Israel

Mendel is in Israel, at the Wall, living and loving life. That is all, the rest is commentary. Here’s the commentary:

About 3 months ago, on May 14, a quiet Shabbat afternoon, I picked up a supplement in a Jewish magazine devoted to stories of miraculous outcomes achieved by praying at Kever Rachel, the tomb of the Matriarch Rachel, in Beit Lechem, outside Jerusalem. They all sounded way too good to be true. One story was presented in comic strip format: A family had all but given up on their sons, who had become estranged from them. Somewhere inside me, where I allow dark and pessimistic thoughts, I saw myself in this story and I thought: me too, I think I’ve also given up on my son. Years of trying so many ways to unlock the mystery of Mendel- who is clearly so intelligent, so trapped inside himself- and so little progress to show for it… it wears you down. I’ve pushed so many doors, tried so many things and yet he remains as stuck as ever. My eye fell on the next comic strip: “the names of the sons ( and their mother’s name) are sent to Kever Rachel”— and the mother’s name is my exact (very uncommon) Hebrew name, in the exact (very uncommon) spelling. I was totally taken aback. I resolved to see this as an opening; maybe, maybe we’d see some sort of miracle. After Shabbat, I reached out to Hindel Swerdlov of Jerusalem, someone I knew through her friendships with family members. Hindel went straight to Kever Rachel and prayed her heart out for Mendel, telling me to update her when the miracles started pouring in. I’m a bit of a skeptic, I told her, but I was grateful. 

That very week, two things happened . 

The first was that, after much effort, we were able to finalize our tickets to California to work with the amazing Julie Sando Johnson. I just checked my text message history to her: Monday May 15: “We’re booked and so excited to see you!”. If you’ve followed my social media, you know the miracles that came pouring out of that visit. 

The second took longer to unfold, but here we are. That Wednesday, we got a call to host a sleeping guest for Shabbat. The caller was the director of the Friendship Circle of Jerusalem, an incredible woman named Chana Canterman, and the guest she was hoping to find a host for was Rafi Yellon, a young man who is the Head Counselor of her 10-day Friendship Circle Summer Camp for young men in Jerusalem, who needed a place to stay in Manhattan.  It was entirely providential that she called us, and she wasn’t even aware of our special needs son. But as we started talking, I said: you have a camp? I have a son who has never been to Israel. Maybe he can attend! I said it as something of a joke. I did not believe it could ever be possible. But something larger than us was clearly at play, and that very Shabbat, the head counselor of the camp arrived, met Mendel…. and…. to skip to the good part: Mendel is now in Israel in his camp, where he is already having the experience of a lifetime. 

This entire saga is so miraculous, that the final piece seems to fit right in, and here it is:

Mendel was in Boston for the weekend, and the plan was for my husband to fly from NY to Boston on Sunday at 1pm, wait six hours in the airport ( he gave himself tons of extra time in case of a delay) and meet Mendel, who would be picked up from his school by our friend Eric, for an El-Al flight to Tel Aviv leaving at 8:30pm. At 1pm my husband boarded the plane in NY… and was kept waiting for five hours on the runway. The calls from Eric, waiting in the airport from 5pm with an increasingly anxious Mendel, were getting more frantic. He put an El Al ticket agent on the phone. I said to her: you don’t understand what this trip means. My husband and son MUST make this flight! Of course, Mendel’s passport was in my husband’s pocket; he could not check in or do anything but wait at the counter helplessly with Eric. Yuda Silverstein at Joy Travel, our exceptionally dedicated travel agent, sent a picture of the passport to the head of El-Al in Boston Logan Airport: this young man needs to be on tonight’s flight!

My husband’s plane from NY finally landed at 7:55pm, five and half hours late, in a totally different terminal. He raced across the airport, was met by an El Al agent who checked him and Mendel in, whisked them both through security, and—- there is no logical explanation for this: made it onto the flight at 8:27pm, just in time for takeoff.

