A principal of principals, Morah Blau demanded academic excellence while ensuring school was enjoyable and exciting. Her petirah on Erev Pesach left generations of students grieving

Mrs. Cohen,* a sixth-grade teacher with several years’ experience under her belt, was exasperated. She simply couldn’t get through to Chevy. The girl was defiant, indifferent to her schoolwork, and seemed to delight in picking fights with her friends.

In frustration, the teacher consulted with the principal, Morah Rochel Blau. Before Mrs. Cohen could start to lay out her litany of grievances, Morah Blau took her by the arm and pulled her into the office, wordlessly pointing to a framed picture on her desk. It was Chevy, beaming proudly at her kindergarten siddur party, with her principal’s arm around her shoulder.

“I loved her then, I will love her now, and she’s going to grow out of this,” promised Morah Blau.

This was vintage Morah Blau: an abiding love for her students, coupled with complete confidence in their ability to access their limitless potential.

Rising Light

As the sun went down over Europe, across the ocean a new sun rose.

It was March 1935, just three weeks after the passing of Sarah Schenirer, legendary pioneer of girls’ chinuch, and the world was poised on the cusp of World War II. During that tumultuous time, Rochel (Felice) Lieberman was born in Brooklyn to two scions of proud Hungarian rabbinic families. (“My family is Hungarian going back to Avraham Avinu,” she used to say.)

Her father, a respected talmid chacham, eked out a meager living selling eggs, but his true passion was the shiurim he delivered in Torah Vodaath. Rabbi Lieberman held rabbanim in the highest respect; when he heard the boat carrying the Mirrer talmidim from Shanghai had docked in New York, he ran to greet it, later managing to claim one of its most esteemed passengers, Rav Dovid Kviat, as a son-in-law.

Though the family was spiritually wealthy, they were materially impoverished. The five girls officially attended Rabbi and Rebbetzin Kaplan’s Bais Yaakov, but Felice’s older sister had to leave school to support the family; another was never able to attend at all. When Rabbi Kaplan would knock, seeking his tuition payments, Rabbi Lieberman would tell him, “I can give you the girls, but the money…”

Felice’s school career got off to a rocky start. Because of certain health department restrictions, she missed the last year and a half of elementary school. Underprepared though she was for high school, her talents were recognized by Dr. Gershon Kranzler, then Bais Yaakov’s English principal.

“Without him, I’d be nobody,” Morah Blau used to say. Recognizing the girl’s aptitude for the arts, particularly writing, as well as her magnetic personality and rock-solid hashkafos, Dr. Kranzler made it his mission to draw Felice out, assigning her jobs and tapping her to give art lessons to groups of students he thought could benefit from them.

If Dr. Kranzler was the one who discovered Felice’s talents, it was Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan, a protégée of Sarah Schenirer, who gave the raw talent direction.

“Over 68 years in chinuch, my mother never held an assembly without mentioning Rebbetzin Kaplan,” recalls her older daughter, Mrs. Tzivia Fishman. “Rebbetzin Kaplan lit the fire in her, transmitting the ideal that teaching is the most noble thing to do. She was an ishah gedolah on a tremendous madreigah, and my mother emulated that.”