The Teshuvah of Unmasking: Salvation of a Disabled Bodymind

by Mati Boulakia-Bortnick

Yom Kippur is often misunderstood. Let me set the record straight right now at the very beginning. It isn’t about “repentance”. It gets flattened into a day of guilt, of punishment, of atoning for being human. But that’s not what the day is. Not really.

Teshuvah doesn’t mean repentance in the way most people use the word. It means return. A turning. A coming back - not to perfection, but to presence. To authenticity. Not to some idealized version of ourselves, but to the parts of us we’ve been taught to cut off.

And that hits different for disabled people.

We don’t walk into this day arrogant - at least not in the way people assume. Abled people often assume that we see ourselves as “better than” or “privileged”. An asinine assumption, of course, and one based in ableism. If anything, it’s the arrogance of survival - the kind you build to protect what little dignity you’re allowed to keep. We come into it already having spent our whole lives being told we’re wrong. That we need to try harder. That we need to manage ourselves better. That we’re too sensitive. Too rigid. Too chaotic. Too slow. Too complicated. Too much - and not enough at the same time.

So when the tradition asks us to confess what we’ve done wrong, what happens if what we’ve “done wrong” is just exist in a bodymind the world refuses to accept?

Yom Kippur doesn’t ask us to erase ourselves. It invites us to come back to ourselves. To return to the truth underneath the performance.

And that’s precisely where it starts to hurt.

Because so many of us have had to perform to survive. We’ve had to contort ourselves into versions of “acceptable” just to get through a day. We’ve had to do this in our own communities which are “affirming”. We are asked to do this on Yom Kippur itself! If we don’t go along with what others deem to be “acceptable” on the day, we are shunned.

We’ve learned to hide what we need, to mute what we feel, to translate our truth into something palatable. We’ve learned to say “I’m fine” when we’re not. To smile when we’re in pain. To make eye contact when it floods our nervous systems. We’ve learned to make other people comfortable, even if it kills us a little.

That’s what the world taught us. That safety comes at the cost of authenticity. That survival requires erasure.

And it “works” - until it doesn’t. Because the price of being accepted is being absent from our own lives.

Yom Kippur is the day we tell the truth about that.

It’s not a day about shaming ourselves. It’s not simply a day about holding ourselves to account for the “wrongs” we’ve done to others. This is the activity of the entire month of Elul that precedes the High Holidays.

Rather, it’s the day we ask ourselves: Who am I underneath all of that performance? What did I bury to stay safe? What did I lose to be loved?

And can I come back?

So what happens when we ask ourselves, honestly: who am I underneath all this performance?

What many of us find is grief. Not clarity. Many of us think that there is nothing underneath, that we are simply a shell.

Because for a lot of us, we don’t know who that person is. Or we’re scared to find out. Because the first time we showed up as ourselves, we were punished for it. Or ignored. Or told to try harder. Or told to stop making everything about us. And so we learned: authenticity is dangerous. And hiding keeps you alive.

That’s what masking for a disabled person is.

People talk about masking like it’s a choice. Like it’s a little trick autistic and other disabled people do in order to blend in. But for most of us, it’s not a choice - not an active one anyway - it’s something we’ve had drilled into us since early childhood. Not gently. Not metaphorically. Often violently. And sometimes under the banner of “therapy.”

As a child, I was subjected to years of ABA - Applied Behavior Analysis. Let me be clear: therapy is not the right word. Dog training is often more humane. I was trained. Trained to act like an abled, allistic person. Trained to suppress, to obey, to disappear. And yes, I use that word - trained - intentionally. ABA is not therapy. It is conversion “therapy” for autistic people. Its goal isn’t to support us - it’s to make us look and act allistic, no matter the cost. In fact, it was developed by many of the same people. It teaches that the problem isn’t our pain, our needs, or our isolation - it’s that we’re visible. That we make other people uncomfortable. That we are the inconvenience. That our existence is the problem.

What ABA taught me was that my body could not be trusted. That if I moved in certain ways, I would be corrected. That if I spoke with too much intensity, I would be punished. That my instincts had to be overridden. That eye contact mattered more than comfort. That compliance mattered more than consent. That if I wanted to be safe - or loved - I had to become someone else.

I wasn’t learning how to live. I was learning how to pass.

And even when you’re not in ABA, that same message shows up everywhere: school, synagogue, the workplace, your own family. Be more polite. Be more flexible. Be more accommodating to the people who refuse to accommodate you. Smile when it hurts. Regulate in a way that doesn’t bother anyone. Keep your breakdowns quiet. Keep your joy quiet, too.

