Shiluv: More Than Just Disability Awareness

Bridging differences, fostering belonging, and building equitable Jewish communities.

Join the Fellowship

Examine mindsets about disability and empower yourself to transform attitudes and practices in your school.

Implement the Curriculum

Bring lesson plans, book lists, Jewish texts, and guest speakers with disabilities directly to your classrooms.

Discover Shiluv

Shiluv, Hebrew for inclusion, is an innovative Gateways program that transforms attitudes and fosters belonging.

Shiluv cultivates a culture of respect and appreciation for learning, physical, emotional, and developmental differences within Jewish educational settings.

By focusing on the culture and mindset of the community towards difference and disability, and doing so through a uniquely Jewish lens, Shiluv seeks to shift understandings of what it truly means to include people with disabilities in Jewish community.

The Shiluv Curriculum

Developmentally appropriate, experiential learning about difference and disability through a uniquely Jewish lens.

Multisensory Experiential Learning

Students engage in fun, hands-on activities that explore themes of embracing differences, respecting developmental variation, and understanding disability. Students reflect on their own characteristics, cultivate an appreciation for the individual differences within their community, and brainstorm ways to support and include everyone.

An elementary school student painting on the outside of a flower pot.

Supplementary Classroom Resources

Jewish text study and reading guides engage students with stories of people with lived experience of disability and make explicit connections with Jewish values, texts, and community.

A class of kids sitting on the floor watching a presentation

Guest Speakers with Disabilities

Speakers with different disabilities, including physical disabilities, intellectual and learning disabilities and Autism, share their lived experience navigating their differences with friends and family, in school, and in the Jewish community while forming a positive identity.

Shiluv speaker Avner Fink, who has low vision, shares his lived experience and demonstrates adaptive equipment with a classroom of third graders.

Disability Through a Uniquely Jewish Lens

Jewish stories, texts, and thought are part of the foundation of Shiluv and are incorporated at every stage of the curriculum. Texts like the one from Pirkei Avot below yield thoughtful conversations about the role of disability and difference in Judaism.

[Ben Azzai] used to say, do not scorn any person,
and do not disregard any thing,
for there is no person that does not have their hour,
and there is no thing that does not have its place.

הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם,
וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר
שֶׁאֵין לְךָ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה
וְאֵין לְךָ דָבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם.

Two elementary school students sitting side by side on the floor and looking intently at a piece of paper with a Jewish text.

The Shiluv Educational Model

Students generalize what they learned to personal relationships and community

Students hear firsthand from speakers with disabilities

Colorful circle infographic with text reading "Shiluv" in the center, surrounded by words in a concentric circle, reading: "Experience, Reflect, Apply, Connect, Generalize."

Students participate in experiential activities

Students reflect on the activities and make connections to personal experiences

Students engage in literacy activities to apply their learning

Bring Shiluv to Your School

The Shiluv Faculty Fellowship

A Disability Equity Leadership Program

The year-long Shiluv Faculty Fellowship empowers educators to transform attitudes about disability and build communities of belonging in their schools. While bringing the Shiluv curriculum to their classrooms, Shiluv Fellows develop grounding in the philosophy and history of disability rights and inclusion, reflect on ableist mindsets and practices, and create action plans to promote inclusion and equity.

Core Features

Monthly webinars exploring key topics: The language of disability, ableism, social vs. medical models of disability, disability in Jewish tradition, universal design, and more!
Access to and certification for implementing the Shiluv curriculum
1:1 Coaching with Gateways experts on implementing the Shiluv curriculum
Dynamic community of practice with like-minded peers

Who Can Join?

Judaic and general studies teachers, administrators and principals, directors of student support, learning specialists, librarians, and more!

Bridging differences, fostering belonging, and building equitable Jewish communities.