Title: Abled: Living with a Disability
By: Michal Horowitz
Mosaica Press
256 pages
Aside from sefarim, which occupy a category unto themselves, memoirs are my favorite genre of nonfiction, making the first sentence of Michal Horowitz’s new book, Abled, a compelling beginning.
“This volume is a three-way partnership of a personal memoir, a book, and a sefer.”
I first “met” Horowitz six years ago when I began learning Nach Yomi through the newly launched Torat Imecha program of the OU Women’s Initiative. I hadn’t learned Sefer Yehoshua since ninth grade and my Navi skills were woefully rusty, but what I remember most about those early days of re-immersing myself in the era of the Prophets was not the material itself, but rather the sense of awe that I had for its teacher, Mrs. Michal Horowitz. I assumed, from her breadth of knowledge and poised manner of speaking, that she was either a Navi teacher in a girls’ seminary or perhaps the principal of a yeshiva high school, an assumption that was only reinforced each time I had the pleasure of listening to her Nach Yomi shiurim over the last six years.
Shortly after I became aware that she had written a book, I got an email saying that she was going to be giving a Zoom shiur as part of her book launch, and since I was lucky enough not to be working that day, I watched the shiur live. I was stunned to find out that she was deaf, that her educational background was in audiology, and that her post-seminary learning had been entirely self-directed. Shortly after this shiur, I had the opportunity to read Abled, and although I would usually reserve the description “page-turner” for a work of fiction, this memoir/sefer rightfully owns that description as well.
Horowitz begins her memoir with a short introduction, explaining why she wrote her book. “This book is my story, but it is also the story of the Torah’s perspective on how we must view and interact with those who have disabilities. It is my story but it is also the story of so many other individuals – be it yourself, the reader, someone in your family, a close friend or confidant, or someone in your community that you have met.” She then segues into more biographical details. She shares with us that she was not born deaf, recounting some of her early and cherished auditory memories, such as the theme song to Sesame Street and the soundtracks to the Disney movies that were popular during her childhood. She comments that although she has not watched television in years, “in retrospect this was an important part of my life, my childhood and my journey…this makes me very grateful for my thirteen years of normal hearing, which allowed my speech to develop perfectly, thank G-d.”
Throughout the narrative, Horowitz points out examples such as this, where things in her life could have been so much worse, and woven throughout the entire sefer is evidence of the incredible gratitude she has to Hashem for the many gifts she has received that help her navigate through a world without sound.
When she was thirteen, Horowitz experienced severe vertigo, which turned out to be a inner ear virus that permanently damaged the hair cells in her ear. After that, her hearing slowly deteriorated, and eventually, when her oldest child was three, she acknowledged that her hearing loss needed to be addressed. At the time, she was studying audiology in Brooklyn College, so she went to one of her professors for an evaluation and was told that she did have significant hearing loss and needed hearing aids.
In the Zoom interview for the book launch, she notes that her audiology degree was a clear example of Hashem’s Divine intervention in her life – that He created the refuah before the makkah, the solution before the challenge, in that her degree gave her the understanding and preparation for her hearing loss. Indeed, this tool that Hashem gave her is all the more extraordinary because she never actually practiced audiology, but instead became a Torah teacher.
A month after earning her Master’s degree, Horowitz was blessed with a second child and decided to take some time off before going to work. Two years later, she was blessed with premature twins and again chose to remain home with her growing family. At some point when the children were a little older and she had some more free time; she started learning Chumash with Rashi every week and supplemented this learning with all the sefarim she had about the parsha. Two years after this, when the youngest children were in school, she began to wonder what else she could do to fill her days. She wryly observes that as a mother, she actually had a million things to do to fill her days, but she felt, as many young mothers do, that “there is more to life than laundry.”
A very sick relative in need of a refuah started Horowitz thinking about ways that she could create a zechus for the choleh. “I had an idea…It sounds absurd when I retell this because it was something I had never done before. I decided that I would prepare and deliver a shiur to women in the community as a merit for the choleh. It was clearly siyata d’Shmaya and hashgacha pratis that put this seemingly bizarre and totally random idea in my head.” This shiur led to other shiurim, and today Horowitz is a renowned Torah teacher on all topics related to Yahadus, including Chumash, Tanach, machshava, inyanei d’yoma, emunah, tefillah, and the chagim.
