Jewish History (2013) 27: 399–434 © The Author(s) 2013. This article is published DOI: 10.1007/s10835-013-9190-x with open access at Springerlink.com Women and Hasidism: A “Non-Sectarian” Perspective MARCIN WODZINSKI´ University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Hasidism has often been defined and viewed as a sect. By implication, if Hasidism was indeed a sect, then membership would have encompassed all the social ties of the “sectari- ans,” including their family ties, thus forcing us to consider their mothers, wives, and daughters as full-fledged female hasidim. In reality, however, women did not become hasidim in their own right, at least not in terms of the categories implied by the definition of Hasidism as a sect. Reconsideration of the logical implications of the identification of Hasidism as a sect leads to a radical re-evaluation of the relationship between the hasidic movement and its female con- stituency, and, by extension, of larger issues concerning the boundaries of Hasidism. Keywords Hasidism · Eastern Europe · Gender · Women · Sectarianism · Family Introduction Beginning with Jewish historiography during the Haskalah period, through Wissenschaft des Judentums, to Dubnow and the national school, scholars have traditionally regarded Hasidism as a sect. This view had its roots in the earliest critiques of Hasidism, first by the mitnagedim and subsequently by the maskilim.1 It attributed to Hasidism the characteristic features of a sect, 1The term kat hahasidim (the sect of hasidim)orkat hamithasedim (the sect of false hasidim or sanctimonious hypocrites) appears often in the anti-hasidic polemics of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.