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Loving Our Own Bones

Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole

Author Julia Watts Belser
Paperback
$18.95 US
Beacon Press
On sale Sep 10, 2024 | 288 Pages | 9780807016442
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A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture

A 2024 National Jewish Book Award winner and essential read on disability, spirituality, and social justice

“What’s wrong with you?”

Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What’s wrong isn’t her wheelchair, though—it’s exclusion, objectification, pity, and disdain.

Our attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots that we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible 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 or as a challenge to be overcome.

Through fresh and unexpected readings of the Bible, Loving Our Own Bones instead paints a luminous portrait of what it means to be disabled and one of God’s beloved. Belser delves deep into sacred literature, braiding the insights of disabled, feminist, Black, and queer thinkers with her own experiences as a queer disabled Jewish feminist. She talks back to biblical commentators who traffic in disability stigma and shame. What unfolds is a profound gift of disability wisdom, a radical act of spiritual imagination that can guide us all toward a powerful reckoning with each other and with our bodies.

Loving Our Own Bones invites readers to claim the power and promise of spiritual dissent, and to nourish their own souls through the revolutionary art of radical self-love.
CHAPTER ONE
Claiming Disability

CHAPTER TWO
Grappling with the Bible: Gender, Disability, and God

CHAPTER THREE
Hiddenness and Visibility: Passing and Presenting as Disabled

CHAPTER FOUR
Ableism: The Social-Political Dimension of Disability

CHAPTER FIVE
Priestly Blemishes: Talking Back to the Bible’s Ideal Bodies

CHAPTER SIX
Moses: Portrait of a Disabled Prophet

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Land You Cannot Enter: Longing, Loss, and Other Inaccessible Terrain

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Perils of Healing

CHAPTER NINE
Isaac’s Blindness: The Complexity of Trust

CHAPTER TEN
Jacob and the Angel: Wheels, Wings, and the Brilliance of Disability Difference

CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Politics of Beauty: Disability and Desire

CHAPTER TWELVE
The Radical Practice of Rest: Shabbat Values and Disability Justice

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
God on Wheels: Disability Theology

Glossary of Jewish Terms
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation
Notes
Index
Julia Watts Belser is a rabbi, scholar, and spiritual teacher, as well as a longtime activist for disability, LGBTQ, and gender justice. She is a professor of Jewish studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University and core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program, as well as a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Author of Rabbinic Tales of Destruction, among other scholarly books, she has held faculty fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s also an avid wheelchair hiker and a lover of wild places.
Julia Watts Belser View titles by Julia Watts Belser

About

A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture

A 2024 National Jewish Book Award winner and essential read on disability, spirituality, and social justice

“What’s wrong with you?”

Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What’s wrong isn’t her wheelchair, though—it’s exclusion, objectification, pity, and disdain.

Our attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots that we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible 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 or as a challenge to be overcome.

Through fresh and unexpected readings of the Bible, Loving Our Own Bones instead paints a luminous portrait of what it means to be disabled and one of God’s beloved. Belser delves deep into sacred literature, braiding the insights of disabled, feminist, Black, and queer thinkers with her own experiences as a queer disabled Jewish feminist. She talks back to biblical commentators who traffic in disability stigma and shame. What unfolds is a profound gift of disability wisdom, a radical act of spiritual imagination that can guide us all toward a powerful reckoning with each other and with our bodies.

Loving Our Own Bones invites readers to claim the power and promise of spiritual dissent, and to nourish their own souls through the revolutionary art of radical self-love.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE
Claiming Disability

CHAPTER TWO
Grappling with the Bible: Gender, Disability, and God

CHAPTER THREE
Hiddenness and Visibility: Passing and Presenting as Disabled

CHAPTER FOUR
Ableism: The Social-Political Dimension of Disability

CHAPTER FIVE
Priestly Blemishes: Talking Back to the Bible’s Ideal Bodies

CHAPTER SIX
Moses: Portrait of a Disabled Prophet

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Land You Cannot Enter: Longing, Loss, and Other Inaccessible Terrain

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Perils of Healing

CHAPTER NINE
Isaac’s Blindness: The Complexity of Trust

CHAPTER TEN
Jacob and the Angel: Wheels, Wings, and the Brilliance of Disability Difference

CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Politics of Beauty: Disability and Desire

CHAPTER TWELVE
The Radical Practice of Rest: Shabbat Values and Disability Justice

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
God on Wheels: Disability Theology

Glossary of Jewish Terms
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation
Notes
Index

Author

Julia Watts Belser is a rabbi, scholar, and spiritual teacher, as well as a longtime activist for disability, LGBTQ, and gender justice. She is a professor of Jewish studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University and core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program, as well as a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Author of Rabbinic Tales of Destruction, among other scholarly books, she has held faculty fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s also an avid wheelchair hiker and a lover of wild places.
Julia Watts Belser View titles by Julia Watts Belser

Additional formats

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By Julia Watts Belser Image credit: Mohamed Hassan Ever since I began writing Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, I knew I wanted to craft a plain language version. The book brings disability culture into conversation with Jewish and Christian traditions, inviting readers to explore how disability insights can transform

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