The next few chapters in the book delve into the Torah view on disabilities in general. She discusses the fierce and unconditional love mothers have for their children. Why does she have a chapter about mothers? “Because behind every handicapped child with any degree of success…is his mother.” Later in the sefer, Horowitz discusses Moshe Rabbeinu and his speech impediment, but before she does so, she discusses his mother Yocheved – “behind every av b’Yisrael there is an eim b’Yisrael.” I’d like to share a small portion of Horowitz’s Dvar Torah on Yocheved as an example not only of her erudite scholarship but also of how this sefer is for everyone, not just those with visible and physical disabilities.
Moshe was born to Yocheved and Amram during the time period of Pharaoh’s decree that all baby boys should be thrown into the river. The language of the pasuk is very interesting: “She gave birth to a son, and she saw him, that he was good, and she hid him for three months” (Shemos 2:2). What does this mean – “she saw he was good”? Surely every mother sees that her child is good! Rashi explains that when Moshe was born, the entire house filled with light, and that’s what Yocheved saw. Now we have a new question: If the house was filled with light, why doesn’t the pasuk say “they saw him, that he was good?” In other words, what about Amram? Didn’t he see the light too?
If we go back in time, we recall that Amram had separated from his wife in despair over the terrible situation in Mitzrayim, and it was his daughter Miriam who encouraged Amram and Yocheved to remarry. The Sages teach us that women have binah, an extra measure of intuition and understanding that men do not possess. “A Jewish woman has an ability to see good, even in very dark times.” Later, this child – Moshe – would grow up with a physical speech impediment, and yet his mother saw beyond his physical impairment; all she saw was his radiant inner light. The Torah tells us that when Moshe came down with the Luchos, his face was radiating with these beams of light, and it was his mother who had first detected that light concealed within him.
Further topics of discussion are Moshe and his speech impediment, as well as the inability of kohanim with disabilities to serve in the Mishkan and the Mikdash. In her sensitive and practical way, Horowitz explains that this rule is not exclusionary simply because of their disability, but rather it is a lesson in sensitivity and compassion. She then discusses her personal limitations and how she deals with them, sharing with us her difficulties in following conversations at the Shabbos table, as well as how hard it was during Covid when everyone was masked and she could not see people’s mouths moving. She also shares with us the importance of “reframing,” a psychological construct that teaches those with disabilities to shift their mindsets from a mentality that says, “This is what I can’t do” to “This is what I can do.”
There are many stunning Divrei Torah in this sefer that are expertly laced into the author’s personal narrative. One of the things that became obvious to me as I was reading was that she draws from a wide variety of sources and hashkafos; her parents sum this up very beautifully in their dedication at the beginning of the book. “Michal’s first year of high school was in Yerushalayim at Tzviah, and then she completed high school at Bais Yaakov of Toronto. Michal absorbed the Torah of both, without commitment to the ideology of either. She is interested in Torah that unites, not that which divides, which enables her to inspire all whom she encounters.”
Although ostensibly this is a book about the Torah view on disabilities, it is really a book for anyone who experiences any kind of struggles in life. Horowitz quotes Rav Soloveitchik: “There is no such thing as ‘the sun always shines’ for a person. If he thinks so, he is mistaken.” No one journeys through life unscathed – no one. We all face our own personal tribulations in life, physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually.
Once again through the wisdom of the Rav, Horowitz explains the difference between fate and destiny. Fate is passive; we are subject to the forces of nature that shape our lives, but destiny is how we choose to confront and live with our fate. “I can choose – each day that I live – to transform a passive, disabled, deficient existence of fate into one that is replete with meaning, productivity, and passion. I can choose to strive to become the best person that I can be, despite my hearing loss…for where fate leaves us powerless and forlorn, destiny endows us with the gift of meaningful living.”