I often feel that I don’t fit in anywhere. I know that’s a common feeling with posters here. People only feel comfortable around “neurokin.” However, I’ve never really felt that inherent connection with other autistic people. Partly it might just be me. I have often wondered if not fitting in has become so much a part of my personality that I unconsciously stop myself fitting in anywhere. That may be true. But I feel a lot of it is being Jewish, indeed an Orthodox Jew. It feels like I have two different identities. We live in an era of multiple, overlapping identities, but I feel like I have two identities that make me massively different to “normal” people, two identities that completely shape my sense of self and my outlook on the world, two identities that summon me to an inherent connection with others (neurokin/mishpachah (“family” i.e. other Jews).
The problem is, I feel torn. I can’t leave behind either identity and I wouldn’t want to leave behind Judaism (I’m honestly not sure about autism), but I feel like among other Orthodox Jews, I feel different because I’m autistic, and among other autistic people I feel different because I’m Jewish. And it’s hard to tell which identity is more stigmatised and misunderstood among outsides, autism or Judaism. (I should probably clarify that Jewish identity is multi-stranded. A person can be ethnically and culturally Jewish without being religiously Jewish, and, more rarely, vice versa. I happen to be all three, ethnically, culturally and religiously Jewish.)
Religious Orthodox Jewish identity brings with it for me so many different thoughts, beliefs, practices, insights, viewpoints, that I struggle sometimes to find common ground with people who aren’t frum (religiously Jewish). It’s not deliberate, we just view the world and live our lives very differently and it can be hard to find common ground.
That said, I have always had non-Jewish and Jewish-but-non-religious friends, so I guess the empirical evidence is that I can bridge the cultural gap in a way that most frum Jews are not willing or able to do (most Orthodox Jews socialise mainly if not entirely with other Orthodox Jews).
I’m just so lucky to have found my wife. She’s the only person who gets me 100%, or near enough (I don’t think anyone can know someone else 100%). She is Jewish, but she’s actually not as religious as I am, although she is interested in becoming more religious with me. But she’s Jewish AND geeky AND, while she doesn’t have a diagnosis, we suspect she might be autistic. And she just accepts me for who I am and lets me be me. She hits my “intersectionality” as well as anyone could, although it’s interesting that she isn’t as observant as me; I guess I feel that there really must be very few of us like that. I suspect a lot of autistic people raised frum stop being religious because being autistic in the frum world is so hard, practically and socially. Others probably go undiagnosed due to social stigma and the fact that the Orthodox community tends to lag somewhat behind the secular Western world in terms of social trends, so we may see awareness and diagnosis suddenly rise in ten to twenty years’ time.
I feel like I ought to do something to reach out to other frum autistic Jews, but I don’t know what. I’m on a couple of Facebook groups for autistic Jews (not just religious ones), but they’re pretty quiet. It really feels like there aren't many people like me out there.
