Kimberly talks with self-described queer, disabled, feminist, Rabbi, Julia Watts Belser. Her book, Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, received the 2025 Grawemeyer Award for Religion from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville. They talk about grappling with spiritual texts as people with disabilities.

If you are interested in registering for Rabbi Belser’s public lecture, either in person or online, visit givebutter.com/2025Grawemeyer

Thanks to Chris Ankin for use of his song, “Change.”

The book "A Celebration of Family: Stories of Parents with Disabilities." is available from Amazon here.

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Demand and Disrupt is sponsored by the Advocado Press and the Center For Accessible Living.

You can find the transcript in the show notes below when they become available.

Transcript

Kimberly Parsley Today on Demand and Disrupt, I speak with Rabbi Julia Watts-Belzer, author of Loving Our Own Bones and the 2025 winner of the Graumeier Award for Religion.

Robotic Voice You're listening to Demand and Disrupt, the podcast for information about accessibility, advocacy, and all things disability.

Kimberly Parsley Welcome to Demand and Disrupt, a disability podcast. I'm your host, Kimberly Parsley.

Sam Moore And I'm your co-host, Sam Moore.

Sam Moore How you doing, Kimberly?

Kimberly Parsley I am doing very well. How about yourself, Sam?

Sam Moore I'm doing great. You know, spring is kind of sort of in the air. The temps are going up and down, though. But, you know, it's March Madness here, too. And I know you're such a big basketball fan, Kimberly.

Kimberly Parsley Yes, so much. I don't even know. I don't even know what's going on, so you should probably tell me.

Sam Moore Well, I tell you, we're going to – you're going to watch at least one game before the national title. Between now and the second week of April, you're going to watch at least one game.

Kimberly Parsley I only know that WKU is not in it this year.

Sam Moore The Tops are not in it.

Kimberly Parsley They're not in it. So there's just nothing for me. There's nothing for me.

Sam Moore They're setting their sights on next year.

Kimberly Parsley So I guess all the basketball fans are just in heaven, huh?

Sam Moore Yes, but even the most diehard of basketball fans need a little break here and there, and we're glad to give them one through Demand and Disrupt.

Kimberly Parsley That we are, that we are. It's a beautiful spring. My husband and daughter picked me some daffodils and you and I were talking that they are called many things daffodils.

Sam Moore Yes, I've heard my mom calls them Jonicles, and you said that your mom calls them Buttercups.

Kimberly Parsley She calls them March flags and March flags.

Sam Moore Or March flags, that's right.

Kimberly Parsley Yeah. And then they're also called buttercups, which I just think is adorable.

Sam Moore That reminds me of an old song from the 60s. "Why do you build me up, buttercup, baby, just to let me down?"

Sam Moore You've heard that song, haven't you?

Kimberly Parsley Wow, not sung like that, I haven't.

Sam Moore That's an oldie but a goodie. [laughter] I'm not old enough to remember it, but I still know it.

Kimberly Parsley [laughter] Right. And you were telling me a story, speaking of old, about a nursing home.

Sam Moore Yes, I'm glad you brought that up, Kimberly, because, you know, our good buddy, Eldon, who you and I both know.

Kimberly Parsley Hello, shout out to Eldon.

Sam Moore Yeah, he and I were talking the other day. He was telling me about a buddy of his who is a musician, and he goes around to a lot of local and regional venues to entertain people. Anyway, Eldon's buddy, he was going in to sing at this nursing home a few weeks ago, and he was going to entertain the troops with some singing and play guitar. Anyhow, he noticed that one of the guys in the audience was in particularly poor shape because he just looked like he was in a lot of pain and struggling big time. And anyhow, this guy had a request. And so he's not able to get to everybody's requests every show, but he thought, gosh, I got to honor this guy's request because this day is probably not going to have a whole lot of bright points for him. So we got to at least give him one and play a song. So he did, and he sang and he played his way through it. He had a great sense of pride knowing that he had done his part to make this old man's day a little better. So anyhow, after the show, he went to talk to this old man. He shook his hand and he said, I hope you get better. Old man looked straight at him, said, I hope you do, too. [laughter] Poor musician.

