The Least Likely

The past century of traditional Jewish life is characterized by change: the founding of Orthodox political parties, the development of an Orthodox press, specifically in the form of Orthodox newspapers, the spread of yeshivos to far-flung locales. But far and away, the greatest reform to Orthodox society of the past 100 years was the establishment of institutions of Torah learning for girls.

In the years that preceded this change, girls learned all they needed to know about Yiddishkeit within their homes. Although girls were able to attend chadorim in some Eastern European towns, their primary method of religious instruction was through the practical teachings of those close to them, usually their fathers and mothers.

Because this transformation was vivified through the efforts of an unknown dressmaker, rather than as a result of rabbinic determination, it begs for a deeper understanding of the woman who envisioned it, began it, and saw it through until the end of her life.

Sarah Schenirer was not the first to recognize the necessity of Orthodox education for girls; many other educational models established in Eastern Europe attempted to address this need. Several prominent rabbanim attempted to place systematic Torah learning for girls on the Orthodox landscape. But only Sarah Schenirer, with her passionate determination and deep respect for mesorah, managed to make it happen. As Rav Yechezkel Sarna, Rosh Yeshivah of Chevron, provocatively announced in the late 1960s at a gathering of gedolei Yisrael both Chassidic and Litvishe: “The one who did the most for Klal Yisrael in the last one hundred years never learned a blatt Gemara!”

It is astounding to contemplate that at a time when one’s social stratum demarcated their sphere of influence, when the greatest operators in society rose up from the ranks of either the intelligentsia or the aristocracy, a humble, simple woman was the one who made the biggest impact. Nothing in Sarah Schenirer’s background or accomplishments could have predicted the change that she would effect. She was not wealthy, nor was she a rabbi’s daughter. Her lineage did not place her in a position of status within the community.

Not only that; Sarah Schenirer had zero support from the “elite” and no access to power as she began to put her plans into practice. Hers is a story of one woman with a vision. She had no budget, no advanced education, no ostentatious talents, and yet this was the woman who singlehandedly saved Klal Yisrael.

It begs the question: How did Sarah Schenirer craft her inimitable crowning achievement?

How did the magic happen?

Growing Pains in Galicia

The backdrop of Sarah Schenirer’s movement was the storied and luminous Krakow, that jewel of Jewish life in southern Poland. Born on July 3, 1883, Sarah Schenirer came of age in this city famed for its dazzling past.

But it wasn’t just the medieval castles and fortresses of the Wawel Hill on the banks of the Vistula River, with their breathtaking architecture and mysterious majesty, that set the town apart. The Jewish influence there ran deeper, quieter. Its vibrancy existed not in grandiose structures or imposing works of art, but rather in the brilliant sparkle in the eyes of Jews sharing words of Torah; the scent of scribal ink on the imprint of a fresh mezuzah; the rise and fall of a holy melody emerging from a Kazimierz courtyard on Friday night.

Like every Jewish child of Krakow, Sarah Schenirer was raised in the shadow of the Torah giants who populated it, staking its claim as a landmark in the development of those elements most precious to the Jewish people: Torah, mitzvah observance, and fear of Heaven. These luminaries included historic figures such as the Rav Moshe Isserles, the Rema, who codified Ashkenazic halachah, and leaders of her own era such as Rav Dov Ber Meisels, Rav Shimon Schreiber, and Rav Chaim Leibish Horowitz.

Most prominently, Galicia — the southern region of Poland, where Krakow was situated — was home to the most prolific iteration of chassidish life in the history of the Jewish people. The holy Divrei Chaim of Sanz, whose name reverberated throughout the world of Torah letters, and whose progeny became chassidic leaders throughout their eponymous Galician towns; the Belzer Rebbes, the Tchortkover Rebbes, the Rebbes of Zidichov and Komarno — all flourished within Galicia and made waves beyond it as well, attracting Jews from distant lands to traverse the chassidishe path to spiritual fulfillment. The vernacular of yeshivish lamdanus, later honed in Lithuanian yeshivos, was also birthed in Galicia by the Ketzos, the Nesivos, and others, and it featured constantly in Jewish intellectual life at that time. This heady brew of Torah and chassidus dominated the atmosphere of Jewish Galicia, contributing to a distinctive cultural identity. You can still perceive the reverence for intellectual pursuits that characterize Galicianers in the present day; hints of German are ensconced in Galician Yiddish, as are aesthetic standards of grace and hospitality or höflichkeit, largely absent in the more hardscrabble and earthy Lithuanian and Polish-Jewish experience.

Yet at the turn of the century, Krakow began to witness a decline in religious observance by a significant percentage of young women from Orthodox families. This defection was in no small part a result of the compulsory education laws obligating citizens of Habsburg regimes — who then governed Galicia — to send their children to public school. The cultural exposures that Galician girls experienced during their years of schooling lacked a formal religious counterpart. As they absorbed the lessons, these girls were awakened to different societal and intellectual possibilities. In fact, this was the very premise of secular education in Galicia: the modernization of the supposedly “backward and isolated” members of society; little wonder that one of its primary aims was the destruction of traditional religious barriers to stimulate a national, integrated culture.

Since daily life was full of difficulty, poverty, and inequity, intelligent Jewish youth were drawn into social constructs with ideals that promised an improved, more humanistic way of life. Many frum young girls followed their curiosity by attending philosophical lectures and universities, going to the theater, and reading secular books that contained morals offensive and opposed to Orthodoxy. In more drastic and tragic cases, some were taken in by the wiles of Christian missionizing, or compelled to leave their homes and wholesome lifestyles in order to support themselves independently.

This complex reality — a deeply religious history challenged by a modernizing secular environment — was Sarah Schenirer’s world.

An Abandoned Field

The sixth child in a family of 14 (six of whom died in childhood) with ties to Belz and Sanzer Chassidim, Sarah internalized the warmth of prewar Yiddishkeit, but also bore witness to the challenges it faced. Her father, Bezalel HaKohein Schenirer, descended from Rav Shabsai HaKohein, whose essential commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, the Sifsei Kohein, immortalized him as the Shach. Her mother Rosa (neé Lack) was directly descended from one of the greatest Talmudic sages in Polish history, Rav Yoel Sirkis, known by the acronym of his sefer the Bayis Chadash, the Bach.

But the family’s rabbinic pedigree was not a foolproof inoculation against the spiritual challenges of the era. Since the laws enforcing compulsory education began to be introduced in Galicia in the 1870s, Schenirer counted among the 60 percent of Jewish girls to attend public school by 1900. (Other Jewish girls were privately tutored or otherwise occupied.) But through this “free” system of education which exposed students to different ways of thinking about life’s problems, including ideologies antithetical to Torah and mitzvah observance, several of Sarah Schenirer’s siblings and many of her friends were drawn away from traditional Yiddishkeit.

