Israel’s only deaf rabbi is providing the hard of hearing with the gift of Torah by translating the entire Bible into sign language.
Rabbi Yehoshua Soudakoff told Jewish News that it is a “big responsibility” to attempt to make the Torah “accessible and possible” for Israel’s 15,000 strong deaf community who communicate using sign language. He added in jest that he “wishes he had competition!”
Along with his crew of Bible scholars as well as actors, US-born Rabbi Soudakoff has launched the groundbreaking, yet “very exciting” mission of translating the 24 books that comprise the Tanakh into a visual format. This in turn “brings the word to life” for people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
The task is essential to the 40- 50,000 Jews worldwide who communicate using sign language. This, he explains, is because the Torah is meant to be read aloud, in the synagogue, three times a week, to entire the congregation.
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“It is done together, as a community, and that’s how it is meant to be read. It is a shared human experience. That’s really important for deaf people because so many times deaf people are disconnected.”
Despite the fact that the Rabbi categorizes himself as a statistical “oddity” since he was born into a deaf family, he adds that many kids aren’t so lucky.
“This is not something that is very enabling for many children. Their parents do not have a degree in deaf education, they are starting from scratch, they don’t know how to communicate with their deaf child and so the child may lose out or feel left out.”
This can be a source of frustration for the child as he explains. That’s because the parent “may only have time to give them a brief synopsis rather than the full story. We hope that we will now be able to give them direct access to the source.”
Rabbi Soudakoff explains that the translation process is “very lengthy.” Until now, he and his team have only completed the book of Ruth and are halfway through both Genesis and Esther. He estimates it will take him approximately 15 years to complete the entire Bible.
“Each team requires 2 people both fluent in sign language– one scholar, who can interpret the writing and an actor, skilled in expressing the words into a visual format. We then must test out the translation with different people to see if it stands up and they understand it. After that, we video it in a professional studio, and in post-production, we add captions, animations, and voiceovers.”
But the rabbi acknowledges unique challenges in translating the Bible into sign language that “wouldn’t happen when translating into other languages.” One example is the book of Ruth, where Boaz gives bread to Ruth.
“The question is what kind of bread is it? Is it a flatbread? Is it round? Is it pizza-like? That info is not inherent. we don’t have pictures from that time to tell us. The problem with the written word is that it’s not visual so we have to pick one single way to express that and the sign for bread could be lots of things, so we are doing lots of archaeological and historical research of the background. to make sure we are accurately translating it.”
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