Our hearts are filled with gratitude at all those who helped us make Mendel’s dream of travel and exploration, and visiting the Holy Land, come true. To Chana Canterman and the Friendship Circle of Jerusalem, to the dedicated volunteer staff, to the friends in NY who sponsored Mendel’s trip, to the incredible caring people of El-Al (the ONLY airline worth flying to Israel!), Rachel Chandali of El Al at Logan Airport, the station manager and the entire team— thank you and may Hashem bless you!

A final word: Friendship Circle of Jerusalem sponsors this camp in honor of special needs children and the costs are enormous. Thanks to a very special friend of Mendel who wishes to remain anonymous, Mendel’s trip is almost completely sponsored but if you would like to contribute to this incredible endeavor ( all gifts go directly to the Friendship Circle of Jerusalem) here is a special link set up by our dear friends Rabbi Shlomo and Sara Gutnick in our local FC- NYC website : http://friendshipcirclenyc.org/mmetzger

If you’re still reading: may the miracles flow in your life as they are for Mendel. ❤️

Both Are True

 I wrote this little piece for my daughter's preschool newsletter. The editor asked me to share something of my life, a personal narrative. I asked her: which part of me: Chabad emissary? Preschool person? Mom of a girl pack? Author of my little book? Parent of a special son? Of course, she chose the latter. It's what everyone is most interested in, I guess. And I've come to see that this role- Mendel's mom- is the linchpin of who I am. Nothing else is as central. For years I thought of this a something of a sentence for our family; for myself:  "You are only as happy as your least happy child" was my core belief; and seeing as Mendel was not reaching the happiness I wanted for him, the implications were obvious. I also extended that belief: You are only as free as your free-est child. And Mendel was not free; his words and deepest self were not finding expression. He could not string together a sentence and could barely write his name. Thus my own self-expression, my lifelong love of writing, of seeing the words and paragraphs form themselves on the paper in front of me, articulating feelings I knew of but could not speak of, remained mostly within. If he was not free, went my unexpressed logic (I would have had to write it to understand it), neither could I be. Gradually, and inspired by a quote to this effect from Dr. Brad Reedy,  I came to be aware that being only as happy as my least happy child was placing far too great a burden on my children. I could grieve for the things my son did not have, and cherish the gifts I was given too. I could be happy because I exist; because I am a valued and cherished soul; because my life is full of blessings. I could be sad for what Mendel doesn't have, and cherish his existence, all at the same time. Mendel's journey is central to who I am and who we are, and it will always be that way. And we wish for more, and cherish life, and find happiness, all at the same time. That nuance is what I tried to convey in this little piece.

We are so blessed that our youngest child, Leah, is having the most wonderful preschool experience

in Morah Leba’s Pre-Nursery class at Chabad ELC. She’s our youngest of six (BH) and her oldest sister Mushka attended Chabad too, in 2006-7, back on 92nd Street. In the interim, we opened our own

Chabad Preschool (now called Manhattan Jewish Montessori) on the East Side where most of our

other children attended. Over the years, we’ve been lucky to be guided by Morah Pearl’s {the director}

wisdom and experience, which she so generously shares (where and how does she have the time? I

will never know!)

One “pearl” from Morah Pearl came when I had to meet with the parents of a child in our 18 month classwho needed additional classroom support. I was terrified of the meeting, and called Morah Pearl for

guidance. She told me (I’m paraphrasing), “Just remember that you are shattering these parents’ dreams. Until a child goes to preschool, parents may not realize something is wrong, or they may be hoping

everything is ok- you are the first person to shatter their dreams.”

This was very valuable wisdom, and helped me gain perspective through a difficult meeting (it’s never

easy) and maintain a warm relationship with these parents throughout their time in our preschool and

beyond.

What also helped, of course, is that I’ve been (and still am) on both sides of the chair, as a preschool educator and a parent of a child with severe autism.

Parenting children who are typically developing, alongside and together with a very severely disabled

child (my son Mendel has autism, and is mostly non-speaking), has been a journey, to say the least. 

I look back at my very innocent mid-twenties self, bringing my oldest child to preschool, totally unaware

of what was to come in our lives, and compare it to my current reality, bringing my youngest to Chabad

each day, and think about everything I’ve learned in between. 

So it’s true, as Morah Pearl told me, at some point if you’re a parent of a child with special needs,

your dreams really do shatter. In our case, our son was two and a half when diagnosed and appeared

typical until then, so it was a rather dramatic shatter and took many years to process. 

