The Holy Woman who Worried the Rabbis
The life of Hannah Rochel Verbermacher, the Maid of Ludmir
Until the last century, traditional Judaism was almost exclusively centred around men. Synagogue services were conducted by men, rabbis and religious functionaries were all men, even the administration and application of Jewish law was an all-male affair. This is still the case today across a great part of the religious spectrum.
Of course, there were always some prominent women in Jewish religious life: Miriam and Deborah in the Bible, Bruria, Rochel and Abaya’s nameless mother in the Talmud and Rashi’s daughters in the Middle Ages. But they were exceptions, as was the wealthy 16th century philanthropist, Doña Gracia Nasi. Apart from these, and not many others, every Jewish name that we encounter from biblical times until the late 19th century, is that of a man.
So, it was bound to be startling, and indeed controversial, when a woman in 19th century Galicia adopted a role as the religious head of a community, performing the rituals that only men performed and attracting a following as if she had been a traditional male rabbi. It is not surprising that details of her life story are piecemeal and steeped as much in legend as in fact: she was always an outsider, as far as we know she had no chronicler and it is only in recent years that anyone has tried to reconstruct her biography.
Hannah Rochel Verbermacher was born around 1815 in Ludmir, a town known today as Volodymyr in Ukraine. Her birth, appropriately, though it might be a legend, was miraculous; her parents had spent years unable to conceive until they consulted a charismatic hasidic rebbe who promised them that they would have a child within the year. They did, and when Hannah was able to read she showed herself to be deeply pious, praying three times a day, studying the Bible and Talmud, immersing herself in the Jewish religion.
Her behaviour was a little intense but her parents were more shocked when she told them (another legend, probably) that she could sense that the meat her mother had just bought was not kosher- she said the house had a smell as if there were a corpse in it. When he was challenged, the butcher apparently confessed that the girl was right, the meat he had sold her mother wasn’t kosher. Nevertheless her intuition worried her parents. They were relieved when she told them at the age of 12 that she had fallen in love and intended to marry. They hoped that marriage would cure her of her strange behaviour.
Then tragedy struck. Her mother died and Hannah Rochel, prohibited by custom from seeing her beloved until the day of the wedding, became deeply depressed. She confined herself to her room, only leaving from time to time to visit her mother’s grave. One day, while visiting the cemetery she collapsed and passed out. She was ill for several weeks, drifting in and out of consciousness. When she eventually recovered she told her father that she had visited Paradise where she had appeared before the heavenly court and been given a new, sublime soul. Declaring that she had now transcended the material world, she broke off her engagement and vowed that she would never marry.
From that time on, she took on the religious behaviour of a man. She studied sacred texts all day long, garbed herself in the religious accoutrements that only men wore when at prayer and removed herself entirely from all mundane activity. She began to acquire a reputation as a ‘holy Maid’; some people declared that she had worked miracles.
She was the only child of her parents’ marriage and when her father died a few years later he left her a substantial legacy. She used the money to build a small study house and synagogue. It was known as the Gornshtibl; the name means it was constructed on a building’s upper storey.
One of the defining characteristics of the hasidic communities which thrived in Galicia (part of modern Ukraine) was the tzaddik’s court. Every community had its own rabbi or tzaddik, who presided over his followers, his hasidim, in an environment rather like a monarch’s court. They would gather to receive his blessings, to hear him speak, to eat the shabbat meals with him and to seek his advice on worldly matters. Playing a role previously unknown in Judaism, the tzaddik functioned as an intermediary between his followers and heaven. The title tended to be handed down through the generations, from father to son. Sometimes a particularly charismatic woman who was related to the tzaddik might take on an auxiliary role in the court, but as a woman she could never become a tzaddik herself. Nonetheless, Hannah Rochel Verbermacher soon gathered a flock of hasidim around her, including several learned scholars and rabbis. They came to receive her blessings or listen to her preach, as was customary for a tzaddik at the third meal towards the end of Shabbat. Her newly built synagogue effectively became her hasidic court. Despite being a woman she fulfilled the role of a tzaddik, although she was never referred to as that. Instead, she became popularly known as the Maid of Ludmir.
The Maid of Ludmir’s activities did not go down well with the leading rabbis in the area. Although Hasidism was a radical innovation - the first hasidic court had been founded less than a century earlier- as far as the role of women was concerned it stuck to the old ways; women could not play a leadership role in religious life. The most prominent hasidic leader in the region, Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl prevailed upon her to marry, keeping up the pressure until she finally gave in. But the marriage was never consummated; it is said that her husband was too scared of her to approach her and they divorced quite quickly.
Hannah had not wanted to marry and her capitulation to pressure marked the end of her career as a charismatic leader in Ludmir. She emigrated to Israel, where there were a few, small, hasidic communities. Little is known about her activities in Israel- there are a couple of mystical legends but nothing especially believable. The last that is known of her is that she was living in Jerusalem in the 1860s and 1870s, and it is there that she died, largely forgotten. (continued below….)
The Ludmir Maiden Prays
by Kehot Kliger
Translated by Dr. Ida Schwarcz
(from https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Volodymyr_Volynskyy/vol293.html
Evening comes to the wooden porch of the Gornshtibel
A grey shade covers the rosy almond shaped window panes
In her dark silk dress, like an evening birch tree
The “Ludmir maiden” sways piously praying the late afternoon prayer
In front of the gold embroidered ark curtain, quietly and alone
The holy Hannah Rachel prays with devotion at twilight
And with enthusiasm she sings “Kedusha”
The shadows of her followers are seen on the walls.
[Translator’s note: Very difficult to translate. Author has invented some words.]
We might wonder why Hannah was shunned by the hasidic leadership in Ludmir. The hasidic movement had emerged a century or so earlier as a reaction against mainstream, traditional Judaism; it was a radical and in some ways a subversive movement. As such, we might have expected Hasidim to be sympathetic to the non-conforming Maid of Ludmir.
There may be several reasons why the Hasidim were not sympathetic. There was the antipathy that men in positions of authority had in those days towards women by whom they felt threatened. She may have been pious, unworldly and without any political agenda but through her very actions the Maid of Ludmir threated the male rabbinic edifice that had been constructed over millennia. Equally, Mordechai of Chernobyl, was a powerful hasidic leader, with a large following and significant influence; Shmuel Horodezky, a Chernobyl hasid who wrote the first biography of the Maid of Ludmir in 1909, criticised Mordechai’s opulence and dynastic ambitions. Mordechai may have felt that the Maid of Ludmir’s popularity might potentially undermine his own.
There is third possibility too. Unlike Christianity, Judaism has no tradition of ‘holy virgins’ - pious, celibate women, like nuns, who devote themselves to a spiritual life and never marry. Yet the Maid of Ludmir may have been seen to pose just such a threat. If other women, or indeed men, followed her example; if the idea of celibacy gained a foothold in Jewish life this would be far more destabilising than anything that had ever happened before. Perhaps this is why the rabbinic leadership reacted to the Maid of Ludmir so forcefully.
But one should never discount the obvious when there is no good reason to do so. They were men, she was a woman, jealousy would have had a lot to do with it.
For more about the Maid of Ludmir, see Nathaniel Deutsch’s 2003 book, The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World
The fierce cultural contest between male and female is as old as recorded history, going as far back as ancient Sumer. Catholicism followed suit. Dominican male clergy didn't hesitate to write Malleus Maleficarum, a manual of torture of women deemed to be witches. Following the actual torture of a 'witch' the celibate monk could go to the chapel to pray before the statue of 'his' Blessed Virgin Mary, apparently with nary a qualm about his violent behavior.
Great. Don't forget Osnat Barazani.