Julia Watts Belser: As I was writ­ing Lov­ing Our Own Bones, I kept com­ing back to the phrase ​“Dis­abil­i­ty Torah.” Those words were my touch­stone, a way of nam­ing a core ori­en­ta­tion that runs through the book. My work is root­ed in the assump­tion that dis­abled peo­ple have wis­dom that mat­ters — not in spite of our dis­abil­i­ties, but at least in part because of them. Dis­abled folks know some­thing cru­cial about what it’s like to move through a world that rarely wel­comes us. We bring a dif­fer­ent kind of knowl­edge to the table, a knowl­edge born of dis­si­dent bod­ies and minds. When we bring those insights to the study of Torah, we can crack open new per­spec­tives on spir­i­tu­al life and reli­gious experience.

Joy Ladin: That is the same assump­tion I brought to The Soul of the Stranger: Read­ing God and Torah from a Trans­gen­der Per­spec­tive. I know from my own expe­ri­ence of read­ing Torah as a trans per­son, and from the respons­es of non-trans peo­ple to the Torah read­ings I’ve shared, that trans­gen­der and non­bi­na­ry expe­ri­ences of liv­ing out­side or between bina­ry gen­der cat­e­gories can illu­mi­nate the Torah — and that, just as you remind us about dis­abil­i­ty wis­dom, our expe­ri­ences can help every­one rec­og­nize the ways in which we all some­times feel alien­at­ed from the roles and iden­ti­ties we are assigned.

JWB: Yes, exact­ly. Dis­abil­i­ty Torah can also be deeply trans­for­ma­tive for peo­ple who don’t iden­ti­fy as dis­abled, in part because we all expe­ri­ence moments where our bod­ies and minds don’t match society’s expec­ta­tions. But while Dis­abil­i­ty Torah feels deeply aligned with queer and trans tex­tu­al cre­ativ­i­ty in many ways, there’s also an inter­est­ing point of dif­fer­ence. Queer and trans Jews often grap­ple with the prob­lem of absence, of not see­ing our­selves rep­re­sent­ed in the text. With dis­abil­i­ty, we have the oppo­site prob­lem. Dis­abil­i­ty is every­where, but it’s often rep­re­sent­ed in ways that are quite alienating.

Isaac’s blind­ness is a potent exam­ple. As an ancient Israelite patri­arch, Isaac is expect­ed to pass on his bless­ing to his eldest son, Esau. But Isaac ages, and his eyes become dim. His wife and younger son use Isaac’s dis­abil­i­ty against him, trick­ing him into giv­ing the bless­ing to Jacob instead. Jacob wears his brother’s clothes to shroud him­self in Esau’s scent; he wraps his hands in goat skin to mim­ic his brother’s rough skin. Isaac is made to play the fool, the bum­bling blind man — the one who can’t even dis­tin­guish between his own sons.

For years, that text felt too tox­ic to touch. It felt like a car­i­ca­ture, an obvi­ous mis­nam­ing of dis­abil­i­ty expe­ri­ence. It also felt like a dev­as­tat­ing con­fir­ma­tion of dis­abled people’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. I flinch from both of these nar­ra­tives: that dis­abled peo­ple are laugh­ing stocks or trag­ic fig­ures, that we’re always at risk of being used.

JL: For me, the sto­ry of Jacob dress­ing up as his more mas­cu­line broth­er, Esau, to trick their father into giv­ing him the first­born bless­ing was extreme­ly painful. I nev­er want­ed to iden­ti­fy with Jacob, a char­ac­ter I real­ly dis­like. But as a trans­gen­der child pre­tend­ing to be a boy I knew I was­n’t, I felt I had to iden­ti­fy with Jacob, to rec­og­nize that I, like Jacob, was using the con­ven­tions of mas­culin­i­ty to trick my par­ents into giv­ing me bless­ings they would­n’t have giv­en me if they knew who I real­ly was. I did­n’t read the sto­ry as being about Isaac’s blind­ness; I saw it as being about Jacob’s dis­hon­esty toward his par­ent, his betray­al of his father’s trust for his own gain.

It was­n’t until many years lat­er, when I was open­ly liv­ing my trans iden­ti­ty, that I final­ly real­ized that I was in a dou­ble bind: I was try­ing to act like the boy my par­ents want­ed me to be, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly blam­ing myself for lying to them and betray­ing their trust. My feel­ing of betray­ing my par­ents was inter­nal­ized trans­pho­bia, and a way of avoid­ing my anger at them for not being able to rec­og­nize or accept my true self. When I found com­pas­sion for my child self, I was able to rec­og­nize that Jacob was also doing what he had to do to become the per­son he was cre­at­ed to be.

