From the Desk of Rabba Adina

3 July 2026 - 18 Tammuz 5786
Parashat Pinchas (Numbers 25:10–30:1)

Sam Bauer’s production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was extraordinarily beautiful with a magnificent cast. In the interests of full disclosure I need to share that my daughter had a main role. But it’s not nachas alone that made the play so remarkable.

As a child, my parents would go to an Arts Cinema on a Saturday night. Then on Sunday my dad would ask my mum, "What are your thoughts the morning after, about the night before?" And they would reflect on the movie together. Isn’t it the case that good art is meant to move us, even change us? The Curious Incident poignantly shares the tale of a girl, Chris, who lives with her father and is trying to solve the mystery of a murdered dog. Chris loves numbers and the colour red, hates yellow and struggles with noise. Chris is also an incredibly loveable character, a deep character and a character of profound feeling who evokes tremendous empathy in the audience - and she is neurodiverse. In the course of the play, Chris goes on a journey, overcomes unimaginable difficulties and emerges quietly triumphant with a sense of her own abilities as a human. She ends the play saying, "I can do anything". It’s no wonder that every time I watched the play (I confess, I saw it three times), I wept. 

In Parshat Pinchas, the Israelites are still traveling through the desert and a census is taken. As the tribes and their descendants are mentioned by (male) name, we find a girl, Serach, the daughter of Asher, is included among the genealogies. Unless a woman was a mother of someone famous or a wife of someone famous, women aren’t usually included in these lists (sigh, patriarchy). The question is why does Serach get a mention? In rabbinic literature, Serach was quite a woman, a keeper of secrets, a poet and musician, she understood the secret of the Redemption from Egypt. She also knew where Joseph’s bones were hidden and revealed them to Moses at the Exodus. Serach travels through the desert, enters the land of Israel and is considered to be a wise woman in the times of King David. We next meet her in the Talmud where she is having an argument with Rabbi Yochanan about what the walls of water looked like at the Splitting of the Sea. Serach traverses large swathes of time and enters the rabbinic ivory tower. Like Chris, she can do anything. I don’t know if Serach was neurodiverse…but she was certainly different. 

I think the story of The Curious Incident showed me that when someone has the courage to truly, fully, simply be themselves and live their truth, that is all that matters in this world. Both Chris and Serach found ways to live who they are. One of our school values is Inclusion, Hachlalah and I am pleased to think that Serach was INCLUDED in the names of our ancestors, and that Chris’s story was included in our repertoire of drama at the school. Their stories remind us that every neurodiverse human needs a village, but much more than that, every village needs neurodiversity. We are enriched by our differences.