Neurodivergence: Inclusion Expanded
by Rabbi Shoshana Leis
Editor’s Note: We are grateful to Rabbi Shoshana Leis for sharing her Yom Kippur 5785 / 2024 sermon with our community.
Our ancestors, like all humans- were human. This is one of the wonderful things about our tradition. We look to our ancestors not just for the ideal, but for the complex, real humans who struggled, grew, and found their voices. Joseph was a gifted dream interpreter and he missed social cues. King Solomon valued wisdom above all else and sometimes engaged in black and white thinking.
Moses- before he was Moshe Rabeynu, was a shepherd. He mostly talked to sheep. But God was able to recognize who Moshe could be. God saw in the shepherd, a leader who could free a people and lead them to a land of promise. Moses claimed he didn’t have words- midrash says he had a speech impediment - and yet in the end, he became a man of vitally important words that we continue to live by today. Moshe needed to be shown how to speak, and the more he used his words, the more he found them. It is the same with us.
This morning, I begin with a story about Alex Gorman, who along with his mother Judy Chinitz, is a proud member of Pleasantville Community Synagogue. When Alex was diagnosed with autism at a young age, his mother Judy was told he was “profoundly cognitively disabled,” with little understanding of language or emotion.
Judy shares: “Alex spent his school years in programs for the profoundly disabled, and despite my efforts as a special educator, I couldn’t teach him academic skills or give him a way to express himself. For 21 years, I felt I had failed. After he turned 21, I placed him in a daycare program, believing his cognitive level was that of a preschooler. But in July 2019, I discovered a method for teaching Alex to spell using a letter board—and it changed everything. I realized his motor impairments had prevented him from showing his intelligence. He had been reading since age two, and his knowledge was far beyond what I ever imagined.”
Alex went on to pass the high school equivalency exam and was accepted into SUNY Purchase’s prestigious screenwriting program. His blog is entitled Speaking for Myself. After discovering how to help her son, Judy went on to start Mouth to Hand Learning Center which serves over 80 students now. When I asked Alex to share his reflections for these High Holy Days, he wrote:
“All of my life I’ve been locked inside a body that doesn’t respond to the commands of my brain. When I was 25 and vegetating in daycare, my mother heard of a technique to teach the non speaking, to type for communication. Being my mother, she gave it her all, and a few months later I slowly began to be able to type my thoughts. “How did you stay sane?” she asked me one day. The answer I gave her was only partly the truth. What I said was that I always believed that one day she would figure out that I am smart. The whole truth is that God could hear my silent prayer, begging for help. I had faith that God would show Mom the path, and that she had the strength to walk it. Faith in their love gave me hope while I waited. This Rosh Hashanah has special meaning for me, since it is this year that two of my dreams will come true. I start college soon, and in March I will become a bar mitzvah. There is no one on this earth happier than me to be able to say l’shana tova. And no one is more thankful to God for my blessings.”
Alex- We are also so thankful to the Source of Life and to your amazing mother Judy for your blessings - which are also our blessings. I want to acknowledge you for your incredible resilience in living with challenges that have kept you from fully expressing yourself. Thank you for reminding us through your story that within each of us lies the potential to lead, to contribute, and to be fully seen - by one another. Thank you also for showing us how to have faith in God that we will be fully seen, in this lifetime, that we will be known as God knows us. May you continue to go from strength to strength as you prepare for school and your Bar Mitzvah in March. I fully expect all of us to be there to celebrate!
For some of us, our gifts are hidden.
For others, it’s our challenges.
We all have places where we are afraid or held back from being the amazing souls God created us to be.
Imagine a world in which each of us shows up for one another because we are so enriched in the process of doing so.
Imagine a synagogue where each of us makes spiritual and psychological progress every day and feels comfortable to be vulnerable, to grow and where we can be ourselves.
Imagine a community where we stand for one another’s full self-expression and leadership potential.
Our family has been blessed to be part of communities like this.
We had always appreciated our son Ari’s intricately designed mind and uncanny empathy in which he deeply understands each human, and remembers way more about us than we remember about ourselves. We hadn’t realized that his rigidity about routines, anti-authoritarianism, special interests and ability to self-occupy for hours on end, in which he created worlds and told himself endless stories, ordered toys into perfect patterns, memorized 300 places of pi…we hadn’t known that these were signs that Ari is autistic. They were and are just Ari. Ari’s unique brain synthesizes information more quickly than most. He was diagnosed as autistic in 7th grade.
