With a Bit of a Mind Flip: Time, Neurodivergence, and the Bavli

• In Event: Negotiating Disability within Jewish Tradition: Interpretations, Rabbinic Discourses, and the Modern Religious Self

Abstract

Much scholarly attention has been given to the formal features of rabbinic literature (e.g. Handleman 1982; Boyarin 2009; Weiss 2017), some of which explores the possible ethical implications of these formal characteristics (e.g. Filler, 2013; Epstein-Levi, 2018). There is also an important body of work on rabbinic text’s potential resonances with divergent or even deviant forms of embodiment (e.g. Boyarin 1993, 1997; Belser, 2018), and, recently, a turn towards the study of time in rabbinic texts (Kaye 2018, Gribetz, 2020). I argue, bringing these bodies of work into dialogue with concepts of “queer time,” “crip time,” and “neuro-queer-crip time,” (Halberstam, 2005, Kafer, 2013, Yergeau, 2018) that rabbinic texts have deep formal affinities with thought patterns characteristic of neurodivergences such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, dyslexia, and Tourette’s syndrome, and that one key site of affinity is these texts’ relationship with time.
Using passages from the sugya beginning at B. Berakhot 30B and ending at Berakhot 32A as case studies, I examine some of the key mechanics and logics of the text’s navigation of time (such as facilitating dialogue between figures centuries apart, rabbinizing biblical figures). I also examine the ways this text understands the relationships between time and affect in its treatment of the proper mental state for engaging in prayer. I then explore these features’ resonance with neurodivergent experiences of time and the ways these experiences, like the text itself, can “teleport across time scales and spaces.” (Yergeau, 2018). Finally, drawing on Gribetz’s work on the role of time in the development and differentiation (2020) of rabbinic identity, I consider what these affinities can teach us about the moral value of divergent relationships with time, especially in light of the role time—and whether one is doing it “right”—plays in both anti-Jewish polemic and neuroableist discourse.

Author

• Rebecca Epstein-Levi, Vanderbilt University