The Maiden of Ludomir

By Cecil Bloom
When one sees khasidim going about their day-to-day business or engaged in their religious activities, it is easy to accept the view that the khasidic world is a male-dominated one in which women have no special place. Most khasida, as the women are called, readily adopt low profiles, and few are well-known to history as religious leaders. One exception was the Maiden of Ludomir.
Her name was Hannah Rachel Werbemacher. She was born about 1815 in Ludomir, Poland, the only daughter of a wealthy and pious businessman, who provided her with a wide-ranging religious education. She is said to have been a beautiful girl, very pious, with extraordinary mental agility. She was betrothed at a typically young age to a local boy whom she loved deeply. Tradition did not allow communication between the couple after the day of their betrothal, however, and this caused her great distress; she wanted to share ideas and thoughts with him but would have to wait for the marriage ceremony before she could even catch a glimpse of him again. Shortly after her betrothal, her mother died. In her grief, the girl withdrew from normal life and became ill, but her busy father failed to recognize her mental suffering.

Now comes the first legend about her: Werbemacher often used to visit her mother’s grave, and once fell asleep on it. It was dark when she awoke, and she panicked and started to run around the cemetery. She was later found in a collapsed state, and became seriously ill for so long a time that she was given up as lost. Then, suddenly, she recovered. She told her father: “I have just been in heaven at a sitting of the beth din and I have now received a new and sublime soul.” She then broke off her engagement and started to live as a man.
She wore tsistsis, wrapped herself in a talis, and, like Michal, King Saul’s daughter, put on tfiln every weekday. All day long, she studied the holy books. When her father died, she recited the kaddish and, with her inherited fortune, built a beth hamedrash (study house), called “the green synagogue,” to which she attached a separate room. She lived in this room, spent all her time in study and prayer, and gave sermons through the door while hiding herself from view.
Gradually, her fame spread and men and women journeyed to see ‘the Maiden of Ludomir.” She became known as a miracle worker. One group formed themselves as her khasidim. They prayed in the green synagogue, and every shabbes at the third meal would listen to her discourses through the door.
Eventually, some in the traditional male leadership began speaking of an evil spirit and made attempts to get her change her ways. Rabbi Mordecai Twerski of Czernobyl, her father’s rebbe, proposed marriage for her, but it was not until she was 40 that she agreed to marry a Talmudic scholar, only to divorce him after an unconsummated marriage.
Eventually, the Maiden’s influence declined and people began to see her merely as a pious woman without any special powers. She went to Eretz Israel, where she associated with a kabbalist and worked for him for the coming of the Messiah, planning for it with due pomp and ceremony at a cave near Jerusalem. It did not, of course, happen, and the Werbecmacher lived on in obscurity in Palestine, where she died in 1892 at the age of 77.
There is another khasida of legend, Yente the prophetess, who is said to have lived in the middle of the 18th Century. Her father was an ordinary Galician Jew and her husband was a follower of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of khasidism. After meeting him, she decided to live a life of prayer and celibacy. The Baal Shem Tov announced that she was a prophetess after her husband complained to him about her conduct, and khasidim besieged her with requests for blessings and cures — which, it is said, she successfully executed and for which, unlike her male colleagues, she refused to accept money. There are clearly some similarities between the stories of these two women, but very little that is not the stuff of legend is known about Yente the prophetess.

Cecil Bloom, who lives in England, is the retired technical director of a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. He now spends much of his time researching and writing on Jewish history, music and literature. A number of his articles have appeared in Midstream and in publications in the UK, Israel, South Africa, and Australia.