Rabbi Joseph Kelman freely admitted that he excelled at bringing services to the mentally and intellectually handicapped in Toronto because he was no expert.
"He always used to say that part of the reason he was able to do this was that he wasn't trained at all in this area," said his son, Rabbi Maury Kelman. "He had no training. He wasn't a social worker. When somebody came to him and needed help, he just said, 'Okay, how can I help?' He didn't form committees."
Instead, the name Joe Kelman was like a tonic, synonymous with engaging society's most vulnerable and often excluded members. He led one of Toronto's largest synagogues for 38 years and pioneered a host of programs for people who, in his day, were tagged as "retarded" and, too often, relegated to institutions.
Often described as the conscience of Toronto's large Jewish community, Rabbi Kelman first saw a need when a congregant at his synagogue, Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda in north Toronto, came to him and wondered whether her developmentally disabled son could have a bar mitzvah. The response, according to Maury Kelman, was, "What do you mean? Of course he can have a bar mitzvah." Soon, other families in the same situation came forward.
Responding to the sudden demand, Rabbi Kelman in 1961 started the Kadima School (kadima means forward in Hebrew) in the synagogue's basement, offering basic learning in Jewish customs and values to the mentally handicapped. It was considered cutting edge at the time. A decade later, he established the Kadima Centre, providing recreational, social and cultural programs for special-needs adults.
He later co-founded Ezra - a school for those described at the time as "slow learners" - and She'arim, a day school for children with learning disabilities. The jewel in his crown came in 1973, when he helped establish Reena (Hebrew for joy), a world-renowned organization that integrates adults with developmental disabilities into mainstream society. Today, Reena provides services to about 1,000 adults and children with developmental disabilities and their families. It operates 132 locations, which include group homes, rented apartments, specially designed facilities for seniors, and a slew of day and evening programs.
He encountered parents who wondered why God had made their children with disabilities and community leaders resistant to recognizing the need for special-needs programs.
"He saw in vulnerable individuals a potential that very few people saw," said long-time friend Sandy Keshen, Reena's CEO. "And what he did beautifully was to mobilize the community slowly to understand that potential."
He was an eighth-generation rabbi, whose grandfather had come from Vienna to Queens, N.Y., in 1924 to take over a congregation. The grandfather sent for his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kelman, who got a visa only to Canada.
The growing brood settled in Toronto when Joseph was three and his father served at least four synagogues in the city, a not uncommon arrangement in the days when a single full-time spiritual leader was a luxury. He died at 40, and his wife, Mirl, left with six children, stepped into the role of community leader, dispensing religious and personal guidance. She also held peaceful protests in Toronto's Kensington Market to persuade Jewish shopkeepers to close on the Sabbath.
The Kelman children, meantime, carried the banner: All three sons became rabbis, two daughters married rabbis and one daughter's son is a rabbi.
Following ordination in New York, Joseph Kelman served in Sherbrooke, Que., Suffern, N.Y., and Beverly, Me. He returned to Toronto in 1959 to become spiritual leader of Beth Emeth, a new congregation of 100 families in burgeoning North York. In the beginning, services were held in a member's home. In 1963, Beth Emeth merged with Bais Yehuda Synagogue, then led by his brother, Rabbi Abraham Kelman. Today, the congregation numbers 1,500.
Working at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre in 1960, he became convinced that disabled people were entitled to programs tailored to their disabilities. He went on to provide religious services and kosher foods to prison inmates and patients in hospitals and convalescent homes across Ontario. When prisoners at Kingston Penitentiary rioted in 1971, they provided a short list of people they would negotiate with. One was Rabbi Kelman.
His other major passion was baseball, a subject that infused many of his sermons. He was honoured on his 71st birthday with tossing out the first pitch at a Toronto Blue Jays game. For him, it was a reprise of the time Rabbi Meilich Silber delivered a special invocation at the opening game of the 1969 New York "Miracle" Mets, a team that went on to win the World Series. It so happened that Rabbi Silber was Rabbi Kelman's brother-in-law. "Maybe I could do for the Jays what my brother-in-law did for the Mets in '69," Rabbi Kelman hoped. His pitch was a zinger, but alas, in the dirt.
Before that game, he delivered a prayer to the club. Abner Doubleday may have invented baseball, he told the Jays, but it was God who first thought of it. How do we know? Because at the very outset, the Bible states, "In the big inning ..."
JOSEPH KELMAN
Joseph Hersch Kelman was born in Vienna on April 1, 1927, and died in Toronto on June 27, 2009, of cancer. He was 82. He was predeceased by his first wife Ruth in 1999. He leaves his wife Sara, brother Rabbi Abraham Kelman, sister Claire Goldstein, daughter Tova Gutenberg, sons Rabbi Jay Kelman and Rabbi Maury Kelman, and 10 grandchildren.
