Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls

Rating:
Summary: Hardly an "Intimate Journey"
Review: The author, as part of her doctoral thesis at Harvard, spent a year in Crown Heights, studying Lubovitch girls in high school and beyond, before they married. I'm no Chasid, but I'm Jewish enough to feel uncomfortable with her anthropologist's view of our culture. She describes ritual, behavior, and myth as if she were Margaret Mead among the Samoans. Although the author is Jewish (though non-observant), her year-long stay among the Lubovitchers affects her not at all --she adamantly refuses to take as small a step as lighting Shabbat candles, despite the pleas of her hosts, because, she states, she is afraid that it might be the first step along a journey that takes her away from her beloved pork spare ribs. She keeps an anthropologist's distance throughout, and although she dresses like the natives, in order to get close enough to study them in their natural habitat, she is never at any risk of "going native".
She clearly is most fascinated by the minority of girls who don't fit in with the Lubovitchers, and who leave the community. Since her thesis only concerns girls IN the community, when they drop out of the neighborhood, they drop off the author's radar, and we don't know what ever happens to them.
In all, I was dissatisfied with the book. Although the subtitle calls the book an "Intimate Journey", I got the feeling that no intimacy developed between researcher and subject, and no journey was made -- the author didn't really get anywhere.

Rating:
Summary: Hardly an "Intimate Journey"
Review: The author, as part of her doctoral thesis at Harvard, spent a year in Crown Heights, studying Lubovitch girls in high school and beyond, before they married. I'm no Chasid, but I'm Jewish enough to feel uncomfortable with her anthropologist's view of our culture. She describes ritual, behavior, and myth as if she were Margaret Mead among the Samoans. Although the author is Jewish (though non-observant), her year-long stay among the Lubovitchers affects her not at all --she adamantly refuses to take as small a step as lighting Shabbat candles, despite the pleas of her hosts, because, she states, she is afraid that it might be the first step along a journey that takes her away from her beloved pork spare ribs. She keeps an anthropologist's distance throughout, and although she dresses like the natives, in order to get close enough to study them in their natural habitat, she is never at any risk of "going native".
She clearly is most fascinated by the minority of girls who don't fit in with the Lubovitchers, and who leave the community. Since her thesis only concerns girls IN the community, when they drop out of the neighborhood, they drop off the author's radar, and we don't know what ever happens to them.
In all, I was dissatisfied with the book. Although the subtitle calls the book an "Intimate Journey", I got the feeling that no intimacy developed between researcher and subject, and no journey was made -- the author didn't really get anywhere.

Rating:
Summary: interesting, but hardly convincing
Review: This is a very fascinating read about adolescent girls in the Lubavitch section of Crown Heights. However, the study is not rigorous enough to really support the theoretical claims the author tries to make. Surely her research into Orthodox Jews in general would have suggested that girls in the Lubavitch community are NOT representative of those in either mainstream Orthodox Jewish or "ultra-orthodox" Chassidic communities, in which gender segregated schools are also the norm. As such, it's not clear how she can assert so confidently that the relative immaturity and extrovertedness of the girls she observes comes from their lack of inter-gender contact. The failure to "test" for alternative hypotheses - say, for example, the goals of community leaders, or the dictates of Lubavitch philosophy (neither of which are thoroughly examined - makes this even more problematic.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful insight....
Review: What a wonderfully-written and touching book. I was fascinated by the portraits drawn by the author, and I appreciated her honest and loving portrayal of these young girls' lives. I highly recommend this book, especially for anyone who believe that women are completely marginalized in traditional Judaism. There is so much more to it than that! An engaging and eye-opening book.