JWB: I find that so painful, the way you both deeply dis­liked Jacob and iden­ti­fied with him. When I read this sto­ry, I feel deep empa­thy for Jacob. I don’t see him as a deceiv­er. I see him as a per­son fac­ing an excru­ci­at­ing ques­tion: am I allowed to be my true self?

It’s a pow­er­ful ques­tion, and not just for queer and trans folks. So many dis­abled peo­ple have also learned that we have to hide. We’ve learned to shrink our­selves, to min­i­mize our dif­fer­ence, or to expend huge amounts of ener­gy try­ing to pass as nondisabled.

When Jacob faces this ques­tion, he doesn’t reveal him­self. I see that as a tragedy. But to read that moment as Jacob’s fail­ure over­looks the fact that tragedy is baked into the whole sys­tem. Ancient Israel has a pro­found cul­tur­al invest­ment in the sys­tem of pri­mo­gen­i­ture, the legit­i­ma­cy of the first­born son. That’s what makes it impos­si­ble for Jacob to come before his father as him­self. Cre­at­ing a world where Jacob can receive his father’s bless­ing and be him­self requires dis­man­tling the oppres­sive struc­tures that are pre­vent­ing that possibility.

That’s what I wish I could say to your younger self, and what I want to say to dis­abled folks who are also strug­gling with our bod­ies and minds in all their com­plex­i­ty. Claim­ing our iden­ti­ties and say­ing yes to our­selves can be a pow­er­ful cat­a­lyst for trans­for­ma­tion. But it’s easy for that to feel like just anoth­er pri­vate bur­den, one more way that we aren’t mea­sur­ing up. The cru­cial work — the work that’s an oblig­a­tion for all of us — is to push for deep, col­lec­tive cul­tur­al change.

JL: I agree. This series of tragedies — Jacob’s need to hide who he is from his own father, Isaac’s inabil­i­ty to rec­og­nize Jacob or pass his bless­ing on to the son he meant it for, Esau’s loss of the bless­ing that his father had been hold­ing for him — is a symp­tom of sys­temic fail­ure. The sense of scarci­ty, that only one broth­er can receive the bless­ing, is built into the bib­li­cal form of bina­ry gen­der. Even though Jacob is born lit­er­al­ly hold­ing onto Esau’s heel, the sys­tem defines Esau as the first­born, and Jacob as his life­long subordinate.

Male suprema­cy, racism, ableism, and many oth­er oppres­sive sys­tems oper­ate accord­ing to this same either/​or, win­ner-takes-all prin­ci­ple. Those at the top of the hier­ar­chy are enti­tled to every­thing, while those who aren’t are enti­tled to noth­ing but subordination.

Isaac is gen­er­al­ly thought of as the most con­ser­v­a­tive of the bib­li­cal patri­archs, whose main achieve­ment con­sists of main­tain­ing and pass­ing on what he inher­its from Abra­ham. Unlike his wife, Rebekah, who comes up with the plan to sub­vert pri­mo­gen­i­ture by hav­ing Jacob imper­son­ate Esau, Isaac nev­er thinks out­side the sys­tem, nev­er imag­ines that his life or fam­i­ly could work any oth­er way. That lack of imag­i­na­tion leads to Isaac’s most trag­ic fail­ure: his insis­tence that he has only one bless­ing to pass on, that after he has blessed Jacob by mis­take, there’s noth­ing left for Esau.

JWB: For me, that’s a huge part of the tragedy: the way in which we often end up accept­ing unjust, bru­tal sys­tems as part of the unques­tioned frame­work of our world. But as I read this sto­ry, I also find a potent moment of pos­si­bil­i­ty, a glim­mer that might let us imag­ine otherwise.

In Gen­e­sis 27, Isaac asks Jacob about his iden­ti­ty sev­er­al times, giv­ing Jacob chance after chance to tell him the truth. As we’ve talked about, Jacob doesn’t dare to appear before his father as his true self. The last time Isaac asks, ​“Are you real­ly my son Esau?,” Jacob answers in the affir­ma­tive. He tells his father a lie, and Isaac goes ahead and gives him the bless­ing. But there’s some­thing curi­ous about the Hebrew, some­thing that feels like it holds a sec­ond pos­si­bil­i­ty. When Jacob answers his father, he speaks a sin­gle word. He says, ​“Ani,” mean­ing ​“I.”

For me, that final word feels like the door­way to a dif­fer­ent world, one where Jacob can let go of the imper­a­tive to hide, where he can receive his father’s bless­ing with­out hav­ing to deny his own iden­ti­ty. I hold that verse like a pearl of pos­si­bil­i­ty: that dis­abled, queer, and trans folks will find and forge spaces where we can unmask, where we can hon­or the truth of our own lives, where we can trust that we’ll be cher­ished and held in our full­ness. That’s the bless­ing I want, for all of us.