I am not sure of the right forum for this. Mods please move if appropriate.
I have been wondering about strict othodox cultures like Hasidic Jews and their traditional garb and physical chractoristics. What happens when a Hasidic family has a baby with down syndrom? I would assume the whole beard and locks would be skipped for them -like they are some how not expected to obey that tenent. Is this correct?
Are there rules for non-typically developing children in orthodox religions such as hasidic jews? If so what are they? Do they still grow their payot? What abotu beards?
No doubt one of our Jewish Dopers will be along to clear this up. In the meantime, we have this, which mentions several of the religious practices of a Hasidic family with a Down Syndrome child, and they don’t appear to be any different. Likewise here.
Is there something about people with Down’s Syndrome that causes them not to have beards?. The commandment is a negative one…you shall not shave the corners of your beard, you shall not cut the corners of your hair. Obviously, if someone can’t grow hair or a beard, he doesn’t have to worry about violating this commandment.
Anyone must fulfill the obligations that they are capable of fulfilling so long as it doesn’t endanger a life. A severely retarded 13 year old would even have a bar mitzvah of some sort even if it just involves holding a cup of wine and saying amen.
It really doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to grow a beard, you know. It happens if you don’t even do anything.
But yes, to the extent someone with Downs Syndrome could keep the commandments, he or she would have a duty to keep the commandments, and that’s true of everyone.
The point about the beards is their significance to the religion and the meaning of growing them for the purposes of tradition. Basically, I’m just wondering if young men with downs in an orthodox household are even oblidged to grow them. I know they can grow them, but are they obligated to.
It would not be an oversimplification to say that in Judaism, the mentally handicapped have the same status as children – they are taught as much as their abilities allow. Whatever they can do is great, what they’re not capable of is no big deal.
In general, this means that active rituals – prayer, synagogue, Chanuka candles, etc – are very dependent on the developmental abilities of the person. Prohibitions, on the other hand, end up being a function of the person’s surroundings: If he is at home, there’s no excuse to feed him pork. But if a person is in a situation where the only way to take care of him is in a nonkosher institution, then his health comes first and don’t worry (much) about the food.
If a person, for whatever medical reason, is unable to grow a bread, there’s no problem. As Captain Amazing wrote, there’s no obligation to grow a beard - only a prohibition against trimming it.
…and just as an anecdote for the curious, I saw a Down’s Syndrome fellow with a healthy 3 day stubble a couple of weeks ago, so I would presume DS doesn’t affect facial hair growth.
Not a direct answer, but a couple of related insights: my Dad was a doctor in a child development and welfare centre in Jerusalem in the 1970s. One case I remember him mentioning was of an orthodox Jewish woman who was unable have children, and as a consequence decided to adopt a large number of children with mental and physical disabilities from within her community - so maybe there is/was an incidence of abandonment too.
I also know a Rabbi whose beard simply wouldn’t grow - he used to joke about it.
Not so much anymore, but in the US in the world wars period, it wasn’t uncommon for Jewish families to hide away a kid with MR/DD or a psychiatric problem. This seems to have been especially true for families who fled the Nazis (since people with disabilities were killed, and families didn’t want the authorities’ attention turned on them). Anecdote, no cite, family and clinical narratives.
That was fairly common among Americans as a whole, not just among Jews, and I think the attitude had less to do with fear of euthanasia than a combination of shame for having a “defective” child, societal discomfort with the severely handicapped, and the belief that people with serious disabilities couldn’t and shouldn’t be expected to function in society.
It’s not until very recently that American attitudes about the disabled have changed.
There’s a lovely story in Oliver Sacks’ The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat of a young woman with a developmental disability and the comfort and personal growth she derived from participating in the rituals of Jewish life.