These were not isolated incidents. From the beginning of the 20th century, governmental laws aimed at modernizing the European public began to yield deeply unsettling outcomes for Jewish communities worldwide. The communal structures that had served to protect Jewish life in the past began to weaken as Jews were exposed to foreign ideologies. Christian doctrine often prevailed in the public school system and outside of it, and Jewish girls from impoverished homes were particularly vulnerable to influences that took advantage of their innocence and compromised positions.

The effect of public education on Jewish girls was later described by Rabbi Tuvia Yehuda (Gutentag) Tavyomi, a rabbinic leader, author, and contributor to the Bais Yaakov cause:

At the time that Sarah Schenirer appeared on the Jewish horizon, there was no field as abandoned as that of the field of Jewish education for girls in Poland. There were no Orthodox schools for girls, no Orthodox literature appropriate for young girls, no religious atmosphere. Everything was infected with the poison of heresy; the corrosive germs of frivolity and pretense completely pervaded the atmosphere of Jewish women.

Soon enough, rabbanim and communal activists, too, note of the alarming trend. In 1901, Rabbi Aharon Mendel, the Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Cairo, called for a convention of Torah leaders from all over the world to find solutions that could strengthen Yiddishkeit, and deal with the pressing challenges to the Orthodox community through a united international approach.

But the Krakow conference — which did not occur until Tu B’Av of 1903 — was fraught with contention and disagreement. One of the most dramatic disagreements concerned education for girls. The item was raised by Rav Menachem Mendel Landau of Nowy Dwor, who pointed out that whether girls were taught by private tutors or in public schools, the irreligious pedagogy to which they were exposed wreaked havoc on their spirituality. As mothers of future generations, these girls would be expected to set the tone in their homes, and without “knowledge of Torah and the commandments, of the life of the people of Israel and its faith,” as he put it, the fabric of Orthodox society would be stretched and weakened.

At first, the conference of rabbis decided to accept Rav Landau’s proposal to institute Jewish Talmud Torahs for girls. But when the logistical planning phase of such Talmud Torahs was raised for consideration, Rav Eliyahu Akiva Rabinovich of Poltava, the influential editor of HaPeles, passionately rejected the idea altogether: “Do they wish to establish this custom as well in Israel? A Talmud Torah for girls? Heaven forbid. It shall not come to pass.”

The proposal was then defeated, and even Rav Landau’s amended suggestion to provide young girls access to the books of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch and Marcus Lehmann, either in their original German or in translated editions, was deferred to the next rabbinic conference, which never came to pass.

Sarah Schenirer was 20 years old when this conference took place in her city. While there is no evidence of her impressions of it in her writings, she was surely aware of this groundbreaking event and its failure to advance a solution to the burning issue of the time. Perhaps it planted a seed in her mind.

Diary of Dreams and Doubts

With a better understanding of Sarah Schenirer’s milieu — her city, her background, and the waves of contention and concern for the future consuming the leadership of her era — I sought to gain a clearer picture of her inner world.

The first place I looked was the first document she is recorded to have written: her own diary. The recent publication of this diary aroused tremendous interest, because it is the only known document she wrote in Polish, and it had never before been published in its entirety. Even now, parts of the diary still remain lost, but this record of her life from the years 1909-1913 stands as the first touchstone of Sarah Schenirer’s self-reflective journey.

The work fills in the details that constituted the life of a studious, frum young woman of Krakow, and provides insight into the factors that prodded her to visualize the educational project that would become Bais Yaakov.

In addition to that diary, in 1933 Sarah Schenirer published a Yiddish reflection upon her life covering the years 1883–1927 under the title Gesamelte Schriften, or Collected Writings, under the banner of Bnos Agudas Yisrael in Poland. The volume was printed again in 1955 with additional material, including tributes from Bais Yaakov luminaries such as Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan.

From these sources, I learned not only the chronological stations of her life, but also of her emotional world — her deep feelings for Yiddishkeit, the realization that her friends and peers were lacking something essential in their religious identity, and the simultaneous temerity and timidity inherent in her decision to tackle the problem herself: “Only here in my room does the spiritual battle begin. It boils, roars and foams, and the spirit, the spirit demands freedom: To work, to transform, to do something for society, for those girls who stand before me like mummies when I measure corporeal dresses for them. But will I ever dare to say it out loud, me with my eternal shyness….”

When Sarah Schenirer reflects upon her early education, she describes her father with great respect, citing his purchase of the sefer Chok L’Yisrael — which includes portions of Tanach and Chazal to be learned daily — as one of her earliest sources of inspiration. The recollection of her childhood centers on her father’s singular focus in rearing children faithful to Torah. In the days before her father’s passing, she visited the kever of the Rema and reflected upon his incredible output — writing 33 works in his 33 years. Her recognition of the ephemeral quality of life spurred her to imagine a better and more vibrant future for herself and her contemporaries, even if she was not quite sure how it would materialize in real time.

Along with these deeply spiritual influences and aspirations, Sarah Schenirer had a thorough exposure to secular culture, beginning with her education in a secular Polish school through the eighth grade. It is clear from her writings that she harbored a great love for knowledge. In many senses, she was cosmopolitan; she loved to travel, loved to experience the intellectual lecture circuit — a widely available public form of enrichment at the time — as well as important world events, as evident in her journey to Vienna to witness the 60th anniversary celebration of the accession of Kaiser Franz Joseph I.

Like many Orthodox women of the time, Sarah Schenirer had interest in and familiarity with the classic literature of the European canon, with a proficiency in both Polish and German literature. When she traveled to Vienna to purchase fabrics for her dressmaking business, she made sure to catch a lecture at the Bayerishe Hof; lectures such as these were an attraction for anyone with an inquisitive and intellectual mind. In fact, before World War I, she attended numerous lectures on women’s affairs, including those that centered on the promotion of equal rights and education for women. She also completed a course on the popular topic of hygiene in 1913, as well as a general philosophy course covering Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Bruno, Berkeley, Spinoza, Wolff, Hume, and Leibniz, and attended meetings and lectures on the Esperanto movement.

Her diary reflections, poetic as befitting the genre, contain lyrical quotes from the canonical Polish bards Pan Tadeusz and Adam Mickiewicz. She notes that her friends, and later her fiancé’s family, “dragged” her to staged performances in Krakow on more than one occasion.

That these influences were present in her life was not unusual for frum women at that time, and they proved the necessity of the alternative system for Orthodox girls that she would eventually create. What set Sarah Schenirer apart from her peers was her ability to be at once a part of this world and above it, to survey the sophisticated elements alive in her milieu and sublimate them, or at even eschew them, in the service of a purer and more direct approach to holiness. Sarah Schenirer was no stranger to the worlds of culture, intellect, and activism. But she was fully aware of their paucity in contrast to Yiddishkeit. And she was determined to reveal the staggering beauty of our eternal beliefs to her sisters still in the darkness.

If I Only Had the Courage

Sarah Schenirer’s diary provides ample evidence of this struggle, and reading it through glasses fabricated by Bais Yaakov, we can imagine when and how the initial idea to change the landscape of girls’ education took root.

