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The story of Max Rubin, the vivacious child with cerebral palsy from Metuchen, was among the stories told in "A Place for All: Faith and Community for Persons with Disabilities," a new documentary that will premier on ABC Sunday, Dec. 27 at 1:30 p.m.

Max, who has the emotion and cognitive intelligence of a typical child his age, is physically disabled and cannot do things like walk or feed himself without assistance.

"When it came time for him to start nursery school, we really wanted him to go to our local synagogue, Neve Shalom, but being that he was physically disabled we weren't certain whether or not that was going to be possible," Sherri Rose Rubin, Max's mother, said in the film.

Rubin said that they were not optimistic about whether the school would accommodate Max, since they had no obligation to do so -- they are a private religious nursery school.

"With every single question the answer was always, yes. Yes, he can come in a wheelchair, yes we will make accommodations in the classroom, and yes we will hire an extra staff person so he gets the help he needs," Rubin said.

Neve Shalom not only provided assistance to help Max feel comfortable, they also used his presence to help teach all of the students about value of helping others.

"Everyone needs a little bit of help, and to make Max feel like he wasn't the only one who needed help, the teachers instituted a few programs that showed how children can help each other," Rubin said. "Everyone had a buddy, not just Max. Everyone helped each other put on their jackets and helped each other with their backpacks and lunch boxes and it really went a long way in building Max's self-esteem, and also instilling some good values in the other children."

The film, produced and directed by Debra Gonsher Vinik, details the stories of persons with disabilities in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities as they seek to make their own communities more inclusive.

Gonsher Vinik told The Jewish State in a phone interview that though the project faced significant financial obstacles after the original funder pulled his support, she was determined to finish what she had started.

"It was a very, very tough struggle, though in the end I felt that I went very far and it is not my style to give up on a project before it is brought to fruition," said Gonsher Vinik, whose other credits include "Yearning To Belong," the Emmy award-winning documentary about the formal conversion of the Ugandan Jewish community and "Legacy of Our Ancestors," about the early history of Jewish immigration to America, among many others.

Another of the stories explored in this documentary is that of Rabbi Darby Leigh of Bnai Keshet in Montclair.

Leigh, who is one of a handful of deaf rabbis in the world, has sought to make his congregation more inclusive to people with disabilities. In the film, Darby says that he has made these efforts not solely for those who directly benefit from such services, but rather for the entire community, and is frustrated by the "patronizing condescension" when people think that by providing access to people with disabilities they are being nice to "those people."

"Providing an interpreter, providing a ramp, providing access for people with disabilities isn't making you nice giving these poor people something, its enriching your own community," he said. "So if you don't build those things, you're depriving yourself. So it's not how nice you are to them, it's really are you taking care of your own spiritual needs or are you missing a really important part of the picture?"

In the making of the film, Gonsher Vinik said she was struck by how all the clergy from across the many faiths had essentially the same message.

"Everyone's on the same page, everyone said the same thing: "We've really come a long way, but we have a lot more to do," she recalled.

For Gonsher Vinik, being inclusive to everyone, including those with disabilities, must take precedence.

"It needs to be a priority for all of us," she said. "Not just giving it lip service. All of the faith groups need to take it in their heart and make it happen -- not just say we're inclusive, but actually be inclusive."

Gonsher Vinik is currently working on a documentary, to be aired in 2011 on ABC, about how faith communities deal with the problem of domestic violence.