Martin Schloss

Rabbi Martin Schloss was born into a household filled with Jewish communal activities. His father, an émigré from Germany in 1939, was a sergeant in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. The Schloss apartment in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, served as an oasis of Jewish knowledge and culture for soldiers on the post. In 1961 Rabbi Schloss entered the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from high school there in 1965. He attended Yeshiva College and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University and received his bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1969. During this period Rabbi Schloss served as a camp counselor and first encountered Scott, a child with special needs. It was his work with Scott that motivated him to dedicate himself to the field of Jewish special education.

From 1969 to 1978 Rabbi Schloss served as the Coordinator of the Religious Education Department at Maimonides Institute for Exceptional Children in Far Rockaway, New York. He planned programs for and taught children with mental retardation as well as those with physical, emotional, and learning disabilities. He also served as a rabbinic advisor to the Boy Scouts of America where he assisted a number of boys with disabilities to receive the Ner Tamid Award for religious knowledge and practice. During this same period Rabbi Schloss received a master’s degree in special education from Brooklyn College and rabbinic ordination from the Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Avrohom in Brooklyn.

Rabbi Schloss joined the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York (BJE) in 1980 as the Director of the Jewish Heritage Pilot Project for Developmentally Disabled Adolescents and Adults. As a result of this very successful project and some others, the BJE created its Special Education Center. In 1992 he developed an agreement with the New York City Board of Education ensuring the provision of special education services to students in nonpublic schools.

Since 1975 Rabbi Schloss has taught special education courses in a variety of colleges and schools. He has lectured on special education issues at Yale Divinity School, York College in Toronto, the University of Tel Aviv, as well as many other institutions and organizations worldwide. In 1984, together with Sara Simon of the BJE in Washington, DC, Rabbi Schloss co-founded the Consortium of Special Educators in Central Agencies for Jewish Education.