Masking isn’t just suppressing a stim or softening a tone. It’s the full-body performance of “I’m fine” in a world that punishes you if you’re not. It’s disconnection dressed up as adaptation.

And it “works.” Until it doesn’t.

Because over time, masking fractures us. We lose track of what we actually want, what we actually feel. We can’t tell the difference between a regulated yes and a dissociated one. We don’t know if we’re saying no because we need to or because we’re terrified of being too much again. We perform love. We perform ease. We perform safety. But none of it feels like home.

This isn’t just exhaustion. It’s grooming. Grooming us to betray ourselves - to stay inauthentic, disconnected, and alone. It’s setting us up to fail no matter what we do.

For me, it’s also spiritual disintegration. And it’s our holy work to understand how to reverse it. To be safe in our own bodies. We shall explore that here.

Because masking doesn’t just disconnect us from our emotions or our needs - it disconnects us from our selves. It teaches us that the real self must be hidden in order to be safe. That authenticity is a liability. That the cost of love is disappearance.

That is the damage.

And it raises a spiritual question: What do we call this state - this condition of learned self-abandonment?

What does our tradition say about being cut off from our own bodyminds, not because we chose it, but because the world demanded it?

 How do we begin to make teshuvah when we were never allowed to be ourselves in the first place?

And what would it mean to name that fracture - not as a failure of character - but as a sacred wound in need of healing?

If masking is a sacred wound, then what does healing actually look like?

Not fixing. Not curing. Not correcting.

But healing.

Repair. Return.

This is where theology matters. Because when we’ve been dis-integrated - split from our bodyminds, our instincts, our voice - we need a framework that doesn’t just pathologise the pain or romanticise the comeback. We need language for what it means to be authentic again. To be whole. Not in some perfect or pure way - but in a way that feels honest.

Grounded. Coherent.

That’s what Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan gave us.

Mordecai Kaplan was a 20th-century rabbi, theologian, and the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism - my spiritual home. He was deeply influenced by modern philosophy and rejected the supernaturalism often found in Judaism. But he didn’t throw everything out. He redefined it and recontextualises it. He held onto Jewish tradition while reshaping it to speak to real life that was applicable to the Jewish people of today. And at the center of his theology was one core idea: salvation isn’t about the next world. It’s about this one.

Kaplan wasn’t interested in reward-and-punishment theology. He rejected the idea of a God who doles out consequences from on high. For him, the Divine wasn’t a person. It wasn’t a judge. It wasn’t supernatural.

The Divine was process. Reality. “The power that makes for salvation.”

And salvation, for Kaplan, didn’t mean going to heaven. It meant living a life of integrity. A life where we feel at home in ourselves and in our communities. A life in which our actions reflect our values. A life where we are not constantly at war with who we are.

He wrote that sin is not disobedience against an angry God in the sky, but that it’s disconnection from ourselves and others. A failure to live in tune with the best within us. A betrayal of our inner truth.

That language changed everything for me.

Because when I think about what masking did to me - what ABA taught me to do to myself - it wasn’t just physical suppression. It was soul suppression. I was taught to override my own instincts. To doubt my inner knowing. To treat coherence as a threat and compliance as virtue.

That is alienation. And that, in Kaplan’s terms, is sin—not because I failed, but because I was made to fail myself. Because I was taught - systematically, relentlessly - that self-betrayal was survival. And here’s the thing: the people who taught it? They were alienated too. It’s not just personal brokenness - it’s a cycle. A system. People disconnected from their own humanity teaching others to disconnect from theirs. Institutions built on disembodiment, enforcing it onto anyone who doesn’t fit. It’s not just that we were left out. We were trained out of ourselves.

And if that’s true, then unmasking isn’t just personal growth. It’s spiritual coming back to center and to authentic self. It’s not about expression. It’s about reintegration.

This is not about becoming someone new. It’s about coming home to someone we were taught to forget. It’s about noticing the places where we’ve betrayed ourselves out of fear, and slowly - compassionately - turning back.

Kaplan believed that Judaism was meant to help us do exactly that. Not to shame us into obedience. But to create frameworks for living with integrity. With alignment. With depth. Not to separate us from the world, but to root us more fully in it.

So when I speak about unmasking, I’m not speaking about some abstract ideal. I’m speaking about salvation - here and now. In the Kaplanian sense. Not escape. Not transcendence. But the return to a self that is allowed to exist. A self that can breathe.

If salvation is returning to ourselves, then the next question becomes: for what?

Not just so we can feel whole, but so we can be in relationship - authentic relationship. With others. With the Divine. With the world. Are they not all the same?

