God on Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology

At kiddush one day, I was welcoming a visitor to synagogue when she popped the question. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked as her eyes flicked from my face to my wheels. I’ve been asked this question in an astounding array of inappropriate venues; I didn’t flinch. “I have a disability,” I said, though it was plain she’d already noticed. A firm full stop followed that statement, though I knew full well I didn’t answer her question. I’m more than willing to talk about disability, but I’m disinclined to do so while waiting in the buffet line for my salad.

In truth, my answer was something of a lie. What’s wrong with me has more to do with objectification, pity, and disdain than with honest muscle and bone. The primary problem lies in social attitudes, architectural barriers, and cultural conceptions of normalcy that value certain modes of being over others. In other words, the problem is ableism — a complex set of power relations and structural arrangements that privilege certain bodies or minds as normal while designating others as abnormal and that afford the “able” the right to exercise power and influence over those considered disabled.

“Ezekiel’s vision split open my own imagination,” the author writes. “I think of the delight I take in my own chair . . . the way wheels set me free and open up my spirit.” Whirlwheel by Olivia Wise.

Olivia Wise (oliviawisestudio.com)

The Transgressive Potential of Disability Culture

The disability justice movement has drawn many of us together for activism, artistry, and passionate community. In these circles, disability isn’t a medical diagnosis, but a cultural movement. Approaching disability through the lens of culture allows us to appreciate disability as a dimension of human diversity. This perspective has often been overlooked in religious communities. But like the critical interpretive insights of feminist, queer, womanist, and liberation theologies, disability culture can bring vital, transformative insight to questions of spirit.

I claim disability as a vibrant part of my own identity, as a meaningful way of naming and celebrating the intricate unfolding of my own skin and soul. A student once asked whether it was appropriate for someone with a disability to recite the blessing Asher Yatzar, the blessing that Jews recite to praise the One who creates the body with wisdom. My bones say yes. I bless God for crafting this holy house of skin and blood: these clear eyes and bony hips, this leg a bit shorter than the next, this hip unwilling to bear weight. When I walked as a child, my heel used to strike ground in its own distinctive rhythm. Though my walk was subject to scrutiny and no small disapproval, I remember listening to the off-beat of my quirky stride, loving the sound of my own step.

Falling Embers by Amy Monthei.

Amy Monthei

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. In the luminous words of Ntozake Shange in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, “I found god in myself / and I loved her / I loved her fiercely.” Muscle, heart, body, and bone testify to the One who made me, to the Source of wind and rain and soil who cobbled my elements into form and breathed soul into my veins. Who had the brilliant audacity to call it good and know it whole.

As a feminist, as a queer woman, and as a disabled bi-sexual Jew, I insist on honoring the integrity of a self that has often been disdained. These days, I also find myself increasingly moving through spaces that are opening toward welcome. As growing numbers of religious communities strive to include people with disabilities, they increasingly undo the structural and attitudinal barriers to our engagement. This is vital work, urgently needed. In recent years, such commitments to inclusion have led synagogues to invest in religious education for...