Chava E. Weissler Papers
Chava Weissler (1947-) is a scholar whoÌýstudies the Jewish Renewal Movement,Ìýespecially the organization called ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal.ÌýDuring 2003, with a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities,ÌýWeisslerÌýobserved Renewal congregations and retreat centers in Pennsylvania, New York, ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥, California, and Washington State, and interviewed rabbis, teachers and ordinary members. In May of 2003, she delivered the Stroum Lectures at the University of Washington, sharing her insights on Jewish Renewal, and for the fall semester 2003, she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Enjoying the academic atmosphere of YIVO, Weissler returned to school, earning her PhD in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. Her dissertation (published in 1989) Making Judaism Meaningful: Ambivalence and Tradition in a Havurah Community, examined the worship services and social dynamics of a Jewish community influenced by the counter-cultural values of the 1960s and 1970s. After graduating, WeisslerÌýtaught at Princeton for the next six years while researching Jewish women’s devotional literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard Divinity School. In 1988 she began teaching at Lehigh University as the Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Department of Religion Studies.
After finishing her book on devotional literature, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (published in 1998), Weissler began a new project examining the Jewish Renewal movement and its organization, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, collecting interviews, materials and publishing articles. At Lehigh, Weissler continued to teach courses based on her research until her retirement in 2015.
Gift of Chava E. Weissler in 2016.