Ari is also a synesthete. Synesthesia is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously. With his interest in music composition, Ari first sees a colorful art piece in his head and then writes it down. He imagines that most famous composers were probably synesthetes. Ari has taught us so much about so many subjects from Neuroscience to Classical philosophy to Japanese. He also teaches us the beauty and joy in building a more compassionate, conscious, and diverse world.
Ari marvels at how Jews must have been neurodivergent when they invented Shavuot, a holiday where you stay up all night studying. He also asked me to mention that an autistic person might not dress up for holidays due to changes in routine and/or sensory issues.
Ari’s friend Liam joined us at the house last night. When I asked Ari and Liam about whether they ever wished they were neurotypical, they both gave a resounding “no!” Liam commented that as a neurodivergent person, “I feel free. I am not inhibited by social norms. Rather, I am free to be me, and to do what I want to do.” They are so blessed to go to Flexschool (founded by Jacqui Byrne) which allows them to follow their unique passions and to get support for their particular needs within the context of a true community. Every school can learn from Flexschool for shaping future leaders to face the opportunities and challenges of tomorrow. It’s beautiful to see the sense of tribe among Flex students where neurodivergence is the neurotypical.
I have a little taste of this sense of community on the Neurodiverse Jewish Community Facebook group (started with a microgrant from The Jewish Education Project) I started in 2021, which is quite active most recently with an outpouring of responses to questions regarding neurodiversity challenges, engagement and inclusion in Jewish community. I will compile my responses. Here is just one by Rabbi Lily Solochek:
The Torah of refrigerator organization
The world says to put the produce in the drawer, but if it goes in there, we will forget it, it will mold, and no one will get fresh fruits or veggies. The world says the condiments should go on the door, but the door is home to the fresh veggies from our garden, easily visible and thus easily accessible. The condiments go in the drawer, we’ll always go looking for ketchup if we need it.
The rest of our home is like the fridge. We structure our physical and mental space around our own needs, without caring what “we’re supposed to do”. We don’t feel shame because we’ve built the world to work for us, instead of constantly feeling sad that the vegetable drawer has failed us, or worse, that we have failed. We set our home up so that everyone can succeed, privileging the highest needs first, because we all benefit when everyone is included.
In preparing this sermon, I discovered “Neurodivergent Torah” through Rabbanit Dr. Liz Shayne, Director of Academic Affairs at Yeshivat Maharat. She does not just read biblical characters as having Neurodivergent traits. She invites us to see more deeply, for example, “Moshe’s struggle to communicate in a new light: making oneself understood and teaching people how to listen.” Neurodivergent Torah doesn’t just discuss Abaye’s different approach to learning, but articulates how his teachings reflect his identity. It looks at the story of young Abaye who, when asked where God was, runs out of the beit midrash to point to the heavens as a paradigm for a kind of scholarship that thrives outside of rigidity.“
One of the profound challenges for an autistic person, especially those who are socialized females, is masking in order to get by in a neurotypical world.
Yom Kippur is connected to Purim. It is the “Yom” day; “k” like; Purim. Yom ki Purim.
Rabbanit Payne wrote an important Neurodivergent Torah article about Queen Esther, which means hidden. From the Purim story, we can learn about how masking our true selves has its price.
Rabbanit Payne: “When neurodivergent people mask, we are constantly monitoring every single part of our lives and remain in a state of constant stress and vigilance. We may also end up filled with shame and self loathing; if we only show our masked face to our friends, then no one truly sees us for who we are. We might even believe we are unworthy of love because those who love us do not know the real us and we worry that if they learned who we really are in all our neurodivergent messiness they would leave. Masking can lead to depression, anxiety, and burnout and it can take us years to recover and to unmask. It takes tremendous courage for us to be ourselves.”
Hester Panim - God’s hidden face- is connected to Esther hiding her face. When humans mask due to societal pressures or fear, God’s face is hidden. When God’s face is diminished, we are all diminished.
Today on Yom Kippur, the day like Purim, there are no masks. There is no pretense. We get to taste what it is to be who we are and to be with others, unmasked. We can then bring the embodied memory of this lived experience into every day.
Just as biodiversity strengthens an ecosystem, so too does neurodiversity enrich our human families and communities. Neurodivergent individuals bring perspectives and strengths that are essential to solving the complex problems we face in our world today.
Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz, founder of Shulchan, teaches: “We are at a time when big changes are on the horizon. Old maps will not help us with this new territory. As we strive to adjust to what is necessary for us, new ways of perception may emerge. Exploring emergent cultures and innovative ways of seeing the world might provide the necessary medicine for an ailing world.”
