The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World (University of California Press, 2003) by Nathaniel Deutsch, associate professor of religion at Swarthmore College, is a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. The National Jewish Book Award, presented by the Jewish Book Council, is the oldest and most prestigious prize given to books on Jewish subjects written in the English language. The awards ceremony will be held in New York City on Dec. 1 at the Center for Jewish History.
The Maiden of Ludmir is the first book-length account of one of the most fascinating figures in modern Jewish history. Hannah Rochel Verbermacher, a Hasidic holy woman known as the Maiden of Ludmir, was born in early 19th-century Russia and became famous as the only woman in the 300-year history of Hasidism to function as a rebbeÑor charismatic leaderÑin her own right. Deutsch follows the traces left by the Maiden in both history and legend to fully explore her story for the first time. The Maiden of Ludmir offers powerful insights into the Jewish mystical tradition, into the Maiden's place within it, and into the Jewish community of Ludmir. Her biography ultimately becomes a provocative meditation on the complex relationships between history and memory, Judaism and modernity.
Deutsch, whose expertise is in Judaism, Gnosticism, and early Christianity, has taught in the Department of Religion at Swarthmore since 1995 and is the chair of the Program in Interpretation Theory. He is the author of Guardians of the Gate: Angelic Vice Regency in Late Antiquity (1999), The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and Merkabah Mysticism (1995) and coeditor, with Associate Professor of Religion Yvonne Chireau, of Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism (2000). |