Because when we are split inside, when we are dis-integrated, we can’t show up fully anywhere. We can’t connect. We can’t be met.

From the outside, it might look like we’re connected - we might be doing all the right things. Showing up. Participating. Leading. Praying. Smiling. Responding to texts. But on the inside? It’s hollow. Or tense. Or transactional. Because if I’m not present as myself, then the relationship isn’t real. It’s a performance. It’s proximity, not presence.

And that’s where my own theology meets Martin Buber’s.

Buber teaches that the Divine is revealed in the sacred space between two people when they encounter one another in truth. When both show up, fully. When no one is being managed or used or filtered. He called this kind of meeting I-Thou - and said that it is the most sacred form of relationship we can experience.

But what happens when you can’t show up like that? When you’ve been trained, since childhood, to perform a version of yourself that others will find acceptable? What happens when masking is your default? When you don’t even know that you’re doing it?

In this case, which is sadly the case for most disabled people, even our closest relationships become I-It - even when no one intends it. Because we’re not being met, not really. The person across from you is interacting with a version. A mask. A curated self. And even if we love that version, it’s not us, not really. And some part of us knows it. Feels it. Holds back.

This isn’t just true in friendships or romantic relationships. It’s true in community. In family. In ritual. In prayer. Even in spaces that claim to be inclusive. Especially in spaces that claim to be inclusive - because when you unmask and the response is discomfort, silence, or retreat, it confirms your worst fear: that the invitation was conditional all along.

And so the disconnection deepens. Even when we’re surrounded by people. Even when we “belong” on paper.

This is the spiritual cost of masking. It doesn’t just isolate us from ourselves - it isolates us from each other, and from the Divine. Because if you believe, like I do, that the Divine is found in relationship - in the honest, imperfect, vulnerable encounter between beings - than anything that blocks that encounter also blocks access to holiness.

Which means that unmasking isn’t just a personal milestone. It’s a spiritual act. A relational act. A reclaiming of our capacity to be seen - and to see others in return.

Only by being true to ourselves can we be genuine with others. This isn’t simply a turn of phrase. This is how trust works. This is how presence works. This is how the Divine shows up in our lives. This is how we reveal Torah in our world.

Authenticity is not always tidy. Sometimes it’s messy. Dysregulated. Delayed. Confusing. Sometimes it needs time. Sometimes it needs silence. Sometimes it looks like tears or stillness or stimming or leaving the room. But it’s real. And that realness is holy.

When we allow ourselves to show up in our fullness - not the fullness others expect, but the fullness of who we actually are - we create the conditions for relationship to emerge. Not performance. Not projection. But presence. And that presence is where the Divine lives.

So if unmasking is holy - if it’s relational, spiritual, sacred - then the burden cannot fall only on the person unmasking.

The community has to make teshuvah, too.

Because most of the time, masking isn’t just a personal survival strategy. It’s a response to the conditions we live in. The systems we’re part of. The spaces we’ve been invited into on paper, but not in practice.

If someone has to hide their truth to be part of a space, that space is not neutral. It is very much complicit.

That means that the question communities should be asking on Yom Kippur isn’t just “What have we done wrong?” It’s:

What have we required others to do in order to be here?

Who had to shrink for us to be included?

Who are we celebrating only because they’ve become easier for us to digest?

If we reward masking - if we praise the disabled person who performs ease and meets abled expectations of what a “good disabled” person does - we are committing a great act of violence. We’re reinforcing the cycle of pain and inauthenticity for all of us. We’re pushing the idea that love and belonging are conditional. That safety is earned through erasure.

That is not simply a personal sin. That is a communal failure. And it requires communal teshuvah.

Are you the kind of person who makes others feel safe enough to be their true selves?

It’s a serious question. And it’s not only about individuals. It’s about families. Synagogue communities. Workplaces. Support spaces. Institutions that claim inclusion but demand translation. Communities that expect the most disabled among us to educate while masking their distress. Or worse - to stay silent for the sake of unity.

Real teshuvah isn’t about apology. It’s about accountability. Not just for what we’ve done, but for what we’ve created. And allowed to continue. And refused to question.

Because the real question isn’t “How can we be more inclusive?”

It’s: “Why did we build something so exclusive in the first place?”

What values were prioritized? Whose comfort? Whose rhythm? Whose needs? Who got to decide what was ‘normal’? Who was centered in the story of community - and who was cast as a disruption?

Teshuvah - real teshuvah - asks us to reckon with that. To turn not just inward, but outward. To redesign. To rebuild.

And it starts with presence. With noticing who is missing. Who is silent. Who is always exhausted. Who is always smiling, always affirming, always “doing well,” but never quite… here.