I try to wrap up what Mendel has taught us and our family, but it’s not easy- we are in the thick of it still.

Parenting a special needs child- particularly one on the severe end of the spectrum- means you don’t

have an issue, resolve it, and move on. It’s your life; the issue evolves and fluctuates, your response

changes, your whole identitychanges. For the better, in many ways. I have no doubt, for example, that my typically developing kids

are kinder, more empathetic people as a result of their disabled brother. I know that they will always be

able to see the humanity in every person, view others with understanding and compassion, and accept

challenges from a deeper place than most people ever could. 

Beyond that, I think the greatest lesson we have learned is the co-existence of dichotomous realities. Bear with me, here. Nuance is not easy to relay, but that’s the beauty of it. We have learned that someone can be deserving of compassion and impossible to deal with, that a situation can be overwhelming and reveal a deeper, richer dimension to life; that we can accept and love our children and go crazy from them (to use a very basic parenting term)--- that it all can exist together. Somehow having a child with extreme needs has made me comfortable with all the extremes in life; I find myself able to sit with them better. I used to think it was a matter of perspective; as in, most challenges pale in comparison to dealing with a lifelong disability, but I’ve come to see that it’s not that. It’s just being able to sit with all parts of life; the bitter and the sweet. The mundane and the monumental. Neither negates the other; they can exist alongside each other and both are true.

I think that perhaps of all the things I’d want to tell someone just starting on a special needs journey, or

wondering about a friend or relative in those circumstances, it would be this point: You will be OK- you

will be very OK. Sometimes, of course, you won’t be OK at all. And both are true.

Mendel goes to Higashi

 I am finally posting this long reflection I began writing the day after Mendel left to the Higashi school- more than two months ago. I thought I could post it right away, that I felt whole enough with all of it to share. I couldn't, and I didn't. Sending Mendel off to residential school was- perhaps still is- the most gut wrenching thing I've ever encountered. In the nights after he left , I'd wake up at 2 or 3 am, overwhelmed with every type of worry, and pace my bedroom floors, sleep completely eluding me. My days were a blur, almost like a newborn haze without the baby. It's been a few months. Things have settled somewhat. He does seem very happy at the school. He is clearly growing in ways he could not grow at home. He is objectively doing well. His health has significantly improved . The reports from the school are great. Our family is doing better. It was very, very hard to manage at home when he was here- harder than I'll ever want to admit. It was perhaps unfair for our other children, although-- perhaps not, he is our child too. I'll never settle that one in my mind, I think. But a tenuous peace has allowed itself into my heart and, thank Gd for small mercies, I've been able to sleep. So I feel like I can share this piece. 

Mendel went off to the Boston Higashi School for autism yesterday. Here he is as a baby,

as a gorgeous three year old with his new haircut, as a beautiful ( but always silent) little boy, as a Bar Mitzvah boy that we struggled to understand, we struggled to reach, we struggled to find, as a teenager who struggled to find his way in the world. There are some souls in this world who struggle . I've come to

accept that my son is one of them, and our family along with him. His journey is not smooth; it never has been. His diagnosis didn't fit like a smoothly aligned thing, the professionals we met illuminated some of the treatment path but never all of it; seeing progress was difficult-- two steps forward, three steps back. We never quite knew: was this method/intervention/regimen/ treatment protocol/therapy right for him, and if it was, was this all he could be? Was there more, could he do more, could he be more , could we do more, there must be more. We always knew- we still know- there is more inside. At his Bar Mitzvah my husband spoke from his heart and said the words from Song of Songs "Show me your voice, your secrets ", and he said, we have always felt that Mendel is a mystery to us, we pray for his secrets to be revealed. I admit that when he shared that publicly, I felt a flash of shame at this vulnerability with everyone we knew in that crowded hall. Weren't we supposed to have this child figured out by now, at 13 years old? Or at least put up some sort of front toward that. My ego, my need as an educator to pull it all together and present a coherent picture, an organized show, an impressive accomplishment, felt taken down, humbled. I was not figuring this out on my own, on our own.

