Disabled Wisdom and the Revelation of Torah

by Mat Wilson

I lived in Utah during my early twenties, where I learned a lot about Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-day Saint movement. I was struck by the story of young Joseph, who grew up surrounded by a lot of religious fervor, and was deeply troubled by how so many different churches and preachers could interpret the same verses of the Bible so differently. That confusion and dissatisfaction led, in part, to the creation of an entirely new religious movement.

But for me, I’ve always felt the opposite. I would be far more troubled by the idea that there could be one singular, correct way to read a verse of the Bible. I find comfort in the complexity of Torah, in the layers of interpretation, the multitude of voices in discussion, the rich body of midrash and exegesis that has developed over centuries, and the ongoing conversations that emerge as we continue to wrestle with Torah week after week. I love that our tradition doesn’t demand a single answer, but invites a whole chorus of them.

That’s why the holiday of Shavuot is particularly meaningful to me: a moment when we celebrate not only the receiving of Torah, but all the ways we continue to learn from it, argue with it, and be blessed by it, even after all these generations.

Shavuot is the holiday of revelation, the day we remember the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Traditionally, it’s a moment of awe and trembling, of thunder and silence. But it’s also a moment, perhaps the moment, when we affirm that Torah was not just given once, to one person, in one form. It is a moment that invites us to ask: What is Torah? And more importantly, whose is Torah?

At the heart of the Disability Torah Project is a deep belief, that disabled wisdom is Torah. Not metaphorically, not as a nice add-on or inclusive gesture, but literally. The Torah of our bodies, our minds, our access needs, our relationships to systems and structures, our resilience, our grief, our pleasure, our pain. It’s all Torah. And it’s needed. Urgently.

In Deuteronomy 30:11–14, we’re taught:

“Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.”

This is not a Torah locked behind gates. It’s not in a place we can’t reach. It doesn’t demand climbing, crossing, or contorting. It’s near. It’s inside. In our mouths and in our hearts. And that means it is inside the mouths and hearts of disabled people too, perhaps especially so. For many of us, Torah hasn’t always felt accessible. Sometimes that’s literal: the bima too high, the print too small, the seating too rigid, the pacing too fast. And sometimes it’s spiritual or cultural: our stories missing from the commentary, our lives framed only as metaphors or tests of faith. But we have Torah. We always have. And Shavuot invites us to bring it forward.

Pirkei Avot teaches in the name of Ben Bag Bag:

“Turn it, turn it, for everything is in it.”

It’s a beautiful vision of Torah as endlessly generative, a text that yields insight and meaning when we engage it from every angle. But Rabbi Julia Watts Belser complicates this teaching. She writes:

“Sometimes I believe this. And sometimes I am haunted by the enormity of absence [...] by the palpable weight of all the voices, all the worlds that are not there.”

I fully agree with her. That absence is real. And I think the process of turning that Ben Bag Bag alludes to is what bridges that absence. It’s not that Torah contains everything on its own. It’s that when we turn it, when we bring our stories, our truths, our experiences into relationship with the text, that’s when it starts to contain everything. And the more people who turn the text, the smaller that absence becomes. But that process of turning requires something. It requires permission. Or maybe not permission, but space. Empowerment. A sense that we belong in this conversation. That our insights matter. That our interpretations are not just valid but essential.

That’s what the Disability Torah Project seeks to create. Spaces where disabled people feel not only invited to turn Torah, but authorized to do so. Where disabled wisdom is not just a lens we can apply to the text, but part of what brings the text to life. We are not only interpreters of Torah, we are part of its unfolding.

Rabbi Benay Lappe articulates this with clarity and power:

“God gave Moses three torahs at Mount Sinai—the written torah, the oral torah, and the svara torah—the torah of our own moral intuition, the torah that is in our hearts and minds, the torah that we know to be True in our kishkes, the torah drawn from the insights gained from our lived life experiences—and the queerer the lived life experience, the richer the insight, and the more essential it is to be brought into the tradition which so desperately needs it in order to be the liberatory enterprise it has always sought to be.”

This third Torah—the Torah of our hearts and minds, the Torah of lived experience, that is the foundation of the Disability Torah Project. Disabled people live in bodies and minds that often resist the expectations of normative culture. We are experts in navigating systems that were not built for us, in reimagining what care and community can look like, in telling the truth about pain and joy. That truth, that Torah, is often uncomfortable, nonlinear, embodied, communal, and real. It’s not sanitized. It’s not perfect. But it is holy. And just like the Torah given at Sinai, it sometimes comes with trembling. Sometimes it comes in a whisper. Sometimes it comes with defiance or a breaking-open.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”l, offered a teaching on the multiplicity of Torah that illuminates this idea:

“Let my teaching fall like rain: Just as the rain is one thing, yet it falls on trees, enabling each to produce tasty fruit according to the kind of tree it is – the vine in its way, the olive tree in its way and the date palm in its way, so the Torah is one, yet its words yield Scripture, Mishnah, laws and lore. Like showers on new grass: just as showers fall upon plants and make them grow, some green, some red, some black, some white, so the words of Torah produce teachers, worthy individuals, sages, the righteous and the pious.

There is only one Torah, yet it has multiple effects. It gives rise to different kinds of teaching, different sorts of virtue. Torah is sometimes seen by its critics as overly prescriptive, as if it sought to make everyone the same. The midrash argues otherwise. The Torah is compared to rain precisely to emphasize that its most important effect is to make each of us grow into what we could become. We are not all the same, nor does Torah seek uniformity.”

This is not a Torah that demands sameness. It is not a system meant to flatten us into conformity. It is a Torah that nourishes each person differently, according to our own inner wisdom and truth. Disabled wisdom, in all its variety, whether physical, emotional, cognitive, sensory, psychiatric, developmental, is part of that nourishing rain. We are vines, olive trees, date palms, and grasses. We are not all the same, and Torah was never meant to make us so.

Disabled Torah is not only about disability as a topic, it’s about a way of knowing, a way of studying, a way of being in relationship with text and tradition. It’s about noticing slowness, attending to silence, and embracing contradiction. It’s about asking: what is revealed when we center those most often left on the margins? What does Torah sound like when spoken through a communication device? What questions arise when you read Leviticus with a feeding tube or chronic pain or neurodivergence? These aren’t distractions from Torah, they are invitations deeper into it.

Shavuot is a holiday of collective revelation. We stood together at Sinai. And the midrash teaches that each person heard the voice of God in their own way. One sound, many receivers. There was no one "normal" or “correct” way to receive Torah. That is the model we follow. Disabled Torah is not separate from Torah, it is Torah. It has been waiting, ripening, germinating in our hearts and mouths.

The Disability Torah Project exists to water that growth, to lift up the perspectives of disabled Jews who have always had Torah to give. It exists to affirm that when we turn it, when we bring disabled wisdom into dialogue with sacred text, Torah becomes more full, more honest, more liberatory.

This Shavuot, may we open to revelation not just from above, but from within. May we listen for the Torah spoken in disabled voices, in disabled lives. May we remember that what is most holy is often what is most human. And may we affirm again: the Torah is not in the heavens, and not across the sea, it is here, in our bodies, our stories, our communities.

In our mouths and in our hearts, to do it.

Mat Wilson (they/them) enjoys board and video games, road trips big and small, and any opportunity to be in water. They discovered a love for Torah study through the art of source sheet creation, and are now using writing as a way to explore their lived experiences with disability. Outside of their free time, Mat is a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and is pursuing a Master’s in Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania.