Mishneh Ha-Briyyot: A New Jewish Approach to Disabilities

by Rabbi Elliot Dorff

I want to suggest a virtual Copernican revolution in how the Jewish tradition, and Jews along with it, should understand and treat disabilities. In order to describe this new view, I need first to summarize what the Jewish tradition has said in the past.

A Summary of the Tradition’s Treatment of Disabilities

I think it is fair to say from the very start that traditional Judaism’s approach to disability is remarkably enlightened and compassionate, especially when compared to the treatment disabled people got in other cultures. Before we get to the specific legal aspects of this, note that almost all of the biblical heroes were disabled in some way. Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Hannah are all barren for some time in their lives,1 Isaac and Jacob suffer from blindness in their old age,2 Jacob was lame for much of his life,3 and even the greatest biblical hero, Moses, suffered from a speech impediment.4 Similarly, a number of talmudic rabbis were disabled; for example, Nahum of Gimzo, Dosa ben Harkinas, Rav Joseph, and Rav Sheshet were all blind.5 The more “manly” biblical models – Esau, Gideon, Samson, and even David – are all portrayed as flawed in character. In contrast, the heroes of Greek and Roman culture were all physically perfect -- even extraordinary. American secular culture applauds those who overcome disabilities, along with those who triumph over any obstacles, and some popular movies, like Philadelphia, and some country songs, like Mark Wills’ “Don’t Laugh at Me,” warn us not to ignore or denigrate the homeless or ill, but very few, if any, commercials depict disabled people or even old people because Americans honor youth and ability. That is why Franklin Delano Roosevelt insisted on hiding his wheelchair in the last years of his presidency. Thus the fact that so many of the biblical and rabbinic heroes were disabled in various ways speaks volumes about how our tradition from its very beginnings thought of this group of people: in contrast to the Greek, Roman, and American cultures, in Jewish sources the disabled were to be construed like everyone else, and they were often leaders.

This stems from some deep Jewish convictions. For the Jewish tradition, we are all created in the image of God,6 and, as such, we have divine worth independent of whatever we do. That does not mean that we may do whatever we want; quite the contrary, God gives us 613 commandments, and the Rabbis add many more. Moreover, the fact that each person is created in the image of God does not mean that we have to like everyone or what everyone does. It does mean, though, that even when we judge a person harshly for his or her actions, we must still recognize the divine worth inherent in that person. The extreme illustration of that is that the Torah demands that “If a man is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale him on a stake, you must not let his corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury him the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God”7 – literally, “a curse of God.” That is, the image of God inherent in even such a person must be honored. How much the more so must we honor the image of God in those who have not committed heinous crimes but happen to be disabled in some way.

The Jewish tradition is remarkable not only in how it thought about the disabled, but in the actions it demanded with and for them. In Greek and Roman cultures, “imperfect” infants were put out to die, and disabled adults were left to fend for themselves and often mocked to boot. In Jewish culture, in contrast, killing an infant for any reason constitutes murder,8 and the Torah specifically prohibits cursing the deaf or putting a stumbling block before the blind.9

As Jews, we dare not forget these fundamental features of our tradition’s thought and practice. On the contrary, given how other cultures treated the disabled, we should take pride in the fundamental humanity embedded in our own tradition.

With this as a background, though, it is also important that we acknowledge that Jewish sources did put the disabled at some disadvantage. This especially affected the Temple and the biblical concept of the holy. Specifically, while disabled men born into the priestly class were not denied their part of the priestly portions, they were not allowed to serve in the Temple and were instead put to menial work such as cleaning the kindling wood from worms, for which a special area was set aside: “No one at all who has a defect shall be qualified [to offer a sacrifice], no man who is blind, or lame, or has a limb too short or too long; no man who has a broken leg or a broken arm; or he who is hunchback, or a dwarf, or who has a growth in his eye, or who has a boil-scar, or scurvy, or crushed testes.”10 Maimonides explains the exclusion on the grounds that “most people do not estimate a person by his true form, but by his limbs and his clothing, and the Temple was to be held in great reverence by all.”11 Somehow, for the Torah and Maimonides, one could be disabled and still function as the people’s political leader, but one could not serve in the sacred precincts of the Temple. One verse in Deuteronomy even says that a man who has crushed testes or a severed penis “may not enter the congregation of the Lord”; it is not clear whether that only refers to a man who voluntarily maimed himself that way in service of some Canaanite god, or whether it refers to any man in that condition, and we also do not know the meaning or implications of “not entering the congregation of the Lord,”12 but it clearly constitutes an exclusion of such men from normal status.

