writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

Why? Did she want to capture her and other girl’s youth in Poland at the beginning of XX century?
What were the cultural values of the Hassidic community at this time and place? To answer that
question we need to provide deeper research among Hassidic women in that period.
The Hassidic community bears the characteristics of a traditional patriarchal community: almost
absolute separation between the sexes and a clearly defined division of roles between men and
women. As in the rest of the Orthodox society, the declared central role of the woman inside is
bearing and raising children. In most other Orthodox religious groups the woman fulfill another
important role: the economic support of the family becomes her responsibility so that her husband
can devote all his time to studying the Torah. In addition, among the Hassidim the educational
system provides the women with far less knowledge than other ultra‐Orthodox women. As a result,
the women’s world is extremely narrow, even in comparison to other ultra‐Orthodox women. As in
the general Jewish community, marriages are arranged and take place at a comparatively early age
(girls at 18 and boys at 18–19; Ester Kreitman’s mother got married at the age of 15; Ester herself
was 19). In most of the Hassidic groups however, the boy and the girl are allowed to meet each other
before the parents finalise the engagement, but often the members took a more stringent view and
only allowed the boy and the girl to formally meet for a few minutes at the time of the engagement,
after both sets of parents had finalised the financial arrangements concerning the couple’s economic
future. The girls of other Orthodox groups are instilled with the importance of the biblical verse
‘‘Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain’’ (Proverbs 31:30) from a very early age. Most of them were
nevertheless concerned about their external appearance and considered it important to look
respectable and attractive.
Group members have a unique style of clothing. The men wear a striped caftan over black
trousers tucked into long black socks. They wear a broad‐brimmed black hat on weekdays and a
shtreimel (fur hat) on the Sabbath. The women, for reasons of modesty, are required to wear simple
dresses that do not display their femininity, and black stockings. When they are married, they are
required to shave their head completely and cover it with a black kerchief. Young unmarried girls
must wear their hair long in one or two braids.
In this vein, symbolic boundaries constructed around the status of women in the public sphere
serve to distance the group from both secular culture and/or more liberal denominations. The status
of women within conservative religions who find significant value in an egalitarian agenda is
problematic. As a result, while some women choose to exit their traditions, those who stay are
confronted with a dilemma: how to deal with patriarchal practices that they see as compromising
their feminist sensibilities.
A central characteristic of passive resistance strategies is that women work to improve their
status through pragmatic means, whilst avoiding upsetting the system with ideological challenges to
gender roles or directly challenging the symbolic boundaries that gender plays within these
traditions. That is the strategy of Ester Kreitman’s literary alter‐ego, Deborah.
In real life, Esther Kreitman rejected the traditional values of the Hassidic community by removing
her wig and rejecting the traditional life of Jewish women‐ additionally, she convinced her husband
to shaved his beard. Unfortunately, this symbolic move had consequences: when rich father in‐law,
Kreitman, diamond cutter, discovered their decision, he cut off his financial support and abandoned
them for the rest of his life. Until the end of their lives they were extremely poor and miserable.
When considering the meaning within the context of women and religion, active resistance may
be understood as open confrontation with Jewish Modern Orthodox Women; religious authorities
over gender roles. Embedded in women’s active resistance are two proclamations related to their
status in religious life: (1) that feminism has a place within religious life: (2) that aspects of the
religious tradition can and should be changed to accommodate the opportunities feminism presents
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