The Maiden of Ludmir A Jeish Holy Woman and Her World [Hardcover]

Hannah Rochel Verbermacher, a Hasidic holy woman known as the Maiden of Ludmir, was born in early-nineteenth-century Russia and became famous as the only woman in the three-hundred-year history of Hasidism to function as a rebbeor charismatic leaderin her own right. Nathaniel Deutsch follows the traces left by the Maiden in both history and legend to fully explore her fascinating story for the first time.The Maiden of Ludmiroffers powerful insights into the Jewish mystical tradition, into the Maidens place within it, and into the remarkable Jewish community of Ludmir. Her biography ultimately becomes a provocative meditation on the complex relationships between history and memory, Judaism and modernity.

History first finds the Maiden in the eastern European town of Ludmir, venerated by her followers as a master of the Kabbalah, teacher, and visionary, and accused by her detractors of being possessed by adybbuk,or evil spirit. Deutsch traces the Maidens steps from Ludmir to Ottoman Palestine, where she eventually immigrated and re-established herself as a holy woman. While the Maidens storyincluding her adamant refusal to marryrecalls the lives of holy women in other traditions, it also brings to light the largely unwritten history of early-modern Jewish women. To this day, her transgressive behavior, a challenge to traditional Jewish views of gender and sexuality, continues to inspire debate and, sometimes, censorship within the Jewish community.

Nathaniel Deutschis Professor of Literature and History at the University
of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author ofGuardians of the Gate: Angelic Vice Regency in Late Antiquity(1999) andThe Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and Merkabah Mysticism(1995), and the coeditor with Y. Chireau, ofBlack Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism(2000).

The first book-length account of one of the most fascinating fil³‡