what is so extraordinary about this is that early and found purpose something we talk about something we don't quite understand how do people find purpose and then that purpose the israel congregation in lawrenceville correct and he has i'm fascinating life story so are you and his life he almost didn't make it and this why don't you tell us how it all  to the point where one doctor who just figured what why bother he wrote ill eleven different death certificates once a week he wrote it with death certificate because i'm going to make it anyway kid and for a while i had those of the poster on the wall  call from the archbishop of philadelphia and i say thank you for telling me of course i'll be there as though he left a request he says even though he was a very devout catholic he says and i'm going to do the funeral service he wants you to and saved my life and everything and the whole side of my face here here my knee was purplish black because most of the blood vessels burst he didn't mind my parents didn't mind but some other dr who to talk about there or at least don't mention he came up with the brilliant idea that the way to get by skin color back to normal was to radiate me and so in one nine hundred fifty one they radiated me more than the people of the roshumba nagasaki i survived obviously but i have very little vision life working on that kind of stuff i knew early on i wanted to be a rabbi i knew that i wanted to work with all sorts of people and i also found that lots of people and special needs were simply kind of pushed aside so i was very lucky when i not only did well and he were school i grew up in philadelphia went to grants college i did other things when i was in college i got a full scholarship from my junior year to hear you know were sitting in jerusalem so i went there so i knew early on that i had the brains of the skills and yeah i mean that hearing problems and things like that or the joke was if you ever hear me speak hebrew i make certain mistakes over and over again because i don't hear so well the english have learned to some more about that well i was looking like you said by parents and dr b and some of the others they said kids are going to do the best you can the cash working for me and every once in a while like if i was in the hospital or somewhere else i see other people who  treat kids like they were a puppy dog you know it's like oh it's good enough he's fed he's closing it he's not the know anything and i say well what's the kids favorite subject oh he can't learn anything and it would make me furious so i decided very early on but i was in high school and i started volunteering at places the only well there are levels just to to do and i was lucky because they came from a family where there was a lot of volunteering going on my dad was very active in what was called the j w the jewish war veterans and he was a veteran of the second world war and it was a regular thing that but least once a week he and my older brother who's now a doctor and myself and we go to the v a hospital and work with guys who it was shocking to meet people who had been a visitor from their family at six or seven years it's like i just leave it as like a warehouse and i decided to really want between disability and other things people don't people deserve better than to be thrown away or warehouse so i decided coming early on that i would do stuff like that my started doing things at this pennsylvania school for the deaf in philadelphia that i would visit and other things and i got mom pretty quickly and then one of the things which later developed when i was in graduate school sign language was not created by the deaf sign language it was created by jesuit priests who were sworn to silence and and so you know suddenly i started looking up sign language and studying i can't figure out why there's nothing jewish about any of it and then i looked it up and i still remember the quietest room in the world i'm sitting in the national library for the dea adele short and she is a linguist and she is that if children and she's jewish and together it took a couple of three and a half years she did this her name is on the cover of mines and the inside is like  assisting her we wrote the first dictionary we work into or sign language so that we wouldn't so the jewish deaf kids would have a positive identity instead of these other ridiculous things and over the years that's been very very rewarding right and unusual story and tell us more about the people you've helped i mean directly you said i thought someone told me you know you think you worked in the prisons but yet is this and you told me when i mentioned it to you third yes i like to help people i just want to throw away yeah fit can you give us some examples why did you learn about the prisoners what did you do for them well first of all was sometimes just somebody to talk to somebody to play cards with somebody you know and he just was like one  and or i'd give him book and he'd read it and i'd read them and come back and share with them and talk to him about it so it wasn't like i suddenly thought these people were quote it could be redeemed or fixed it wasn't that they were just people they didn't need to be thrown away they needed to be taught doing dealt with and look at everybody makes mistakes i mean i've made mistakes in my life everybody does and it just doesn't mean you're on human yet and i think part of what you pointing out is what but people needed for him human connections yes and that's what you brought something so precious and so wonderful and yet people are deprived of it and then in so many ways like it's a way that is to go to the v of or whatever tell jokes you know that matter but i just felt that it was wrong for the be treated like they were throwaway stuff i know i had an opportunity to work and a princeton very very briefly i was a counselor at an anti poverty program and we had a program in the present and that wasn't the want to normally worked in but i was asked if i would go yes and work and rikers island oh sure for one day and i was there  and there was a young prisoner who was sweeping the floor but i kept seeing that he was head would come up and be fairing at me and then i look around and he'd look down again and i couldn't think it was anything bad but i was curious so i went up to him and i said do we know each other he said yes so how do we know each other you said you were my high school teacher oh my gosh yeah oh my gosh he recognized me he was an air strike prison uniform and he wasn't in our program and so i said ok why didn't you say hello to me and he said because i didn't want you to see me here like this and i said ok and i want to put you here and he said no i got involved with drugs he was from the bronx i and so i only had that one day to be there and he wasn't in the program which was training them to find jobs so they would not get back and to get or i'm sure and so i begged them to please put this young man in the program i said i'm only here one day i have to use this in this mission that was given to me to help him and please please put him in the program whether they did or they didn't i really don't know but i know what you mean people out there when we isolate them when we look at it we don't see them as a fellow human being this is when we do the most harm and it's when we bring humanity to them that you also work with children right yes sure what do you do with children i teach or do other stuff i do arts and crafts with