Kimberly Parsley Just, just, just so, so everyone's a critic, right? Everyone's a critic.

Sam Moore I'm telling you. And, you know, the critics are a lot of times people that you least expect to be critics. I guess that's sort of the life of a musician.

Kimberly Parsley Yes. And well, speaking of the opposite of critics, we have gotten some fan mail.

Sam Moore Fan mail!

Kimberly Parsley I know we love fan mail. Jerry Wheatley emailed and hi, Jerry. Hi, Jerry.

Sam Moore Hey, Jerry.

Kimberly Parsley And he said he liked your interview that you did with Jennifer Hunt Spurling. He said it was a lot of good information about the Kentucky Lions Eye Foundation. And he thought it was great that we were bringing some attention to what they do and bring in what they do to the attention of other people. So don't tell Jerry.

Sam Moore Tell Jerry that his check's in the mail.

Kimberly Parsley Exactly. So glad to see we are, you know, helping out people and giving the people what they want.

Kimberly Parsley And anyone who would like to send in an email to Demand and Disrupt, just send to [email protected].

Sam Moore Yes, we welcome fan mail, and we are also pretty thick-skinned, so, you know, we can take, you know, if you have, well, constructive criticism, maybe, topics you'd like for us to maybe dive into at some point.

Kimberly Parsley Oh, I love topic suggestions. I love that. Yeah, that'd be great.

Sam Moore So feel free to pass along those show ideas and suggestions too.

Kimberly Parsley Yeah. And, or you can get on Facebook and go to the Advocado Press and that link is in the show notes. So you can engage with the discussion that way. So you made me think of

Sam Moore You made me think of Avocado, which I'm not a fan of Avocado.

Kimberly Parsley It does, but it's like avocados, but with a D, A-D.

Sam Moore Yeah, that D just has to throw a wrench in things.

Kimberly Parsley Well, you know, yeah. What are you doing for spring break, Sam?

Sam Moore I think it'll be a staycation pretty much on this end. I'm sure half of Henderson will be out of town the week of April 7th through 11th because that is spring break in our school system, and I'm sure it is in the Warren County school system too, is it not?

Kimberly Parsley Yeah, I think it's a popular spring break week. I mean, of course, most of the colleges and universities, I believe they're on like this week.

Sam Moore Yeah, I think they already had — When I was at Western, I think our spring break was always like middle of March. But anyway, although I might want to hitch a ride to Louisville somehow because you're about to enlighten us on a special event that's happening in the Derby City during spring break, correct?

Kimberly Parsley I am the person who I interviewed today, Julia Watts-Belser. She will be giving a public lecture on Tuesday, April the 8th at 5 p.m. Eastern. So that's 4 p.m. Central. And it's a public lecture at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And I will have a link to that in the show notes to get updates. And I think if you can't make it in person, you can register. I think it will be live streamed. So I believe I am going to try to make it up there in person. I think there's a contingent of us from the Center for Accessible Living who are all going to try to get together and go. And that will be fun. And I'm very much looking forward to that.

Sam Moore That'll be fun. Maybe a little carpool action up from Bowling Green.

Kimberly Parsley Yes, exactly, exactly so.

Sam Moore Maybe you can record this presentation and that can be an episode.

Kimberly Parsley Well, like i said, i think that she's, i think they're planning on streaming it so...

Sam Moore It's going to be live streamed anyhow, so yeah.

Kimberly Parsley I think so. So, I mean, I think they're still, you know, working out details and stuff.

Sam Moore Yeah, If it's live streamed, of course, you can always go back and catch it later.

Kimberly Parsley Right but even if you're — I think you have to register even to view the stream so...

Sam Moore Okay, so don't forget that registration.

