A call for dignity, access and full belonging

One of my favorite things about retirement is that I no longer have to commute daily to B’nai Abraham in Butler. Though I loved my congregation and my work there, the onerous drive was over an hour. To make that boring commute go faster, I used to listen to classical music on WQED-FM or the local NPR news station, WESA. Besides beautiful music and the daily news, I heard many excellent human interest stories over the years.

One particular show sticks in my mind. This show featured an interview with Ben Mattlin, an author who, since birth, had suffered from a debilitating muscular degenerative condition that had put him in a wheelchair and given him limited use of his arms and hands. Despite his physical handicaps, he graduated from both Harvard and Princeton, had a successful career as an author, sustained a long marriage, and fathered and raised two children.

One of his books profiled 15 inter-abled couples like he and his wife. Some of these profiles were heartbreaking, not because of the individuals’ disabilities, but by the limitations placed on them by parents and others who loved them. Most had been told not to expect to experience love, marriage, parenthood, or even careers, but that their life expectation would be always to live with their parents. Obviously, somehow, these 15 people and their partners were able to break away from this limited view of what their lives could be. Mr. Mattlin kept using the same phrase to explain society’s limited expectations for the disabled: “unfair and untrue.” I came away from the program thinking that 21st-century civilization may have come a long way in the treatment of differently abled people, but obviously has further to go.

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Our biblical ancestors were afraid of human conditions they didn’t understand. They were particularly terrified of skin diseases and other physical afflictions that appeared unclean. Passages in Tazria-Metzora describe in minute detail the conditions temple priests would use to pronounce a person impure, and expel him or her to outside the community. Isolation must have been a hard burden on those who were already experiencing less-than-optimal health.

Perhaps we can empathize with our ancestors and understand the fear they felt about those with skin afflictions and other diseases. We can even see the medical sense of temporarily isolating the individual from the community. However, we might not be as comfortable reading about other conditions that would cause an individual to be excluded from the camp or town. These conditions concerned menstruating women and those who recently had given birth. At least the way back into the community for these groups was outlined by Torah. There were proscribed rituals for menstruating or birthing women to reenter a state of purity, and a list of improvements the diseased person must exhibit before being allowed back into the camp by the priests.

As we will read in a few weeks in the Torah, those with a handicap, even just a broken arm or leg, were considered unfit to serve as priests, or even to offer sacrifices. Sacrifices in ancient Israel were offered for a variety of reasons: to thank and show appreciation to God, to seek atonement for sins and to maintain a close relationship with the Holy One.

No rituals were given to these individuals to reenter the state of purity necessary to reclaim these privileges. The psychological trauma of being separate from their fellow Levites or Israelites in not being able to perform the same jobs or rituals would have been great. Even greater would have been the denial of any close relationship with God or a way to atone for sins.

It is very hard for us with our modern sensibilities to read these passages. We learn in Genesis 1:27 that we all are created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. If one follows that pronouncement to its logical conclusion, one must conclude that all, including the differently-abled and diseased, are created b’tzelem Elohim.

If everyone contains a spark of the Divine, why are some of us put in a different category and even denied a way to be close to the Divine? Might these biblical passages account for, at least in part, the way those with disabilities often have been “othered?”

In many ways, we in the 20th century have grown into a more sensitive and educated people who see the injustice of “othering” those with diseases or disabilities. As Mr. Mattlin’s story points out, we have work to do. Recent cuts in programs that affect those with disabilities have made our work even more pressing.

There is no time like the present for working to effect change for the good. PJC

Cantor Michele Gray-Schaffer served as spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Abraham. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.