Stephanie Levine

Residence : Cambridge, MA

Biographical information

After graduating from Brown University, Stephanie Wellen Levine entered Harvard's Ph.D. program in American studies. Her dissertation focused on the Hasidic teenage girls of Crown Heights, Brooklyn-a topic that encompassed her fascination with boundary pushing (she found it in all sorts of large and small ways), educational systems beyond the American mainstream, and life-driving spiritual conviction. Because Levine saw this project as a personal journey into a new culture and worldview, she wrote a rather unusual dissertation, filled with emotion, humor, and literary spark. She worked hard to create rich, engaging portraits of the girls, to share their often humorous and always poignant struggles and triumphs.

Levine enjoyed writing in a popular style so much that she decided to transform her dissertation into a mainstream book, meant to attract readers far beyond the academic world. This book has attracted considerable attention, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly and feature articles in a broad spectrum of print and online media. Levine has very much enjoyed speaking about her book in various public venues.

Currently, Stephanie Wellen Levine is working on new writing projects and teaching at Tufts University.

Discussion topics

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

This lecture takes the audience on a fascinating journey into the heart of Hasidic teenage girls' lives and minds. Stephanie Wellen Levine, author of Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls, will share highlights from her remarkable book. Levine spent a year among Crown Heights, Brooklyn's Lubavitcher Hasidim, famous for their messianic fervor and outreach to secular Jews. She went to school with the teenage girls, joined their social events, celebrated holidays with their families, intensively interviewed over 30 of them; in short, she got to know them in a deep, complex way. Discover how the restrictive rules, intriguing rituals, and powerful mystical beliefs that define Hasidic life interact with adolescent hormones and quirky personalities. Meet a passionate mystic whose religious intensity baffles her peers; a band of brilliant questioners who read forbidden literature, dabble in drugs, and occasionally visit a strip club; fun-loving young women who combine typical teenage hang-ups and unshakable spiritual conviction; and many others. This talk offers a window into a world few have glimpsed-a world at once foreign and intimately familiar. Although Hasidic life differs radically from mainstream American habits, the girls' desires and dreams will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled to come of age in our world.

Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers: Insights from Hasidic Girlhood

This lecture is similar to option one, but it focuses more on the insights this Hasidic community could offer to parents, professionals, and teenage girls themselves as they try to enhance young women's confidence and quality of life. Much recent writing has focused on the problems American teenage girls can face, but Levine's book Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers uncovers surprising psychological health among many of the Hasidic girls. Levine found that single-sex social lives, close community, supportive families, a deeply empowering theology, and a drive towards self-understanding are all positive forces for most Lubavitch young women. All of these benefits can be secularized in some form; this talk will explore how Lubavitch wisdom can be broadened to benefit mainstream Americans.

Different people thrive in different situations. As Levine discusses in her book, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls, many young women flourish within Lubavitch, but those whose beliefs or desires fall beyond basic expectations suffer deep, unforgettable pain. She presents her insights and suggestions as points to ponder, not as absolutes. Listeners may find some very helpful for their particular situations and others irrelevant. At the end of Levine's lecture, she would love to hear audience members' own views on how to help our girls (and people in general) develop into confident, content human beings.

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