Neurodivergent Torah

During this coming week we mark the start of Nissan – the month in which Passover falls, of course commemorating the Exodus narrative and our people’s transition from slavery to freedom.  Thus, while our weekly Torah reading has us moving into the book of Leviticus, the attention is still on Moses (well, more or less depending on how “traditional” your Haggadah is). 

I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about Moses this year in preparation for Sunday’s Ryterband Lecture on Neurodiverse Torah.  What is neurodiversity you might ask.  According to CalTech, “neurodiversity” is a term that arose in the 1990s to move from “neurodivergent” as a way of describing a deficit or pathology, to acknowledging an array of ways that people think and experience the world.  In a nutshell, I would describe so-called “neurotypical” minds as those that succeed well in a “traditional classroom” setting: can sit still, focus, learn from a teacher lecturing/explaining, do paper-based practice exercises, and perform well on standardized tests.  Everyone else would be neurodivergent.  It would be akin to saying Red Delicious apples are the norm because they fit the round, red, average-sized “mold” that we think of when we say “apple,” while all other apples varieties are different, special needs, etc. 

We’ve come to learn that different people think and experience the world differently, and that most everything is on a spectrum.  It blew my mind to learn several years ago that most of you can actually see things with your mind’s eye and that wasn’t just an expression.  My mind’s eye is blind.  Or that there are people without an internal monologue.  Or… the list continues.  I don’t think anyone is really “neurotypical” because we all have our idiosyncrasies.  In public school, I could “pass” as neurotypical, but I’ve also come to realize that some of the assignments I struggled with were because my teachers assumed I could visualize, and there was a disconnect there.

Changing the mindset from assuming people think and experience the world around them in one way, to understanding that reality is very subjective, has influenced how we approach religious school.  In simple ways from the variety of seating options in Hebrew, to varied teaching modalities, and trying to increase student-choice in instructional methods. 

However, changing that mindset, let me to start considering, in what ways have we read the Bible with the assumption that all the Biblical figures are neurotypical?  What happens if we open our imaginations to the possibility that the Biblical communities experienced autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more?  Specifically, for Sunday one focus will be on what happens if we read the Exodus narrative from the perspective of Moses as someone who has autism.  For more on that, come on Sunday!  In the meantime, if you can visualize that Red Delicious apple in your head clearly, you have my permission to join my husband in teasing me about the fact that I cannot.