Six years ago, Linda Sue Sohn’s daughter needed help preparing for her bat mitzvah. Since her daughter had special needs, Sohn was accustomed to seeking help outside the school system. But in the case of such a meaningful life event, Sohn decided she would be the one best suited to work with her daughter on a one-on-one basis.

They studied together for the next two years, and Sohn invited her brother, a high-functioning autistic man who couldn’t read Hebrew, to join them. By the time of her daughter’s bat mitzvah, her brother had also learned all the Hebrew vowels, letters and blessings and was able to celebrate his bar mitzvah together with her daughter.

Linda Sue Sohn Photo by Justin Allardyce Knight

At that time, Linda Sue Sohn was a software engineer. Now she is a full-time student in Hebrew College’s Cantor-Educator program with a specialization in Jewish special education. She works at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley as a bar mitzvah tutor, at Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline as the special needs coordinator, and she teaches at her own congregation, Temple Beth Shalom in Framingham. In addition, she privately tutors nine students on Hebrew reading and letter recognition.

Sohn led a Jewish secular life until her husband’s father died in the late 1980s. Warmed by the community of people who came to his shivah, Sohn started going to shul every week. “I liked the rhythm of it,” she says. “The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn.”

Encouraged by her fellow congregants, Sohn began pursuing the cantorial arts, which led her to enroll in classes part-time at Hebrew College in 2003.

When student advisement came, she was encouraged to pursue Jewish special education as well, so she signed up for the Jewish Special Education Summer Institute in 2004 and 2005 and worked for Etgar L’Noar during the 2004–2005 year, doing b’nai mitzvah training. It wasn’t until the summer of 2005, when Sohn was laid off from her job in software engineering, that she considered enrolling full-time in the cep. She applied and was accepted for the fall of 2006.

At Etgar, Sohn realized she "had a knack" for teaching kids with autism. "I knew how to slow things down and make the lessons more predictable, because I was accustomed to communicating this way with my brother," she recalls. Preparing kids for b’nai mitzvah also came naturally to Sohn, as she not only trained her daughter and brother, but also trained herself. In April 1998, Sohn celebrated her own bat mitzvah. She enjoyed learning to chant Torah and haftarah so much that she taught herself trope and became a regular Torah and haftarah reader for her synagogue.

Although she has an extensive personal background in Jewish special education, Sohn deeply values the education hc afforded her through the Certificate in Jewish Special Education. "Hebrew College has opened an amazing number of doors for me, " she says. "The formal education I received made me understand the pedagogy and how to assess kids. All the courses were valuable and the staff at HC are phenomenal."

Once she graduates, Sohn hopes to become a cantor-educator in a synagogue setting. "I like the synagogue, and I like encouraging congregants to participate in services, " she says. "Leading services shouldn’t be viewed as a scary or an odd thing to do, or something that’s only done by clergy. People need to know that leading services is available to everyone: Anyone can make a blessing."




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