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Skokie synagogue dedicated to deaf people may have to close its doors. ‘Right now is not a good time to be asking people for money’

Sari Daybook, 37, was a year old when she was diagnosed with severe to profound hearing loss. She recalls being fitted with hearing aids at 17 months. With help from her family, she learned how to talk. She also remembers she was 5 years old when her family discovered the Congregation Bene Shalom in Skokie.

“It was so important to my grandmother that I love and appreciate my Jewish faith,” Daybook said in an email interview. “When I walked in at 5 years old, I was overwhelmed with joy and excitement watching members using sign language and talking back and forth. I was raised orally, and my family did not use sign language. So being involved at a deaf temple was such a wonderful experience for me. It still is to this day. Congregation Bene Shalom did just that.”

Since its creation in 1972, Bene Shalom has been a Reform Jewish congregation committed to providing an inclusive environment to experience God and understand Jewish heritage through prayer, study of the Torah, Kabbalah and healing prayer. It is the only full-service synagogue in the nation devoted to the deaf community, which is exempt from religious obligations according to some interpretations of Jewish law. Unfortunately the synagogue is on the cusp of closure, according to temple President Laura Schwartz. Over the years, she said, the temple has lost funding sources as congregation members have died.

“We used to have a friends group of some very wealthy people who really supported the synagogue, and many of those people have passed away,” she said. “When we launched our fundraising campaign around Thanksgiving last year, we were able to reach out to the children of the very wealthy people, and they did make some donations, so we did get enough money to get us through the year when we were really desperate. We’ve been managing those funds very carefully, but of course they are going to run out.”

Schwartz said the synagogue’s rabbis have already taken pay cuts, the temple put a donation button on the top right of its website and a Gofundme campaign is in place. According to Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, the annual budget is $300,000, and they still need $150,000 to remain open until January 2021.

“We’re struggling, but right now is not a good time to be asking people for money,” Schwartz said. “We’re hoping once this coronavirus situation dies down, hopefully in the fall, we’ll renew our fundraising efforts. We’re going to try everything we can. We haven’t been able to meet to figure out what our next big step is, but once this critical time passes, we’ll get together and put our heads together and come up with more ideas and brainstorm.”

Over the years, teens studying for their bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs have learned their Torah portion in Hebrew and translated it into English and sign language at Congregation Bene Shalom. A signing choir accompanies the cantorial soloist.

Daybook, an instructional assistant for special education at New Trier High School in Winnetka, said the temple has been with her for the majority of her life, including adult classes and Kabbalah. She became a Sunday school teacher, a member of the sign language choir and is now a rabbinical student at Bene Shalom.

Goldhamer said that if Bene Shalom shutters, its food pantry will close and the synagogue’s help for families in the community will end for deaf members as well as those who are not hard of hearing.

“We need to share money with people who need food, who need clothes,” Goldhamer, 75, said. “I do believe strongly God has inspired me to do this work because I was sharing with the people a new way of seeing God through the American Sign Language — translating the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic characters through American Sign Language. … Imagine going to your church and seeing prayers signed — it’s as if the prayers are dancing before you.”

“This temple has so much to offer,” Daybook, an Avondale resident, said. “The services were always in sign language and spoken in English and Hebrew. It felt so comforting to be involved. Bene Shalom is my first exposure to the deaf culture. I give a lot of credit for this temple helping me learn my true identity — learning that I can have faith in God and in my religion even though I’m deaf. This temple needs to stay open. Without this temple, I am not sure what I would do. I can say much more, but others need to come and witness what they are supporting and why this place is so special.”

drockett@chicagotribune.com