Disability Wisdom & Spirituality

Joeita Gupta :
I am Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse. What's wrong with you? It's a question that people with disabilities often get asked. What's wrong has little to do with an impairment and a lot more to do with ableism, pity and disdain. The roots of our ideas on disabilities are so obscured, we often struggle to discover their origins. But open the Bible for instance, and disability is everywhere. Moses believes his stutter renders him unable to answer God's call. Jacob's encounter with an angel leaves him changed not just spiritually, but physically. He gains a limp. For centuries, these stories have been told and retold in ways that treat disability as a metaphor for spiritual incapacity and as a challenge to be overcome. Today we discuss disability, religion, and spirituality. It's time to put to your finger on the pulse.
Hello and welcome to The Pulse on AMI Audio. I'm Joeita Gupta, and I'm joining you as I always do, from Accessible Media Studios in Toronto. My guest today is someone who wears many hats. Not only is she a rabbi, but Julia-Watts-Belser is a Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, as well as core faculty at George Brown's Disability Studies Program. As well as all of that, she's a senior research fellow at the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Julia is the author of Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom in the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. Julia, hello and welcome to The Pulse. Thank you so much for speaking to me about this important topic.

Julia-Watts-Belser:
Hello, such a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Joeita Gupta :
I'm sorry to ask you what I think you will consider a banal question, but what are you trying to get at with the title of your book?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
It's a great question actually. I think it's one of the things that feels so crucial to me as a proud disabled person is the embrace of my own bones. In a world that so often tells disabled folks that we are less, that we are insufficient, that we don't measure up, these messages come to us in so many ways. My instinct here is that one of the most crucial and transformative things we can do in this world as disabled folks is to love ourselves and our kin fiercely. So that's of course, personal work, but it's also the work of social transformation. And I'd say my book has two intertwined efforts. The work of orienting us toward that spiritual message of finding and claiming the sacredness of our own true selves, and also the work of challenging ableism, of getting better tools and strategies and capacities to transform the world in which we live.

Joeita Gupta :
But is there some amount of disconnect when you try to do that work within your practices in theology and the self-affirmation you might feel as a person with a disability? Because I don't have your depth of knowledge, but the little that I read of the Bible does not often have the most promising things to say about people with disabilities. How do you reconcile that?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
Oh my goodness, it's absolutely right. As a queer, disabled feminist rabbi, I spend a lot of my time working with people who have been burned by religion. In a lot of disability spaces, especially people are deeply hesitant to engage with religion for very good reason. Religion has so often been weaponized against disabled folks. I mean, faith healing, miracle stories, paternalism, saccharine, sweetness. There are so many frustrating cultural narratives about disability that get wrapped in spiritual language. I'm thinking about those lines. I'm sure you've heard them as well. Disability is our greatest teacher. God doesn't give us more than we can bear. These are all things that I find so deeply frustrating.
And I think as I work with religious texts, religious traditions, as I open the Bible, as you said, open the Bible and disability, you find disability in so many of these familiar stories. And yet the cultural scripts that are encoded there often imagine disability as an impediment, as a struggle to overcome, as a disappointment, as a lack, as a loss. And so I spend a lot of my time saying no to those stories. And yet I also believe that it's worth continuing to grapple with these texts. First, because they have shaped so profoundly the world in which we live. I don't think we can contend against ableism without unpacking some of the religious roots of these paradigms. And also because I believe there are seeds of liberation that can be found within sacred texts and traditions.

Joeita Gupta :
One of the things that you didn't mention, and I thought you would mention is the charitable impulse that is embedded in so many religious communities. It's not a bad thing, but often people with disabilities either willing or not, are recipients of that charity, how does one deal with that contradiction? I mean, do we just do away with charity as part of our religious practice, or is there a way to do charitable work in a religious context without also being paternalistic to people with disabilities at the same time?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
Yeah, absolutely. I think a question that I often ask and that I want religious communities to do a better job at asking is what's the difference between charity and solidarity? Religious communities have often treated disabled people as symbols. Sometimes we're cast as symbols of suffering or exemplars of tragedy. Sometimes we get lifted up as virtuous or inspirational or brave. All of that is garbage. They're all one-dimensional characters that deny disabled people our full humanity, they end up making us into object lessons, and I think they also make us into the sights through which other people can demonstrate their virtue.
So part of what I think we need to do is to, or part of what I think religious communities need to do is to get out of that mode of thinking so symbolically about disability. I want us to recognize the ways that disabled folks are complex. We are complex people, complex individuals, not single-note stories of suffering or inspiration.
But I think the other thing that also needs to happen is to really change the power dimensions. As a rabbi myself, as a person who often works in religious communities and religious spaces, people are consistently surprised to see me as a religious leader. Part of that's gender, of course, but a lot of that is my wheelchair. I don't look like what most people assume a rabbi is going to look like because we've been socialized, so many folks have been socialized to assume that disabled folks are recipients of charity, not the ones who are giving the blessing.