Now, as we turn from ancient rites to Jewish law now in practice, I shall summarize the various categories of disability and how the Rabbis treated them. In all fairness, by and large the Rabbis limited any legal restrictions on the disabled to the specific tasks the disability prevented them from doing, seeing such people otherwise as full-fledged Jews. That is, the Rabbis did not dismiss the disabled categorically from Jewish responsibilities and roles; they instead sought to empower them as much as possible. Still, Rabbinic law does impose some limitations on them in both ritual and civil law.

The disabilities the Rabbis discuss are the following: one who is insane or sufficiently mentally retarded to lack the mental ability to be held legally responsible (shoteh); blind (suma); epileptic (nikhpeh); sexually neuter (tumtum) or hermaphrodite (androgenus); or sterile (saris for a male; aylonit for a female). In addition, they speak about a heresh, a term the Mishnah defines as someone who is both deaf and mute, but the Talmud defines heresh as someone who is deaf but not mute, ileim being used to describe a mute.13 That ambiguity will affect later rulings about that category.

Here, then, are some of the rulings regarding the disabled in Jewish ritual law:

Blind people should say the blessing before the Shema that praises God for creating light because even though they cannot see the light of day, they benefit from it because others see them and keep them from accidents.14
Similarly, even though the third paragraph of the Shema (Numbers 15:39) commands us to wear fringes so that we may see them and thereby remember God’s commandments, blind people are obligated to wear fringes because others can see them.15
Along the same lines, even though the Shema begins with “Hear O Israel,” a deaf person, who by definition cannot hear either the command or his or her own voice saying the prayer, can nevertheless fulfill the commandment of reciting the Shema because others can hear him or her saying the prayer.16
Since the Torah must be read and not recited by heart, blind people may not serve as the Torah reader, but they may be called up to recite the blessings over the Torah and they may read the Haftarah from a Braille text or even recite it by heart.17 A deaf person may read from the Torah as well as recite the blessings over it.18
A blind person may lead the congregation in prayer because blindness does not free a Jew from the duty to pray and, contrary to reading the Torah, one may pray by heart.19
A heresh (probably here a deaf-mute) cannot fulfill the obligation of the community to hear the Purim megillah read because such a person cannot speak audibly.20
Despite some arguments to the contrary, a blind person is obligated to recite the Haggadah of Passover, as two great, blind talmudic scholars, Rav Sheshet and Rav Joseph, did.21
A blind person may not serve as a kosher slaughterer, for one must see clearly to cut firmly and quickly to minimize the animal’s pain. A deaf-mute or even a shoteh, however, may serve in this capacity if they are supervised by a person who knows how to do this and who attests that the slaughter fulfilled the requirements of Jewish law.22
Finally, a heresh, shoteh, and a minor are not obligated to hear the shofar blown on Rosh Hashanah and therefore are not eligible to fulfill the commandment for others if they blow the shofar. The later codes specify that this applies only to a deaf person, but a hearing person, even if mute, is obliged to hear the shofar blown and therefore can fulfill the commandment for others.23 This is a good example of a general tendency embedded in all of these Jewish ritual laws and in Jewish civil law as well – namely, that the Rabbis restricted a disabled person’s duties and eligibility only to those areas affected by the disability.