Kimberly Parsley So we'll have that in, in the show notes and everyone listen to my interview. It was an amazing interview. She's just — her — the way she looks at disability and spirituality is just really, really impressive, really coming at it from an interesting direction. And she is Julia Watts Belser, and she is the author of Loving Our Own Bones, Disability Wisdom, and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. And here is my interview with her. Welcome Dr. Julia Watts Belser to Demand and Disrupt. How are you?

Julia Watts Belser Thank you so much. I'm doing well, and it's a real pleasure to be here with you.

Kimberly Parsley Thank you for taking the time and congratulations on winning the Grommeier Award for Religion.

Julia Watts Belser Thank you so much. It's a huge honor. I'm really, really thrilled.

Kimberly Parsley So tell me about this award and what it might mean for your studies, your future and things.

Julia Watts Belser Well, thank you. The Graumeier Award for Religion is a huge honor. I'm really delighted to receive this award for my recent book, Loving Our Own Bones, Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. Of course, it's incredibly gratifying both personally and professionally, but it's also a really profound affirmation of the importance of bringing disability perspectives to the study of religion and theology. And that's core to my work and central to my own commitments. I am passionate about bringing disability voices and disability perspectives to the center of the conversation about, right, braid them into conversation with Jewish text and tradition, and also think more broadly about the role of disability and religion in so many different ways. There's, you know, I think there's such a long history of complexity when it comes to disability and religion. Disabled people have so often borne the brunt of a lot of ableism from religious communities. Sometimes that's, you know, pretty overt harm. Sometimes that's paternalism and charity that gets all wrapped up in spiritualizing language. So part of my work and part of my commitment is to really challenge that. But it's also core to my work is the belief that disabled people deserve meaningful access to spiritual life and to religious community. So I firmly believe that religion and religious communities can be a powerful site for justice-seeking work in the world. And part of what I hope my work and my book and this award can help do is to really help catalyze that sense of possibility.

Kimberly Parsley Well, the book is wonderful. I have read it and loved it so, so much.

Julia Watts Belser Ah, thank you.

Kimberly Parsley I listened to the audio and this is one of those times that I really would like to have been able to use like a print copy and a highlighter, really been amazing. So thank you so much for making it available as an audio book. And seriously, folks, if you haven't read it, you should pick it up. It is called Loving Our Own Bones, and it is wonderful. Instead of asking what do Jewish and Christian traditions have to say about disability, you kind of took this book in a different direction. Can you speak about that?

Julia Watts Belser Sure. So in my professional life, I am a professor of Jewish studies and disability studies at Georgetown University. And I work a lot on questions of what both biblical texts and early Jewish texts, what these texts have to say about disability. So people often ask me, what does the Bible say about disability? What does Jewish tradition teach about disability? It's a fair question. But with this book, my question was really different. My question really flips that on its head. I'm asking instead, what insights does disability bring to spiritual life? You know, Loving Our Own Bones dives deep into ableism and disability injustice, both in religious texts and in contemporary culture. In the book, I am really working on laying out both a spiritual and a political invitation to reimagine our world, our cultural traditions, our religious traditions, in ways that honor the real deal, our actual bodies and minds. In so many ways, I think of this book as like a love letter to disability community. I wrote it out of my fierce appreciation for all of the ways that disability community has changed my own life, to honor the ways that disabled people push back against normativity, the way that we teach each other to let go of stigma and shame, to spit out the poison that is ableism and claim each other's lives as worthy and beautiful and beloved. For me, that is powerful work. That is sacred work. And so part of what I am doing in the book is aiming to recognize and claim the sacredness of disabled people's lives, and then to bring our wisdom, disability wisdom, into conversation with religious texts and traditions. I think there's a lot that religion can learn from disability experience, and that's partly what I hope to open up.

Kimberly Parsley Because you have—You live in a disabled body which—

Julia Watts Belser I am a wheelchair user. Yeah, I'm a long time wheelchair user and disability activist. That's core to my own sense of identity and my politics and my spiritual life. I mean, I really can't say anything about who I am religiously, socially, politically without foregrounding my sense of disability matters to me deeply.

