Julia Watts Belser

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Articles

The Last Time I Climbed A Mountain

Sep 14, 2024 | brevitymag.com | Julia Watts Belser

There are a thousand things I can’t recall: the date, the place, the details of the trail. I was nineteen, maybe twenty. It was a strong ascent, somewhere above St. Gallen in the Alps. All the rest has gone to mist. What stays: the incandescent sunshine. How the air bit thin and clean against my skin. The way the grass glowed green against bare rock. The skitter of stones beneath my shoes. The spilled blue bowl of sky. The hike was for a morning, nothing more.
Jewish Communities and a Dizzying Freedom

Aug 26, 2024 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Carol Ungar |Mira Simon |Andrés Spokoiny |Julia Watts Belser

The motivation for writing a book often falls somewhere between arrogance and generosity. And it’s funny how these two impulses interact. For example, the arrogant part of me thinks that I’m so well-intentioned that I wrote a book only as a selfless exercise in generosity. Compulsion can also be a powerful source of motivation for writers.
Shabbat and the Radical Practice of Rest

May 13, 2024 | lilith.org | Julia Watts Belser

Left to my own devices, I would eat up my life with worry and work and fear. It’s Shabbat that reminds me: I am more than my “to-do” list. My work is not my worth. My humanity is not dependent on my ability to get things done. The tendency to value accomplishment isn’t simply a personal fetish. It’s baked into the very structures of society, the structures that undergird ableism.
Reading scripture through the experience of disability

Mar 12, 2024 | christiancentury.org | Julia Watts Belser |Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Brian Bantum

Julia Watts Belser has written a book about joy, a political manifesto, a cry from the heart, and a spiritual companion. A queer and feminist rabbi, spiritual teacher, scholar of disability in both Jewish and Christian traditions, and disability activist, Belser carries all of these identities with strength, grace, and determination. Her writing is both intimate and eloquent. Disability politics are a provocative challenge to prevailing notions of human value, according to Belser.
Spirituality & Practice

Nov 29, 2023 | spiritualityandpractice.com | Julia Watts Belser

“When I first came into disability community, when I first began building the politics and relationships that would anchor me through the decades, it felt crucial to root my own identity in that bold refusal of healing and cure. I was emboldened by the example of Deaf activists, who fight for the recognition and protection of signing-Deaf cultures, even as technology and treatment offer increasing entry into the hearing world. My experience, of course, was not the same.
Loving Our Own Bones by Julia Watts Belser | Review | Spirituality & Practice

Nov 29, 2023 | spiritualityandpractice.com | Julia Watts Belser

This book is an extended reflection on disability, its politics, and how disability and spirituality intersect. Belser — a rabbi, scholar, and activist for disability justice — is sane, wise, and witty. She begins: “After synagogue one day, a visitor popped the question. 'What’s wrong with you?' she asked, as her eyes flicked from my face to my wheels.” Belser answered, “I have a disability,” but then she wants to change how you hear that word.
After Hottest Summer on Record, Local Governments Are Underreporting Deaths

Oct 27, 2023 | truthout.org | Greg Harman |Sabrina Fernandes |Kwolanne Felix |Julia Watts Belser

This story was published in partnership with Deceleration. Throughout the blazing summer of 2023, reporters dutifully marked prior heat records being demolished repeatedly across the nation. New record-setting high temperatures were noted almost daily, and in city after city, a raft of new hottest June, July and August monthlong records were marked in towering fonts. Far fewer stories, however, sought to document what that extreme heat meant for working people.
Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Why Do the Heathen Rage?’: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress

Oct 18, 2023 | publishersweekly.com | Jessica Wilson |Christian Wiman |Jacob Wright |Julia Watts Belser

Jessica Hooten Wilson. Brazos, $24.99 (192p) ISBN 978-1-58743-618-5In this worthwhile if flawed study, Wilson (Reading for the Love of God), Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University, contextualizes Flannery O’Connor’s little-known third novel, which was left unfinished at the time of her 1964 death.
This Yom Kippur, Let’s Undo Ableism

Sep 20, 2023 | lilith.org | Julia Watts Belser

Courtesy of the author and Beacon press. There’s a haunting moment in the traditional liturgy for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when Jewish prayer acknowledges that all hangs in the balance.
Loving Our Own Bones

Jul 31, 2023 | beacon.org | Julia Watts Belser

“This is an extraordinary book: beautifully written and accessible yet filled with scholarly insights; profoundly spiritual yet also boldly critical; fiercely angry yet also affirming and joyous. Readers of Loving Our Own Bones will not only come away with a deepened understanding of disability and ableism but will also likely have their views of many biblical texts challenged and transformed.”—Judith Plaskow, author, with Carol P.