Ari Wallach is a futurist and social systems strategist. He is the founder and Executive Director of Longpath Labs, an initiative focused on bringing long-term thinking and coordinated behavior to the individual, organizational, and societal realms in order to ensure humanity flourishes on an ecologically thriving planet Earth for centuries to come.
In Ari Wallach's book Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs, he touches on neurodivergence as part of a broader conversation about embracing diverse ways of thinking to navigate the complexities of the far future. Wallach suggests that neurodivergent individuals, with their unique perspectives and cognitive patterns, play a critical role in solving the global challenges we face. Rather than seeing neurodivergence as a deficit, Wallach views it as a vital asset, offering fresh approaches to problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration. By fostering environments that honor different ways of thinking, we not only create a more inclusive society but we can also discover new innovations and engage in long-term planning that is essential for shaping a sustainable future.
Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve problems using the type of thinking that created them.” According to Wallach, Einstein meant that we need to be accepting of all different ways of thinking.“
(Maybe Einstein was struggling to be accepted as neurodivergent! )
Just before Kol Nidre, Ari Wallach shared with me the parable of the three blind men who walk up to an elephant: one touches the trunk, one touches the belly and one touches the tail. They all have very different ways of describing what that animal is. Right now when we describe our problems, our issues, we're only using one methodology which is a “Neurotypical way” (ie just the trunk) but the reality is there are elephants in the room. Neurodivergence will allow us to seize and see better so that we can move forward as a species.”
On Yom Kippur - as we are all together - can we see a little bit more of the whole elephant? The truth is, we aren’t all in the room, because this room isn’t yet fully accessible to everyone.
On Yom Kippur, we are called to examine ourselves and our communities for the sake of now and into the far future.
Are we creating spaces where every individual can show up as their full self so that the issues and challenges of tomorrow can be met with our greatest capacity?
Are we finding ways to recognize the potential in one another, to lift each other up for the betterment of the whole community?
Neurotypical folks and neurodivergent folks: we need each other, but do we know how to bring out the best in one another? It takes true compassion and good communication to stay connected whatever the nature of your brain, and especially in a Neurotypical-Neurodiverse relationship!
Just before Rosh Hashanah we read parshat Nitzavim (Deuteronomy 29) in which the people have evolved in their consciousness over 40 years of wandering and are preparing to enter the land. 16th century Italian commentator Obadia ben Yakov Sforno saw this moment as one when we were of one mind. There is unity, and there are people of all sensibilities- Woodchoppers and water drawers - included in a covenant of mutual responsibility. The text includes those of us in the room and not in the room, ancestors and future generations. This expansive vision calls us towards a deep, time-space-unbound empathy, which we can experience on Yom Kippur. The text inspires us to think into the far future which Wallach talks about as “intergenerational empathy” in his book.
It is taught in the Zohar that the voice of Shechina herself speaks through Moses. We are all Moses. When we embrace and are embraced for the design of each of our own unique minds, we can embrace the unique designs of the minds of our fellow humans, without shame or stigma. In so doing, we find our words, and the more we use them, the more we find them. When we find our words, we find our voice, and then we are free l’mancha -for Your sake, the sake of the whole. Only together, with each of us being who we are created to be.
Gmar hatima tova. A good seal on your Book of Life.
Discussion questions
What resonated with you in this talk?
What is your unique personal power, your greatness?
What holds you back from full self expression?
Do you have questions from this talk?
What do you hope to bring to your communities and ask of your communities in the new year?
Are there people in your life, perhaps earlier generations, who went through life undiagnosed and who you imagine could have had an easier time if they had support / awareness of their neurodiversity?
לעברך בברית, Deut 29:11 you are all arranged in this order in order to signal your acceptance of the forthcoming covenant. It is clear from Moses’ addressing all the assembled, that they were of one mind at the time, all willing and eager to accept the covenant.
About Rabbi Shoshana Leis of Pleasantville Community Synagogue
Rabbi Shosh has served as Director of Youth and Family Education at Romemu, a start-up synagogue in New York City. Prior to this, she served for seven years as rabbi (with her husband, Rabbi Ben Newman) at Har Shalom Center for Jewish Living in Ft. Collins, Colorado.
A graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Dartmouth College, she also studied at St. Petersburg University, the Conservative Yeshiva, and the Drisha Institute for Jewish Studies.
Rabbi Shosh also serves as part-time rabbi of Hebrew Congregation of Somers. She lives in Dobbs Ferry with her husband, Rabbi Ben Newman, their two children, Ari and Isaiah, and two dogs, Oz and Bodhi Zalman. She loves to sing and spend time in nature - and is always up for a nature walk!