Phyllis Chesler - Personal Life

Personal Life

Chesler was the eldest of three children raised in a working class Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. As a youth she joined the Socialist-Zionist, anti-religious youth movement, HaShomer Hatzair, and later the even more radical left-wing Zionist youth movement, Ein Harod. Despite her parents' disapproval, she continued to rebel against her religious upbringing. She attended New Utrecht High School where she was the editor of the yearbook and of the literary magazine. She won a full scholarship to Bard College, where she met Ali, a Westernized Muslim man from Afghanistan, the son of devout Muslim parents. They married in a civil ceremony in 1961 New York State and settled in Kabul, in the large, polygamous household of her father-in-law. She credits this experience with inspiring her to become an ardent feminist.

According to Chesler, her problems began on arrival in Afghanistan. The authorities forced her to surrender her U.S. passport, and she ended up a virtual prisoner in her in-laws' house. Chesler describes this as how foreign wives were treated. This phenomenon has been documented by others. She reports that the U.S. embassy refused to help her leave the country. After several months, she contracted hepatitis and became gravely ill. At that point, her father-in-law made it possible for her return to the U.S. on a temporary visa.

Upon her return, she completed her final semester and graduated from Bard, embarked on a doctoral program, worked in a brain research laboratory for Dr. E. Roy John, published studies in Science magazine and received a fellowship in neurophysiology at the New York Medical School at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital. Thereafter, in 1969, she earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the New School for Social Research and embarked on careers as a professor, author, and psychotherapist in private practice.

Chesler divorced her Muslim husband and remarried an Israeli, whom she also later divorced. She has one son. She describes their relationship, pregnancy, childbirth, and her first year as a newborn mother in With Child: A Diary of Motherhood. In the 1998 edition, her son wrote the Preface to the book.