Cultural context: Chavruta is a style of text study in Jewish spaces where we learn in partners or sometimes small groups. While the texts we study are most commonly from the Talmud, you’ll find source sheets like this with a wide range of traditional and contemporary texts. Read the quotes and argue about them!

 

Shabbat dinner with my queer Jewish family, when the conversations flow loudly over each other in the candlelight, when someone is pacing around the room and someone else is grabbing a book to find a source, and we’re all gesturing and laughing and arguing until it’s time for the morning Sh’ma, is the time I have always felt the least pressure to try to mask.

 

Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following, currently or by history...

3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests)

-American Psychiatric Association. DSM. 5th ed. (Autism Spectrum Disorder)

 

“Even if we were all wise and understanding, all experts in the Torah, we are still obliged to speak of the Exodus from Egypt. The more one expands upon the telling, the more praiseworthy they are.” -Haggadah

 

Six (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted for at least 6 months

a. Often fidgets with or taps hands or feet or squirms in seat.
f. Often talks excessively.
g. Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed (e.g., completes people’s sentences; cannot wait for turn in conversation).

-American Psychiatric Association. DSM. 5th ed. (Attention Deficiet Hyperactivity Disorder)

 

"One of the most striking aspects of high involvement style that I found and analyzed in detail was the use of what I called 'cooperative overlap': a listener talking along with a speaker not in order to interrupt but to show enthusiastic listenership and participation. The concept of overlap versus interruption became one of the cornerstones of my argument that the stereotype of New York Jews as pushy and aggressive is an unfortunate reflection of the effect of high involvement style in conversation with speakers who use a different style."

Deborah Tannen, Gender and Discourse.

 

"The two-way nature of cross-cultural differences typically eludes participants in the throes of conversation. A speaker who stops talking because another has begun is unlikely to think, 'I guess we have different attitudes toward cooperative overlap.' Instead, such a speaker will probably think, 'You are not interested in hearing what I have to say,' or even 'You are a boor who only wants to hear yourself talk.' And the cooperative overlapper is probably concluding, 'You are unfriendly and are making me do all the conversational work here'” -Deborah Tannen, Language and Culture in An Introduction to Language and Linguistics

 

"It is true that autistic people often lack insight about NT perceptions and culture, yet it is equally the case that NT people lack insight into the minds and culture of ‘autistic people...' One could say that many autistic people have indeed gained a greater level of insight into NT society and mores than vice versa, perhaps due to the need to survive and potentially thrive in a NT culture. Conversely, the NT person has no pertinent personal requirement to understand the mind of the ‘autistic person’ unless closely related socially in some way... Differences in neurology may well produce differences in sociality, but not a ‘social deficit’ as compared to an idealised normative view of social reality." -Damian Milton, On the ontological status of autism: The 'double empathy problem'