In one entry, she expresses her wishes that her friends would realize how fleeting and temporal are the pleasures of the material world. She writes, in Polish, of the chasm that existed between her and her peers in her seriousness and devotion to scrupulous performance of mitzvos. Throughout her writings, she expresses deep self-doubt: “My soul is full, but I don’t have the courage to express my thoughts. But that’s always been my story.”

On another occasion, she shares the pain of being ridiculed in her quest to enlighten women with the meaning of Jewish life. In 1910, she wrote, “My ideal, deep down, is to work only for my sisters!… Ah! If only I succeeded once, I would be happy, a hundred times happier than a millionaire. But what! Who will want to read this? Am I foolish? In today’s day, the age of progress, to want something like this? Yes! Yes! That would be laughed at, that would be talked about! What a silly, backward Chusidke.”

In challenging her friends for their choice of entertainment during their outing at a Krakow theater in October of 1909, she describes the outing as frivolous and counterproductive: “Well! And what, isn’t this whole world a theater, in which one wears a royal crown, and another rags… when the curtain falls, when death calls, won’t the king and the beggar be interred in the same earth? Just as during the performance one plays the role of king, and another the beggar, when the curtain falls both are the same actors…. Isn’t it better then, instead of spending time in the theater, to spend it on careful examination of the laws of our destiny, our spiritual [destiny] in this vale of tears, to remember that every day we are closer to the grave and we will give an account of every deed on high, whether king or beggar….”

This excerpt reveals how clearly Sarah Schenirer perceived the predicament facing young women as they indulged in modern media, years before she discovered another way for women to slake their searching souls by learning words of holiness.

As she mentions, she read the teachings of Midrash on Shabbos, and the daily portion of Chok L’Yisrael, most probably as a solitary pursuit at home. These isolated cerebral/spiritual pastimes were in keeping with her deeply pious and earnest personality, for which she earned the nickname “Chusidke.”

Always, Sarah Schenirer was highly sensitive to the foolishness that occupied the fancies of her friends, and she dreamed of a reality where women could tap into the sources of strength that comprise the sacred legacy of our people. The anecdote from her diary portrays the talent that would manifest itself eight years later: The ability to combat contemporary trends utilizing words of Torah, aimed to penetrate the hearts of those who needed it most.

Inspiration in Austria

In 1908, Sarah Schenirer traveled to Vienna for the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Franz Joseph I, an event commemorated at the Ringstrasse with pomp and elaborate decorations, showcasing over 12,000 people in historical costume to represent highlights of the Habsburg Empire.

After viewing his palace and the accoutrements within it, she noted her admiration. But as she often did in this conversation with herself, she reflected upon these riches as a living parable. If so much honor is accorded to a man who is mere flesh and blood, “how much more should we heed, adore, and honor the King of Kings on high.”

Sarah Schenirer was 27 when she became engaged to be married to Shmuel Nussbaum. Her engagement was a concession on her part, undertaken only after careful calculation of, in her own estimation, her relatively meager prospects: “Will I really have the courage to say: I don’t like him….” Then she elaborates with biting sarcasm: “Should I, with my beautiful face and this great fortune, really have great aspirations?”

Even before her marriage, Sarah Schenirer wrote of her concerns about compatibility, fearful that her future husband might never fully understand, let alone appreciate, her idealism and sense of mission for Klal Yisrael. At this time, she began to articulate her wishes to enhance the lives of Jewish women, writing, “When will I be able to act on behalf of my sisters?”

Sarah Schenirer was as unhappy as she predicted she would be, and ultimately made the decision to divorce. She returned to the use of her maiden name, Sarah Schenirer, in all her correspondences, and began a new chapter of her life. (Later on, in 1930, she would marry Rav Yitzchok Nuchem Landau, a great-grandson of the Radomosker Rebbe, Rav Shlomo Rabinowitz, known as the Tiferes Shlomo. Although she did not have children of her own, she and her second husband became a source of support and sustenance to young men learning Torah in Krakow.)

And so Sarah Schenirer looked toward a future with a failed marriage behind her, a quiet home empty of children, and a heart full of unrealized dreams — an array of ambitious plans, but just as many disappointments, doubts, and fears. But she was a woman who faced her fears and forged ahead in spite of them. Instead of writing extensively about World War I or the pain of upheaval in her diary, Sarah Schenirer depicts the night of Tishah B’Av, 1914, as the birth of a particular salvation.

With the outbreak of World War I, Poland was thrown into chaos. Along with many others, the Schenirer family fled to Vienna, and one of the first things Sarah did after finding living quarters was to seek a place to daven. The Schenirers’ new home was an hour’s walk — too far — from the famous Schiffschul, but she learned of a local Orthodox shul, the Tempel-und-Schulverein on Stumpergasse.

On Shabbos Chanukah of 1914, Sarah Schenirer witnessed something she had never seen before: The Rav, Rav Moshe David Flesch, approached the bimah before Krias HaTorah and began to address the congregants. Although the difference in shul protocol was already surprising to Sarah Schenirer, the content of the derashah and its direct appeal to women were absolutely riveting.

Rav Moshe David Flesch, born in 1879, was an exemplary orator who delivered his speeches in German. He had studied at Pressburg and then in Frankfurt, in Rav Shlomo Zalman Breuer’s yeshivah, and his approach represented the hybridity of Torah im derech eretz that would serve as the educational foundation of Sarah Schenirer’s efforts later on.

In this specific speech, he described the deeds of Yehudis, portraying her as a Jewish heroine whose historical bravery should serve as a model for contemporary women. With fire in his eyes, Rav Flesch exhorted the women in shul to rise up to their own Jewish obligations, and behave in accordance with the brave model that Yehudis represents.

Beyond her glowing impression of Rav Flesch’s rhetoric, the greatest novelty — the hidden treasure in these presentations — was the revolutionary concept that speaking to women in their own language could and would produce a lasting change. In Vienna, in the midst of the ravages of war and exile, Sarah Schenirer excavated the foundations of Bais Yaakov.

For the duration of her stay in Vienna, she continued to attend the lectures of Rav Flesch on Chumash, Tehillim, Pirkei Avos, and inyanei d’yoma. And then, in Av of 1915, she returned to Krakow, determined to transform that inspiration into an educational model for others.

With the Rebbe’s Blessing

When Sarah Schenirer set a course for her pedagogical journey, the tides were high. Klal Yisrael was at an inflection point, a moment of crisis and upheaval induced by the Enlightenment and by the ideological movements captivating Jewish youth. So many were choosing paths foreign to Yiddishkeit, whether through the desire to pursue higher education, the pull toward social movements that promised freedom and a better life, or the attraction of modernity itself. Girls began to be ashamed of their “old-fashioned” parents and were persuaded that their modes of behavior were a relic of the past. Gedolei Yisrael were painfully aware of the problem and actively searching for solutions to stem the scourge of attrition from religious faith.