Last year Mendel began to outgrow his beloved school of many years. Notwithstanding his painstakingly slow general progress and the tremendously challenging evenings and weekends at home, school days were a bright spot for him over the past seven years in a wonderfully loving Jewish school in Brooklyn . But it was clear- from their end and ours- that he needed a new place. We began to search, exploring residential and local high schools. Local high school options were very limited, and far away, and none seemed like they could work for him. Given his excellent experiences at sleepaway camp each summer, we knew that a highly structured residential setting would be ideal for him. But the Board of Ed was a Covid-mess and at our IEP meeting they told us before we said anything: don't even bother asking for residential placement. We have orders and budget cuts. You can appeal. 

We applied to Boston Higashi ( among other schools), and after lots of research and a lengthy intake process - all virtual- Mendel was accepted for September, pending Board of Ed funding. We appealed the Board of Ed; our case was set for August. The DOE had neglected to offer Mendel an appropriate placement, and for those familiar with FAPE ( the law requiring free and appropriate public education for all), that gave us a really good chance of winning a judgement with a direct placement at Higashi. Long story short: We didn't win it. We re-appealed.  

In the meantime, September came and Mendel was home. His sisters started school; a busy month of holidays began. He went back to his old school for a day or two trial- it didn't work out. The process of fighting the DOE dragged on with no resolution in clear sight. The Friday after Simchat Torah, I got a call from the Higashi school that had been holding his spot; it needed to be filled and they could not wait any longer - we could either unilaterally enroll and fund him, or we needed a judgement in our favor ( which was out of our control). Oh, and since cases from NY are so backlogged at present , the minimum amount to get Mendel started at the school would be one full year's tuition, a quarter of a million dollars. If we couldn't do it, the spot would go to someone else. 

Here is where I felt my need to keep it all together, to say, "we've got this, we're figuring it out", fray at the seams. A few weeks prior to that phone call , I'd shared the disappointing progress of our Board of Ed case on my family chat group. My siblings said, let's do a Go Fund Me campaign for Mendel and get him in! No way, I answered. The Board of Ed is supposed to fund him, not kind friends. It's just a long process but we'll get there. But standing there that Friday morning, I knew his chance to  attend Higashi was slipping away in front of me. And I knew we needed help, we couldn't do it on our own. I hated the thought of baring our story on social media. I hated the thought of Mendel's picture on everyone's screen, our plight pulling on everyone's heartstrings. But I stood there and faced reality: we didn't have the cash reserves to lay out, our case was still pending, Mendel was about to lose his spot, he did not have any school to go to otherwise, this place could do really great things for him, and our family and community was ready to help. We could fundraise to lay the money out and use those funds once reimbursed for a different autism-related cause, as my brother had pointed out. I took a deep breath, pushed aside my ego, and texted my brother that we were ready to go ahead with the GoFundMe campaign. 

At this point, I felt like all our work to get Mendel to where we had gotten him- the search for the school, the research, the application- all of it was now taken out of our hands, birthed into being by the pro-activity of our family, the generosity, goodwill and tangible caring of close to 500 friends, relatives and some perfect strangers. Within two weeks, we raised over $100,000 on the platform; a group of deeply generous souls saw the campaign and committed to lending the shortfall. Within just a few days I was able to call the Higashi school and commit to the funds. We sent the full quarter-million dollars in a short while later and Mendel's spot was confirmed, with a start date of October 25.

And--- just a few days after that, we won the case with the Board of Ed. Within a few weeks, our full tuition will be refunded and forwarded to charity. 

So it all works out, and Mendel started on Monday. He went off with some anxiety, but we got good pictures from the staff and he seems to be really comfortable there and he always loved camp and we think he'll really love it and do well. Here's why we think so:

Twelve years ago, when Mendel was four, we faced a decision, to keep him in a home ABA program or send him to a center based program in Brooklyn that we'd applied to. Tough call. I went to the Ohel late one night to pray for guidance. 

