class and  prevent it from spilling out into the hall. We received the grades our teachers  expected us to get, which was irrelevant because learning in such an environment  was simply impossible.

There was also the  indignity of being in what everybody in school knew was the lowest track-a  special dishonor for me, coming from the Jewish community where young people  were expected to excel academically.

How did I get there? I  had always been what used to be called a "problem student." Bored in my  elementary school classes, I was a discipline problem and spent many hours-even  days-in the principal's office, missing the class time devoted to basic math and  grammar. Not that I could master basic math and grammar. I could do neither. As  an adult, my kids used to make fun of the fact that I couldn't help them with  their third grade math homework and didn't know my multiplication tables.

In addition, I was fat,  athletically "uncoordinated"-so they called it-and socially inept. In short, a  walking disaster area. There were no tutors, no allowances for  disabilities-there weren't even terms for the handicaps I had. And there was  certainly nothing remotely like the Lab School.

By age 13, I was  friendless, confidence-less, and failing out of school. I spent much of my time  alone, wandering in the woods or alone in my room.

But then I began writing  poetry. First, in the woods, in my head, and then in my room, in a notebook.  Soon I'd completed a book-"Who Cries for the Soul of the Pigeon"-and then became  publishing individual poems in august publications such as Seventeen Magazine.  The Star Ledger even wrote a story about me, "Teen Poet Fights to Get Foot in  Publisher's Door."

Still, it took my school  three years to notice and only when I was 16 did one English teacher, Mr. David,  a man to whom I am fathomlessly grateful, allow me to enrol in one honors  literature class.

I was terrified. Shaking.  Here were all the talented students, members of the highest track, and I had  come from the lowest. Furthermore, I knew nothing. I did not know how to turn in  a homework assignment. I did not know how to spell. Imagine the horror! I  faltered miserably, at first. Mr. David insisted I rewrite my papers and that I  consult a dictionary for all words over two syllables.

Yet, painfully, doggedly,  I began to get it. I began to get good grades-and not just in that English  class. And those grades enabled me to escape my other lowest-track classes. I  lost weight, refashioned myself into an athlete, and forged  friendships.

But my learning  disabilities remained. There's a popular wisdom that students get 250 points on  their SATs just for putting down their names. I got 230. My guidance counsellor  smiled at me empathetically and recommended a good community  college-maybe.

I took me another try to  realize that I suffered from a dyslexic problem: I was unable to discern  straight lines. The result was that I was filling in the answer to question 4 in  answer box 6. Consequently, I asked for what was then unthinkable-that I be able  to take the SATs again with a ruler. Later, my guidance counsellor called me  down to her office. She wasn't smiling anymore. She wanted to know how my score had jumped 400 points.

Though I managed to  emerge from those difficult years and, yes, to register some successes, I've  still had to wrestle with my disabilities.

Another dyslexic  handicap-an inability to transfer images from a topographical map to the actual  topography plagued me throughout my military service. I still can't see straight  lines and I still don't know my multiplication tables. But I've learned to  sidestep these obstacles. I've learned to appreciate the assistance of a wife  who is very good at straight lines and true wizard at math.

Together, we have raised  three sensational kids, each of who suffered from learning disabilities every  bit as onerous as my own, if not more so. We were able to give our children the  assistance and understanding they needed to overcome their disabilities. And we  were fortunate to raise our children in Israel, a country singularly sensitive  and committed to educating special needs students.

Our eldest son, a fluent  Chinese speaker, has just graduated from Columbia. Our daughter is working on an  advanced degree in special education. And our baby boy is becoming an officer in  an elite unit of the Israel Defense Forces.

These children-not the  degrees, not the books, not the ambassadorial titles-are my greatest success in  life. And for that I owe an incalculable debt to those like Mr. David who lent  me a hand and lifted my out of that lowest track, who showed me that stretching  above the even the darkest and deepest craters is a bright and limitless  sky.


Shabbat  Shalom!
Rabbi  Mordechai Levin