“Ima I want to go play in the park.”

“Okay Daniel we can go when Abba comes home.”

“I want to go now!”

“You know I can’t take you alone. It won’t be long and then we’ll go.”

“Ima there are so many things you can’t do! You can’t walk you can’t write you can’t pick anything up off the floor you can’t wash dishes you can’t give baths …”

“That’s right. There are so many things I can’t do. It’s frustrating isn’t it?”

(Pause.) “But you can talk to me you can read books to me you can hold me on your lap you can hug me and kiss me. You can do lots of things.”

This conversation took place ten years ago but the situation hasn’t changed. Malka Goldberg Beit Shemesh wife and mother of six cannot walk write pick anything up off the floor wash dishes or give baths. Yet incredibly over the past eighteen years she has succeeded in managing a home raising her children and chairing the board of a Beit Shemesh school with a current student body of over one thousand.

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