Going Far Away in Order to Better Understand the Familiar: Odyssey of a Jewish Folklorist into the Bobover Hasidic Community

This article is about my journey into a community of close-knit and ultraconservative Hasidic Jews. It explores my reasons for studying the Bobover Hasidim, a community within my own Jewish tribe but with a very different culture from mine. The article also articulates how I gained access to the community and what impact the study of Hasidim has had on my life as a scholar and a Jewish woman.