Sarah Schenirer joined that search with several attempts to create a forum for girls to learn and grow in Yiddishkeit. But these efforts were unsuccessful. In one early instance, she formed an Association for Orthodox Women, where she invited women to lectures on Jewish topics.

In her diary, she describes her first lecture on Pirkei Avos for 40 women, who were enthused by the idea of the lecture. However, when the topic turned to “Ve’asu seyag la’Torah” — the exhortation to fence in the holy laws of Torah, and she explained the laws of muktzeh on Shabbos, Sarah Schenirer felt a palpable shift in the audience; the women reacted with surprised expressions. It seemed that they did not expect to be given practical direction for the observance of mitzvos. Some of the women summarily departed with cynical grins on their faces.

Sarah Schenirer may have been dismayed, but she was not deterred. She decided to invest her energies in her fledgling women’s organization anyway, by building a lending library, with as many books authored by Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch and Marcus Lehmann as she could acquire at the time.

But she felt that these endeavors were insufficient to create a lasting change in the society around her. Women agreed to attend her lectures, but few participants were actually altering their behavior or lifestyle as a result. Clearly, something more immersive and comprehensive was needed. So she decided to open a school.

As the 1903 Krakow Conference proved, starting a school for frum girls was a very controversial step — an effort that could easily be perceived as a challenge to traditional rabbinic authority, since such important resolutions — a solution to the question of Jewish girls’ education — might well alter the very fabric and character of the religious population. But reading her diaries, it is clear that Sarah Schenirer was anything but a renegade, and that she did not want to embark on this project without the support of rabbanim, specifically the rebbe that her father and brother so deeply revered.

Picture what it must have looked like from her vantage point: Standing at the precipice of innovation, the opening of an Orthodox school of Torah education for girls, Sarah Schenirer was completely alone. She had not a single voice of support or direction, only her own inner compass to lead her.

She anticipated opposition from all sides: Pushback from the right on the basis of the Talmudic position against teaching Torah to women; dissent from left-leaning movements and parties who, like her, were vying for the souls the youth and unwilling to relinquish their prey. And so, despite — or perhaps because of — the revolutionary aspects of the Bais Yaakov project, Sarah Schenirer waited until she received a brachah from the Belzer Rebbe before she ventured forward.

Between 1915–1917, Sarah Schenirer sent a letter to her brother in Bohemia, detailing her plans and seeking his opinion. Her brother was not enthusiastic. He predicted severe opposition, foreseeing struggles and obstacles. “Why get involved in that?” he asked. But she insisted, and, familiar with Sarah’s determination and resolve, her brother offered her the age-old path of our people at a crossroads, in seeking the counsel of sages. Surely his Rebbe, the holy tzaddik Rav Yissachar Dov Rokeach of Belz — leader of the court in which their father spent his finest hours — would guide her.

This foray had its risks. The Belzer Rebbe was considered one of the most important chassidish leaders of Galicia and Hungary of his time. Known as a wonder worker, thousands flocked to him to seek blessings, advice, and to imbibe the wisdom of his words. His leadership, prayer, and Torah were suffused with holiness, vitalizing his disciples with sanctity and emotion. But the Rebbe was also extremely faithful to tradition, rejecting any deviation from the customs and practices of the past. Not only were Zionism and the Mizrahi movement anathema to him, the Rebbe also refused to support Agudath Israel because of its novel borrowings from the secular institution of political parties. It seemed most unlikely that he would encourage Sarah Schenirer’s revolutionary proposal.

Nevertheless, at her brother’s suggestion Sarah Schenirer quickly prepared for a journey to the spa town of Marienbad, where the Rebbe was visiting. Since her brother was a well-known figure among the Belzer chassidim, the pair was granted an immediate audience with the Rebbe. Her brother drafted a kvittel, stating, “My sister wishes to educate bnos Yisrael in the spirit of the Torah and tradition,” and the Rebbe read the kvittel in her presence, lending his blessing to the endeavor.

For Sarah Schenirer, this blessing from the tzaddik was a powerful sign that she had been given a divine mandate to realize her vision. The journey to the Rebbe was a turning point in her monumental project, filling her with the courage and confidence that Divine Providence would grace her efforts.

To Proudly Uphold the Flag

It must be noted that the Belzer Rebbe’s blessing did not magically remove all opposition. While many leaders — including the saintly Chofetz Chaim, Rav Yisrael Meir Hakohen of Radin — lent their approval and support to the movement, many rabbanim and rebbes remained suspicious of Bais Yaakov. The Rebbe of Muncakz, Rav Chaim Elazar Spira, for example, strongly denounced the nascent movement. The new ground it was breaking, including girls singing and davening aloud together, led the Rebbe to compare it in writing to a “Bais Eisav” rather than a Bais Yaakov. Some even tried to claim that the approbation of the Belzer Rebbe was not absolute, pointing to the fact that his own followers did not send their daughters to Bais Yaakov schools.

To this point, a rare testimony supporting the Belzer Rebbe’s approval came from the son of the Rebbe Yissachar Dov, Rav Mordechai of Bilgoray (father of the current Belzer Rebbe shlita). Addressing the crowd at a wedding in Antwerp in 1948, the Rebbe of Bilgoray spoke highly of the institution: “Sarah Schenirer, the founder of Bais Yaakov, I knew her well. She was in Belz before she founded Bais Yaakov, and received approval with the intention that this institution would have the character of Bais Yaakov, that is, an education whereby bnos Yisrael will proudly uphold the banner of the Torah and the banner of Yiddishkeit.”

The Belzer publication Ohr Hatzafun (163) asserts a great measure of pride in the fact that their rebbe was the first of all gedolei Yisrael to support the movement. It expands upon the implication that the only words uttered by the Rebbe to Sarah Schenirer were “Brachah v’hatzlachah”; it was likely that there was far more to that discussion. In one letter reproduced there, Sarah Schenirer repeats the direction of the Belzer Rebbe in prohibiting her from producing plays in the early years of Bais Yaakov, as they are considered chukas hagoyim. (Later on, she did write and produce plays and certainly received rabbinic blessing for doing so.)

Another source, a diary of a Lithuanian Bais Yaakov seminarian, repeats Sarah Schenirer’s statement that the Belzer Rebbe’s blessing included an immediate injunction against teaching Hebrew, which she did not speak in any case. Taken together, it is clear that the conversation that took place in the Belzer Rebbe’s chamber was richer than the established narrative portrays.

Additionally, the publication explains that the followers of Belz initially avoided sending their daughters to Bais Yaakov not due to opposition to girls’ formal Torah learning, but rather due to concerns about the teachers. Most of the early Bais Yaakov teachers were educated women from Western and Central Europe, as there were no experienced female educators in Poland at the time. Their relatively modern appearance was a concern for the conservative Belz community. However, in places where there was a greater risk of girls remaining uneducated at home, the Rebbe gave his consent for chassidim to send their daughters to Bais Yaakov schools.

