“Eilu v’Eilu Divrei Elokim Chayim” — “These and those are the words of the Living G-d.”
—Talmud, Eruvin 13b

As a clinician, licensed social worker, Orthodox Jewish woman, and disabled professional, I live in a world where two seemingly contradictory truths must often coexist—sometimes uneasily.

I can be highly educated and permanently disabled.
I can be a deeply competent, effective therapist, and unable to drive.
I can carry the strength of generations and still feel profoundly unseen.

In prior roles, I disclosed my disability and how it shapes my scheduling needs. Recently, following colleagues’ advice, I submitted cover letters to agencies emphasizing my clinical strengths and commitment to trauma-informed care, along with my need for remote accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to a non-visible, permanent disability that prevents me from driving.

Initial responses were often enthusiastic. But then came the phone call:

“When can you come in to work in person?”
“As I mentioned in my cover letter, I don’t drive due to my disability.”
“But you’re a therapist — how can you not drive?”

This disbelief was not merely logistical. It revealed a deeper struggle to understand duality: how strength and limitation, visibility and invisibility, capacity and need can coexist in one person.

Psychology & Duality

In psychology, dialectics—the foundation of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) — teaches us that two opposing realities can be true simultaneously. We can accept ourselves and still desire growth. We can be effective and still need support.

We teach this to our clients every day. Yet society often fails to extend the same grace to its professionals.

Ableism thrives on binary thinking: you’re either “disabled” or “functional.” But disability is complex, dynamic, and often invisible, and it does not define the whole person. My disability does not diminish my empathy or clinical insight; if anything, it deepens them.

Sociology & Stigma

Disability often intersects with other identities to create double marginalization. As a visibly Orthodox Jewish woman, I am frequently judged before I even speak. Layered onto that is skepticism about my disability, forcing me to prove my worth in ways my non-disabled peers never must.

Disability often intersects with other identities to create double marginalization. As a visibly Orthodox Jewish woman, I am frequently judged before I even speak. Layered onto that is skepticism about my disability, forcing me to prove my worth in ways my non-disabled peers never must.

Erving Goffman described this as the “spoiled identity”—a stigma requiring constant impression management to fit into normative structures. Despite my credentials and experience, I face this challenge daily.

Anthropology & Culture

American professional culture idealizes the endlessly mobile, tireless, always-available provider—a modern myth of invulnerability. This clashes with the essence of healing: empathy, relationship, and humanity.

In contrast, many Indigenous and Eastern cultures honored disabled elders and healers as sources of wisdom, valuing lived experience rather than viewing disability as diminished capacity. Why has modern society lost this perspective?

Historical Memory & Jewish Legacy

History reminds us of great thinkers and leaders who lived with disabilities, often in silence:

• Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi compiled the Mishnah while enduring chronic pain.
• Helen Keller, deaf and blind from childhood, became a pioneering advocate and author.
• Temple Grandin, living with autism, revolutionized animal science through her unique perspective.
• Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, zt”l, a renowned Hasidic rabbi, psychiatrist, and addiction specialist, openly spoke about his struggles with self-esteem and his experiences working with addicts, turning his personal challenges into a lifelong mission of healing and teaching. His legacy reminds us that vulnerability and leadership can powerfully coexist.
• Within the Jewish community, Chava Willig Levy, a wheelchair user and writer, challenges communal assumptions about disability, marriage, and faith.

History reminds us of great thinkers and leaders who lived with disabilities, often in silence.

Their legacies endure not despite limitations but through them. Their disabilities did not disqualify them from leadership—they simply required accommodation and imagination.

Torah & Truth

Duality is woven into creation itself: “And there was evening, and there was morning…” (Bereishit 1:5). Light and darkness, joy and sorrow, strength and fragility are not opposites but partners in the human experience.

Moshe Rabbeinu, Judaism’s greatest leader, had a speech impediment and pleaded for relief. Hashem’s response was not to remove the limitation but to provide support: “Aharon, your brother… shall speak for you.” (Shemot 4:14–16) Leadership is not about perfection—it is about purpose.

The Torah commands: “Do not place a stumbling block before the blind.” (Vayikra 19:14) Our sages interpret this broadly: to avoid creating unnecessary barriers that hinder those already capable.

We ask our clients to accept complexity; now we must ask the same of our institutions.

Remote work, accessible supervision, and respect for disabilities—visible and invisible—are not acts of kindness. They are inalienable rights.

In a mental health landscape facing critical shortages, the solution is not to be gatekeepers based on outdated assumptions about who “looks like” a therapist or who can drive a car.

The solution is to embrace duality: to make space for clinicians who carry brilliance and brokenness, skill and struggle.

We are not anomalies—we are models of resilience, quietly showing that wholeness does not erase limits; it integrates them with dignity.

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Ariel Rose Goldstein, LSW, LMSW, is a licensed trauma therapist and writer who integrates Jewish values with mental health and disability advocacy. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and is expecting their first child in early fall.

Recently, a group of rabbis published an open letter in the Times of Israel defending New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and his run for city mayor. They claim that he represents “Jewish values” of justice and compassion and suggest that opposition to him stems from fear or ignorance.

