Loving Our Own Bones
Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole
The essential read on disability, spirituality, and social justice that won the 2025 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the 2024 National Jewish Book Award, and more
A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture
“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.…