No child had ever asked to play with Justin before. He had never been invited to a birthday party or play date.

Coe asked Jeremy's mother if her son had told her that Justin was a non-verbal special-needs child in the Keshet program at Solomon Schechter Day School, which both boys attended.

He hadn't. Jeremy simply liked Justin and wanted to be friends with him.

That was seven years ago. Today both boys are going into eighth grade and are still best friends who often go to the movies, swimming or bowling together. When Justin celebrated his bar mitzvah, it was Jeremy's recorded voice that came out of his electronic communications device while Justin signed the words.

Justin and Jeremy's friendship is one of many extraordinary stories that have come out of Keshet, a program for Jewish children and adolescents with special needs, and its philosophy of integrating its students with mainstream students. But what is most unusual, Keshet parents, teachers and administrators say, is that the benefits go both ways. Both the special-needs students and the mainstream kids (also sometimes called typical or typically developing children) gain understanding, sensitivity, valuable life experience-and friends.

Nowhere is this double mitzvah more apparent than in the Peer Buddy Monitoring Program, in which mainstream students at Solomon Schechter pair with Keshet kids for classroom activities, extracurricular events, sports and more.

The program is so popular that there is a waiting list of kids who want to be included. Mainstream kids, that is.

The peer buddy program (its official title is the Dorf Family Peer Buddy Mentorship Program, after a donor) is the formal expression of a philosophy that has guided the organization from the beginning, according to Marlene Grossman, director of the Ariella Joy Frankel Keshet Day School.

"Keshet was founded on the cornerstone of an integrated model," she says. It was started in 1982 by a group of parents, "a grassroots group," Grossman says, "who had typical children who were in a Jewish setting and wanted their special needs children to have that same experience. They went from school to school until they came to Solomon Schechter," which not only agreed to open its doors to Keshet kids, but to integrate them as thoroughly as possible with its mainstream students, according to Grossman.

Today Keshet includes the day school, located on the Solomon Schechter campus in Northbrook, plus a high school and Sunday school program, the Leventhal Autism Center, a choir, vocational training programs, a Special Olympics program and a recreation and summer camp component. The newest program is a Buddy Baseball League, introduced three years ago and already a popular and successful part of the Keshet firmament.

Keshet serves 41 students in the day school program and about 150 through camp and other programs. All have moderate to severe cognitive impairment, including autism (about 40 percent of Keshet students fall somewhere in the "autism spectrum") and mental retardation. Some have physical impairments as well. Students who have physical impairments but whose IQ is in the normal range, however, wouldn't be placed in Keshet but would instead be mainstreamed with typically developing children.

The peer buddy program in its present form started eight years ago as an outgrowth of an "ability awareness" agenda that has been present from the beginning, Grossman says. Under that rubric, the mainstream and Keshet kids "have the continuity of going through life together, going through the milestones together. The ability awareness for the typical children starts at the kindergarten level," Grossman explains. "Instead of just seeing these (Keshet) kids piecemeal, they are growing up in a community together. The special needs kids are immersed and accepted within the community." The notion of ability awareness "starts from the minute the child enters, either at Keshet or the partnering school," she says.

Some years ago, Grossman (who has been with Keshet 11 years, her first eight as a teacher) and other professionals at the school decided that "we needed to create something that had a little bit more of a social structure; interaction didn't always happen naturally," and the peer buddy program was formed, a collaborative effort between Keshet teachers and administrators, social workers, "inclusion coordinators" and teachers, administrators and assistants from the mainstream classes.

In the lower grades, unstructured peer mentoring takes place-Keshet students are assigned to a Schechter classroom and participate with that class throughout the school year during prayer, library, lunch, music, art and physical education, along with special assemblies, ceremonies and field trips.

The program becomes more structured in sixth through eighth grades. Students can choose the peer mentoring program from among a number of "specials," such as Hebrew, music, art and drama. Those who choose the mentoring program-it is one of the most popular "specials" and there is a waiting list to participate- take part in a three-session orientation in which they learn about the Keshet program, the students and their challenges and find out what is expected of them as peer mentors.

Then each student is assigned to a classroom, which they visit twice a week to join in a variety of activities with the students, from playing games to working on computers to reading. Peer mentors also serve as "lunch buddies," accompanying Keshet kids to the lunchroom and playground. The Schechter students keep a journal of their experiences and receive a grade for participating in the program. At the end of the year, both Keshet and mainstream students celebrate their partnership at a culminating ceremony where students receive certificates and, this year, rainbow bracelets with their names on them.

The benefits for both groups of students are vast, Grossman says. For the Keshet kids, "research shows that children with cognitive impairments learn better, do better when they're in the mainstream of life and of the community," she says. "If they are always separated, they don't have the opportunity to model good social skills and language, to feel a part of the mainstream of life.

"I truly believe our children come out having more confidence in themselves, feeling more accepted. For some of our children, it's really hard to know you're not like everybody else. Many do understand that. Sometimes people look at them with a funny look, with disdain. Here they feel respected, feel safe, walk away knowing they're someone special," she says.

