Leading with Autism

Gedaliah Shaffer wasn’t thrilled when his mother enrolled him in Shrub Oak International School. His mother, Liba Shaffer, was herself ambivalent about the decision.

But by the time he turned fourteen, Gedaliah’s disabilities—he is visually impaired and lives with autism as well as ADHD—made living at home untenable. 

Situated in New York’s Hudson Valley, Shrub Oak, a therapeutic boarding school for children with autism, has a selective enrollment that keeps its student body small. Liba met with faculty members for an interview and found that the 127-acre campus in Lake Mohegan checked almost all the boxes. Still, the thought of sending her son away from home was painful. “And the thought of sending him someplace not Jewish was worse.” 

She reached out to Rabbi Yehuda Heber at Chabad of Yorktown—not far from the school—with an unusual request. Would the rabbi appoint her son as the shliach, Chabad emissary, to Shrub Oak International School, Liba asked. It would be an unofficial appointment, but it would give Gedaliah a sense of purpose and responsibility at the school. Rabbi Heber, who had a relationship with Shrub Oak, was game, and the matter was settled.

As Gedaliah acclimated to his new setting, he took seriously his role as the school’s Jewish representative. “We actually call him the shliach of the school. He arranges all the Jewish programs there with the other boys,” Rabbi Heber says. In a school with some eighty students of all ethnicities, he’s even managed to rustle up a minyan so that one of his classmates would be able to say the Kaddish prayer on his father’s yahrzeit. 

The rabbi began a weekly Torah class at Shrub Oak with Gedaliah and another Jewish student. Soon a third boy joined, then a fourth and a fifth. Now, says Heber, thanks to Gedaliah’s efforts, seven students join the Torah class each week. They also visit the Yorktown Chabad House, where Rabbi Heber and his wife create opportunities for them to participate at holiday events while being mindful of their needs.

Recently, the subject of the class was the Biblical Joseph and his journey: from being sold into slavery to becoming the viceroy of Egypt, saving his family—and the world—from famine. “The story is like mine,” Gedaliah told Rabbi Heber. “I was very against coming to the school, but because I’m a shliach here, it’s worth it.”