Now let us look at a few of Jewish civil laws related to the disabled. In general, deaf-mutes were categorized together with insane people and minors because the Rabbis had no way of knowing whether deaf-mutes understood what was happening or not; as a result, deaf-mutes, like minors and the insane, were not given much legal status. The blind and the crippled, on the other hand, were presumed to have full legal competence, except in areas that required someone to see or to walk. In other words, Jewish law worried most about legal competence (what American lawyers call “mens rea”), and that was much more likely to be compromised by mental, rather than physical, disabilities.

Here, then, are some examples, of Jewish civil laws relating to the disabled:

An insane person and a minor who does not realize the value of an object cannot acquire title for themselves or for others; only an agent of sound mind (such as a parent) can acquire title for them. A deaf-mute and a minor who can understand an object’s value, however, can acquire title for themselves, although not for others.24
Because inheritance to and from blood relatives requires no legal transfer of property but rather occurs automatically at death, both an insane person and a deaf-mute can make bequests and receive them. In both cases, though, a trustee or guardian must be appointed to look after their affairs.25
An insane person cannot buy or sell property, but a deaf-mute and even a minor can buy or sell movable property (but not real estate) in order to sustain themselves.26 Special care had to be taken, though, to assure that the witnesses to the sale correctly understood the gestures made by the deaf-mute to indicate an intention to buy or sell.27 Someone who was mute but not deaf, however, could effect an acquisition or sale even of real estate.28 Someone who sometimes was of sound mind and sometimes not, such as an epileptic, has full ability to buy or sell both movable property and real estate while of sound mind, but the witnesses must take steps to ensure that that is indeed the case during the transaction.29
Even though there were restrictions on the ability of deaf-mutes, insane people, and minors to acquire property, someone who took away anything such people found had committed theft.30
Insane people were not held liable at law, and if the situation required it, a guardian was appointed to protect the interests of both the insane person and those who might suffer as a result of his or her legal immunity.
An insane person may never serve as a witness, and even a sane person who is confused about a given matter may not serve as a witness about that matter. Those who are sometimes sane and sometimes insane must be tested to ascertain their eligibility as a witness.31 The deaf and mute were also excluded from most testimony because the Rabbis, interpreting Leviticus 5:1, determined that one must be able not only to hear, but to speak in order to testify.32 The deaf and mute could, however, testify to free a woman from becoming chained to her first husband and thus unable to remarry (an agunah).33 The Torah’s verse requiring that witnesses see what happened also excluded the blind from testifying, even if they recognize the voices of the parties.34 Moreover, since these disabilities barred a person from serving as a witness, they also excluded them from being eligible to serve as a judge.35
An insane person could not marry because such a person could not legally consent, but a deaf-mute could.36 Sterile people could marry as long as both parties were aware of that fact at the time of marriage, but otherwise the marriage was void. Someone who exhibits no sexual characteristics (a tumtum) could marry either a woman or a man, although the marriage had doubtful status. A hermaphrodite (adrogenus) may marry a woman but not a man because the Rabbis considered such a person male.37
Finally, and perhaps most indicatively, just as a person who disgraces an able-bodied person must compensate the victim with money as well as seek forgiveness, so too anyone who demeans a disabled person must pay such damages. Only an insane person is not paid for this, according to the Talmud, because being insane, in the Rabbis’ judgment, already constituted a disgrace second to none.38 That last provision may disturb us, but what is remarkable is that Jews were forbidden to embarrass all other categories of disabled people and had to pay damages if they did.

My Copernican Revolution

Dayyenu, that is enough to give you a good sense of the tradition’s treatment of disabilities. It is not a perfect picture; there are parts of the story and the law that we might wish were different. Those who would like to see changes in Jewish attitudes toward the disabled or the laws governing them base their arguments on the immense changes that have taken place in recent times in technology and medicine, enabling even paraplegics to get around, the deaf to communicate through sign language, and the blind to read texts translated into Braille. Psychotherapy and drug therapies have made good progress in relieving a variety of psychological disorders. Obviously, such disabilities often still compromise a person’s competence to do some things, but, many maintain, the advances in what the disabled can do should move us to change Jewish law in a number of particulars. I completely agree with such moves, and I think that they are completely in line with the Rabbis’ careful analysis of identifying exactly what people suffering from a particular disability can and cannot do.

