It appeared to be like any other Monday for Luis, last August. It was sunny; and there was a blue sky and light winds as Luis — a deaf New Yorker — emerged from a Brooklyn subway station to walk …

When Lila’s mother was pregnant, she escaped Nazi Germany and settled in Brooklyn. Lila was born a few months later. Some years after, while at home, when Lila was 12 years old, Lila’s father collapsed in front of her from …

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, writes in his book, Lights of Holiness, of the imperative to bring light into our lives. “[Man] rises toward the heights until he …

“Brazilian Romance” was the last album recorded by the incomparable Sarah Vaughan. There, Ms. Vaughan soars as she sings “So Many Stars.” “The dark is filled with dreams So many dreams which one is mine One must be right for …

Sapphire walks into our office yesterday seeking asylum. Through an interpreter, Sapphire shares with us that she is deaf and she is a lesbian and is fleeing persecution from her home country, Jamaica. Sapphire has been targeted because of her …

Henry was evicted from his upper Manhattan apartment within a few months after receiving an eviction notice.  He had been living in the apartment for over 12 years and because of an administrative error not due to Henry, his bank …

We placed a small flyer on the door of a social service agency in the Bronx with our name — New York Center for Law and Justice — offering a workshop that we were sponsoring on the subject of legal …

We should have been home for Christmas,” Henry tells me as we speak one week before Christmas at the law center. “When you don’t have housing, you don’t have nothing,” he adds. This is a short story about Henry and …

Richard closes his eyes tightly in the middle of his sentence and I know that he is searching for the word that will not come to his mind.  In a five-minute conversation, the “pause” will occur many more times.  Richard …

Each day, our deaf clients enter our office and require an American Sign Language interpreter to render our voices into meaning. Our clients cannot hear the spoken word and surely strain to apprehend the resonance of musical notes felt through …