The Bible's Autistic Prophets

A conversation with Liz Shayne, a leader in Jewish thought's newest emerging field

There’s no special bell that gets rung when someone develops a radically new idea. Some catch on quickly, while others take a while to build up steam. In the latter camp is neurodivergent Torah, a concept that I’ve seen develop over the last few years and which deserves more attention.

Neurodivergent Torah fits into a century-old pattern of ideas that emerge from marginalized groups. The mother of these is feminist Torah, which in turn paved a path for LGBTQ Torah, both of which are ongoing projects that will take centuries to fully unfold. Neurodivergent Torah, which alongside the Torah of disability is now building steam, follows their predecessors’ playbook by reinterpreting traditional texts in light of new experiences and identities. So, for example, where LGBTQ Torah might code a certain rabbi as queer, neurodivergent Torah might code Moses as autistic, an idea that was first developed here, or that some rabbis might have had ADHD (see here).

Despite the fact that each of these projects begins with a “simple” desire for more recognition, their ultimate contributions to Jewish thought are both far-reaching and will likely be quite different from one another. Neurodivergent Torah in particular seems to be asking major questions about emotion, obligation, justice, and disagreement. This is major stuff, and it feels genuinely novel.

One of the most important figures in this work is Rabbanit Dr. Liz Shayne, who is in the process of developing some of neurodivergent Torah’s foundational ideas. The following is a conversation in which she lays out the current state of the field.

David Zvi Kalman

Why would someone call Moshe autistic and would you do the same?

Liz Shayne

There are two ways to approach the answer to this question. First, on a very practical level, I'm looking at the way that Moshe engages with the world. Moshe is somebody who struggles with a number of things that autistic people struggle with: difficulty speaking with others, difficulty understanding other people and needing mitigating factors like his brother to help him, or somebody who struggles with anger and struggles with the emotional needs of others when there's a very clear justice-based (or in his case God-based) reason to move in another direction.

Number two is that autistic Jews look at our own history and our own people and see ourselves reflected there. The things that shine or are complicated about our natures are what we're inevitably going to look for when we look at our leaders or the people who we hear stories about. So it’s not necessarily whether he was autistic, but rather the question of: In what way do we see ourselves in our leaders? How can we make the argument that we, too, are part of the mesorah (tradition)?

The other thing is that prophets tend to resonate with autistic people because their job is basically to say uncomfortable things that nobody really wants to hear, often about the way that other human beings are treated or valued. The need for other people to show up and do a better job, that sense of justice and fairness—you can either call it black-and-white thinking or a real commitment to tzedek (justice) depending on whether you're feeling good or bad about it on any given day—is something that really drives autistic people and something that really seems to drive the prophets, as well.

David Zvi Kalman

One thing that I’ve seen around both the project of feminist Torah and of LGBTQ Torah is that they can be understood narrowly as a project for a specific section of the Jewish people. So, for example, you could argue that LGBTQ people need LGBTQ Torah because they want to feel like Torah is speaking to them and because they want to see themselves in the tradition.

But there’s also broader way of framing these projects, where they’re actually saying something profound about gender roles and gender identity that has implications for everyone.

To bring this to neurodivergent Torah: For a person who is neurotypical, what might they stand to gain from a neurodivergent Torah reading?

Liz Shayne

I’ve heard from many people who responded to some of the things that I’ve written with, “I’m neurotypical, but this really resonates.” Because some of the things that we talk about are not isolated neurodivergent experiences, but are instead versions of things that other people experience. Many pieces of both feminist and queer Torah and things like that are speaking simultaneously to very particular experiences and also a broader sense of what it feels like to be marginalized.

So, for example, I tend to write a lot about anger because it tends to be something I spend a lot of time thinking about and grappling with. But that is not a purely neurodivergent emotion. It’s anger as experienced by autistic people. But it's something that other people can connect to and see insight and also hopefully understand me a little bit better.

David Zvi Kalman

Can you give an example?

Liz Shayne

Sure. When I started on my year of neurodivergent Torah project the first prophet that I tackled, so to speak, was Jonah. Think about him at the end of the book, just sort of resenting God for not punishing the people of Nineveh the way that God had intended to because the people had momentarily repented. There’s a deep sense of injustice and unfairness—and, according to some of the commentaries, Jonah was aware that the Assyrians would later go back to their evil ways and eventually conquer the Israelites. Jonah was furious about that.

Seeing Jonah was really formative and important for me—but I could then take the next step and say: Well, okay, if I resonate with Jonah, what is God saying to Jonah? God's response is: Maybe you're right, but what do you want me to do about these hundreds of thousands of people living in the city? I think that's the question that those of us who get so angry at injustice in the world need to sit with. What are you going to do about the hundreds of thousands of people?

David Zvi Kalman

In one of your articles you write that autistic Torah is “the Torah of details,” that an autistic person might relate to the aspects of Jewish law that others might think are too nitpicky or repetitive. For example, you talk about the rule that shows up at the very beginning of the Shulchan Aruch (Jewish law code) on the order in which a person should tie their shoelaces and suggest that perhaps an autistic person might relate in a way that a non-autistic person does not.

I thought that was very interesting, but I could also see it leading to a kind of alienation towards those rules. If those laws are “owned” by autistic people I can imagine a non-autistic person saying: Well, where do I fit? How can people with different minds relate to rules like that, both seeing those rules as being “for them” while being aware of the other's interpretation?