In this paper, though, I want to try a completely different approach. I call it “a Copernican revolution” because like Copernicus, who got us to think of the Earth as going around the sun rather than the other way around, I similarly want to prod us to think of the world from the vantage point of the disabled. That is, I want to suggest that we think of a world in which the norm is what we now call “disabled,” and we able-bodied and sane people are the abnormal ones. What would – or should – Jewish perspectives and law look like then?

This project of mine may seem a little crazy to you, and so before I go any further with it, I would like to point out two things that might make it seem considerably more reasonable. First, the idea struck me because of what a disabled person told me long ago – namely, that from the point of view of the disabled, all the rest of us are “temporarily abled”! How do you like that description of yourself? But we all know, of course, that they are right: Even Olympic athletes will, in the course of life, most likely lose at least some of their vision and hearing, and even the most nimble and those who exercise regularly will not escape the slowing down and the aches and pains that age inevitably brings. We nervously joke about it, but even our mental processes may dull; you do not have to have full-blown Alzheimer’s to become increasingly forgetful -- and yes, often more crotchety -- as time goes on. As my wife, Marlynn, told me, the first time she heard about disabilities was at a conference of the Bureau of Jewish Education in Los Angeles in 1971, when a young woman who was wheelchair-bound told the assembled teachers: “Don’t care about the disabled out of sympathy. Care for them for your own selfish reasons, for you too will be like me some day.” My intention is not to depress you; it is only to point out that it is not so far-fetched to think of everyone as disabled, especially as the American and Jewish populations age.

Second, one is not just abled or disabled; there are degrees of disability. I, for example, have worn glasses since I was 17, and it was also during that year that I had my first asthma attack. Ever since then I have lived with these disabilities. The asthma, in particular, prevents me from engaging in fast sports. In my younger days, when the test of a male’s masculinity was all-too-often connected with his athletic abilities, and when asthma medications were much less helpful than they are now, that particular malady took quite a toll on my psychological well-being and my social standing. I mention these things not to seek your sympathy, but just to indicate that each one of us is disabled in some ways -- physical, mental, interpersonal, or all of the above -- and even if we learn to cope with these problems, they do change our image of ourselves and what we can do. So all of us who think of ourselves as able-bodied should not have too much difficulty picturing ourselves as at least partially disabled.

In such a world, then, in which the norm is being disabled and the unusual thing is to have full control of one’s physical and mental faculties and full ability to interact socially with people without any psychological problems whatsoever, how would we want Judaism to treat disabilities? I guarantee you that our whole attitude would change. Instead of thinking about humane treatment for the disabled as being motivated by our own compassion or God’s commandment, we would see it as simply caring for ourselves – much as we see any of the services that we Americans expect the government or others to provide for us.

With that as the norm, wheelchair access, for example, would not be a new and sensitive thing; it would be what we just normally assume. “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” lights at intersections would naturally have ticking sounds so that the blind would not have to depend on the sighted or what traffic they hear to know when to cross. As many college classrooms are now equipped with internet access, so too they would have facilities for Braille transcriptions of materials being discussed in class, and they would be routinely staffed by people who sign for the deaf. The same would be true for business meetings, court proceedings, and the like. Even private homes would be easily accessible for people in wheelchairs and would be arranged to ensure that the blind would have an easy time finding their way without tripping.

