The Most Famous Autistic in Jewish History | Part 1
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The Most Famous Autistic in Jewish History | Part 1
by Leah Ahavah Weintraub
We’re delighted to bring you the first video in a series by Leah Ahavah Weintraub, also known as the Autistic Rebbetzen.
Leah Ahavah Weintraub runs the Facebook page and YouTube channel, Autistic Rebbetzen. She is autistic and ADHD and has fibromyalgia, hypermobility, and sleep apnea. She had none of these things discovered or diagnosed until she was married and a mother. She tries to break stigmas by being unabashedly open about experiences that others feel they must bury under community enforced silence. She loves puns, science, Lindy Hop, and loons. Leah Ahavah lives in Upstate New York with her family. Her Emotional Support Animal is a dog named Frankie, who has his own Facebook and YouTube.
Rabbi Michael Levy, a member of the JDIN advisory board, shares this commentary. This is Rabbi Levy's opinion and we encourage conversation and response about any post:
There is a fallacy—just because a person’s actions, feelings, thoughts, etc. RESEMBLE autism
DOESN’T MEAN that that person IS AUTISTIC. The other problem with this kind of analysis is that
IT MAKES THE DISABILITY CENTRAL to the person’s identity, WHICH ABLE-ISTS ALWAYS DO.
Perhaps you could make a case for Moses experiencing PTSD, all alone there in the basket in the Nile. No wonder he cried! Of course, the question is “how long was he in the Nile?”
Moses had a different soul, perhaps the greatest soul that ever lived in a human being. The main trait of Moses is the one that THE TORAH ITSELF mentions—that Moses was the most humble of all human beings.
THAT was Moses’ central and defining trait. My impression of autism is that there is too much sensory information coming in. Again, this does not DEFINE a person, it is a cluster of traits that society “calls” autism.
Moses’ humility removed his ego, so he had room in his psyche to REALLY UNDERSTAND other human beings. As he told Joshua, he would be happy if all the Israelites were prophets like himself. He acknowledges the imperfections of the Israelites and then says “May God multiply you JUST AS YOU ARE a thousand times.
Bottom line:
We can draw inspiration from the Bible, and find sources in it to advocate for disability and enhance the disability experience, but let’s leave it at that. Let’s leave the characters to be themselves and not try to prove that they had this or that disability. Of course, if the BIBLE mentions that a character had a disability, that’s a different story.