We live in a world pitched toward productivity, where we often face intense pressure to measure our worth on the basis of our work. In this session, we’ll bring the insights of disability culture into conversation with Jewish wisdom about Shabbat practice to explore how traditions of radical rest can counter productivity culture. Together, we’ll consider how Sabbath practice and other forms of intentional slowness and sustainability can offer resources for challenging ableism. We’ll grapple with disabled people’s experiences about living with limits, about the way disability often means we move through the world at a different pace. How might we build a world that better honours our need for rest? How might we cultivate the spiritual insights that slowness can offer?
Join Julia Watts Belser for conversation and learning about her new book Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, which brings Jewish sacred texts into conversation with disability culture to deepen conversations about disability, spirituality, and social justice.
As a Rabbi and person with a disability, Julia brings a unique and brilliantly insightful perspective to disability in our shared scriptures. She explores how these insights impact our theological understanding and social context and redeems disability as central to the purposes of God both historically and in contemporary culture.
Each webinar will last for 90 minutes and include input from Julia, with time in small groups and Q and A.
Please use the Eventbrite links below to register.
A Zoom link will be sent before the meeting.
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If you have any additional access requirements – information and slides in advance or BSL – please let John Beauchamp know about this at john.beauchamp@london.anglican.org
Julia Watts Belser (she/her) 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. Her latest book, Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, won a National Jewish Book Award. She’s an avid wheelchair hiker, a devoted gardener, and a lover of wild places.