HISTORY OF COUNT ME IN

In 1986 The Jerusalem Post published a most shocking account of families in Israel giving birth to a child with Down syndrome. It reported that more than eighty-five percent of children born with Down syndrome in Israeli hospitals were being abandoned by their families. An alarming statistic indeed!

Rabbi Ernest Rothman is a special educator from Los Angeles currently living in New York. He is the founder of Count Me In Foundation for Disabled Children in Israel. When Rabbi Rothman read the Jerusalem Post report he was terribly shaken. He wholeheartedly believed that parents giving birth to a special child were often making rash uneducated judgments regarding whether to take their children home from the hospital to raise or to give them up for adoption. These unqualified decisions were most often based on a combination of shock, fear, misconceptions, hearsay and popular myth. Rabbi Rothman argued that although parents do of course have the basic right to have the final say in the matter, and personal option of doing what works best for them, but shouldn’t they also have all the knowledge and information necessary to make a wise, educated choice?

Rabbi Rothman realized that there was an urgent need to help educate parents to the vast potential of these unique children, and that for many families, taking their child home to raise within the family unit could be very productive and rewarding. He was determined to build a model educational and rehabilitative facility in Israel for children born with Down syndrome. Parents needed to see with their own eyes that by investing in the development of their special children they can truly enable and empower them to become independent, self-sufficient, and fruitful members of society and the community.

At that very same time, a little baby boy was born to a dear friend of Rabbi Rothman living in Israel, Rabbi Chaim Plato. Rabbi Plato is the Rosh Yeshivah Emeritus of Yeshivas Radin in Natanya. Rabbi Plato, looking towards the future, began to investigate the existing educational opportunities in a search for a top rate educational facility for his son. Sadly, he did not find anything to his satisfaction. Rabbis Rothman and Plato collaborated together, and after much effort, toil, and sweat they built the Count Me In-Kadima Center for Special Children in the Southern part of Natanya, which became one of Israel’s premier institutions for special children. Little Moshe Plato soon became one of the Center’s founding students. The opening of the Count Me In-Kadima Center for Special Children, in conjunction with other Count Me In programs, generated tremendous public awareness which has been influential in causing the national rate of abandonment in Israel to plunge drastically to well below 40% - and still falling.

Thanks to the efforts of Count Me In and the broad public support it enjoys, more and more people are realizing that special children need not be a burden to their families and society, but quite the contrary; special children are simply … special!

PROFILE OF RABBI ERNEST ROTHMAN

Rabbi Ernest Rothman is the Founder and Director of the Count Me In Foundation for Disabled Children. He holds degrees in both Rabbinics and Special Education. Rabbi Rothman is originally from Los Angeles, California and currently lives in New York with his wife and children where he maintains a practice providing special education training and remedial assistance. He also gives daily lectures in Talmud. Rabbi Rothman is a prominent Board member of many important Jewish Charitable institutions and organizations.

With Dr. Warwick J. Peacock, Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Neurological Surgery University of San Francisco	With Dr. Leila J. Arens, Department of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Cape Town, South Africa	With Professor Dr. David Segal, Dept. of Orthopedic Surgery, Hadassah University Hospital
With Rav Yitzchok Yaakov Weiss, Chief Rabbi of the Eida Chareidit	With a child at the Count Me In/Kadima Center	Observing a music therapy session at the Count Me In/Kadima Center
With Dr. Warwick J. Peacock & Dr. Paul Jordon	With Dr. Louis Lasagna, Dean, Tufts University School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, Boston	Speaking to a group of prominent rabbis

PROFILE OF RABBI CHAIM PLATO

Rabbi Chaim Plato is a Brooklyn-born Rabbi who studied at the Mirer Yeshiva and Lakewood. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Brooklyn College and later moved with his wife to Natanya, Israel.

Rabbi Plato and his wife have ten children. Mrs. Londinsky is the grand-daughter of Rabbi Moshe Londinsky, the famed Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Radin in Poland who ran the Yeshiva together with the saintly Chofetz Chaim. The Platos youngest child, a little boy with Down Syndrome, is named Moshe after his illustrious ancestor. Rabbi Plato is the Rosh Yeshivah Emeritus of Yeshivas Radin in Natanya, Israel and the founder of the Kadima School.

With Rabbi Rothman at the Count Me In/Kadima Center	Welcoming the Counsel General of the Netherlands to the Kadima Center	In the Classroom
In the Playground	In the Old City	With son Moshe at the Kotel
With students of the Count Me In/Kadima Center	At the Bar Mitzvah of a student	With a student in the Factory Workshop