Like many young Jewish kids, I did not enjoy being dragged to Hebrew school every Sunday morning. And yes, it was partly because I was bored of learning the alef-bet repeatedly, year after year, and because I got fidgety during tefillah.  

But there was another reason, too, one that I’ve only recently been able to articulate: I was totally overstimulated. The loud, chaotic Israeli dancing, the “mandatory” Purim carnivals that drew huge crowds of screaming kids and synagogue attendees, and the overall environment left me feeling anxious, and frankly invisible.  

When I felt overwhelmed by these environments, I would ask if I could take a walk with a friend or step outside. But my Hebrew school teachers told me “no,” and after years of feeling miserable, my mom agreed to stop sending me to Hebrew school. She cared deeply about my Jewish education, but she understood just what I meant when, in my whiny ten-year-old voice I explained my frustrations: “They plan their activities as if all kids want the same things and we all have the same brains, but we don’t, and it’s not fair!”  
I would have been a much happier Hebrew school student if my teachers had read and followed the philosophy of Jewish Australian sociologist Judy Singer. Singer coined the term “neurodiversity” to describe the community of people with ADHD and autism as they began to push for acceptance and liberation. Witnessing this push, along with her daughter’s autism diagnosis, led her to understand that people experience this world differently. She believed that we should strive to embrace different ways of thinking, as well as the humanity and value of those who are neurodivergent. We should find ways to make our communities ones where everyone can thrive, not just the neurotypical.  

I am not considered neurodivergent. However, if I, as someone who merely had some mild anxiety, didn’t feel embraced in my Jewish education, I can only imagine how difficult it was for those who have autism, ADHD, or other conditions. 

In her article for Kveller, Jaime Herndon, the parent of a disabled child, admits that “finding where we belong in our local Jewish community has not been easy. The ableism I’ve seen among multiple synagogue preschools across branches of Judaism has shocked me.” Every child deserves to have every opportunity to explore their religious identities, but Herndon felt hopeless, stating, “By the time my son was 2.5 years old, I didn’t think there was a place for us in our Jewish community at all.”  

In her similar article for Kveller, Benay Josselson, another parent, remarked that she doesn’t believe she can find a Jewish day school that she can comfortably send her autistic son to. Herndon asks us some essential questions as members of the Jewish community – summer camp counselors and directors, teachers and parents and synagogue members, such as, “What are we doing to make our Jewish spaces as welcoming as possible for those who are disabled and/or neurodivergent, especially children?”  

These stories remind me of a Hasidic legend: A little boy walks into a synagogue and doesn’t know the prayers that congregants are reciting, so he recites the aleph-bet instead. The congregants get annoyed at him, but he explains to the rabbi that he hopes that God will be able to put the letters together and understand his important prayer. The rabbi assures him that God will understand him and encourages him to continue praying in whatever way is most meaningful to him.  

To me, this story shows that neurodivergent people deserve to have the tools in their synagogues to connect with their religion in meaningful ways. They deserve congregants and rabbis who will embrace their ways of being Jewish, even when they don’t look “traditional.”  

In some versions of the Hasidic legend, the young boy ends up leading the congregation in recitation of the aleph-bet. This is a powerful testament to how people who may experience the world through a different lens can end up leading the Jewish community and helping them connect with their faith in unexpected ways. They just need a community that will uplift them. 

We are a religion of dissenters, of people who push against the norms, from Abraham pleading with God to save the people of Soddom and Gomorrah to the Women of the Wall in Jerusalem. These aspects of our Torah and our legacy cannot be forgotten in our interactions with Jewish children, especially those who are neurodivergent. We cannot push neurodivergent people away from communicating with God and building Jewish lives; we must embrace their ways of experiencing the world so that we, as a Jewish community, can better understand our prayers, stories, and values. 

In the years since I’ve attended Hebrew school, a ton of progress has been made in the Jewish community. I’ve noticed increased efforts to include neurodivergent people. Where I live in Boston, we have the organization Gateways, which has a plethora of education programs for neurodivergent Jewish youth and collaborates with Jewish day schools to help all students get the support they need. They also train Jewish educators and provide resources to Jewish families who may struggle with mental health challenges. Furthermore, Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ Ruderman Synagogue Inclusion Project worked from 2015 to 2023 to push for over seventy synagogues in the Boston area to become more inclusive of disabled people by providing education and resources on accessibility and inclusion in Jewish settings. The synagogue that my family still attends offers fidget toys at all their services and a quiet room for participants to take a break. 

I recently attended the bar mitzvah of a close family friend at a synagogue in New York City. The family friend is autistic, and I immediately felt how warm and welcoming the community was to all its congregants, especially those who were neurodivergent. I poked around on their website and found out that they have “sensory-sensitive” holiday celebrations and a religious school program fully equipped to welcome a neurodiverse group of Jewish learners. I began picturing my younger self, grogger in hand standing outside of the rowdy Purim celebration, wondering what new connections with my faith I could have forged at a “sensory sensitive” celebration.  

 This culture of acceptance seeped into the after party of the bar mitzvah. There were tweens wearing noise canceling headphones while dancing the hora and overstimulated kids and adults playing by themselves in a quiet area when the party got too loud, rejoining when they felt ready. Neurodiversity was a core part of the community’s fabric, and embracing it was natural for them. I hope every one of those kids feels that they are embraced, and I hope that we can all commit to building that community alongside them.