Layers of Complexity

My very body resisted easy and basic categories. I was female, yet intersex; autistic, yet invisible in classrooms. From the start, I never fit the tick-boxes adults expected. I was assigned male several months after birth because my intersex condition was initially misunderstood, but later medically and halakhically recognised as fully female. At an age when most girls were navigating the ordinary storms of adolescence, I was navigating layers of complexity I could not even name. I did not feel like I belonged in the front of any classroom, so I lingered at the margins, hoping not to be noticed.

Looking back, I see how my invisibility was not just personal but systemic. Schools reward what is loud, obvious, and easy to categorise. The boy who blurts out answers, the girl with flawless handwriting, the charismatic student who knows how to play to the teacher’s approval — they are remembered. Meanwhile the quiet girls in the back row, the autistic students who process differently, the children whose identities are too complex to reduce, are overlooked. Thus, invisibility became my survival strategy.

And yet, Torah itself models something profoundly different. As the Zohar Chadash teaches, “those who are pushed aside (nidachim) stand closest to the Shechinah” (Zohar Chadash, Ruth 88a). If Heaven draws near to those at the margins, how can schools ignore them?

The Hidden Girls

Modern data underscore what Torah intuits. Studies suggest that as many as 80% of autistic girls remain undiagnosed by age 18, largely because they camouflage their differences and because educators misread their silence as shyness. Diagnostic ratios are often cited at 4:1 (boys to girls), yet many researchers believe the true figure is closer to 3:1. These girls — thoughtful, inward, struggling quietly — are the ones most likely to be left behind in classrooms that prize the obvious and the loud.

In my case, the road to diagnosis was especially long. Although I was dressed as a boy, my autism presented in ways more commonly seen in girls: quiet masking, emotional sensitivity, deep internal processing. I did not stim or lash out as often as autistic boys. I disappeared. Teachers did not know what to make of me. And because my autism did not neatly match the male-typical patterns they were trained to recognise, they saw only a “strange little boy” instead of a neurodivergent little girl.

Autism was missed not because it was absent, but because it was wrapped in too many layers for anyone to notice. And when people did see my difference, they reached for the wrong explanations. My own silence was read as emptiness when in fact it was full. I had thoughts I could not yet name, questions without language, and feelings too complicated for the neat binaries adults expected. I was female, yet intersex; autistic, yet articulate in ways that did not fit school rubrics. My quiet was not absence but overflow.

The Torah’s Truth

Torah does not erase complexity. It confronts it. Consider the agunah, the woman chained to a marriage when her husband refuses a get. For generations, poskim have poured over halakhic detail not to erase her pain but to honour it — to find halakhic pathways where none seem to exist. Consider the ger, who does not fit seamlessly into inherited categories but is embraced nonetheless with dignity and obligation. These are not treated as embarrassments or mistakes but as realities with which halakha must wrestle.

Even in my own life, I have seen this halakhic courage up close. When questions were raised about whether I was halakhically female, Rabbi Asher Weiss shlit”a reviewed my case with care and sensitivity. After studying the detailed medical opinion of Rabbi Dr. Avraham Steinberg shlit”a — a senior posek and physician — Rabbi Asher Weiss shlit”a affirmed without hesitation: “Geveret Talia Avrahami hi ishah lechol davar” — “Mrs. Talia Avrahami is a woman in every respect.” Thus, what seemed like ambiguity became clarity through halakha. That is not merely a biological statement, but a halakhic recognition — one that dignifies bodily ambiguity with spiritual clarity. It was a psak rooted not in ideology, but in cheshbon: in meticulous, compassionate halakhic reasoning.

It was, in the truest sense, a detransition — a complex return to the reality of being a woman. As a female, it was the only reality Hashem ever meant for me, untouched by the passing fads of our time. As Rabbi Hershel Schachter shlit”a has written, “halakha is not embarrassed by complexity; it is embarrassed only by indifference.” Those words have always stayed with me — and when gedolim of our time apply them in practice, recognising with halakhic clarity who I am, I feel honoured and blessed beyond measure. Even if wider communities take longer to align, the Torah world’s leaders have already shown the way.