For the mainstream students, "the experience is so important," Grossman says, "for what it teaches them about acceptance."

Parent Jo Ann Potashnick says that one of the best parts of her daughter Samantha's Keshet experience was participating in Jewish holiday and religious experiences with her peer buddies. Samantha, now 16, is severely learning disabled, although high functioning; her mother says that "while she could not compete (with mainstream students) academically, she certainly could be a part of Shabbat, Chanukah, Purim, all the holidays, the davening. I can't imagine what our daughter's life, our life, would have been without Keshet," she adds.

Samantha, now a high school student at Ida Crown Jewish Academy, "is very sweet and friendly," her mother says. "She's a regular teenager in some ways and she has her (mainstream) Schechter friends, but she needs to be in a safe environment, she needs to be well looked after while still (having people) push her to reach her potential."

Thanks to the peer buddy program, while Samantha was at Schechter "she was able to mainstream for gym, lunch, tefillah (prayer). It was fun for her to have her Schechter friends come into the Keshet classroom," Potashnick says. "It meant the world to her to see them come in her room and share a part of her day."

She says she particularly appreciated the Jewish component of the message the program imparted-"That we're all created in G-d's image, all valuable and important. You couldn't say that in public school."

Abbie Weisberg, Keshet's director of programming, who is in charge of all integrated programs outside of the day school, agrees that what she calls "disability/ability awareness" benefits both Keshet and mainstream kids and their parents.

Programs like peer mentoring "offer role models to the (Keshet) kids," Weisberg says. "If you raise the bar, people will rise to the challenge. When you show the appropriate social interactions and behaviors, kids are more inclined to rise to the level then when they have an opportunity to copy only behavior from kids with developmental challenges."

Meanwhile, the mainstream kids "are able to see what it feels like to do a good deed, to be altruistic," she says. "We have so many kids who request to be with kids from Keshet. Our kids are fun. They can do everything the typical child can do, maybe just differently. This offers a new variable."

Weisberg says that special needs kids are benefiting from an increased awareness from the public as well. "It used to be where individuals with special needs were segregated, and people would stare at them," she says. "It's very different today. The level of acceptance has become greater." For the mainstream kids, "there's the level of how great it is to have a friend who had Down syndrome, who has autism, the rewards you get from it."

Schechter eighth-grader Gabri Asrow detailed in her journal all the important lessons she had learned from her Keshet friends.

"I've become better at really, really listening with my heart, not just my ears, to what others have to say," she writes. "I've learned that it's a good thing to let loose and have fun. I am constantly reminded of how wonderful it is to have a friend and to be a friend. Even the times that were turbulent, taught me how to be more accepting of the negative right along with the positive in life." Each lesson, she says, she can trace to a particular Keshet friend.

For a student like Justin Coe, Keshet and his peer buddies have made all the difference in his life, his mother Shari, now president of Keshet, says. When her family discovered the program when Justin was in kindergarten, "it was like this cloud lifted over us, the darkness disappeared and the rainbow came around," she says. (Keshet means "rainbow" in Hebrew.)

Besides meeting his best friend, Jeremy, "the day (Justin) started in Keshet, he was a different person," his mother says. "He made friends, he was accepted into a community, he developed self-respect and understood his place in the world. He wasn't just a child with special needs. He wasn't looked over, he was looked at."

Justin, who has an undiagnosed disability, is non-verbal and medically fragile and also has behavior issues, received a talking device through Keshet and now communicates through a combination of electronic voice output, sign language and spelling on a spelling board.

When he first received the device, it was programmed to "talk" in a female voice. Then, Coe relates, "a little girl in Solomon Schechter integrated (mainstream) called up and said, why does Justin have a girl's voice? Then we programmed it to be a boy's voice. But the kids really realized it was Justin's 'voice.' That's how kids look at him-they don't look at his disability, they look at him like any other child."

Throughout his school career, Coe says, Justin has benefited from the peer buddy program and particularly from its "reverse integration" aspect. "They come into the Keshet classroom and learn how the Keshet kids learn," she says. "Instead of watching Justin come in and do art, they came in to Justin's world. The Schechter kids teach the Keshet kids on their own turf."

The Schechter peer mentors "take it very seriously," she says. "This is very important to them. They have something they can teach the Keshet kids and they want to be there." Justin himself gets a huge boost out of "knowing that his friends want to play with him, not because I called up to make a play date."

Justin's bar mitzvah last October was "a miracle in itself for us," Coe says. "He's a Jewish boy, he should have a bar mitzvah like any other child, but how is it going to happen?" In the end, with the help of Keshet and their synagogue, Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living in Highland Park, the family created a book in which Justin recorded his part of the ceremony with Jeremy's voice; during the bar mitzvah, Justin pushed a button and the book "read" with Jeremy's voice while Justin signed. During the Torah portion, Justin's sister Breana read the parsha while Justin signed.

Jeremy, although he sounds extraordinary, is "a typical Schechter boy," Coe says. "The Schechter children embrace Justin. His bar mitzvah was such a big deal. Everybody celebrated with him."

