As an employee of Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, I was quite moved to watch Arlene Remz, our Executive Director, receive the honor of the Community Service Award from the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts for her work in leading our organization to improve the quality of Jewish education for children with special needs.
Arlene Remz, Governor Deval Patrick, Rachel Chafetz
Reflecting on the significance of this wonderful evening, I greatly appreciated reading Daniel Levenson’s remarks. He appropriately pointed out that “one of the things that makes the Massachusetts Synagogue Council unique is that it consistently brings together Jews of different denominational affiliations to not only talk about issues of common concern, but to engage in learning and celebration with one another.”
I certainly agree with his point and I want to add that by honoring Arlene Remz, Executive Director of Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, the Council has recognized our agency’s ability to also serve families across the denominational spectrum, as well as recognized the importance of including families who have children with a diverse range of learning styles and abilities. Gateways provides Jewish education to children with special needs in a variety of settings – day schools, synagogue and community programs, and specially designed programs for children who would benefit from highly structured programming, individualized attention and smaller class sizes. Our client families identify as Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and unaffiliated.
The Synagogue Council of Massachusetts and Gateways: Access to Jewish Education are vibrant models of organizations identifying an important community need and working for the greater good to create services and programs for all Jewish families.
Arlene Remz with Gateways staff at Synagogue Council Annual Meeting
For more information about Gateways: Access to Jewish Education please visit our website and become a fan on facebook.
Sonni Bendetson
Program Associate
Gateways: Access to Jewish Education
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