Joeita Gupta :
Yeah. You've talked a lot about your work as a rabbi, but I wonder if I could tap your thinking as a scholar. As someone who reads and has likely reread a lot of these texts, do you think there's something to be gained in terms of our understanding of the Bible and other texts if we start to read from a place of compassion and a place of understanding around disability? Because disability is held up as an object lesson or as a cautionary tale, but if you were to center disability in a more positive way in our reading, what does that do for our interpretation of some of these texts that are so central to our cultural beliefs?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
It could open up so much. Take the figure of Moses. I would lift up Moses as a disabled prophet. There's a moment when the Hebrew Bible describes how God calls Moses and sends him to Pharaoh. It's Moses's job to speak to Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh that Pharaoh must let the Israelites go. This is a major moment in the turning point of the Jewish, eventually the Christian story, when the people are freed from enslavement and begin to enter into a more liberated experience of life. And Moses says no. Moses says no because he's a bad speaker. The Jewish tradition says that he uses a term that's often ... It says his tongue is heavy. And many commentators have understood that to mean that Moses has a speech disability, that Moses, in other words, is a stutterer.
So Moses, in a moment of what I would as a scholar, as a disabled person, I would identify as a moment of internalized ableism. Moses says, "I'm not going to do it. I'm a bad talker. Don't make me go there." And so we see the first reasonable accommodation in the Torah. God says to Moses, "All right, take your brother. You speak, and then he will revoice your words." It's a moment that mirrors a practice that many speech-disabled folks use today. And it's extraordinary, I think, to find that written in to one of the oldest cultural traditions that we have, to find that actually given a stamp of approval by the divine. Of course, I wasn't waiting around for the Bible to tell me that it was okay to request accommodations, but there is something about finding these moments of resonance in some of these ancient Jewish stories.
The story becomes complicated because as a scholar, as much as I love this moment, I also know that the history of the tradition is such that many traditional commentators have been deeply uncertain, hesitant, ashamed of the idea that the greatest prophet was a disabled man. And so there is also a legacy of ableism written into the tradition where traditional commentators say it isn't possible that Moses, the chosen Moses would have a disability. And so part of what my commitment is as a scholar is also to contend with the ways that both the Bible itself and later traditions of commentary, reinscribe assumptions about disability that are violent, dangerous, and demeaning. So part of my commitment as a scholar is not only to lift up the beautiful moments that appear within tradition, but also to give us tools for confronting the violence.

Joeita Gupta :
And I think one of the passages that you talk about, which I found to be especially violent, was in terms of the priest who was able to come up and offer a sacrifice to the gods, and that any priest with a blemish, I.E, anyone with a disability was immediately excluded. It's very hard to reinterpret that in a way that takes away the ableism. So how does one reconcile with something like that?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
It's such a difficult text and it's a text, this text in Leviticus that describes a blemished priest as barred from offering sacrifice at the altar. It's a very difficult text. It's really in your face. And so I have heard so many folks try to give a kind of nicer ... Put a nicer spin on that text, explain why it isn't as harsh as it sounds to explain how ... And my heart goes out to folks who are thinking, I don't want my religion to say this. I don't want my religion to say this either. But what I believe we have to do is to take this text as a witness to ableism. I don't believe that this text tells us true about the real feelings that God has for disabled people.
But what I do think it tells us is that it bears witness to the tremendous history and legacy and ongoing present in which disabled people are imagined as less desirable. Our very bodies and bones are seen as ugly, unfortunate, shameful. And so I don't want to polish up this text and make it pretty, and I certainly don't want to apologize for it. What I want to do is use it as a [inaudible 00:15:50], use it as a mirror, ask us to look at it, and then confront the way in which we human beings have so often pressed our prejudices onto God.