Kimberly Parsley Yeah. And that shows in the book. And I like what you say about the disabled community because I personally learned to love myself more once I became more involved in the disability community.

Julia Watts Belser Yeah, it's something that I hear from so many people. It's been my own experience as well. You know, it was other disabled people who—I've been disabled all my life, but I became a wheelchair user in college. And, you know, first of all, it was other disabled people who taught me all the tricks of the trade. But even more importantly, it was coming into disability community that helped me claim and recognize the fact that disability could be a catalyst and place of fierce self-love. And that that really matters to me, you know, that that sense that our body minds matter, that we have worth. That's something that, like I said, that feels to me like deep truth, but truth that we so, that the world often, the world tells us a lot of lies. And part of what I so deeply appreciate about disability community is the way that we teach each other otherwise.

Kimberly Parsley It's true. it is so true. The world tells us a lot of lies, but then, you know, there is this whole internalized ableism—

Julia Watts Belser Oh my gosh.

Kimberly Parsley —Where, you know, your own, your own self, your own brain is telling you the lies.

Julia Watts Belser Yes.

Kimberly Parsley —And it's so painful.

Julia Watts Belser It is.

Kimberly Parsley Can you tell me what led you to become a rabbi?

Julia Watts Belser It's a beautiful question. And of course, it's a complicated one. But I'll say, so I'll say a couple of different things. I think one of the things that led me first and foremost to become a rabbi was, is my deep commitment to the work of social justice. I feel that I became a rabbi to teach a Torah of love and liberation. And also because I wanted to root my own commitment to social justice work in sacred ground. Spiritual practice is an anchor for me. Contemplative practice, deep reflection, study of sacred texts, silence, song, care. All of these practices are, they're like the deepest ground I know. And they are part of what anchors me when the work is long and the fight is hard. So that was a big part of it. I wanted that commitment to the sacred to be at the center of everything that I do. But another truth about me is that I also really love tangling with sacred texts. I really, I really find it meaningful to be in ongoing conversation with a tradition, with wisdom, wisdom that has been passed through the centuries. You know, it's funny. Sometimes people say, oh, I became a rabbi because I, you know, was in love with Torah. Torah is a term that, you know, it's the sort of Jewish way we talk about the Bible. But I don't think that's true for me, actually. I have a very complicated, I have a complicated relationship with biblical text, with sacred text, with the text of, with Jewish tradition. I think one of the things that is most important to me about Jewish tradition is the space that it makes for dissent, for disagreement, and for argument. In Jewish community, we talk a lot about wrestling with God and wrestling with tradition. That's vital for me. And well, you know, because you've read Loving Our Own Bones, you know that—

Kimberly Parsley Yes.

Julia Watts Belser —We spend a lot of time tangling with texts that do disability harm. And that's part of my commitment, not just to look for the sweet and the soulful, but also to go straight into the places of trouble. Because I think we have an obligation to look very closely at the deep roots of ableism, violence, harm, and do the work to better understand that. And then also, hopefully, to alchemize it, to change it, to make it new, to teach a different possibility.

Kimberly Parsley In your book, you talk about Leviticus 21. Can you tell me about your struggles with that text in particular?