Walking away from the Rebbe's resting place I saw Rabbi Krinsky, his longtime aide, who I had worked for years before. I said hello and then on impulse, said: Rabbi Krinsky, I came to daven for my son who has autism. What did the Rebbe ever say about autism, do you remember? Rabbi Krinsky said he was sorry to hear that, and he couldn't remember instances where the Rebbe had advised people on autism (I was not at all surprised , seeing as its such a new phenomenon) and then just before he said goodbye, he stopped and said, "Boston. I think the Rebbe would often tell people to go to places in Boston with issues like these."

I said goodnight, thanked him and thought, well, what am I supposed to do with that? We had no lines out anywhere in Boston, no doctors we had heard of out there, no programs, no methods-- nothing. Until now. Until, out of all the many places we explored, and despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles on the path to get here- this is the place that worked out, the Boston Higashi School.

Something else happened, this past summer when Mendel was away at Camp Hasc. It was a Friday morning, and I had a conversation with the Higashi school, finalizing his acceptance and start date ( pending the success of his board of Ed case, which proved to be a lot harder than anticipated , but we didn't know that yet.) I felt the import of the decision we had just agreed to with every nerve in my body. How had we agreed to this? We had never even seen the place! Every tour and interview was virtual due to covid. We had researched, it all checked out well, but I was in a nervous daze. It was a long quiet Friday; most of the kids were away. My husband called at some point; a woman named Marilyn from Queens called to ask if she could sleep over so she could visit her mom in the hospital over Shabbos. Not a problem. The day went by; I had guests to prepare for, a welcome distraction: my nerves were on edge. After I lit the candles, Marilyn and I got to talking. Your son is in Hasc? she said, I have a special needs son too. And my husband actually supervises group homes for young men with autism; if you ever come to need that, he can help you with that. Well, I told her. I'm not sure we'll be needing that... Mendel was just this morning accepted into a residential school. Which one, she asked. I told her. "Boston Higashi?!" Her eyes grew wide. "That's the best school in the entire country!!! How did you get him in there?? My husband was just there this week to observe their best practices . He will do so well there!"

I almost burst into tears. All my tightly coiled nerves of the day, held together so I could prepare for Shabbat, cook and host a table full of guests- unspooled .

I don't know how we got him in there, and we had no idea it was the best school in the country but- Marilyn, I said, I think Hashem dropped you in my house , today of all days , of all places, to tell me exactly this. 

********

We got many congratulations for Mendel's next step. We acknowledge them all gratefully. We are eternally grateful for the generous, loving, open hearted support that enabled us to get Mendel into his new school. It has been, overall, a good move for him. He seems settled, happy, calm. Life at home for our other children is peaceful; we can give them what they need, we are not pulled in impossible directions, all the time.  We are grateful. 

And yet there is a part of me that still says- there is more. My son has more inside. You see part of him, you see an adorable disabled child turned sweet disabled teenager. I see a powerful soul. I see his words . It is not easy to send him away, to pray that his precious heart and precious Jewish soul are cherished and nurtured when we're far away and can't see. I don't know if others see his words, when after all he can't say them. 

And in many ways, Mendel's journey is only beginning. Long before finding this school , we  began to explore spelling methods, a long process which revealed his intelligence in ways we could not see beforehand. It's a journey we'll continue to be on, even as Mendels day to day life needs more structure than we can provide at home.  

It's taken me days to write this out. It's intense and long and winding- but then, so is our journey. Thank you for reading.

A New Post

 When Mendel was 20 months, my husband knocked on the door of our little apartment on 51st Street and as his big sister ran to the door shrieking with excitement, Mendel looked at me happily and said clearly, “It’s.Tatty!”. I beamed. There it was, the first sentence. The first two word combination I had heard from my beautiful, developmentally tardy child. Surely, I thought, the sentences would increase, the paragraphs would come. But they didn’t. They never did. And what’s more, he seemed sick and increasingly withdrawn. He would lay his head on the bed and almost fall asleep in middle of the day. He was bored, he had no preschool to attend; he was brilliant, just a late talker; he was tired, he had an ear infection. He was so many things.

But then, finally, he had a label for all of those things: autism. A life changing, debilitating, diagnosis; not- as I was assured by many- a great way to get more services from the government. Not in this case, not in this journey.

