Marla Berkowitz

Marla Berkowitz is an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter. Berkowitz is the only ASL Certified Deaf Interpreter in the US state of Ohio. She is the only deaf member of her family.

She learned fingerspelling from her hearing mother, who had learned it from Berkowitz's teachers at the Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens. When she was 15, she joined a club for Deaf teens and learned more ASL from other club members who were also from Deaf families. She was the first Deaf Wexner Fellow and the first Deaf student to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary's Davis School. Certified Deaf Interpreters work with hearing ASL interpreters, for whom ASL is a second language, to ensure translation is reformulated in ways Deaf will be able to correctly understand.

Berkowitz was the first member of Hadassah's National Center for the Jewish Deaf. In 2008 she was the president of the Jewish Deaf Congress.

Berkowitz became known during the coronavirus pandemic, when working with a team of two hearing ASL interpreters she interpreted Ohio's daily press conferences. A fan club developed on Facebook, and a bobblehead was produced in her likeness. Deaf World Against Violence Everywhere requested permission to use her likeness on a t-shirt. Berkowitz considers herself a sumain, which she describes as "a coined word from two languages - Su - your; main - hands", indicating people who communicate with each other using their hands.