They’re wrong, and dangerously so.

This isn’t about abstract disagreements over Israeli policy. It’s about Jewish safety, communal integrity, and the responsibility to stand with your own when it matters most. These rabbis have misunderstood the stakes, and in doing so, they’ve made a harmful mistake.

To begin with, Mamdani has repeatedly refused to disavow the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” a rallying cry with deep roots in violence against Jews in Israel and around the world. The phrase has been shouted at rallies across the U.S. and openly embraced by anti-Israel extremists. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum rightly called it “outrageous” and “deeply offensive to Holocaust survivors.” It does not signal a call for justice. Rather, it glorifies violent uprisings and echoes a long history of terror, not peace.

And yet, Mamdani refuses to say it’s wrong; he has said that they are not his words, but he nevertheless cannot bring himself to condemn the phrase, its users, and its deadly meaning.

That’s not justice. That’s moral evasion. And the rabbis who defend him should know better.

What makes this support even more baffling is that Mamdani is still a political newcomer. He has barely any legislative record to evaluate. He hasn’t passed meaningful legislation. He hasn’t built a long-term track record of cross-community work. His time in office has been short, and his resume, thin. When someone hasn’t truly worked and has no examples of communal cross aisle success, it’s hard to claim they’re someone you can work with.

And so we look to what he has produced: a trail of statements, interviews, and public appearances that make his position toward Israel and toward Jews painfully clear. From championing BDS, to embracing slogans tied to antisemitic violence, to voting against recognizing Holocaust memory, his rhetoric and conduct speak louder than any policy memo.

Words matter—especially when they are all someone has to show.

The rabbis backing Mamdani argue that he listens to Jews, builds relationships, and is open to dialogue. That may be true. But it misses the more important point. Having a few Zoom calls or town halls with rabbis doesn’t make you an ally. Being in conversation doesn’t mean you’re protecting the community. These rabbis are mistaking proximity for protection and confusing their own access with actual safety.

This isn’t about whether Mamdani is personally polite to some Jews. It’s about his refusal to clearly denounce calls for violence and his repeated choices to undermine Jewish dignity in public life. Intentions aren’t enough. Policies and actions matter more.

Intentions aren’t enough. Policies and actions matter more.

Even more troubling is the rabbis’ implicit suggestion that their clerical status grants them moral authority over the rest of the community. That’s not just arrogant; it’s a betrayal of Jewish tradition itself.

As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote: “Judaism is a conversation scored for many voices.” No one—not even a group of progressive rabbis—has a monopoly on truth. Rabbinic titles don’t override the lived experience, political instincts, or safety concerns of Jews across the spectrum. The letter isn’t just a defense of Mamdani. It’s an assertion of ideological power and a top-down attempt to dictate what “authentic” Jewish values are, as if dissent from their worldview is illegitimate or small-minded forcing these rabbis to be “enraged.”

But Jewish life has never worked that way. Our tradition prizes machloket l’shem shamayim—argument for the sake of heaven. It thrives on moral complexity, not clerical consensus.

One of the most revealing lines in the rabbis’ letter is this: “Being part of this movement and this win matters. It reminds us what it feels like to be in the majority.” But they are not the majority. And they know it.

National data repeatedly shows that the positions Mamdani champions—support for BDS, demonization of Israel, refusal to condemn antisemitic slogans—are deeply unpopular with most Americans. According to the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll and recent Pew research, support for Israel remains strong across much of the country, while far-left calls to dismantle it remain fringe.

These rabbis are deliberately distorting reality and projecting their ideological bubble as if it reflects the broader Jewish or American consensus. It doesn’t. Pretending it does isn’t just dishonest. It’s dangerous.

What’s striking is how out of step these rabbis are with the broader Jewish community. Concern over Mamdani’s record has come from across the spectrum: Orthodox rabbis, mainstream institutions, Holocaust educators, and civic leaders alike. This isn’t a fringe panic. It’s a clear and measured red flag.

The rabbis try to shield their stance by invoking Rep. Jerry Nadler, who also refused to condemn Mamdani. But Nadler’s silence says more about the politics of appeasement than it does about moral clarity. It’s deeply disappointing to see a senior Jewish lawmaker, along with these rabbis, sidestep the obvious in a moment that demands firmness.

To dismiss this widespread concern as political paranoia is deeply patronizing. Jews know when a movement or public figure is hostile to them whether that hostility is loud or coded, explicit or artfully vague. Backing Mamdani might feel morally elevated to some. But it sends the wrong message: that Jewish safety must always come second to progressive acceptance and that Jews are only welcome when they stay quiet.

That’s not tikkun olam. That’s capitulation.

Rabbis have a sacred duty to defend their communities, not just align with the fashionable politics of the moment. Their defense of Mamdani reflects a fundamental misreading of Jewish history, Jewish vulnerability, and Jewish obligation. You don’t need to be a rabbi to see what’s happening. Mamdani has no track record of support for the Jewish community and his refusal to denounce antisemitic rhetoric speaks volumes. No amount of rabbinic framing can alter these truths.

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Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.