Joeita Gupta :
One of the things I wanted to ask you, and I don't know if this is a part of the Jewish or biblical tradition, but I'm Hindu and definitely one of the things that I've heard about disability is that it's a punishment. So Hindus believe in reincarnation. You did something bad in your last life, ergo in this life you have a disability. And that has sort of been a very founding myth of my interaction with religion as a person with a disability. How do we unravel these ideas which are damaging to people when they hear them, but also maybe take people away from religion when they might otherwise have found comfort and solace and community with religion, but you feel like the door is slammed in your face when you hear something like that?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
Absolutely. It's such a painful message. I think that this idea is rooted also in the presumption that disability always demands an explanation. And I think one of the ways that I try to get underneath that impulse is I'd love to ask us why do we always assume that disability demands a reason? I think it's so pernicious, this assumption that you or someone in your family ... I mean, I think about the long legacy of mothers being blamed for disability in a whole different set of ... I mean, there's so many different cultural traditions here. You named Hinduism, but this is alive and well in so many different quarters. This notion that if disability enters the world, it's because someone somewhere has done something wrong.
I want us to learn how to tell a different story. One where we recognize disability as a kind of natural, ordinary part of human experience. Disability, as I see it, is braided into the very fabric of our human lives. Even if we don't have disabilities now, at some point in our lives, we are very likely to acquire disability. Disability is not an aberration, it shouldn't be a shock, it shouldn't be a surprise. And so part of how I would want to push back against that narrative, that disability is a punishment, is also to say disability just is. It is part of the way that our lives unfold.

Joeita Gupta :
So where do we go from here? I mean, in your book, there's a beautiful passage that talks about how yes, you had tried to correct your limp, but you thought it also made you unique. It was what made you yourself. So I suppose that having as a person with a disability, having some self-love and self-affirmation is part of it. But in terms of a broader religious practice, where do people disabled and non-disabled alike go from here?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
One of the things I'd love to see is to see more of us invested as a spiritual, religious, and or secular justice seeking project, I want to see us all in for the work of disability liberation. I want to see us do the work of dismantling ableism. We live in a world that teaches so many of us that our bodies and minds are not whole, and it's not just attitudes, it's not just ideas. It's also the very tangible structures of the world in which we live. We live in a world where people who can sit still and "pay attention" are enabled and rewarded in school. We live in a world where housing discrimination is rampant, where employment discrimination is all over the place. And so I come from a deeply justice seeking tradition, Jewish tradition says [foreign language 00:20:42]. "Justice, justice, you shall pursue."
And for me, that means as a signature cornerstone tenant of my faith and practice, the commitment is to build a world where all people can thrive. That's the story that I want to see become the signature religious story about disability. Not a story about healing, not a story about sin or punishment or karma. A story where we are all committed to transforming and remaking this world. That's the liberation commitment.

Joeita Gupta :
And your book is really fantastic. Obviously, part of it is ideas and scholarship, but a lot of it is very personal and biographical as well. You have a short excerpt from the book you wanted to share with us. Why don't you go ahead and set that up for us and tell us what we're about to hear?

Julia-Watts-Belser:
Beautiful. So it's actually that passage that you mentioned just a moment ago, that passage. "I'm a wheelchair user now, but as a child, I used to walk and everyone wanted to fix my limp, so I tried to walk right. I practiced over and over the motion of heel of or toe. But as I did my exercises night after night, I also remember this. I remember listening to the offbeat of my quirky stride and loving the sound of my own step, the way my foot struck ground, the distinctive rhythm of my walk. They were my signature, something that was purely my own. This was the first spiritual insight I traced to disability experience. This decision to cherish something about myself that other people didn't value. Maybe you know this insight too. Maybe you know what it's like to say yes to yourself, even in the face of disapproval or disdain.
Growing up, disabled, growing up queer, the stakes were stark. It was either kindle, tenacious love for myself or swallow the world's projections whole. And so I chose. I found and felt and claimed the holiness of my own bones. I said yes to my own heart, to my own soul. I had the brilliant audacity to call it good and know it all. Thank you."

Joeita Gupta :
That was beautiful. Thank you so much for speaking to me about your book. It's such a fantastic read, and I really enjoyed reading it, and I really enjoyed our conversation.

Julia-Watts-Belser:
Thank you so much. Huge pleasure to get to talk with you today.

Joeita Gupta :
Julia-Watts-Belser is a rabbi and scholar, and you just heard an excerpt from her book, which I hope you'll have a chance to pick up. This is all the time we have for today. Unfortunately, we do have to run. If you'd like to leave us some feedback and share your insights or experiences with religion and being a person with a disability, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email, write to feedback@ami.ca. You can find us on Twitter, now X, at AMI Audio. Use the hashtag Pulse AMI. You can also give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. Don't forget to leave permission to play the voicemail on the program. Our videographer today has been Jay Kemp, our technical producer in for Marc Aflalo is Jordan Steeves, Andy Frank is the manager for AMI-audio, Ryan Delehanty, of course, is the coordinator for podcast at AMI-audio, should mention Ryan as well. And I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thank you so much for listening. Enjoy the rest of your day.