Elsewhere in the same source, there is an addendum in the name of the Belzer Rebbe, asking Sarah Schenirer a challenging question: “How is it possible to run a school with women teachers who are busy building the world [a reference to childbearing] and taking care of small children?” This question, which speaks to the challenges of balancing professional and family life, remains relevant today, but it also reminds us of a fact we might easily overlook: Before the establishment of Bais Yaakov, it was not practical or realistic for married women to serve in teaching positions. By building not only a school but a seminary to train future teachers, Sarah Schenirer did more than educate girls; she reimagined  a Jewish woman’s potential and accomplishments.

Support of the Imrei Emes

Once she received her blessing from the Belzer Rebbe — whose influence was felt throughout greater Galicia — Sarah Schenirer sought approbation from the Gerrer Rebbe, Rav Avraham Mordechai Alter. Known as the Imrei Emes, he was one of the most powerful leaders of Polish Jewry. Rav Pinchas Yaakov HaKohein Levin (son of Rav Chanoch Tzvi Levin of Bendin, who was the son-in-law of the Sfas Emes), founder of Bais Yaakov in Eretz Yisrael, relates the following in an interview for the Maalot newspaper in its Adar 1975 edition.

Yet in 1919, at the end of the summer, Mrs. Sarah Schenirer a”h traveled to Ger to consult the Rebbe regarding the establishment of a school for girls. In Gur, women were never granted an audience with the Rebbe; I lived in Gur at the time… I spoke with my aunt, the wife of the tzaddik Rav Moshe Betzalel Alter Hy”d, and she went in to her brother-in-law — the Rebbe — as Mrs. Schenirer stood in the other room and listened in to the words of the Rebbe, as he said, “Teaching Yiddishkeit to Jewish daughters is exceedingly proper,” and the Rebbe added that there is definitely room to act on behalf of girls education that has been so neglected up until now.

Rav Levin adds to this narrative, citing words the Gerrer Rebbe told him, and framing them with his interpretation of what they meant: “When we returned from Eretz Yisrael in 1927, we traveled to Marienbad… during that trip the Rebbe said to his escorts — and I was among them — ‘Were Bais Yaakov to have existed thirty years ago, the generation would have looked entirely different.’ These words amount to a resounding approbation from the leader of Polish Jewry before the Holocaust.”

The approval and support of the Gerrer Rebbe, leader of the largest chassidic court in Poland, was critical to the success of the young movement. Beyond his initial commendation, the Gerrer Rebbe expended tremendous energy to ensure the success of Bais Yaakov. It was under his advisement that Agudath Israel extended its sponsorship of Bais Yaakov, and continued to assist in shouldering its financial burden. The Rebbe also wrote many letters on behalf of the movement, and encouraged his chassidim to devote themselves to the cause that he believed would ensure Klal Yisrael’s future. And so they did.

Sarah Schenirer established her first classroom in her apartment on October of 1917, with 25 students, no blackboards, and old benches. But her spirit overrode the material conditions, transforming the sparse quarters into a dynamic educational scene. Soon, the group of 25 girls became a group of 40. In those early years, the subjects were basic, including: Zitten (Ethics), Fleiss (Diligence), Religia (Religion), Brachos, Tefillah, Translating, Writing, Yiddish Reading, German Reading, and Jewish History.

She could not have predicted that eventually the 25 would become 40 and the 40 would burgeon to thousands. Back then, it took much effort and time to win supporters, one by one, and each supporter was precious and deeply valued.

In 1917, Sarah Schenirer writes that one of her most supportive advocates in the early Bais Yaakov effort was the young Rebbetzin Halberstam of Krakow, married to a descendant but also herself a grandchild of the Divrei Chaim of Sanz.

As Sarah Schenirer describes it, Rebbetzin Halberstam acted “with incredible enthusiasm, she began to bring children to my school, to persuade their parents, and to devote every free moment to me.”

At least two historians assert in print that this was the most famous Rebbetzin Halberstam in Krakow at the time, namely, my great-grandmother, Rebbetzin Chaya Fradel of Bobov; she was the daughter of the Admor Rav Shalom Eliezer of Ratsfert, the second-to-youngest son of the Divrei Chaim. But while her husband, the Kedushas Zion of Bobov, was indeed an educational mastermind who established a powerful network of yeshivos throughout Galicia, I knew that it was highly unlikely that Rebbetzin Chaya Fradel could have taken an active role in Bais Yaakov, due to the fact that her husband did not immediately support the movement until he was pleased with its development — stating, “I don’t have my glasses with me” when asked to sign a Bais Yaakov announcement, thereby implying there was metaphorical “fine print” that he needed to examine first.

After additional research, it seems most likely that the young Rebbetzin Halberstam who assisted Sarah Schenirer so assiduously was Rebbetzin Henna, the daughter of Rebbe Shayale of Tschechoiv, youngest son of the Sanzer Rav; she lived in Krakow at the time and was married to Rav Menachem Mendel Halberstam, son of Rav Aryeh Leib of Muszyna, a grandson of Rav Boruch of Gorlitz, son of the Divrei Chaim of Sanz.

After she outgrew the quarters of her crowded home/school, Sarah Schenirer was compelled to rent a small apartment on Katarzyna Street, upon which she hung a sign that proudly read “Bet Sefer Bais Yaakov L’Bnos Yisrael.” A Gerrer chassid named Reb Mordechai Luksenberg owned the building, and at this early stage in the development of Bais Yaakov, most people still did not know whether to relate positively to the initiative; should he encourage the activities taking place under his roof? When he sought his Rebbe’s counsel, the Gerrer Rebbe decisively replied that he would be glad were such an endeavor to take place in his own home.

Seeking the Essential Sarah Schenirer

Through her written words, I began to acquire a sense of Sarah Schenirer’s piety, her intelligence, her hopes, and deepest fears. But to see what was truly important to her, we need look no further than Bais Yaakov itself. The leadership she marshalled, the curriculum she crafted, and the literary output she produced give color, shape, and form to the scaffolding of her stated intentions.

From 1918 to 1922, Sarah Schenirer attempted to accommodate up to 80 girls as students in her own apartment, while also working to achieve broad-based rabbinic support for the movement beyond the personal endorsement of the Belzer Rebbe. In 1919, Agudath Israel adopted Bais Yaakov under its organizational umbrella, and in 1923 Sarah Schenirer opened a seminary in her home as well. Two other Bais Yaakov seminaries opened subsequently, one in Vienna in 1930, under the directorship of Dr. Leo Deutschlander, and another in 1935 in Czernowitz, directed by Esther Hamburger Gross.

The schools functioned with a minimum of printed material in the early years. Until 1926, the entire Bais Yaakov network utilized a single textbook: Yahadus by I. N. Kaminetz. It is baffling to consider that the 49 schools in existence at the time functioned with only the use of this one book, alongside siddurim, Chumashim, and Neviim. Sarah Schenirer’s writings were copied longhand by her students who graduated to become teachers, and thus transmitted to the Bais Yaakov girls.

