Autism: Lester’s Story

My Story by Lester Shapiro, FJMC International Communications

Our son, now twenty-five years old, has long been diagnosed with autism in addition to intellectual disabilities. He is a beautiful and loving young adult with an amazing memory and a good sense of humor, be it in his own way. He has a keen interest in knowing when upcoming holidays and events occur and closely studies both the Jewish and civil calendars, not just for the coming year but for years to come.

He enjoys and greatly looks forward to being out in the community. However, with many sensory issues and a low conceptual understanding, he unfortunately exhibits increased anxiety throughout his day.

While his level of tangible understanding is somewhat better, he lacks the conceptual understanding that babies and little children don’t cry all of the time, that thunder and lightning doesn’t occur every time it rains, that dogs don’t constantly bark and the same unfortunately with many other sensory situations that he often faces. While he enjoys being out and about in the community, he is most often on edge, as he fixates constantly with these anxieties and exhibits with constant perseveration. Thankfully throughout his past schooling and now beginning as an adult, he has received much support towards helping to alleviate these issues, but still many challenges still remain.

Many years back when our son was in the special needs pre-school program at our synagogue, one of his teachers, who has an older child of her own being on the autistic spectrum, strongly recommended to us that we should avoid taking our son out in social settings in the community, unless necessary, to avoid the stress involved for both him and us. We chose to do the opposite and, while indeed a challenge in many respects, we have not regretted our decision. Even with the many challenges he faces, he truly enjoys coming to Synagogue each week to celebrate Shabbat and throughout the year for events and holiday celebrations. He enjoys going out to eat at restaurants with us and going on trips. He enjoys volunteering each week at a local food pantry and being out to shop at the supermarket and elsewhere. And of course, he enjoys going to visit his younger brother, and best friend, at college and cheer on the home team. He truly enjoys being an integral part of our overall community!

We are so appreciative that our synagogue and surrounding community have become so supportive and inclusive. Our son celebrated his very special Bar Mitzvah on a bright May morning a decade ago in 2015. Very proudly his Bar Mitzvah was the impetus for the establishment of an inclusion committee at our synagogue that has greatly expanded through the years to strongly support. And we deeply thank and appreciate the understanding and patience of our overall community, along with the love and appreciation
they show for our son as being such a valued member.

Thankfully we never heeded that advice we received years back from his teacher, and in doing so, his life so far has been thoroughly enriched and of course the same for us and all our community.

As we deeply appreciate the support of our overall community, we are also very grateful that we are able to be members of networks of fellow special needs families in our local community that strongly support each other to provide significant education, guidance and emotional support to navigate through the many challenges that we face now and into the future. We are keenly aware that the specialized care and support that our son needs will unfortunately last his entire lifetime.  And of course this requires the essential need for special planning and financial considerations that we are working to have in place for his long term care at a time when we can no longer provide. And in this same light and in brotherhood, I hope to form a network here in our own FJMC community to together support each other and ask that you please reach out to me at if you share a similar family situation or want to further build your awareness and understanding. 

Thank you, 
Lester Shapiro