My thoughts on beliefs of spirituality and autism as a formerly religious Jewish person

In light of all the posts recently of very non scientific beliefs about autism (indigo children and the nazi post) I want to share my positive experience of a correlation between autism and spirituality being made. One that has helped me combat internal ableism even when I didn’t know I was autistic.

In ultra orthodox Jewish culture those with disabilities (especially those who are nonverbal) are seen as having particularly special souls. The idea is that a regular amount of struggle would be too easy for their soul so god had to give them an extra hard struggle. Therefore these people are to be admired and loved.

This is what I was taught growing up about those with severe disabilities. For thousands and thousands of years religion was the only way for people to explain the crazy world around us, and religion has become an integral part of most human cultures. We should not be so quick to negatively judge those who are religious unless they use their religion to harm others.

We should also not ignore all the good that religion can bring into the world - providing people comfort, preventing people with loose morals from doing shitty things out of fear of god, all the countless charities that have helped thousands of people that are run by religious organizations…. Ezer mitzion is a religious Jewish bone marrow donation organization that saved my aunts and millions of other peoples lives.

All this to say that in talking about the harm that nonscientific beliefs of autism can cause, we should be mindful of not hurting the religious autistics in our community and should also recognize that not all religion is bad to autistic people.

And this is coming from someone with severe religious trauma :)

I hope you all have a wonderful day, please remember to take care of yourselves and drink water