his of done all this all could stuff and especially with deaf kids people just assume they were like pets almost as easy as bright as any other kids they just need to learn to communicate and so i used to do storytelling with kids and things like that and it was just wonderful and there are two good schools for the deaf in the united the three actually this and the id the national technical institute for the deaf where i used to be at rochester sort of said well you don't communicate the same way we do so you must be trash i mean i went through that as a kid and i just didn't want somebody else to do that i mean i was lucky that my parents and the doctors i worked with i mean i went to central high no one tells them that except his own experience and that's why i got involved in what i do because i think there are a lot of parents with special needs kids who simply say oh this is too much of a burden let's just keep around but don't assume very much don't assume they can accomplish anything and so i kind of made that a very very important goal to at least try and i have and you gave them goals yeah exactly that's what was so wonderful  and you had the architect you worked with yeah i had been in a synagogue in philadelphia it was my first one i was a second round way there and i couldn't believe it had three hundred families and no special  people which made no sense to me what that was telling me was they weren't coming or they were so embarrassed or they just wouldn't join any work so when i had a chance to go and start my own place which i did here in lawrenceville  roll up in a wheelchair and take one so it's not just the certain people can get it and the whole place it was designed with a special hearing system if you want if you need some help but not a full hearing aid you walk to the buy put a clip on pop it in and you can hear much come it's not a community place it's a very restricted place as so i made it very clear that if i'm going to be there these are the this is what we're going to do and we and they were more than happy to build with me at work with  proud of that he said that if they did the congregation then change should be going through yeah because you opened it up to right now who right now accepts right yeah it's not interesting yeah so you see in a way we can we create segregation without even knowing absolutely yes and willingly only because we judge or rather misjudge who others are yeah and don't feel that they have the same right leaning right now so i'm in a way people who don't open up to differences in others very good at what they do i mean them myself included you know there are a lot of things i couldn't do with a hearing problem and i also walk with a bit of a limp in this and i but i found there is i mean i'm probably better read than most people who are my age you know  kid so instead of the sunny what a person can't do figure out what they can do support that and then put it all together and you've got everybody working from their strengths instead of their weakness you know that you know  which is this wonderful is i wrote a lot of poetry and she's taken from one poetry and worked with some really good musicians to put the music in i got to tell you being in a major music halls and hearing three four hundred people on the stage singing the words the stuff that i read i was like blown away and it's just you know and she's opened up my world as to how to hear language differently loveth is just wonderful to us wonderful i was very fortunate with the my parents were college educated but they were very well read and they just decided right on that instead of people think well you have this problem that problem medically so if you would you can do whatever you with each other death and if you can offer in this hope for yourself you do it for yourself and but for others as well for others that's why that's why i do what i do because i mean i have been overwhelmed over the years of the number of people who will see somebody with a disability and just assume that they're the equivalent of warehouse like oh let's just keep bed me clothes comfortable and find out what their skill set is and what they can do better than you think and let them flower them blossom that's why i love working with students because we never know what's inside it yeah and if you can help it to them to really nice and discover themselves yeah because they don't know themselves sometimes and it's wonderful to see how good they feel about themselves when they discover gee i didn't know i could do this and people it kids who are very quiet and didn't speak would speak yeah and would speak from the heart  and that that's how you know that's why i love poetry because you get any kind of connection you you talk to yourself yeah you're using your own in fact feelings and putting it out there so i think these have beautiful things and people who you would not expect said my parents their attitude from the very beginning was try if it doesn't work try something else and i mean i i think i like you know having older brother was very well it so i did find i was good in swimming know so i was lucky that i have a family that has the i would say it was keep working till you find out what you can do and then just enjoy doing it right and even like you know i mean i never ever felt with a hearing problem like it's not an ego thing it's just a question of let a person be row and let a person be a little person grow yeah and they will find ways to express themselves i mean there is no way with my hearing loss that i ever thought i would ever see a concert hall and hear my words put to music but lane did some amazing things and some of them have been overwhelmingly that was it the kill center in philadelphia and stuff like that  and i was like wow and i felt great about it because somebody had enough trust in the fact that like let's put it all together make it work yeah and once you're in in it you know thinking about success or any learning experience yeah just experiencing well you know and that's why i thought you would be someone wonderful to have on my show and thank you you are doing what i feel most of us should or many of us need to do and there are people out there doing it by the way and i are finding them i'm finding people and bringing them on it's gas because this is what matters to me this is what makes us human this is what helps us be the human beings we were meant to be so tell me you're now retired and you're so what you think you're still doing a lot of things right yeah i'm writing doing other things right the short story is that with other stuff so that's part of it and wherever needed i mean i get a phone call to show up and do stuff with special needs i think but also because i was just the pope and rabbi for a long time there are lots of people as they grow up they present rabbi and he said it was very sweet he says in all the years he's put been there he's never made any effort to get to know me whereas you feel like family so my wife and i elaine and i went down the baltimore and we did the wedding and it was the ball we had a great time of questions of human interaction and stuff like that because i think that we still are which i say we don't put enough energy into it and then al given the circumstances in their own country i'm probably going to get back involved in more politics and stuff because it is overwhelming to me that for the white house people with disabilities are treated like throwaway junk and can go either way can't