Marcin Wodziński im Gespräch

Between Exclusion and Participation: The Role of Women in Hasidism. Excerpt from an interview conducted by Martina Niedhammer with Marcin Wodziński, currently serving as Brodt Foundation Visiting Professor at the Department for Jewish History and Culture, during the summer term 2026:

MN: So, another perception I sometimes have when thinking about Hasidism is that it is largely a male movement. Do women play any role as followers in your data? Do they help make Hasidism visible in some way?

MW: That depends on the tense in which you ask the question. If you are asking about the past, the answer is no. If you are asking about the present, the answer is yes. The major change occurred around one hundred years ago.

Traditional Hasidism—in its golden age from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century—was essentially a gentlemen’s club. It was a male-only community. Women were institutionally excluded. In Hasidic prayer houses, unlike in non-Hasidic ones, there was no place for women to participate.

This does not mean that Hasidism did not influence women. Nor does it mean that it wasn’t attractive to women as a cultural or religious phenomenon; because it certainly was. However, institutionally, it did not create space for them. Women remained outside the movement.

This outsider position was often ambivalent. On the one hand, it excluded women; on the other, it gave them a certain degree of freedom to develop their own autonomous forms of cultural expression, such as telling stories about the rebbe. Women also came to rebbes seeking blessings, miracles, or advice. Although they were often denied direct access to the rebbe, this did not mean that he had no influence on them.

However, if we speak about Hasidism in an institutional sense, women remained entirely outside it until the early twentieth century. They had no place in the major formative religious events at the Hasidic court or in the shtiebel, the small prayer house. Even when they travelled on pilgrimage to the rebbe’s court, they were often not allowed to stand before him. Instead, a husband, father, brother, or another male representative would present their requests. In this sense, women were actively excluded.

This changed only at the beginning of the twentieth century as part of a broader tectonic shift within Hasidism. The First World War transformed the position of the leader and the spatial organization of the movement. Traditionally, Hasidism had been rooted in small towns. During the war, however, many Hasidic rebbes fled to large cities, where life was safer. Their followers remained behind, and the traditional connections began to weaken.

What is more, interactions with the rebbes changed drastically. When several rebbes found themselves living in the same building, on the same street, or in the same city, people encountered them in everyday settings—walking in the park, at railway stations, or in other ordinary situations. The rebbe, previously perceived as a distant and almost heavenly figure, suddenly became much more accessible. The clear distinction between the unique experience of visiting the rebbe at his court and everyday life began to disappear. The rebbe entered everyday life, and this diminished some of the aura that had previously surrounded him.

This development created a profound crisis for Hasidism. Large numbers of people who had once identified as Hasidim no longer did so. Hasidism became acutely aware of this crisis and sought ways to respond. In many respects, this response resembled a Counter-Reformation. Just as the Catholic Counter-Reformation developed new forms of outreach to previously neglected groups, Hasidism began addressing groups that had long been excluded.

One such group was children. Only in the twentieth century did Hasidism begin to develop a specifically Hasidic educational system. This is difficult to imagine today, since religious education is now one of the most important institutions of Hasidism. Before the twentieth century, however, such institutions did not exist; they were largely a post–First World War development.

The same applies to women. Until the early twentieth century, women were actively excluded. After the Great War, however, schools for girls from Hasidic families began to emerge. This created a space in which these girls could actively identify themselves as Hasidic. It established institutions and allowed women to become far more visible within the Hasidic world. This is a distinctly modern phenomenon.

Today, many people would say that Hasidism revolves around two central elements: family and community. Community is centred on the rebbe and the bonds that connect people to him and to one another. Family, however, is about men, women, and their children. As a result, women have become central to the self-definition of contemporary Hasidism.

June, 2026

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