Because many of us learned to mask so well that no one thought to ask what it was costing us.

If you want to make teshuvah this Yom Kippur, don’t just apologize. Change what you expect of people. Change what you call”strong leadership” that doesn’t deliver for those on the margins. Change what you recognize as participation. Build something where people don’t have to disappear in order to belong.

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan taught that salvation isn’t about the afterlife. It’s not about getting into heaven. It’s not about reward or punishment. It’s about how we live here. Together.

Salvation, for Kaplan, means spiritual integration - a life where we’re not at war with ourselves. A life that feels coherent, connected, and real. A life where we act in alignment with our deepest values. Where we’re able to exist with integrity. Where we’re able to be - fully - without having to disappear in order to survive.

That’s salvation.

And for disabled people, salvation isn’t about being cured. It’s not about overcoming. It’s not about “inspiring” others by pretending our needs don’t exist. Salvation is about being received.

That’s it.

We don’t need to be fixed. We need to be received.

We need to be in spaces where our way of regulating ourselves doesn’t make us a disruption. Where our communication isn’t graded by arbitrary social norms. Where our movement isn’t pathologised. Where our joy isn’t policed. Where our exhaustion is seen and understood. Where our ways of being—our silences, our info-dumps, our pacing, our presence - are recognized as essential, natural, and worthy.

We need spaces where unmasking doesn’t cost us connection. Where showing up as ourselves doesn’t mean being tolerated on the edges, but welcomed in the center.

Kaplan wrote that the Divine is “the power that makes for salvation.” Not a person. Not a judge. Not a king. But a real, living process that pulls us toward wholeness. Toward integrity. Toward a world where we can live, fully, in truth.

And that means the Divine is found wherever people are becoming more whole - where alienation gives way to belonging, and disintegration gives way to coherence.

So imagine: a community where you don’t have to explain your existence. Where your access needs aren’t treated like burdens. Where stimming is as unremarkable as breathing. Where no one is waiting for you to “be less.”

Imagine being allowed to take your full shape.

Not being flattened into what’s functional. Not being asked to downplay what’s hard or translate what’s real. Just being. And being loved in that being. That’s salvation.

That’s the world I’m trying to build. That’s the Judaism I believe in. One where teshuvah means coming back to ourselves - and building the kinds of relationships and spaces where others can do the same.

And that’s not a dream for some distant future. That’s not a messianic fantasy. That’s the work we’re asked to do right now.

This is what the Divine asks of us:

To build a world where no one has to choose between authenticity and community.

To build a world where presence doesn’t require performance.

To build a world where difference isn’t managed - it’s honored.

The greatest teshuvah is to return to who you truly are - without shame, without fear.

That’s not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s sitting with your body instead of fighting it. Naming a need out loud. Not apologizing for your tone. Asking for help without dressing it up in justification. Sometimes it’s letting yourself stim in shul. Or letting yourself not stim. Sometimes it’s saying no without guilt. Or yes without collapse. And sometimes it’s just surviving - honestly. Not performing survival, but living in a way that doesn’t demand you disappear.

That’s return. That’s healing. That’s salvation.

Not perfection. Not transcendence. Just the slow, sacred work of coming back to yourself.

And when one person does it - just one - it creates space for someone else to do the same. That’s the real spiritual chain reaction. One person says “I’m not hiding anymore,” and someone else realizes they don’t have to either.

This is how we heal. This is how we return.

Not alone. Not all at once. But together.

That is the teshuvah I’m interested in. Not self-blame. Not self-erasure. But holy return. The kind that brings us back to who we were before the world told us to be smaller. The kind that brings us closer to the Divine by bringing us closer to each other. The kind that builds new worlds, one breath of truth at a time.

May this Yom Kippur be a beginning.

May it be the kind of return that doesn’t flatten you - but frees you. 

May we all find the courage to unmask - not for attention, not for explanation, but because we deserve to exist in our wholeness.

And may our wholeness make room for others to exist in theirs.

That is teshuvah.

That is healing.

That is salvation.

Gmar Chatima Tova, may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Mati Boulakia-Bortnick (he/they) is a student rabbi at the École Rabbinique de Paris and the Educational Director of the Jewish Autism Network. An autistic and multi-disabled activist, Mati works as an autism and disability educator. Through his consulting work, Mati supports individuals and organizations in creating inclusive spaces and developing practical tools to empower disabled communities and community members. He serves on the Board of Directors of SVARA, as the rabbinic intern at Beth Hillel in Brussels, and is the co-editor of the forthcoming Neurodivergent Torah (Ben Yehuda Press, 2026).