The Hasidic Face of Feminism: Gender between Modernity and Mysticism in Chabad-Lubavitch Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

This ethnographic and textual study of Chabad Hasidism focuses on Hasidic gender theology and the lived experience of Chabad women. The women in this study can broadly be defined as shluchos, female ‘emissaries’ of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994). This study describes the Chabad notion of womanhood, with chapters on outreach, aesthetics, motherhood, women’s Torah study and leadership. As modern subjects, Chabad women have competing and diverse desires: some may want to study the Talmud or become a halachic (legal) advisor, others to present an intimate TedTalk, or yet others to step back from outreach to bolster their family life. In each case, they subsume these desires within their identities as Hasidim. Since the Rebbe’s passing in 1994, his teachings are open to multiple interpretations, and I argue this allows for a breadth of gender ideologies to coexist within Chabad. Chabad’s rich social and theological context requires a methodology that combines ethnographic research and textual analysis of the Rebbe’s teachings about gender. My fieldwork is based on a year of participant observation, interviews with 45 Chabad women in the United States, and ten years as an “insider” in Chabad. I weave together personal reflections, ethnography, and analysis of Hasidic texts to create a theologically-informed, feminist ethnography. I find that Chabad women are products of the Hasidic theory of gender that emerges from the Rebbe’s teachings as well as the cultural milieu of the contemporary United States, in which broad changes to women’s roles have occurred in the past few decades. I argue that when some Chabad Hasidim claim that their Rebbe is the “true feminist,” they do so to contextualize changes taking place within their own communities for women as well as challenging the dominance of secular feminism and its view of gender roles. I suggest the term “Hasidic feminism” as a distinct way of conceptualizing the discourse about gender in Chabad. My work shows how contestations about the meaning of gender and its sociological repercussions are as much a part of the Jewish mystical tradition as they are part of broader American culture.

Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration i

Introduction 1

Part I: Facing Out

1 Chabad Outreach: Gender in Decentralized Jewish Life 62  

2 Contemporary Sensibilities, Aesthetics, and Boundaries 111

Part II: Facing In 

3 At Home in the World: Motherhood and Family in Flux 154

4 Gender Difference in Chabad’s Mystical and Social World 192

5 Learning, Authority, and the Limits of Change 231

Conclusion 279

Bibliography 289

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Religion
Subfield / Discipline	Jewish Religious Cultures
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Religion, General Jewish Studies
Keyword	Hasidism Chabad Haredim Jewish Mysticism Hasidic women Lubavitch Hasidic
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Seeman, Don , Emory University
Committee Members	Hoesterey, James B., Emory University Fader, Ayala , Fordham University Flueckiger, Joyce, Emory University

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