As the objects of society -- the nouns -- would change, so too would daily activities -- the verbs, so to speak. That is, daily activities and special events, including trips, would be planned assuming that most people are disabled in some way. So, for example, there might still be sports for the able-bodied, together with teams and league competition, and there might even be professional sports teams for the able-bodied, but such activities would be seen simply as a subset of the larger social efforts to provide athletic expressions for all of society’s members. Thus, just as there are now professional men’s and women’s basketball teams for the able-bodied, so too there would be professional teams for the blind, deaf, and wheelchair-bound, perhaps differentiated by sex as well. Courses in schools and colleges would be taught in a multi-media way so that people of all kinds of abilities and disabilities could participate. It would be obvious that school districts needed to schedule and pay for classes for autistic children and those with other developmental disabilities, with teachers specially trained for helping such children. Business meetings, court proceedings, and visits to the doctor, the accountant, the barber, and everyone else who provides a service or sells a product would all be easily handled by all people, regardless of their forms and levels of ability or disability. Even those inviting others to their homes would automatically think about not only the activities that they plan, but even how to give directions to get to their home for people of varying abilities and disabilities.

What kind of society would this be? Clearly, our whole way of looking at the world and what we expect of people would change. That would bring with it a number of objective, subjective, and interpersonal innovations.

First, objectively, massive economic and social changes would be entailed in the kind of Copernican revolution I am proposing. As I indicated through only a few examples, both the objects and activities of our lives would have a very different character. Much of that would cost considerable sums of money, and that is a real concern, but, truth to tell, the economic outlays to make this happen would be nothing like the 14% of Gross National Product that we currently spend on cosmetics.

The real difference would be one of attitude. Instead of thinking of ourselves with all kinds of abilities and coping with whatever disabilities we have, and instead of modeling ourselves after people with no apparent disabilities, we would instead think of human beings as coming in all kinds of shapes and sizes, abilities and disabilities.

The Costs and Benefits of Such a Copernican Revolution

While I very much encourage us to entertain my proposal, I must warn you that it entails significant costs. First, in the most literal sense of the word “cost,” my plan, as I indicated above, would require major financial expenditures. There is no getting around that, and it is a major concern. To do anything like what I am proposing would require major outlays of money. We have already tasted that in the costs of complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act, but my proposal would require much more. If anything, American society today seems to be moving in the opposite direction, as we have seen the United States Supreme Court chip away at the ADA’s protections and its costs over the last several years. The current Administration, and American society generally, may not be ready to spend more money on these issues, and that raises real questions about the viability of what I am suggesting.

Even apart from current spending priorities, it must be acknowledged that one important reason why society is structured as it is does not stem from fear of the disabled or prejudice against them, but from the fact that the vast majority of us, for the vast majority of our lives, are, in fact, remarkably abled. We may require glasses, asthma medications, and the like; but God has given most of us bodies that enable us to do many things for many years, and God’s agents in the form of doctors and other mental and physical health care personnel are extending our abilities and their longevity yet further. Thus there is a certain plausibility in treating the abled as the norm and the disabled as the exception, not only in conception, but in creating social policy.

Furthermore – and this really gives me pause – I fear that my proposal may understate the pain involved in being disabled. After it is all said and done, it is harder to cope with life if you are blind and most people are sighted, deaf when most people are hearing, unable to walk when most people can, or unable to learn or interact with people as most people do. This increased difficulty encompasses not only the physical trials of getting around in the world of the abled, but the emotional challenges of feeling a sense of self-worth and the social obstacles of creating friendships. I certainly do not want to minimize those problems in the least; on the contrary, my proposal aims at mitigating them by resetting the default option in society, as it were – that is, by making us think of everyone as disabled in some way. Even less do I want to stand in the way of efforts to develop cures for disabilities or better tools to cope with them; on the contrary, I want to encourage such efforts as much as possible. So my proposal of making the disabled the norm should not be construed as minimizing the pain involved in disabilities or as discouraging efforts to alleviate that pain.

Moreover, to do what I am proposing would require us to do some considerable emotional work in readjusting our American way of thinking and feeling about ourselves. Currently, with the exception of doctors and other mental and physical health care personnel, most of us live in a state of denial for most of our lives about the disabilities that we ourselves will most probably incur at some later date. We do that, in part, by choosing to engage with only able-bodied people in at least the vast majority of our daily activities. We avoid visiting the sick at hospitals, not only because it is a bother and poses a real risk for infection, but also because hospitals remind us of our own vulnerability and even our own mortality, and we do not like to think about that or feel insecure.