Julia Watts Belser Sure thing. Here we are going straight to the heart of the trouble. So, okay, Leviticus 21, that is, Leviticus 21 is a biblical text that declares that a priest with a quote-unquote blemish, the Hebrew word there is mum, a priest with a blemish may not bring sacrifice to God. And, you know, that passage goes on to lay out in very precise detail all of the priests who aren't allowed to serve. No priests who are blind, no priests who are lame, no priests who have a short stature, no priests with a limb that is too long or too short, no priests with scurvy or boil scars or once broken arms, right? I mean, it's a long list and it's really painful. It's a profoundly troubling text, not just for the way that it portrays God as preferring a certain kind of normative body, but also for the way that it bars disabled priests from the most sacred duties of their position. Priests with a blemish are still priests, right? So let's be clear, but they are forbidden to bring sacrifice. And in biblical text and biblical tradition, to bring sacrifice is to be, that is one of the things that brings a person particularly close to the divine presence. So that's hard. But I think most painful of all, that passage in Leviticus 21 concludes with words that actually forbid priests with a blemish from entering into the sacred, the most sacred place. They're not allowed to draw near to God's altar, lest they profane God's own sanctuary. Oh, I mean, twist the knife. So, okay. A couple of things I'd like to lift up in terms of how to grapple with a text like this. First for me, first and foremost, no apologetics. I don't want to make nice with this text. I want us to recognize the violence here and to recognize that this kind of violence, this kind of devaluation of disabled people's bodies and minds still happens all the time. I think it's important to be real about that. And when I encounter this text, unfortunately, this text is read every year. The whole Torah is read every year in Jewish communities. So I encounter this text on a regular basis. Every time I hear it read, I take it as a witness to ableism and as a call to reckon with violence. Okay—

Kimberly Parsley Do you feel like people look at you when that is read?

Julia Watts Belser [laughter] Oh, gosh. So truth be told, sometimes I skip synagogue on the day when I know this text is going to be read. I'm just like, it's not actually so much that I feel uncomfortable with the text. It's like, I don't want to hear what people are gonna say about it and i don't want that awkward moment where people are like, "Oh gosh i can't believe this is in here."

Kimberly Parsley So awkward.

Julia Watts Belser So awkward, so awkward. [chuckle] But so let's think about like what to do with it. Right. So first and foremost, I would say I take it for absolute granted that disabled people are beloved by God, full stop. That's bedrock for me. It's non-negotiable. So I flat out don't believe that Leviticus 21 tells us anything true about how God feels or how God thinks about disabled people. But I do believe this text tells us quite a bit about how humans judge each other and how quick we are to press our own prejudices onto God. So that shift feels really important because then it allows us to think much more about the ways in which human communities have so often judged and marked out certain kinds of bodies and minds as aberrant, as undesirable, as not wanted, and also have served to bar them from sacred places. Now, one of the things that's really interesting to me is that when you dig more into the way traditional, so I'll speak here particularly about Jewish sources, because that's where my expertise is. When you dig into the way that classical Jewish commentators have grappled with this text, it's really quite striking to see how many ancient voices, ancient and medieval voices recognize that this text is unacceptable and have worked to blunt its force. So that's pretty exciting, right? The Talmud, for example, a foundational sixth century text of Jewish law and practice really reinterprets this biblical passage quite boldly. The ancient rabbis, right? So they ask, what's the real problem here? It's so, it's amazing. You can see that they assume that it can't be that God doesn't want disabled They can't, you know, they think it's got to be something else. So they argue instead that the real problem is other people. Other people might get distracted or disturbed by somebody whose body or mind is outside the norm. I mean, I got to say, I don't know about you, but that does ring true for me. So the rabbis adopt what they call the principle of familiarity. And they rule that as soon as a person is familiar, then they're allowed to come before the community and offer the priestly blessing. So, okay, this is an important move. I think it's a really significant, inclusive gesture. There's a lot that I value about it. And I, and it matters to me that that we can find these clear voices of dissent and disagreement already within the heart of the tradition, right? Again, this is 6th, 7th century. This is not a recent gesture toward inclusion. But I also want to say, you know, this business about familiarity, it's not enough. It's not enough. Because here's the thing that haunts me. Whose responsibility is it to become familiar? All too often, in my experience, it's disabled people who are forced to bear the brunt of embracing normativity, right? We're the ones expected to make ourselves more palatable to the non-disabled gaze. There are like a thousand ways we learn to do this. We learn to, you know, to hide the limp, to cover, to pass, to shrink, right? To apologize for our complexity, to try and minimize our difference. So whenever I read this text, I want us to take the Talmud's principle of familiarity and really turn it on its head. I want to use it to say, "The real obligation here is for communities to become familiar with us." Synagogues and churches and schools, public spaces, employers, right, all have an obligation to grapple with the force of this command, to take disability difference seriously, to learn the nuance of different access needs, to shift the burden back where it belongs. So that's how I read this text, and that's where I feel its potential.