Afterward, the newly-formed Bais Yaakov Press published multiple schoolbooks, including Ivri Anochi by Rabbi Alexander Zishe Friedman and Der Yiddish Neshome by Rabbi Eliezer Schindler. The use of Yiddish  — as opposed to Polish — was a primary focus at Bais Yaakov, with the explicit purpose of linking the Jewish girl to the Jewish past and the Jewish people. As Eliezer Schinder wrote: “Jewish daughters who do not speak Yiddish create a barrier between themselves and the Jewish people. Jewish daughters who do not know Yiddish will be unable to rear their children in a true Jewish spirit.” Dr. Shlomo Birnbaum’s Yiddishe Verterbuch Bikhel, an index of 6,000 Yiddish words along with basic grammar rules, was printed by the Bais Yaakov Press to reinforce the traditional expression and even pronunciation of Yiddish among Bais Yaakov students. Dr. Birnbuam encouraged the use of what we called the “chassidish” pronunciation of Yiddish rather than the Lithuanian pronunciation, which he considered redolent of secularism.

As time progressed, the movement advanced to become a robust network with a full curriculum. Aiding Sarah Schenirer in the development and administration was Dr. Leo Deutschlander, head of Keren HaTorah, who along with Rabbi Yehuda Leib Orlean took on a role of responsibility for the growth and development of Bais Yaakov into the ultimate paradigm of girls’ education in Eastern Europe.

In 1925, Dr. Judith Grunfeld, a graduate of Frankfurt University and an alumna of and teacher at the Realschule established by Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch in Frankfurt, lent her considerable talents to the seminary as well. This was thanks to the efforts of Rav Jacob Rosenheim of Agudath Israel, who persuaded her to reroute her plan to move to the land of Israel and to instead enlist in the ranks of Bais Yaakov leadership. She began to work together with Sarah Schenirer in the summer of 1925 in the village of Robow, and remained her partner for six years, becoming, together with Dr. Deutschlander, the third pillar of Bais Yaakov Seminary.

Yet Sarah Schenirer retained oversight over the entire movement, as evident from the mussar lesson she wrote in advance of “Nittel” [the Yiddish term for the Christian holiday, widely considered a time of spiritual impurity] of 1935 for her teachers to deliver to the girls instead of Torah study; she wanted to make sure they refrain from learning Torah that night. One of the special traditions Sarah Schenirer conducted at the seminary was the recitation of Shir Hashirim on Friday nights, to greet Shabbos as she entered the threshold.

The Bais Yaakov Seminary curriculum was marked by a combination of intellectual and practical components. The two-year seminary program included the study of all of Chumash with Rashi and the commentary of Rav Hirsh; selections from Neviim Achronim and Megillah; Tefillah; Jewish History; Hebrew Grammar; and Halachah (this course seems to have encompassed more about the spirit of the law) through the Mesillas Yesharim, Rav Hirsch’s Nineteen Letters, Traces of the Messiah by Dr. Isaac Breuer, and Amudai Hagolah by Ludwig Stern. Also included in the seminary curriculum were Psychology; Pedagogy; Polish literature as mandated; German, including classics of Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, Zweig, and Beer-Hoffman; Gymnastics; and Handicrafts. In order to graduate, students were required to write a lesson plan for a model lesson, a pedagogic essay, and a final paper about a specified Torah text.

A set of notebooks preserved by one seminary student reflects an engagement with a variety of sources; one even contains a beautiful illustration of the Menorah embedded in a lesson about the Mishkan, from a Chumash class.

The physical conditions were decidedly less rich than the curriculum. Dr. Deutschlander described the seminary in those early days:

The girls gathered in an old boarding house in a deserted and dilapidated street. The steps were loose and rickety. Two rooms were rented out to the future Beth Jacob teachers.

We opened the door and step inside. The first room we had to go through served as a kitchen in which they cooked for 50 people. It was small and narrow and was separated from the other room by a curtain. This second room served as a study room and sleeping quarters, in addition to being used as a dining room, wardrobe, and washroom for all 50 of its occupants. Twenty girls shared one room, sleeping two in each bed. There was no room for additional beds and so the others slept on folding cots that were set up in the room used for studies during the daytime.

In spite of this, all the students were happy and anxious to learn, joyous and carefree at all times. Many of the students came from well-to-do homes and were used to luxury, but they never expressed dissatisfaction.

These girls, who were the pioneers of the seminary, immersed themselves in Bais Yaakov with self-deprivation, devotion, and boundless love.

Thanks to the backing and administration of Agudas Yisrael, Bais Yaakov grew with incredible speed: by 1928, the system encompassed over 20,000 students, with 16,000 in Poland and 4,000 outside of Poland. 1929 marked the opening of the first all-day school, combining religious and secular subjects, which later became the standard for all Bais Yaakov schools. Unlike its Lithuanian counterpart, the Yavneh school system — which taught all subjects in Lashon Hakodesh — Bais Yaakov’s leadership decided to teach secular subjects in the Polish language, to differentiate them from the religious subjects (“If we have to teach goyishkeit, we will teach it in goyish”). Within 15 years, Bais Yaakov numbered 250 schools and over 38,000 students.

The financial, curricular, and administrative angles were now handled by Dr. Deutschlander, Rabbi Orlean, and Dr. Grunfeld. As founder and chief visionary, Sarah Schenirer spent a tremendous amount of time traveling across Poland, at first to canvas for students by visiting town after town and opening up dialogue with parents about Bais Yaakov would offer. Once the schools were operational, she would constantly visit the branches to oversee, encourage, and provide advice to her students, who were now empowered teachers in their own right.

Beyond Book Learning

Though the curriculum was ambitious, Sarah Schenirer was frank about the genuine goal of her school system. Her primary motivator, as Rabbi Eliezer Gershon Friedenson, architect and editor of the Bais Yaakov Journal posited, was the depth of her idealism. This expressed itself outside of her educational efforts in her constant quest to feed the hungry, to raise funds for the orphaned and widowed. She held that these charitable deeds should be at the core of every Bais Yaakov girl’s nature. She prioritized the needs of her teachers and her students, often standing in for their parents in helping them choose husbands and finding dowries for them.

In Sarah Schenirer’s own words, “You know that the Bais Yaakov does not attempt to impart a great wealth of knowledge… but a wealth of spirit, a large measure of enthusiasm for the performance of the commandments and a large measure of refined personal qualities.”

And while her innovation provided an immediate response to the question of formal education for girls, Bais Yaakov became far more than that — it grew to be the movement that defined the lifestyle of young Orthodox women.