I like to wrap things up. I teach a class and pay particular attention to the ending. The last paragraph has the magic, in anything I write. Which is why, so many years into this journey with Mendel, more than thirteen since that false hope of a first sentence, I barely write at all. I wrote my way to self awareness as a young adult and I wrote my way through the process of falling in love with my husband and marrying him, despite a chronic existential angst and a reflexive aversion to wholesome, good people (and my husband is wholesome and good to a fault.) But I could not write about my journey with Mendel. There was no climax, no simple arc of crisis-climax/awakening-resolution. There were only so many things, so many small conversations, planners and notebooks filled with names and doctors and mothers to speak to, and alternative nutritionists and cranio-sacral osteopaths and BCBA’s and speech therapists and naturopaths and somatic healers and psychics (my wholesome husband drew the line at that.) And somehow, incredibly, there was no climax. Mendel continued on as he was before, with very little change. We would presume that it must be happening even though it didn’t seem that way, because he was surely exceptional and we would surely be the ones with the happy ending. I would write emails to the therapy team thanking them for “giving me my little boy back”, certain that if I willed it, and sat through more team meetings and inexplicable discrete trials, it would be. But it was not. I learned more, had epiphanies and game plans and wrote lists and played and followed his lead and researched more and more doctors and chemists and psychiatrists and experts of every stripe. And Mendel grew bigger, but his isolated, silent world stayed the same. He never spoke a full unprompted sentence; he wouldn’t call me by name or produce any verbal communication at all.

I was sure it was me. This is the crux of why I could not write about it. What would there be to write: our son had autism, I tried many things but did not do as much as I should/could have done, and I did many, many other things (run a preschool, birth and care for other children, run a Chabad House, run a home, mindlessly scroll Facebook) and this engrossment of mine in anything other than Mendel is surely what caused his lack of any significant progress. Who would ever want to read such a story?

And yet. I think today that perhaps I am worthy, perhaps my story is worth being told, if only because I still try. Not always, and not persistently. But the effort remains alive and I fight to make it, pushing past distraction and complacency and an inability to imagine the light after so many years of dark. Perhaps this is Mendel’s story. What we tried, what we learned, how we love; how we still try, despite many failures, to make it better.

Notwithstanding the general chaos of the month of Tishrei, I love this time of year. I love Fall in NYC and I love the High Holidays. For some people, this is a time of deep introspection and prayer. To be perfectly honest, with my multiple and overlapping responsibilities at home and in my community, that's a luxury I don't usually get much of. I make do with some very concentrated prayers and squeeze all the intention I can into them: "please Gd I need... (looong list)" or "please Gd help me with (looong list)" or just: "G-d, You know what I need, make it all work! Now I gotta run"  and I just pray that my concentrated prayers reach Him. Then it occurred to me that in leaving out much of the formal written prayers, I'm skipping some really important formalities, like, for example, thanking G-d for what I have before asking for more. Sometime in the middle of that night, I made my way through my house, overwhelmed with gratitude for my many blessings, and for the moment, and this poem sort of wrote itself. 

Pre-Dawn Prayer

Thank you G-d for these children
Not even for their shining faces
Just for their breathing
At three a.m.
Twisted in their blankets
In their rooms
(thank you G-d for their rooms)
Asleep, and safe
With parents down the hall- asleep

And baby sister
paused for a brief time between late nights and early morns
Angel-faced, asleep for now

Thank you G-d for now
And always.

A Poem for My Baby Girl

While You Still Fit

To hold you now

While you still fit

in this space between my one shoulder
and the other hip

Straddled here across my heart

In a darkened room

To feel your weight 

Your rounded limbs

small hands clutched onto my back 

And smell your hair 

And touch its silk 

--- And I know, by now

This time will go

I'll find the other joys

I know

But this, just now

To hold you so

Straddled here across my heart 

Feel your baby breath on me

For now you fit

For now you fill

Each corner of my weary soul 

How I will miss this time, I know.