In the society that I am proposing, though, very much like the society of our great-grandparents, people will encounter others of all ages of ability and disability on a daily basis; the disabled will not be sequestered into specific institutions for them, but will rather live at home and will regularly study and work with the more able-bodied. That may make some of us today, who are used to being protected from daily reminders of our vulnerability, terribly uncomfortable. Such feelings may pass, however, as we again get used to such a society. In many ways, this is similar to the process by which Jews of my generation gradually accepted women -- and, for that matter, men -- participating in many areas of life where they had never been before. But like the opening of roles in society to people of both genders, so too the opening of society’s spaces and activities to people of all levels and forms of ability and disability will, at least, take some getting used to.

So much for the costs of my proposal. What are its benefits? First of all, making the disabled the norm would make all of us feel better about ourselves, for such a society would be much more accepting of high degrees of disability in the various areas of life. That would not stop a bad baseball player from striving to be a better one, or a person ignorant of science from becoming more adept at it, for we would still try to develop our physical and mental abilities, as we do today.

On the other hand, this social arrangement would help to control our egos, for it would remind us that our human claim to worth is not a function of our abilities. In the Torah, God warns us against claiming that “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me. Remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to get wealth”39 – and, for that matter, to do anything else. We certainly can and should feel proud of our achievements, but seeing the world from the vantage point of the disabled should restore and reconfirm in us a needed sense of humility.

My proposal would also make society as a whole a kinder, gentler, more inclusive place to be. People would not be judged primarily by how much they can do or how beautiful they look; since the norm would be a lack of many abilities, people would be judged primarily by what they do to help others in coping with life. That is, character world have a much greater chance to be the criterion of worth in such a society – and that, I dare say, is a very nice result.

And what about the trappings of Jewish law? The intriguing part of this proposal is that it might prompt us to look with a completely new lens at a number of the details of Jewish law regarding the disabled. As I indicated above, in most cases Jewish law makes every effort to include the disabled as much as their disabilities will permit, and we should be proud of the extent to which ancient Jewish law did just that. Some provisions of Jewish law, though, would become hard to justify if we look at the world from the vantage point where most of us are disabled. For example, if most of us were blind, we certainly would not require the Torah to be read from a scroll that is only accessible to the sighted; we might allow reading from such a scroll, but we would presume that most people would read from a Braille text. Similarly, if most of us were deaf or blind, we certainly would not exclude deaf or blind people from giving testimony to what they did perceive through their functioning senses. Now that we know that mute people are not necessarily or even usually insane, we would treat them at law like everyone else. And we probably would maintain, contrary to the Talmud but very much in line with its reasoning regarding those asleep, that those who insult the insane would be liable for damages because others hearing the disparaging remark would understand it as an insult.40 Thankfully, there are only a few such cases in which Jewish law would need to be changed, but looking at the world through the lens I am suggesting makes those areas that need to be changed crystal clear.

Epilogue

And now, with apologies to you all, I am going to pull what football players know as a “double reverse.” We owe God daily thanks that most of us, for most of our lives, do not suffer from debilitating conditions that make living life hard. Because that is the case, and because we do need to work to ameliorate the difficulties faced by people who suffer from such maladies, the norm will inevitably – and properly – continue to be people with what we have come to expect as normal human abilities.

At the same time, I hope that this thought experiment will motivate us to think much more deeply about disabilities in our society generally, and in Judaism in particular. Only when we walk in the disabled community’s moccasins, at least in our imaginations, aided by what we can learn from what the disabled themselves tell us about what they face, can we begin appropriately to judge how we think about the disabled and how we treat them in society generally and in Jewish life in particular. In the meantime, may our journey into the world of the disabled – and into the upside-down world in which they are the vast majority – make us better, more sensitive people and Jews.

Notes

In the following, M. = Mishnah (edited c. 200 C.E.); T. = Tosefta (also edited c. 200 C.E.); J. = Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud (edited c. 400 C.E.); B. = Babylonian Talmud (edited c. 500 C.E.); M.T. = Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1177 C.E.); and S.A. = Joseph Karo’s Shulhan Arukh (1567 C.E.), with glosses by Moses Isserles.