Until Bais Yaakov, arenas of activity for Orthodox women were extremely limited. Unlike the present day, the most captivating trends at that time were not superficial but ideological. Young women were inspired by the glittering humanistic bent that enlivened Communism, Zionism, Socialism, and Bundism. These political movements motivated young people with modern ideals, with dreams and activities aimed at building a better future for themselves. Others seeking more passive cultural stimulation outside the home would attend lectures or the theater.

Sarah Schenirer described her own experiences with these social/intellectual excursions. One Shabbos, a friend took her to a Zionist group meeting as part of a program called Ruth, a Hebrew-speaking nationalist association for Jewish women. But she left deeply pained by the chillul Shabbos that she witnessed there. If only, she mused to herself in her diary, girls of our circles had spaces of their own, programs of learning and inspiration designed for us, how different life would be! Now, as the founder of Bais Yaakov, she set out to fill this hole — by drawing women away from intellectual and spiritual diversions that were ultimately inadequate, and inviting them into a world of growth within the bounds of Torah and mitzvos.

She consciously structured Bais Yaakov and Bnos so they would provide a response and a haven for Orthodox women who craved intellectual stimulation, social outings, and travel. Bais Yaakov summer colonies drew young women into the fresh air and rejuvenation of the Polish countryside. Shabbos gatherings for girls, classes and lectures during the week became the new normal, and won new adherents to the movement. Even when the educational model of Bais Yaakov was not precisely replicated, as in the Lithuanian case, the spirit of Bais Yaakov was interpreted abroad, as women’s gatherings and publications developed under the Bais Yaakov banner.

Moreover, Sarah Schenirer’s message to her girls was encapsulated in one of her favorite pesukim, the one that exemplified and decorated her movement: Bais Yaakov lechu v’nelcha be’ohr Hashem. This was not a metaphorical charge alone. For Sarah Schenirer, it was a call to go and do; to step out of the zones of comfort and into the world, in the holy and glorious path that Hashem lights for each one of us.

In describing this discrepancy in 1936, Rabbi Yehuda Tavyomi (Gutentag) painted the following picture: Before [she] appeared, it was forbidden, certainly for a Jewish girl of Poland, daughter of frum parents, to move even one footstep from the house of her father. It was forbidden for her to go to the market and to socialize with other girls her age, since the dangers of the epidemic of heresy awaited her in ambush….

But when Sarah Schenirer arrived, she stimulated the creation of religious literature for young girls. From the time she organized a pure chareidi atmosphere, from the time she raised high the flag of glory for a Bas Yisrael, the bas Yisrael shook off the lowliness her banishment among the freewheelers; shook herself off from the foreign culture, the bowing of her stature and the nullification of her essence in front of the gentiles, and with this she allowed the bas Yisrael to stride broadly on the road of life, to go out of her parents’ house and to go down to the street to the public market without disconnecting herself from their spiritual foundation, without fear or suspicion that the road will lead to the abyss.

Knowing that the young women of her time were voracious readers, Sarah Schenirer incorporated a literary culture into the Bais Yaakov oeuvre as well. In addition to schools and the Bnos and Batya programs, the Bais Yaakov Journal, edited by Agudath Israel activist Rabbi Eliezer Gershon Friedenson, spread Bais Yaakov literature to students and their families. The Yiddish-language periodical began publication in 1923 and ran monthly until the onset of the Holocaust. Once the Journal was fully established, Rabbi Friedenson began publication of a newspaper for elementary school girls entitled The Kindergarten, which first appeared as a supplementary section to the Beth Jacob Journal in 1925. An imprint called Bais Yaakov Press began to produce textbooks and other literature for the movement as well.

Bais Yaakov even opened a trade school called Ohel Sarah in 1934 in Lodz, also under the auspices of Rabbi Friedenson, teaching bookkeeping, sewing, dressmaking, and nursing. The program thrived with plans for expansion, until the Nazi onslaught put an end to it along with the rest of Eastern European Jewish civilization.

A Mother’s Strength and Love

As I got to know Sarah Schenirer by reading her own words closely, I was awed by the emotionality that is threaded through her writings, and how that heartfelt passion became a motif of her movement. It reinforced my deepest held beliefs about why and how women need to learn Torah: It’s all about connection; it’s all about love.

According to this worldview, Chumash, Navi, and halachah must be transmitted by women like Sarah Schenirer, whose love for Yiddishkeit and for her fellow Jews is as evident as their presence in the room. Then the knowledge becomes secondary to the overarching mission: To revel in the beauty so wholeheartedly that keeping it to yourself is impossible.

As Rav Yehuda Tavyomi explained, Sarah Schenirer was a great woman who knew a great deal, having published many literary works in her lifetime including numerous articles, scripts for Bais Yaakov performances, and lesson texts. Yet with all of her intellect, Sarah Schenirer’s knowledge was not her salient characteristic. In defining Jewish womanhood, she emphasized a woman’s greatest strength: The ability to create a passionate continuum of love for Torah, to nurture others in their path of ahavas Hashem, to lead the way to holiness with fervent devotion.

The expansive capacity of women’s emotion, the defining characteristic of femininity, is what makes her powerful. This ability to elicit and perpetuate emotion in others is the essence of women’s strength, the apogee of motherhood.

Sarah Schenirer’s student Masha Goldberg saw that emotion expressed in a relationship akin to a mother’s love for her children. “And we — we are her children,” she explained. “Frau Schenirer’s purpose was children, Frau Schenirer’s life — children. Always and forever — in the company of her children. My children, she would always say. My dearest children, she would always write. The love she had for us was a constant in her heart, in her soul, in her entire being.”

As Rav Tavyomi put it:

To the famous Gemara, “Yosef obligates the evil ones, Hillel obligates the paupers and Rabi Elazar ben Charsum obligates the wealthy,” we must add: “The woman Sarah Schenirer obligates the rabbanim and the askanim in our generation. What was Sarah Schenirer in her generation? She was the Mother, in the entire depth and breadth of the word….

A Jewish woman must know that her mission as a bas Yisrael is not to excel in Torah knowledge, to pose questions and provide apt responses, to complicate, analyze, and interpret, to relate and to iron out the disputes in the field of Torah — Not at all!… all these fall under the mitzvah of “Ve’limadetem” and that is given to men and not women. The mission of woman is: To produce a stream of love for Torah and yiras Shamayim in the hearts of boys and girls from their earliest years.

In that sense, Sarah Schenirer became a mother to generations of women. In her overarching care for the spiritual well-being of her sisters, in her devotion to their betterment and spiritual development, she displayed the reigning characteristic of motherhood.

As the Bais Yaakov Journal explains, the only thing that slowed Sarah Schenirer’s massive energy and devotion to Bais Yaakov was her five-month battle with cancer in 1935. During this time, many of her students wished to visit, and her family tried to shield her by keeping her in seclusion. But Sarah Schenirer refused to be separated from those who loved her so deeply. “Let them all in,” she said. “They are my children.” Reb Yosef Friedenson, the son of Rabbi Eliezer Gershon and himself an esteemed communal figure and writer, described the impact of her petirah upon them as so far-reaching, that thousands of Jewish mothers tore their clothes and sat shivah.