The Son Who Cannot Ask

Well- this was a surprise. Since I'm collecting my writings, I went to Chabad.org to copy an article that I wrote anonymously back in 2009. It was my husband's concept, which I then put into words, then sent it to my dear friend Nechama G who got it published on Chabad.org. We were completely not ready to put ourselves out there and hadn't even shared Mendel's diagnosis with most people who knew us and would only publish it anonymously. Anyway- I'm not sure why I never checked Chabad.org after publishing it (nearly seven years ago!) but turns out there was a raging discussion in the comments section that I was totally unaware of! Interesting perspectives and all of them very valid. One of these days I'll write a piece about the neuro-diversity movement and my opinion on it. For now, I just wrote a comment on the article. I'm copying and pasting the article, as well as the link. 

It's interesting for me to see how my perspective on Mendel has evolved. Subject for another blog post. But I certainly can see, reading this post, how much of my perspective was colored by the ABA approach, which was our initial path, and how much of it shifted later on when we were exposed to the Son Rise method and other paths. 

Here's what I wrote then, in March of 2009, less than a year after Mendel's diagnosis.

The Son Who Cannot Ask

Like the Jews in Egypt, our son is enslaved.

He looks okay, for the most part. Luminous blue eyes with curtain-like lashes and sweet lips set against perfectly rounded cheeks. A charming build, a strong gait, sturdy three-year-old legs.

But he is not okay, and we, his parents, know and live with this every day. He is not okay, because he is enslaved. Like his ancestors, he is in a prison; his is a prison of the mind, perhaps the heart. 

Mendel has autism. At three, his words come stilted and only one at a time, spoken with difficulty only when he really, truly wants something enough to say it. Sometimes, he stands at the periphery and, just for a moment, watches cousins or peers at play. He laughs to himself and seems to want to join, then darts off in the other direction because he can't. You can sometimes catch him eyeing his older sister, whose name he will not say, with something akin to interest. But she will take his hand and try to dance, and he will wrestle free and revert to a solitary puzzle.

But like the Jews in Egypt, we pray for redemption. It is the light at the end of our darkness; the faint dream that pulls us together when we begin to fray. It is possible, and besides, we believe in miracles. The sea can split; our son can talk. His personal exile is deep and real, but there is, always, the possibility of freedom.

An image comes to my mind: Mendel, at two, with a bucket of wooden blocks. Listlessly, he piles them up until the tower falls. He is not perturbed when his sister knocks it over; there is no emotion as, silently, he begins to build again. An evaluator from the State visits and points this out. "He plays with them too often. He doesn't seem to care." I could not see it then, but I do now: Mendel is enslaved, locked in a routine of his own creation, but one that seems to matter little in any sort of real way. And I think of the Jews in Egypt, enslaved in a routine of worthless, meaningless labor, where the work of their hands would crumble, and the bitterness of their troubles made them hard so as not to even care or hear the call of redemption.

Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover, I recall reading somewhere, can be read as two distinct Hebrew words: Peh(mouth) sach (speaks), intimating a redemption on some verbal level. And indeed, commentaries note a juxtaposition in the text chronicling the gradual descent into slavery. "And it came to pass in those many days, the king of Egypt died and the Children of Israel sighed from the bondage and they cried…" They cried then, say the commentators, in the aftermath of Pharaoh's death, in a period of national mourning, because to cry for their plight at any other time was forbidden by their captors, and so they disguised their pain as patriotism and called out to G‑d.

This was the beginning of their exile, an exile so deep it limited even the words they could say, and, as the generations wore on, entrenched until it had enslaved their very souls: the thoughts they could think; the things they could feel.

And I wonder: How to pull one out of such slavery? An entire people, generations of children lost to the memory of freedom—how to move them from suffocating silence to a proud nation, G‑d's chosen? I look at my son and wonder the same thing. 

In Egypt, G‑d sent Moses. Moses, man of G‑d, who humbly bridged the gap between heaven and earth and whose personal struggles and journeys reflected the transformation of his people. 

Moses was a spiritual enigma: a man of Atzilut, says the Kabbalah, referring to the highest of four worlds of spiritual consciousness. Atzilut, from the word etzel, near, describes a world near to G‑d, and distant, in so many ways, from the day-to-day functioning most of us experience. For most of us, living in the world of action, Asiyah, life is a pretty simple eco-system of mind and matter. Our thoughts are grounded; they translate easily into the words and actions that fill our days. We observe the behaviors of our world and act according to its norms. Moses lived in Atzilut, in a world of the mind, nearer to G‑d than to the norms of human life. For this reason, Moses spoke with a stutter. Was he imperfect? Was he shy? On the contrary—his thoughts were of a higher dimension; his reality had little to do with life in this world. He was a man of G‑d speaking to mere men, and the line of communication across such distance inevitably blurs. 

