Livre d'Or

I think everybody always has to say all the brachot, really. Like blind people have to say pokeach ivrim because they give thanks that some people have sight so the sighted people can help them to keep mitzvot that require vision, and there's the ruling that people working as slaves in the Nazi camps had to say shelo asani aved because they were still spiritually free even if they were literally enslaved. I think that's probably in the end more helpful than the view that says, people with certain communication disabilities are just globally exempt from everything, because that leads to eg deaf people being regarded as very nearly halachically non-persons. But what I want is to take this attitude out and examine it, not just handwave this stuff.

And yes, I want to be looking at breadth of tradition about suffering, rather than glibly referencing the obvious piety. I'm really bothered by glossing over the pain in the story about Rebi using the toilet. My impression is that even really historically knowledgeable rabbis don't know the amulet material at all, right, it's a pretty niche academic thing, and this why we need Jen. But I think it's telling that it isn't in the Gemara and therefore isn't really in mainstream modern Torah learning either.

lethargic_man had a great write-up about R' Yehuda haNasi's maid, from R' Oded Mazor apparently. I don't read it as a better off dead story, but I agree teaching just that on its own if you were trying to work on a disability theme explicitly would be a mistake. I think there's something there about healthism, challenging the idea that there's a simple meaning when you pray for "healing", that you're always asking God to restore people to a normative state.