This year, the ReelAbilities Film Festival marks our 18th annual edition in the same
season the Jewish world focuses on disability awareness, acceptance, and inclusion
through Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month (JDAIM), a
global effort by the Jewish Special Education International Consortium to raise
awareness, foster acceptance, and ensure disabled people experience belonging
in Jewish life.

That timing feels less like coincidence and more like alignment, a festival about
disability with roots in Jewish tradition, coming of age at a symbolic number that
according to Gematria – an ancient Jewish system that infuses Hebrew letters with
numerical values and deeper meaning – literally spells life.

Using this framework, each Hebrew letter has a number value and every word has a
corresponding number. The Hebrew word for life, chai, is formed by chet, which equals
8, and yud, which equals 10. Together they add up to 18. For many Jews, 18 is more
than a lucky number. It is shorthand to talk about real life in all its complexity,
vulnerability, and strength.

For me, there is something affirming about knowing our origin story sits alongside that
broader communal push. It says Disabled Jews and Disabled people belong at the
center of our narratives, rituals, and responsibilities. ReelAbilities did not invent that
idea, but we do manifest it through film, conversation, and in community, through the
essential, unglamorous practice of how we invite people in and make room for them to
stay.

Turning 18 also carries resonance beyond Jewish life. In the west, it is legally and
culturally considered the moment we shift from childhood to adulthood, whether or not
we feel ready. As children, our lives are often organized by what others think is best,
being cared for, evaluated, and talked about. Adulthood, at best, is about being trusted
with our own choices, finding our own voice, and accepting that we will, at times, be
seen as responsible, complex, and sometimes contradictory.

ReelAbilities feels like it has grown along a similar arc. In its early years, the festival was
a bold, necessary child of the Jewish community, proving that stories by and about
disabled people deserved space on the screen at all, often focusing on explaining the
basics and correcting the most obvious misconceptions. Now, at 18, the work cannot
only be about asking to be seen. We must graduate to actively shape and define for
ourselves the terms by which we are understood and, by extension, how we are related
to as a result.

Gematria is a disciplined way of deliberately taking a fresh look at what people assume
they already know. Instead of asking “What does this say?” it invites us to ask: “What
else is this saying? What possibilities are hiding in the pattern?”

That instinct to read differently is not limited to numbers or texts. Scholars and
storytellers have revisited biblical narratives through the lens of disability, asking what
changes when we stop treating disability as metaphor and start treating disabled
characters as fully realized people.

Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
suggests that the biblical giant Goliath had acromegaly, a tumor on the pituitary gland
that caused his unusual size and likely affected his vision. That idea goes back to at
least 2000, when neurologist Dr. Vladimir Berginer wrote of a painting of David and
Goliath by Puget from the 18th century in which Berginer recognized the appearance of
acromegaly in the severed head of Goliath. The painting was done over a century
before French physician Pierre Marie coined and described the condition in 1886.

Similarly, law professor Samuel J. Levine published “Was Yosef on the Spectrum?
Understanding Joseph Through Torah, Midrash, and Classical Jewish Sources,”
presenting a portrait of Joseph as an individual on the autism spectrum. Levine writes
that “Yosef emerges as a more familiar and less enigmatic individual, exhibiting both
strengths and weaknesses commonly associated with autism spectrum disorder.”

British author Daniel Tammet, who is autistic and has synesthesia, experiences
numbers as colors, shapes, and textures. That intimate, emotional relationship helps
explain his rapid calculations and pattern-based thinking. It also points to greater truth:
Meaning is rarely limited to what we notice at first glance.

In Thinking in Numbers, Tammet writes “numbers are beautiful,” and suggests that
mathematics can illuminate how we experience the world.

When we consider ReelAbilities’ Jewish roots through the tradition of gematria, the 18th
year of the festival invites a similar insight through the prism of disability. Instead of
stopping with, “What is this film about?” ReelAbilities compels audiences to dig deeper
by asking, “What else is this showing us about disability, power, joy, fear, and
community, and who gets to be seen as fully human on screen?”

If chai means life, then ReelAbilities’ 18th year becomes more than a celebration of
longevity. It also affirms a broader view, a different way of seeing: Disability as truth,
disability as community, disability as art.

A tangible, cinematic celebration of life.