You Cannot Feel a Mother’s Heart: The Centrality of Women in the Hasidic Music of Yom Tov Ehrlich

Abstract

Abstract: Recent scholarship on the history of Hasidism suggests that the role of women within Hasidic communities before World War II was minimal, and that Hasidism eliminated women from its social structure by establishing a religious praxis that was exclusively male. Studies of postwar Hasidic life similarly minimize the presence of women and suggest that they remained an ancillary and silent population within the life of the movement, in large part because scholars have relied on written and experiential Hasidic modalities to gauge female involvement. Analysis of the music of Yom Tov Ehrlich as an untapped source demonstrates that women appear to be seen, heard, and reckoned with in Hasidic life before and after the war. In Yom Tov Ehrlich’s musical texts, women are valued as religious and Hasidic actors, and serve a vital, if not precisely equal, role to that of their male counterparts, providing spiritual guidance, motivation, and agency. A significant proportion of the 317 songs released publicly by Ehrlich feature women. Physical descriptions, both of women’s dress as well as their demeanor, proliferate within the song lyrics, and women and young girls are often described as beautiful. While Ehrlich’s representation cannot be construed as historical fact, female predominance within the songs, and the widespread acceptance and encouragement of this music even within the most stringent Hasidic groups, attests to a vocal and vibrant presence of women within the panoply of religious and Hasidic experience in prewar Europe and postwar America.