Genesis 15:2-4; 18:1-15; 25:21; 30:1-8, 22-24; 35:16-20; I Samuel 1:1-20.
Isaac: Genesis 27:1; Jacob: Genesis 48:10.
Genesis 32:25, 31-32.
Exodus 4:10.
Nahum of Gimzo: B. Ta’anit 21a. Dosa ben Harkinas: B. Yevamot 16a. Rav Joseph and Rav Sheshet: B. Bava Kamma 87a. There were also a number of anonymous, blind scholars: B. Haggigah 5b; J. Pe’ah, end.
Genesis 1:27; 5:1; 9:6.
Deuteronomy 21:22-23.
M. Oholot 7:6.
Leviticus 19:14.
Leviticus 21:17-21.
Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed 3:45.
Deuteronomy 23:2; see commentary on that verse in Etz Hayim (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002), p. 1122.
Heresh as deaf-mute: M. Terumot 1:2. Heresh as deaf but not mute, with ileim describing a mute: B. Haggigah 2b.
B. Megillah 24a-24b; S.A. Orah Hayyim 69:2.
M.T. Laws of Fringes 3:7.
I am drawing this list from the work of Carl Astor, “Who Made People Different: Jewish Perspectives on the Disabled" (New York: United Synagogue of America, 1985), Chapter Four, a book that I heartily recommend in its entirety. In the Talmud, whether the deaf are obligated to recite the Shema is disputed (B. Berakhot 15a), but the codes rule that a deaf person can fulfill the commandment: M.T. Laws of Reading the Shema 2:8; S.A. Orah Hayyim 62:3
That the Torah must be read: B. Gittin 60b. That blind people are therefore excluded from reciting it for the congregation: S.A. Orah Hayyim 53:14; 139:4. That the blind may be called to recite the blessings over the Torah: Moses Isserles, gloss and the commentary of the TaZ (Turei Zahav) by Rabbi David ben Samuel Ha-Levi there.
Astor, “Who Makes People Different,” pp. 75, 107-109.
S.A. Orah Hayyim 53:14.
B. Megillah 19b; S.A. Orah Hayyim 689:2. M.T. Laws of the Megillah 1:2, however, leaves out the heresh as an excluded category.
B. Peshaim 116b.
M.T. Laws of Slaughter 4:5; see, however, B. Hullin 2a, where this special circumstance permitting the animals that they slaughter for consumption is not mentioned.
S.A. Orah Hayyim 589:1-2 with the glosses of R. Moses Isserles and the Magen Avraham there.
M.T. Laws of Acquisition (Zekhiyah) 4:6-7.
M.T. Laws of Inheritance (Nahalot) 6:1; 10:5. As for inheritance from one’s spouse, marriage to a deaf-mute or insane person is valid only by rabbinic, and not by biblical authority, because such people could not be presumed to be of sound mind and could not pronounce the blessings with the proper intent. Therefore the usual, biblical laws of inheritance, where property is passed on automatically to relatives in a prescribed order, do not apply, and the property is treated as gifts. A deaf-mute cannot give gifts but can receive them. Thus a woman who is deaf cannot transfer property to her husband, but a man who is deaf can receive property from his hearing wife (M.T. Laws of Marriage 22:4).
M.T. Laws of Sale 29:1.
B. Gittin 59a, 67b.
M.T. Laws of Sale 29:3-4.
M.T. Laws of Sale 29:5.
B. Gittin 59b.
M.T. Laws of Testimony 9:9.
B. Gittin 71a.
M.T. Laws of Testimony 9:11.
M.T. Laws of Testimony 9:12.
B. Niddah 50a.
B. Yevamot 112b.
B. Yevamot 81a.
B. Bava Kamma 86b.
Deuteronomy 8:17-18; see verses 11-18 to understand the context.
B. Bava Kamma 86b.