Kimberly Parsley And you devote, I think, an entire chapter in your—

Julia Watts Belser Yeah, yeah.

Kimberly Parsley —book to this. So yeah, there's a lot here and it's not—

Julia Watts Belser There's a lot to dig into.

Kimberly Parsley There is a lot to dig into, but I found it, I found it not difficult reading. I found it, I was very curious listening, listening to it.—

Julia Watts Belser Thank you so much.

Kimberly Parsley —I thought, how's she going to square this? How can this be? But in, in every case you, I feel like. I feel like you brought love to both the text and the disabled people reading it. So, which no small feat there. Now, for Christians and Jews alike, Moses is an important figure. And you also have a chapter, I think, devoted to Moses.

Julia Watts Belser He gets two chapters, actually. [chuckle]

Kimberly Parsley Two chapters, right, right, yes, and rightly so. [chuckle] And I, there's one section in particular that I had flagged and I think I sent you that. Do you have that available to read?

Julia Watts Belser I'd be glad to. Let me just take a moment to get to the right spot.

Kimberly Parsley Okay.

Julia Watts Belser Exodus 4 is not simply a record of God's confident command. It is also a negotiation that lays bare the urgency of God's call. God needs Moses in order to accomplish the things that God wants done. But here's the thing. God has a staffing problem. God faces the perennial frustration of having to arrange and marshal a fractious bunch of humans to undertake the work that God wants to accomplish in this world. Good help is hard to find, and the people God selects aren't always reliable. They don't always execute the job in the precise ways that God desires. Sometimes they don't show up. Sometimes they turn God down. This is a problem that disabled folks know well. Many of us rely on other people. People to accomplish physical tasks, whether that's getting out of bed and getting dressed or lifting the books and moving the furniture.

Kimberly Parsley I love that passage so much. So, so much. So can you talk a little bit about that passage to our audience?—Who are of course people with disabilities.

Julia Watts Belser I'd love to. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to. And I'm so glad that you picked that, because that is for me one of the passages that, you know, I—that feels so resonant for thinking about, right? I mean, it comes right, it comes straight out of my own lived disability experience. I should say, before I do, let me just say a word about Moses, right? I lift up Moses as a disabled prophet, as a man who experiences speech disability, and who contends with that as part of his own religious call. There's a really powerful moment in the Bible where God asks Moses to speak God's own words before Pharaoh, right? Go to Pharaoh and say this to them. Pharaoh is, of course, the oppressor who is enslaving the people, and Moses is supposed to go and negotiate. This is a famous let my people go scene, but The thing I find amazing, I think I find really brilliant from a disability perspective is Moses doesn't want to do it, right? He says to God, look, I have a speech disability. I am not a man of words. And then God says, Moses, who made your mouth? Who makes people deaf or hearing, speaking or mute? It's me, God. You know, it's me, Moses. So we have this really exquisite moment where Moses discloses his own disability to God and they negotiate. There's actually, I mean, I won't tell the whole story here. I'll leave you something if you read the book, but there's a whole moment of really extraordinary access negotiations about the kind of support that Moses is going to need and that he gets in order to fulfill God's call. The passage that you asked me to read just now, the passage you chose speaks to something else, something that's actually really core to my own sense of spiritual life. And that's the sense that God also has access needs. God knows disability experience from the inside. Now, I think this kind of flies in the face of the way a lot of at least Jewish and Christian folks have been taught to think about God. Honestly, I think this is just a sort of very common way of thinking about God. Even in secular culture, we often assume that God is like all powerful, all knowing, all everything, all the time, the total antithesis of disability. But I actually find it really generative to think otherwise, to think about God as knowing something about disability, knowing disability quite intimately. One of the ways that I think about that is all of the ways that God relies on human hands, human work, human speech, right? God relies on us, not in some romantic, idealized way, but in the way that a lot of disabled people rely on care attendance, right? The way I need someone to lift things for me and to move stuff and to drive me to the store. As far as I can tell, God can't pick up a single stone without a human hand to lift and, you know, I know something about that because of my own disability experience. I know how frustrating that can be, how vulnerable it can it can leave us. But I also know the intimacy that it can open up the way that it builds out truly a sense of interdependence and mutuality. A sense that we actually really cannot do it alone. I find that beautiful.

