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SmallTalk: Abled: A Torah View On Living With A Disability (with Michal Horowitz)

May 26, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Michal Horowitz was born in Toronto in 1976 with normal hearing. In ninth grade, during a family sabbatical year in Jerusalem, she contracted an inner ear virus that caused severe vertigo. Doctors dismissed it as war stress—it was the year of the Gulf War—but the virus permanently damaged her hearing. She did not see an audiologist or get hearing aids until she was 23 or 24, a decade-long gap. By then she had earned a master’s degree in audiology from Brooklyn College, training that included counseling patients on realistic expectations and communication strategies. She never practiced clinically. Instead, she became a teacher. And she wrote a book, Abled: Living with a Disability, A Torah View, published by Mosaic Press, that blends memoir with Torah commentary. The episode is a conversation between Horowitz and host Naki Weinstein about what that book argues, how it came to be, and what it asks of its readers.

A Book That Is Also a Sefer

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:37) **Book Overview: A Personal Memoir and Torah Sefer** - Michal Horowitz describes "Abled" as a unique synthesis of personal memoir and an English-language Torah sefer, weaving her story with Torah insights.
  • 2 (02:35) **Background Story: The Author's Early Life and Hearing Loss** - Horowitz shares her upbringing as an Ashkenazi Jewish woman in Toronto, a child of Holocaust survivors, and the onset of her hearing loss.
  • 3 (06:08) **Unexpected Path: From Audiologist to Author** - Horowitz reveals the irony of studying audiology (including counseling for hearing loss) but never practicing, as God had other plans for her teaching career.
  • 4 (07:14) **The Torah View on Living with a Disability** - Horowitz explains that the Torah's approach to people with disabilities is fundamentally the same as its approach to any person: be patient, kind, and shoulder their burden.
  • 5 (09:03) **Torah Examples of Sensitivity for the Vulnerable** - Horowitz provides specific Torah verses and concepts that demonstrate the extra care required for those at a disadvantage.
  • 6 (12:57) **Key Insight: "Fear of the Lord" in Context of the Weak** - Horowitz shares a beautiful idea from the book "The Dawn" about the phrase "You shall fear the Lord" (V’Yareita M’Elokecha).
  • 7 (13:52) **Intended Audience: A Book for Everyone** - Horowitz states that the book is meant for all people, not just those with disabilities.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Naki Weinstein

Show Notes

#489

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