This summer Justin is at a JCC camp, where he also has friends who have participated in Keshet's integrated programs. "Our children never feel like they are different," his mother says, thanks to "the acceptance factor." She calls Keshet a blessing not just for Justin, "but a community for our whole family."

The latest addition to the Keshet universe is the Buddy Baseball League, now in its third season at Keshet. The program began when Dean Klassman, a North Shore insurance broker who started a Buddy Baseball League in Buffalo Grove five years ago and was looking to expand it to the North Shore, came to Keshet to recruit players and found so much interest that he ended up starting a Keshet league.

There he pairs special-needs players with buddies who help them bat, catch or play in the field. "They stay with them the whole game and help them with whatever they need," Klassman explains. "They throw the ball, play catch, help them warm up, but it's more about providing moral support than anything else."

Klassman, whose two children are not special-needs, became interested in the concept when he heard a rabbi describe some of the experiences and problems of special needs children. Now the league he started in Buffalo Grove has 200 players ages six to 21; for the Keshet league, some 45 special-needs players signed up along with 40 buddies.

In an additional twist, Keshet director of marketing Ken Cooper recruited five inner-city high school students from the Cabrini-Green neighborhood to be buddies. "They were very enthusiastic," Klassman reports. "They're used to having people help them. Now they have the opportunity to help others. It shows them that as bad as they may have it, it could be a lot worse."

During games, "we don't keep score, there's no winning and everybody gets a trophy," Klassman says. "But we try to make it like a regular team, with the same uniforms as all of the other teams I've coached. The (special-needs) kids love it. You see kids getting up at six in the morning for a 12:30 game."

Each season, which runs from April through June, culminates in an all-star game. This year's will be held on Wednesday, July 27 at Village Green Baseball Field in Northbrook. (Klassman is seeking more kids in fifth grade and above to be buddies; contact him at 847- 714-0606 or Abbie Weisberg at 847-412- 5753.)

This year, Klassman says, the all-star game will be more elaborate than ever thanks to the parents of one of last year's buddies, who were so moved by the event that they donated $10,000 to "take it to the next level." Among other ways of publicizing the event, Klassman printed up brochures and distributed them to schools in the area, picking up 25 additional players as a result.

At the game, "they announce all the players' names and some guys bring out drums, clappers. People go crazy. It's a lot of fun," Klassman says. "For me, the whole point is to see people in the audience all clapping. At least for that one night, every kid is a star." The inner-city kids will be buddies at the all-star game as well.

Klassman calls the Buddy Baseball program "the best-kept secret around" and hopes to recruit many more players, both special-needs and mainstream. The program has had a positive effect on his own family as well: His son helps him coach and his 19-year-old daughter, who coaches one of the teams, "is hooked," he says. "She's going into special ed as a result of working with this. It's my gift back."

Keshet's Ken Cooper, meanwhile, says he believes that the buddy program means that "a whole generation of kids are growing up disability blind. When we were growing up, no one had a 'Keshet kid' at their bar mitzvah party. Now it is a common occurrence."

Jo Ann Potashnick, whose daughter Samantha benefited so much from the buddy program, also believes that the program will have positive repercussions for the future. In fact, she says she is hopeful that some of the Schechter buddies will continue working in volunteer programs with special needs kids as they get older and may even end up in careers in special ed. "At least it shows them that option," she says.

Shari Coe, while she acknowledges the impact Keshet programs have had on her whole family, is most grateful for what it has meant to Justin, which is everything.

I find holiness at Solomon Schechter not only in tefilah, but in working with my peers in the Keshet buddy program. Together we do things that make living more valued for all of us. We help our peers to be better able to take care of themselves and to enjoy more activities in life. It is more fun for one kid to help another.

Nothing lights me up more than the smile I get from Gideon when I walk into the room. And nothing re-energizes Gi more than playing catch outside on the court. When I chose to make Keshet my special (elective), I had no idea of how involved I would become with each of my buddies' different personalities. I came to see how good a person can feel when they do something they could not do before. During the year I watched, as Ira and Austin were able to wipe down the tables on their own, heard Sarah express how she was feeling or what she wanted and saw Gi carry his ever-heavier journal home.

I, too, have become a different person during the year. I am less shy around kids with special needs, I have become more appreciative of what comes easily to me; and I now understand how much people with different abilities can accomplish.

Last year, I confess, I was not so comfortable around Keshet students. Now I seek the students of the Daled and the Hey class - Sarah, Ira, Gi, Austin, Avi, Jacob, Jordan, Natan, Adam, and Samantha - at lunch in the cafeteria. One day Gi was having a rough afternoon and Emmi, the teacher asked me to help him. I did, and he leaped towards me and gave me a hug. That's what friendship is all about.

I am about to graduate, so next year I will not have the opportunity to take part in this outstanding mentor program. But, this program has inspired me to participate in the Keshet Sunday school, and I look forward to learning and growing more.

While discussing my speech with my dad, he told me what the Torah really meant when it said we are all created in the image of God and what the rabbis meant when they said we all have infinite value. After participating in this program, and after helping the students - my friends, I better understand what my dad was saying.