Kimberly Parsley It is, it is beautiful. And I chose that particular passage of your book. Just, I think that's a good example of what you do throughout this book, which is kind of, it's not going to go how you think it's going to go. [laughter]

Julia Watts Belser [laughter] It's not going to go how you think it's going to go. So true. So true. I mean, that flip, right? That saying, what if we assume disability is actually at the heart of the whole enterprise? What if we assume that disabled people know something really... juicy about spiritual life like we're not on the outside looking in. I mean, often in real time we are, we have been pushed to the margins and we are made to sort of look in from the cheap seats and so much of the work I want to do in this book is to to flip that to place disability experience at the heart and center of religious life

Kimberly Parsley Beautiful. Wonderful. I love the Moses section.

Julia Watts Belser Thank you.

Kimberly Parsley I love it so much. A disabled person's relationship to religion can be both complicated and comforting. And I think you spoke to this when we were talking about Leviticus 21. For me, it's when Jesus is healing blind people, the blind man, and I'm in the pews and I know everyone's looking at me and it's just so awkward. So, but then, you know, if I want to know what place is most likely going to have all their materials available for me in Braille, or if someone's going to volunteer to read stuff for me, it's going to be at church. So it's both complicated and comforting. And I wonder if you can talk a little about that.

Julia Watts Belser Yeah, it's so true. I really resonate with what you're naming. It has been my experience that religious communities can be spaces of incredible balm and nurture. They are often places where care can unfold in ways that we want, that we need. And at the same time, I spend a lot of my time working with folks who have been burned by religion, right? I am a queer disabled feminist rabbi. So often—I am—the folks to whom my heart is closest, so many of us have borne the brunt of religious violence. So I just want to name outright, in a lot of disability spaces, people are deeply hesitant to engage with religion and for good reason. There are so many minefields, right? Whether that's like you mentioned, miracle stories, healing stories, faith healing, or paternalism and saccharine sweetness. There are also just a lot of really frustrating cultural narratives about disability that end up getting like garbed in spiritual language, right? People say, "Oh, disability is our greatest teacher." or "God doesn't give us more than we can bear." You know, like, oh, spare me, right? I mean, these are just, these are just so, so upsetting. [chuckle] So I think that, you know, I find myself often very much working between worlds. I do a lot of work with religious communities, helping religious communities think about ways to more deeply integrate the insights of disability movements and disability culture, and to really learn from and be schooled by disability wisdom. And, you know, and to also just not perpetuate some of these really unfortunate tropes. But also, as a spiritual teacher, as a rabbi, one of my commitments is to helping make space for disabled people to engage with religion and spirituality on our own terms. We deserve space to grapple with spiritual questions. We deserve space to mourn losses, to name grief, to find support, and also to savor pleasure and to celebrate joy. And I think, you know, I'm sure I'm not a person that says, oh, everyone needs religious community. I mean, no, you find community, find nurture, find solace, find balm wherever you can. But I do think that disabled people deserve access, competent, culturally competent access to religious community. And that's one of the commitments that, you know, that's part of the work that I try to do. And I think it's really important also for when we as disabled people are engaging with religious communities to think about, to recognize our own agency, to recognize the ways in which we can say no to what does not serve us.

Kimberly Parsley That is hard. It is hard.