And this, too, reminds us that Torah has never fit neatly into the binaries with which the modern West likes to work. It is not “left” or “right,” not “progressive” or “conservative.” A halakhic system that obligates both fierce commitment to tradition and deep compassion for the vulnerable cannot be reduced to the talking points of American, British, or Israeli politics. When secular frameworks demand purity tests, Torah insists on nuance. Thus, nuance is not weakness but strength — a recognition that real human lives are rarely simple, and that faith must walk with complexity rather than deny it.

Sarah Schenirer’s Revolution

I think often of Sarah Schenirer a”h. In Kraków, she looked at Jewish girls who were invisible to the educational structures of their day and saw possibility. Where others saw silence, she built a movement that became Bais Yaakov. She transformed invisibility into voice, not by erasing difference but by dignifying it. Her revolution was not a rejection of tradition but a revolution in the name of tradition. She insisted that Torah itself demanded space for girls to learn, to question, to belong. That paradox — revolutionary in form, yet deeply traditional in essence — has always spoken to me.

As Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis a”h taught: “Hashem does not create junk. If you are here, it is because Hashem deemed the world incomplete without your presence” (The Committed Life). That truth — simple, powerful, and holy — was the foundation of the mission of Sarah Schenirer a”h. It is also the truth that every quiet girl, every child navigating silence and difference, deserves to hear.

It reminds me that invisibility in education is never inevitable. It is a failure of imagination — and perhaps even a neglect of our mesorah. If Torah could inspire a woman in interwar Poland to upend a system, it can surely inspire us to create classrooms that see the autistic girl in the back row, the intersex child navigating silence, the student who does not fit neat categories.

The Gap Between Chinuch and Compassion

Torah texts teach that Hashem draws close to the outcast. Our tradition places the nidachim — those pushed to the side — nearest to the Shechinah (Zohar Chadash, Ruth 88a). And in the halls of Torah, from Chazal to contemporary poskim, we see a sacred commitment to recognise and uplift those whom others overlook.

Yet in the classrooms I grew up in, that same sensitivity was often missing. My teachers meant well, but too often failed to draw close at all. Today, we speak about “differentiated instruction” and “inclusive classrooms,” but research shows that these are honoured more in theory than in practice. Teachers are pressed for time, under-trained, and under-supported. As a result, inclusion too often becomes a slogan rather than a reality.

As Rebbetzin Dr. Malka Schaps has unravelled through her teaching, mathematics is about uncovering hidden structures beneath what at first looks chaotic. That image is a reminder for chinuch in general as well: the quiet student, the autistic girl, the intersex child — all carry depth that may not be obvious, but is no less real. The task of the teacher is to discern those hidden structures and bring them to light.

Rabbi Asher Weiss shlit”a constantly reminds us that every person, no matter their struggle or limitation, remains a bearer of tzelem Elokim. That is not a poetic flourish — it is a halakhic demand. If every student carries divine image, then every student must be seen, taught, and honoured as such. And if Torah refuses to fit the easy labels of political parties, then our classrooms, too, must resist simplistic labels for children.

A Call to Educators — and Beyond

This is not simply a memoir; it is a call. Teachers, principals, schools: transform inclusion from catchphrase into commitment. Train staff to see difference, not as inconvenience but as divine variety. Provide support that recognises not only the child who speaks loudly, but also the child whose silence overflows with thought.

I say this not only as a student once left behind, but as a morah myself. I have been in classrooms on both sides of the desk. I know the challenges teachers face — and I know that Torah offers a better way. As Shulem Lemmer sings so movingly in This Is We: “I am brave, I am free… This is WE.” Let those words echo in our hearts and in our classrooms.

Thus, if Torah honours the ones pushed to the margins, our schools — and our communities — must do no less. Let our classrooms reflect the nuance of our halakha. Let our shuls honour the image of Hashem in every person. And let our leaders — educators and rabbonim alike — learn to see those whose lives refuse easy categories. Torah has the tools to guide us through complexity. All that remains is for us to use them.