Liz Shayne

It's a good question and I think I have two answers.

The first is: I'm an Orthodox woman. I can live in a world where not everyone has a meaningful connection to every law. That doesn't necessarily bother me in the way that I think it would bother other people. There are parts of Torah that I really do resonate with, but that are made inaccessible to me and ^‑that's where I see the problem. I think this is something that the Orthodox community in particular is really grappling with and trying to work out.

“If you have the kind of autistic brain that lets you hold onto every little detail of Talmud, you are golden. But if you have the kind that makes you overwhelmed in the beit midrash because there's sensory overload? Sorry, wrong kind of neurodivergence.”

The second answer is: I think it’s good to be open to multiple understandings and interpretations. I also have autistic friends who don't resonate with the same parts that I do. There’s this saying [attributed to Dr. Stephen Shore], “When you meet one person with Autism, you’ve met one person with Autism.” There are some of us who feel very committed to the exact structure of daily prayers—it has to be exactly the way it appears in the siddur (prayerbook), you have to do everything in the correct order—and there are some people who feel very strongly that that's not what motivates them. Both of those—that sense of structure and that sense of mapping the world onto one’s particular needs—can come from autistic motivations.

David Zvi Kalman

In another one of your articles you seem to connect with a couple of rabbis who are, I think it's fair to say, some of the Talmud's most well-known losers. There’s Shammai, who is almost always overruled; and there’s Rabbi Eliezer, who—despite the fact that he has God on his side, that he literally gets a heavenly voice to announce that he is correct—ends up losing an argument to all the other rabbis. Is there a loss piece to your narrative, as well?

Liz Shayne

I do think that the vision of the person who stands for what they think is right even when there's nothing really left is one that appeals to me. Obviously I’d like to have everyone agree with me, but the person who doesn't know when to give up—it’s something I feel strongly for.

I also may have read many, many fantasy novels over the course of my life. So that sort of last-stand lone hero is definitely a part of my psyche. I think you're right that they’re the losers, but they're still there, in the Gemara. They're pretty prominent. You don't have to win to belong.

Beit Shammai is still a really strong force, even if they didn't win very many arguments, and for me that’s an important part of it. And the tochacha (admonition) that I take from the story is that it's not always about winning the argument, it's also about being in the community.

David Zvi Kalman

Let’s talk about pedagogy for a second. I think we would both agree that it's important for educators to be aware of students with different pedagogical needs, but it seems like neurodivergent Torah is trying go beyond that, to address not just the way one teaches but the substance.

Can you say a bit about what would it mean for Jewish educational institutions to be more open to neurodivergent Torah? How would that show up in the curriculum, beyond showing students your articles?

Liz Shayne

For younger kids—K through 12—I would just want this to be a larger part of the conversation, so we can think about biblical characters or Talmudic characters and allow kids to ask, “How am I like that? Are they role models for me?” Allowing that conversation lets students find themselves in the text and makes people consistently feel that neurodivergence is something that Judaism has space for, that we can really be this kind of wide mental tent.

This is especially important because one of the things we struggle with in Judaism is we really, really like smart people. If you have the kind of autistic brain that lets you hold onto every little detail of Talmud, you are golden. But if you have the kind that makes you overwhelmed in the beit midrash (study hall) because there's sensory overload? Sorry, wrong kind of neurodivergence. How do you say that to any Jew?

David Zvi Kalman

Right, we champion certain kinds of deviance and radically discourage other kinds. I'm thinking about the literary fascination with the illui, a child with a fantastic ability to memorize massive amounts of text or great logical reasoning skills, or who can sit and study for 20 hours a day. We should probably be cautious about valuing people based on whether they are useful models for the beit midrash.

I want to ask you about how neurodivergent Torah might impact Jewish theology. Going back to the concept of mitzvah (commandment): God seems to value people who fulfill pre-existing obligations in certain regular (and often repetitive) ways. What is the neurodivergent reading of the concept of mitzvah? And is there a neurodivergent reading of God?

Liz Shayne

I have not found one, although it’s something I know that other people are thinking about. So the answer to that question may be “hold on.”

In autism there is something called the double empathy problem. There was this idea that autistic people lack empathy, but upon additional research and study—especially by bringing autistic people into the process of the investigation, not just as objects, but also researchers—it became clear that autistic people are often pretty good at empathizing with other autistic people, just as neurotypical people are pretty good at empathizing with other neurotypical people. It’s the attempt to understand across difference that is really difficult.

I tend to think that a lot of the work of being in relationship with God is trying to get past the double empathy problem, on a divine cosmic level. Being a religious person and trying to connect with God—presuming, as I do, a God who is desperate to connect with human beings—is to figure out how to cross this big double empathy problem to connect to the capital-O Other.

And some of that might be through the religious practices that God gave us, whatever is behind God's logic. Some of that is us trying to work with God to say: Okay, so you said this, but what if we do it this way? That idea that we don't really understand each other, but we're trying and the work of trying is so important. And part of my theology is: You have to try.

• Boston folks: please come see me, Josh Foer, and Felicia Herman in conversation this Sunday! Register here.

• I recently published a long response piece about AI in Jewish thought in Mosaic magazine. You can read it here.