When We Err Without Knowing: Ableism and Unintentional Guilt
by Andrew Evans
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Parashat Vayikra opens with God calling to Moses from the Tent of Meeting and laying out the basic system of korbanot, sacrificial offerings, that the Israelites will use to draw near to God and respond to different spiritual and communal situations. Leviticus 1–5 describes several types of offerings, including the burnt offering, grain offering, sacrifice of well-being, sin offering, and guilt offering, each with its own purpose and procedure. A major theme of this opening parashah is that holiness is not only about grand spiritual moments, but also about ordinary human actions: what people do with their bodies, resources, mistakes, and responsibilities. The parashah pays particular attention to unintentional wrongdoing, teaching that even when harm is caused unknowingly, it still matters and must be addressed. Overall, Vayikra begins by building a framework for how a community lives in relationship with God and one another.
At the beginning of chapter 4, the Torah introduces a difficult and humbling idea: a person can do wrong without realizing it, and still be responsible for repairing the harm. The Torah does not say if someone sins intentionally. It specifically names the opposite, wrongdoing that happens accidentally, unknowingly, and outside our awareness. But even without malicious intent, the responsibility for repair is still present.
The same structure repeats three times in the chapter, for a leader, for the entire community, and for an ordinary person. When the harm becomes known, repair is required.
About the community, the Torah says:
“If the whole community of Israel has erred and the matter escapes the notice of the congregation… when the sin they committed becomes known, the congregation shall bring a bull as a sin offering” (Leviticus 4:13–14).
This Hebrew phrase stands out to me: וְנוֹדְעָה הַחַטָּאת / venod'ah hachatat / the sin becomes known.
Something that was once invisible becomes visible.
Similarly, when speaking about an individual, the Torah says:
“If any person among the people unwittingly incurs guilt… when the sin they committed is made known to them, they shall bring an offering” (Leviticus 4:27–28).
In other words: once you know, you act.
This chapter insists that accountability does not depend on malicious intent. The offerings described here are not brought for acts of rebellion or cruelty, but for shgagah “unintentional error.” The Torah seems to understand something profoundly human, that we will hurt one another without realizing it. And when that happens, the question is not “Did you mean to?” but “What will you do now that you know?”
Ableism in our society often lives exactly in this space of unintentional harm. The most egregious forms, like exclusion, mockery, and denial of access are relatively easy to name and condemn. But ableism also shows up quietly, in moments so small they can feel almost invisible to the person causing them, but at the same time painfully loud to the person experiencing them.
I have existed in rabbinical school longer than I have existed as a visibly physically disabled person. That gives me a strange kind of double vision. I know how people interacted with me before my disability, and I feel how interactions have shifted.
People hold the door for me more often now, and not in the way people hold doors for one another out of courtesy. They insist I go first. They rush to help without asking. They take action before I have named a need. None of this is malicious. The intention is good.
And yet, it misses the mark.
What I experience in those moments is not kindness, but an unspoken assumption, “you cannot do this yourself.” The difference is subtle, but it matters. It lands not as support, but as erasure of agency. And because it is small, because it is wrapped in politeness, it is hard to name without seeming ungrateful or overly sensitive.
This is where the Torah’s phrase “venod'ah hachatat / the sin becomes known” feels especially powerful.
Awareness is not always instantaneous. It can unfold, and often it arrives through discomfort, through someone naming something we had not noticed before. Sometimes it comes through proximity, through relationships that reveal the limits of our assumptions. Sometimes it arrives slowly, as we begin to see patterns we once dismissed as isolated moments.
Ableism, especially the quiet kind, often becomes known in exactly this way. Not through accusation, but through attention. A disabled person naming what an interaction felt like from their side. A pattern becoming visible where we once saw only individual acts of kindness. And that moment of awareness can be unsettling. It disrupts our understanding of ourselves as good, thoughtful people. It asks us to sit with the possibility that something we thought was helpful was actually harmful.
But this parsha does not treat that moment as failure. It treats it as the beginning of holiness. Because the sacred turning point in this chapter is not the mistake. It is the moment the mistake becomes known.
Ableism often asks disabled people to absorb harm silently because “they meant well.” Torah asks something different. It asks individuals and communities to notice when their good intentions have caused harm, to listen when that harm is named, and to allow that new awareness to reshape their actions going forward. The holiness of this system is not in its perfection, but in its humility. We will err. All of us. What matters is whether we are willing to acknowledge it when it becomes known.
Andrew Evans is a writer and educator whose work explores questions of meaning, community, and lived experience. Drawing on spiritual tradition, personal reflection, and social analysis, Andrew’s writing attends to the ways people make sense of their lives and responsibilities to one another.
