The Essay

Tina Kelberman shares her experience of growing up in a large deaf Jewish family. Her family has inherited deafness for six generations now and are probably also the biggest Deaf Jewish family in the UK. Whilst their culture is steeped in history, spanning back almost two centuries, it's been a rocky road for them - as Tina shares. She hated the feeling of people watching her family communicate in sign language. Her parents also hated it and so did her grandparents- to the point where their signs were smaller and more secretive when out in public. 70 years on, not much has changed. But Tina talks of how we are bolder these days, and how her own children stare right back until the people staring look away.Tina talks candidly about how sign language is like any other language and so it evolves. Tina gives us examples of the evolution such as the telephone - how signs evolved from the candlestick phone to the mobile phone as we know it today. Tina used to correct her mother’s signing, just like all kids groan at