Vicki Ashmore’s DeafShul initiative featured in the JC

Our synagogue member Vicki Ashmore was recently featured in The Jewish Chronicle for her work in founding DeafShul, an initiative to make Jewish services and resources accessible for people using British Sign Language (BSL).

As part of that initiative our synagogue provided a grant to put BSL interpreters on six Jewish education videos. These ‘how to’ videos are accessed via our Resources page.

The article in the JC lists a number of other BSL initiatives Vicki is involved in and how DeafShul is snowballing – such as working with other synagogues, signing at an interfaith event and helping to build a tailor made bar mitzvah for a deaf teenager.

Vicki is able to do all this thanks to her orthodox upbringing. She is so familiar with the prayers that she is one of the few BSL interpreters in the UK able to sign them in BSL.

The photo shows a still from the video where Vicki is signing the Hebrew prayer, the Shema.