Drawing Torah from Troubling Texts: Gender, Disability, and Jewish Feminist Ethics

Abstract

This article argues for the importance of developing queer feminist disability ethics in ways that push beyond the conventional canon, acknowledging the violence present in many traditional texts and their failures to do justice to lived disability experience. Critiquing a famous debate in the Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 17a, in which Hillel and Shammai debate the permissibility of telling a lie in order to praise the beauty of a disabled bride at her wedding, the author argues for a Jewish disability ethics that engages secular disability arts. Examining the artistry of queer disabled dancer Claire Cunningham, the essay draws out the embodied ethical insights expressed through disability arts and argues that Cunningham's work offers a more compelling answer to the Talmud's question—in her claim that love lodges in the tangible acts of paying attention to another.