A video clip of the Rebbe, stored in my mind: An anguished man leans in to ask the Rebbe's blessing for his son, who is autistic. The Rebbe offers his blessing, and then adds, surely the fact that an autistic child is disconnected from other people shows that he has an even closer connection to G‑d, and spirituality. And I think about our son: he of the intense gaze, the joy he radiates on the holiday of Simchat Torah, the way he probes a Talmud book larger than him and dances to a soulful Chassidic melody. He is a lofty, beautiful soul but it is not enough for me. He is enslaved.

And so I follow the story of our collective redemption, as our ancestors, led by Moses, travel from darkness and boundaries and limitations to freedom. There's no instant cure for a slavery this deep; it's a process. 

I think of the initial breakthrough, as the Jewish people left Egypt and crossed through a sea that miraculously, majestically, parted for them and revealed a dry path to go forward. That undersea world – always there but never seen or really understood – opened up in a stunning split of the water covering it, revealing incredible treasures and an entire world beneath the surface. And beyond a physical display, a spiritual revelation occurred then—the knowledge of a G‑dly life-force was so clear to see that even a simple maiden, says the Midrash, pointed at G‑d's presence on the banks of the Sea of Reeds and said, "This is my G‑d." 

I can picture the point—it is an expression of that which is clear to the mind, and a still elusive pursuit for my son. He is slowly, painstakingly, learning to point naturally and purposefully, and I wait for the day that he will demonstrate clear understanding with the deliberate direction of a finger. In the trajectory of the redemption, it is the point that seems to pierce through the layers of bondage. We can see G‑dliness; it is so real, we can point to it.

But redemption is a process, I remind myself and require no further proof for this than the Jewish people, mere days after the dramatic events at sea, complaining to return to Egypt. They are still enslaved; their souls still gripped by a deep power. It's a one step forward, two-steps back proposition that is all too familiar. 

We know all about the process. Day in, day out, our son sits in a little classroom at home while other children dance and paint in school. He is learning: to imitate, to repeat, to follow instructions and make neuro-connections that he will perhaps one day make on his own. Each step is carefully noted; what he learns, he must then work to maintain. It is hard, hard work but he is enslaved and we have no choice. We wait for his redemption. I clean the house for Passover, pull out the Haggadahs, vacuum the couch and dream of his redemption. He is here; he is hidden; he is stuck. We will work hard, but only you, G‑d, can pull him out.

I imagine Jethro, venerable father-in-law of Moses, traveling to Sinai on hearing of the giving of the Torah, that grand climax of the exodus from Egypt. What exactly did he hear? asks the Midrash. The answer resonates with me and fills my heart with hope. He heard that Moses had been cured of his stutter, and being a man of deep understanding, Jethro understood this event for what it was: a connection, a link, created between an Atzilut consciousness and Asiyah living. Between the world of the mind and the world of action. A great spirituality finding expression in the functions of life every day. It was redemption, he understood, not just for Moses, but for the hidden spirituality of the Children of Israel, for the great G‑dly spirit that lay enslaved, trapped in an exile that did not allow it expression, nor allow it a voice.

And I think, finally, of the Seder, where we celebrate this redemption by speaking of our freedom, of the great and glorious process that wrought a nation of kings from an enslaved and broken people. Our son will be at the Seder, of course. Of the four sons, this year, he will be the one who knows not how to ask the questions. It is for him that the Haggadah says, "Aht ptach lo"—you shall open his mind and explain to him the depth of the exile from which we were redeemed. It was an exile where the soul and mind were enslaved and had no voice-- an exile that needs no explanation for us. Our son lives in exile every day, and we watch, and work, and pray.

This year, we are enslaved. But next year, perhaps next year, we shall be free.

http://m.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/864958/jewish/The-Son-Who-Cannot-Ask.htm