From the Publisher
Winner of the 2004 Moment Book Award.
From the ardently religious young woman who longs for the life of a male scholar to the young rebel who visits a strip club, smokes pot, and agonizes over her loss of faith to the proud Lubavitcher with a desire for a high-powered career, Stephanie Wellen Levine provides a rare glimpse into the inner worlds and daily lives of these Hasidic girls.
Lubavitcher Hasidim are famous for their efforts to inspire secular Jews to become more observant and for their messianic fervor. Strict followers of Orthodox Judaism, they maintain sharp gender-role distinctions.
Levine spent a year living in the Lubavitch community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, participating in the rhythms of Hasidic girlhood. Drawing on many intimate hours among Hasidim and over 30 in-depth interviews, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers offers rich portraits of individual Hasidic young women and how they deal with the conflicts between the regimented society in which they live and the pull of mainstream American life.
Perhaps counterintuitively for those who envision meek, religious girls confined within very structured roles, Levine finds that on the whole, these young Hasidic women seem more confident and have a greater sense of self than many of their mainstream peers. Levine explores why this might be the case, and what we can learn from their example for girls' positive development more generally. Along the way, she provides a fascinating portrayal of day-to-day life in the Lubavitch community.
This superbly crafted book offers intimate stories from Hasidic teenagers' lives, providing an intriguing twist to a universal theme: the struggle to grow up and define who we are within the context of culture, family, and life-driving beliefs.
Boston Globe
"Levine's book shows young Lubavitchers mingling spiritual fervor with the joys and fears all young people experience, from shopping to worrying about their weight."
Moment Magazine
"The light Levine's research sheds on her understanding of our secular culture and her recommendations should be required reading for educators across the country."
Jewish Book World
"Through her vivid descriptions of everyday life and dramatic portraits of seven girls, Stephanie Wellen Levine has provided a riveting account of the daily lives of Lubavitch girls. We learn about Hasidim, the Crown Heights community and Judaism. We sense the serenity and joy of being a deeply religious person committed to observing Jewish traditions and spreading this message to others. As a study of adolescent girls, the book offers much information that would be of special interest to parents, grandparents, and educators."
The Jerusalem Report
"Seven fascinating profiles of Lubavitch girls…at turns charming and scandalous."
The Jewish Week
"Captures the voices of [Hasidic] girls and their worldviews, in complexity, subtlety and depth, and with heart."
The New York Sun
"Compelling…moving…with a talent for inventive images"
JBooks
"Deeply touching and written with a fiction writer's flair for the lyrical phrase"
The Jewish Advocate
"With precision and color, Levine places readers smack in the neighborhood and in the interiors of the girls' inner thoughts and in the spiritual beliefs and routines of their families."
The Jerusalem Post Lit. Quarterly
"Levine does a splendid job of presenting how the girls cope, and paints vivid pictures of Shabbat around their family tables."
Na'amat Woman Book Reviews
"Levine steps back and lets the girls speak for themselves; their voices, layered with determination, yearning, confusion and wonder, emerge clearly."
The Jewish Standard
"Her book is neither a jargon-laden academic study nor a work of pop sociology. It is instead more like an old-fashioned novel in its richly detailed study of character and milieu."
