THE YEMIMA METHOD AS A CONTEMPORARY-HASIDIC-FEMALE MOVEMENT

Kauffman focuses on "The Yemima Method," a method for conscious life that has become an Israeli spiritual movement over the last thirty years. As far as he knows, this is the first effort to depict this phenomenon and locate it along religious, spiritual, sociological, and theoretical axes. After describing the method itself and the movement born and elaborated around it, Kauffman makes two claims: The first is that "The Yemima Method" is a kind of contemporary-Hasidic-female movement; to prove this she points out the elements resembling main features of the "original" Hasidism, that of Rabbi Israel Baal-Shem-Tov. The second is that "The Yemima Method" is a kind of contemporary-Hasidic-female movement and, moreover, bears a significant affinity to feminist religiosity, to the ways in which some feminist theologians articulate religious life.