My research explores knowledge production related to Jewish pilgrimages, with a specific focus on how women pilgrims construct meanings around several popular tombs of Hasidic leaders (kivrei tzaddikim) in Eastern Europe. Drawing on the concept of partial, "situated knowledge" rooted in community belonging (Haraway, 1988), as well as recent scholarship on the interplay of religious and non-religious knowledge in pilgrimage (Mesaritou, Coleman, & Eade, 2020), I examine how women are reshaping what was historically a male-dominated field of religious travel and spiritual search. This paper focuses on three pilgrimage sites in Eastern Europe: Kerestir in Hungary, Leżajsk in Poland, and Uman in Ukraine. The research is based on fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2025, supplemented by open-source materials such as media interviews and pilgrimage diaries.
In Orthodox Judaism, where gender separation plays a significant role, women's knowledge production is closely tied to their areas of access and shared spaces. The knowledge that pilgrims carry is often partial—not only in religious terms but also in relation to the countries they visit. Contemporary political and historical associations affect how pilgrims perceive destination countries: for instance, Poland is often seen as the land of the Holocaust, Ukraine as the site of earlier pogroms, while Hungary evokes both Holocaust memory and nostalgic associations with Jewish heritage. At the same time, specific destinations hold established meanings, which are further reinterpreted within women's circles. Importantly, these meanings are often generated or transformed during the pilgrimage and then reinforced afterward—through engagement with the teachings of a particular Hasidic leader and the influential role played by pilgrimage guides.
Keywords: Eastern Europe, women's pilgrimage, Jewish pilgrimage, knowledge production