From a struggle to learn early in life, this East Hills chaplain found purpose

Jonah Sanderson likes to tell new participants in his classes at Sid Jacobson JCC that he's going to change their lives.

But the 35-year-old coordinator of Jewish life at the East Hills center said he had to change his life and find his purpose before he could start helping others.

As a child, the Mineola resident and Los Angeles native struggled with an intellectual disability. He said he was misdiagnosed and attended a school for children with autism for nearly 10 years.

Sanderson's sister, Isabelle Sanderson, 31, of Brooklyn, said it took her brother a long time to figure out how to focus when it came to academics. As a child, no Jewish day schools would accept Sanderson and multiple synagogues rejected him before he had a bar mitzvah at a reform synagogue at age 13.

But Sanderson said in his 20s he found meaning in his struggle to learn. 

Now the religious instructor and Jewish chaplain said he is using his personal experience to try to help students at the community center find a way through their own challenges by providing spiritual guidance. Sanderson describes his condition as a “learning disability” and said he sees himself as a “leader for the differently abled community.”

Susan Berman, the JCC's vice president of community engagement, said Sanderson brings “light, love and heart” to everything he does for the center, where he began working in February 2023. 

“He can relate to anyone,” she said. “That for us as an agency brings our values and mission to life.”

'An epiphany'

Sanderson said he “had an epiphany” at 22.

“I understood that if I didn’t help myself, the road that I would go down is one of a spiritual death and an emotional death,” he recalled.

That same year, Sanderson found a mentor, Rabbi Yitz Jacobs, at global Jewish outreach organization Aish HaTorah.  

Jacobs, 54, a former Plainview resident, said in an interview that Sanderson would come to his family's home for dinner as the observation of the weekly Jewish Sabbath began. 

“Jonah was a handful. He was all over the place in a lot of ways, but he was delightful and really sincere,” Jacobs said. 

While still 22, Sanderson moved to Israel for two years after encouragement from the rabbi.

Jacobs said that journey helped shape the man Sanderson is today. He said Sanderson used to limit himself based on his disability, but now understands all he can offer.

“He's a very able, confident man now instead of this 22-year-old kid who never went out into the real world,” Jacobs said.

Sanderson said he persevered with his education after his return from Israel and in 2016 earned his high school diploma at age 26.

In 2020, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Penn Foster College. The next year, he graduated with a master's degree in Jewish studies and chaplaincy from The Academy for Jewish Religion California.

'Change your life'

Sanderson was born shortly before the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and counts himself among what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says are about 27% of adults between the ages of 18 and 44 in the United States who have some type of disability.

“I think what makes me successful is that I was told that the best I could do in life was to be a bagger at a grocery store,” Sanderson said.

He said since he joined the JCC as an instructor, one of his courses has grown from five to 35 participants. He teaches three courses every week, including a class called Taste of Torah, where he examines and interprets sacred text. 

For a recent Passover Seder, he hosted 13 of his JCC students in his home, with some describing in interviews how Sanderson's teachings have helped them.

Student Harry Peters, 85, of Manhasset, said he met Sanderson after taking part in a bereavement group at the JCC. He said the instructor's classes helped him cope with his wife's death last year.

“He has a good heart,” Peters added of Sanderson.

Sanderson's student Cheryl Steinberg-Stiles said she met the instructor shortly after her husband died in 2022. 

“I think he just knows when people are in need,” Steinberg-Stiles, 65, of Roslyn, said of Sanderson. “He has this saying 'I want you to come to this. It’ll change your life.' He has done that.” 

Seder attendee Lyzz RothSinger, a Great Neck resident, said she wasn’t searching for community, but was glad when she found it in Sanderson’s teachings.

“Jonah has been a beacon and his story invites people to own their own stories, which I feel has been transformative to me,” added RothSinger, 71, a retired educator. “ … When the student is ready the teacher appears, and he has.”