Publishers Weekly
This absorbing ethnography acts as one subculture's corrective to Reviving Ophelia, in that it offers a refreshing portrait of adolescent girls who are far from insecure. In this refreshing portrayal of girls who are far from insecure, Levine presents a contrasting path to that of mainstream adolescent girls. While a graduate student in American studies at Harvard, Levine spent a year living as a "participant observer" in the Lubavitcher community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, entering with the following assumption: "The possibility that these girls' lives could be anything other than the Platonic essence of feminine subjugation seemed as unlikely as a suckling pig on a Shabbos table." What she found instead is that Lubavitch culture nurtures most girls' inner and outer voices. Though they are not immune from adolescent concerns about fashion, weight, looks and cliques, the Lubavitch emphasis on each person's godly mission to bring the Messiah deepens their spiritual outlook; the single-sex environment in which they mature helps develop vibrant, expressive personalities. Those who clash with Orthodox strictures, however, experience intense and painful struggles. From interviews with 32 girls ages 13 to 23, Levine found "downright juicy" material and culled seven portraits of girls (disguised in name and background) in their "idiosyncratic splendor." The essays are sometimes repetitive within the context of the entire book, as if Levine wrote each to stand on its own, but her bright, lively narrative compensates. Levine invites readers to share the "pure delight" of knowing these girls, and challenges us to draw on Hasidism as an unexpected source in helping our own girls develop into secure, confident adults. Starred review Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Nola Theiss
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KLIATT
When Levine graduated from college, she spent a weekend with orthodox Jewish women and never forgot the experience. Later she decided to spend a year studying the lives of young female Lubavitchers, a sect known for its extreme beliefs, even among Hasidic Jews. Females are considered "innately on a higher spiritual plane than males," which allows them more freedom in school in choice of subjects; ironically, their knowledge of the world is considered a protection from the evils of it for themselves and their future families. Levine found that while the girls in a group all looked more or less alike and shared the same core beliefs, there was considerable difference among individuals and "cliques" of the girls. The book is a thorough introduction to their belief in the coming of the Messiah, which can be hurried through acts of kindness, rituals and holy acts. It also looks at teenage girls with the typical need to rebel, fit in with their friends and "find themselves" even as they embody a range of modern Lubavitchism as lived by women, at least in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Although the author does not claim that they are "representative," she does categorize, as seen in the title. These girls range from Rochel, who has rejected the traditional life, to Gittel, who is combining marriage with medical studies, and Chaya, who works as a waitress in a strip club and lives non-traditionally. Levine treats all her subjects with respect. At the core, this is a popularly written academic study. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, New York Univ. Press, 254p. notes. bibliog. index., Ages 15 to adult.
Library Journal
Levine did much of the research for this book as a graduate student in American studies at Harvard, working under Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice), who provides a foreword. Spending a year living as a participant observer in the Lubavitcher Hasidic community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Levine sought to discover whether adolescent girls raised in strict religious orthodoxy had what could be called a free voice. Indeed they do, and Levine found that the girls she studied had a refreshing liveliness and freedom of expression. Seven of the girls are portrayed here in-depth. Levine concludes that the single-sex atmosphere in which the girls are raised until they marry, along with the Hasidic philosophy instilled in them that teaches them to attend to and cultivate the divine spark within them, enables the girls to grow up with vibrancy and chutzpa, energy and spirit. A useful companion piece to Making Connections: The Relational World of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School (edited by Gilligan and others) and a vivid portrayal of the Lubavitcher community, this is recommended for social science and Judaica collections as well as for YA girls.-Marcia Welsh, Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, NH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
What People Are Saying
Daniel Gordis
"Stephanie Levine offers us a rare glimpse into a world usually hidden from us. Hers is a compassionate but not uncritical take on the world of today's Hasidic girls, and through her investigation of this often misunderstood society, we come to see these people not simply as different, but as complex, nuanced and facing many of the same issues of self-definition that all of us, in whatever world we inhabit, wrestle with throughout our lives. Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymaker sis the product of a keen eye and an engaging pen, and is sure to provide both understanding and insight to all its readers." (Dr. Daniel Gordis, author of If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State)
Riv-Ellen Prell
"Dazzling--beautifully written, fascinating to read, and unpredictable. I began this book wondering if there was anything new to learn about the much- studied Lubavitch community of Crown Heights. I closed the book convinced that Levine has not only captured a complexity of young women's lives I would never have imagined, but that what she learned in Crown Heights illumines any understanding of teenage girls in the United States." (Riv-Ellen Prell, author of Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender and the Anxiety of Assimilation)
Rachel Simmons
"In an age that is at times overly concerned with girls' self-destruction, here is a welcome sign of girls' strength and healthy development. Levine teaches an important and seldom taught lesson: we may find resilience where we least expect it. Her unprecedented insight into this hidden culture is an important addition to the growing body of work on girls." Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out)
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
"This sensitive portrait is full of surprises for those who believe patriarchal religion can nurture only passivity or rebellion. Levine's diverse and outspoken girls help us see the complexity of female development in a little-known but surprisingly familiar world." (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812)
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