Julia Watts Belser It is hard. So often we are socialized to just say, oh, yes, oh, sure. Right. Politeness to just accept. I mean, and I think religion often—religion is often a space where that idea of obedience, of just listening, you know, bowing to the wisdom of the tradition is often ingrained in us. I want to go back to something that I said, you know, when you asked me, "Why did I become a rabbi?" I, it's something that I named that feels so important to me about my own relationship with tradition, which is as often as I say yes, I also say no. And I think it really matters for all minoritized communities, but I'll speak here particularly about disability communities. It matters for us to, to, to build up those, the spiritual muscle of saying, "Nope, I'm not taking that in. I'm not accepting that. That is not going to be, that is not my spiritual truth."

Kimberly Parsley It's exhausting, isn't it, to be in religious community and be reframing. For Christians, every Sunday, reframing a passage to make it palatable.

Julia Watts Belser Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, for me, that's also one of the reasons why I think about, I think that's partly what led me to begin to claim disability cultural space, also a sacred space. One of the things I write about in the book is how important disability arts are for me. I've had the joy and privilege of spending a lot of time with disabled dancers, disabled art makers, people who are doing, you know, disabled folks doing audio work and this kind of brilliant, cultural, artistic, disability-centered work. And, you know, that is sacred ground for me. And often that is a place where I find myself often recharging there, bringing that energy also back into my own sense of, yeah, so I guess I would just say church can look a lot of different ways. And I think that in my own life, a kind of patchwork of different communities has been a really powerful way to recognize that. Yeah, it matters to me to be grounded in Jewish community. It matters to me to have a synagogue. I mean, I actually feel really, really, really deeply grateful to have a synagogue that has a strong commitment to nurturing and nourishing disability community. But that's, but also there have been a lot of times where I have found myself really, yeah, wanting to curl up with disability memoir, right? Great book of essays. To make my way through a kind of detox after an unfortunate moment with religious community that didn't serve me so well.

Kimberly Parsley Understood. Yeah. I feel that I feel that you will be here in Kentucky, in Louisville in April, correct? Are you looking forward to that?

Julia Watts Belser Oh, very much, very much. It'll be a huge delight. So I will be giving a public talk outdoors in the Rose Garden, I believe, at Louisville Seminary. And I'm really, really delighted. So I'll speak more about some of the texts that we've talked about today. And I'll talk a little bit more about Moses and the significance of those stories and also the urgency that I feel for religious communities to recognize disability as a justice issue and to show up, especially now, especially in this moment, in support of disability communities.

Kimberly Parsley Okay. And do you know, you said that's a public lecture. Is that anyone can come or is there invitation only?

Julia Watts Belser No, it's a public lecture! And I believe I mean, I'm not hosting, but it is, I believe it is warmly welcome to, community members are warmly welcome. And I'd be thrilled to get to connect with listeners, listeners then.

Kimberly Parsley Okay. Well, we might, we at the Center for Accessible Living in Louisville, we might just form a group and show up as—

Julia Watts Belser That would be a blast!

Kimberly Parsley —your own personal sharing section. Wouldn't that be great?

Julia Watts Belser I would be delighted. That would be wonderful. That would be wonderful.

Kimberly Parsley Well, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it so much. And again, congratulations on the Graumeier Award for Religion.

Julia Watts Belser Thank you so much. What a pleasure to get to talk with you today.

Kimberly Parsley Thank you.

Julia Watts Belser And hopefully I'll see you in April.

Kimberly Parsley Absolutely. Thank you.

Julia Watts Belser Thank you.

Kimberly Parsley Demand and Disrupt is a production of the Advocado Press with generous support from the Center for Accessible Living based in Louisville, Kentucky. Our executive producers are me, Kimberly Parsley, and Dave Mathis. Our sound engineer is Michael Parsley. Thanks to Chris Ankin for the use of his song, Change. Don't forget to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. And please consider leaving a review. You can find links to our email and social media in the show notes. Please reach out, and let's keep the conversation going. Thanks, everyone.

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