The motherly relationship is clear in her last will and testament, which was written on her deathbed, in 1935, at the age of 51, and preserved in an expanded edition of the Gesamelte Schriften, Collected Writings of Sarah Schenirer, issued in the United States in 1955.

This letter in Yiddish was written prior to her journey to Vienna for medical treatment. In it, Sarah Schenirer speaks to the girls, her students, her daughters, encouraging them as they travel forth, as seminarians, as teachers, as mothers, and as leaders. She is emotional, she is crying. Sarah Schenirer has reached the end of the road, but she is not leaving her students empty-handed. In this last of so many letters to her students, she expressed her own feelings about the essence of womanhood and motherhood, the essence of Bais Yaakov that she achieved through her movement.

Sarah Schenirer loved knowledge and sought to impart it. She loved Torah and divrei Chazal. But the most important thing, the message she devoted her whole life to communicate, is that women do not fulfill their mission by study alone. Rather, it is good deeds, and the motivation of good deeds in others, that are a woman’s true task.

“You are going out into the world,” she writes, “and you will have the fate of future generations in your hands. Remember, you have learned so much, but vos hot de Talmud dir gelernt — what did the learning teach you? No matter how much you have learned, it is not the study that matters, rather it is your deeds.”

Sarah Schenirer taught her daughters how women learn Torah, and this is why her movement was inimitable. This subtle difference in intent and direction still remains Bais Yaakov’s greatest strength. Every daughter of Bais Yaakov — essentially, any woman who learned in an all-girls Orthodox (Chasidish, Litvish, Sephardic) school, even if it bears a different name — is a product of her vision.

Unlike so many heroes of history whose greatness is recognized only after they have passed from the earthly realm, Sarah Schenirer witnessed her triumph. In consonance with the most hopeful of Talmudic blessings, she saw the world she envisioned come to be in her own time. She started with 20 students, and merited multitudes. Her name became synonymous with the ascendant spirituality and growth of the entire Klal Yisrael. She left the world in the loving embrace of all of the girls whose lives she changed forever. And we all embrace her still.

This article draws from the work of Abraham Atkin, Gershon Bacon, Pearl Benisch, Channa Lockshin Bob, Joanna Lisek,  Dr. David Kranzler, Rachel Manekin,  Dovi Safier, and Naomi Siedman, in addition to an array of archival materials.

You can tell I went to Bais Yaakov because…

• I’m proud to be different from the rest of the world. (graduate of Bais Yaakov of Monsey, age 68)
• I feel a sense of responsibility to be an example for the rest of the world. (graduate of TAG, age 33)
• I very much connect with the values that Sarah Schenirer tried to implement. (graduate of Rika Breuer Teachers’ Seminary, age 70)
• I try to do chesed and keep the mitzvah of tzniyus and try to think about what HaKadosh Baruch Hu would want me to do in a given situation. (graduate of Bais Yaakov Bais Miriam, Bronx, age 68)
• I know my tafkid is to do retzon Hashem. (graduate of Bais Rochel of Monsey, age 55)
• I can read mefarshim inside. (graduate of TAG, age 50)
• There are certain lines I’ll never cross. (graduate of Bais Yaakov of Los Angeles, age 46)

The Chofetz Chaim’s Decision

The support of the gadol Hador, the Chofetz Chaim, for the Bais Yaakov movement is well-documented and widely known. Most famously, the Chofetz Chaim wrote a letter in Shevat, 1933, to the community of Fryšták, expressing his unequivocal support for the Bais Yaakov cause. This letter was written during the final months of his life — 16 years after the movement’s founding. However, the precise timing of his support and the question of whether he backed Bais Yaakov early in its development or only later in life has become a topic of recent historical discussion.

A recent account relayed in Manhig B’Saar Hetekufah states that the Chofetz Chaim came to support the Bais Yaakov movement at a relatively late stage. It recounts the perspective of Dr. Samuel Belkin, who had the privilege of studying at the Chofetz Chaim’s yeshivah in Radin. Per Dr. Belkin: “One day, our Rebbe entered the yeshivah and asked the students to fast the following day and to daven for the success of a mission he had undertaken: to convince the Gerrer Rebbe to withdraw his support for Bais Yaakov, as it was, in his view, against the teaching of Chazal — ‘Kol ha’melamed bito Torah….’ He then traveled to Warsaw for this purpose.

“Upon his return, the Chofetz Chaim explained that the Gerrer Rebbe had found grounds to permit women’s Torah learning, based on the principle of Es la’asos la’Shem — that at times, the Torah must be adapted for the sake of Heaven. The Chofetz Chaim then told his students that not only had he been convinced of Bais Yaakov’s necessity in Poland, but that it was also essential in Radin — and perhaps even more so.”

The book correlates this realization as the impetus for the Chofetz Chaim to write his famous letter to the community of Fryšták. However, this narrative does not appear to withstand objective historical scrutiny. First, Dr. Samuel Belkin, the narrator of the episode, emigrated to the United States in 1929. That would mean the Chofetz Chaim’s letter was written at least four years after the alleged meeting occurred. Why would the Chofetz Chaim wait so long to announce such a dramatic change of heart?

Second, as the spiritual leader and moral compass of Klal Yisrael, the Chofetz Chaim had been writing about the challenges facing Jewish women well before World War I. His works Taharas Yisrael and Geder Olam were both written earlier, and both were published with Yiddish translations to ensure accessibility to women. It seems extremely unlikely that the Chofetz Chaim — who in 1931 risked his safety to deliver an unprecedented address to women in Vilna — could have remained unaware of women’s spiritual struggles throughout the 1920s.

Also, the Keren HaTorah yeshivah fund, which was established under the auspices of the Chofetz Chaim, ultimately grew to support Bais Yaakov as well. It is hardly conceivable that a fund originally established to support yeshivos would extend support to Bais Yaakov without the consent of the Chofetz Chaim.

Most of all, it is the chronology that conflicts with the Belkin narrative. The Chofetz Chaim had already published his halachic ruling permitting women’s Torah study in Likutei Halachos on Maseches Sotah, in 1921 — when Dr. Belkin was only 11 years old. That ruling undoubtedly referred to the fledgling efforts toward Orthodox girls’ education, including Bais Yaakov. Addressing the source of the prohibition, “Kol ha’melamed bito Torah ke’ilu melamdah tiflus,” the Chofetz Chaim unequivocally asserted that, in his time, it was a great mitzvah to teach girls Chumash, Neviim, Kesuvim, Pirkei Avos, Menoras HaMaor, and the ethical teachings of Chazal. He did not quote the Gerrer Rebbe as the source of this ruling; it is clearly the result of his own halachic judgment.

Furthermore, the same principles appear again in his 1933 letter, without additional elaboration or novelty in the text. It is therefore difficult to accept the idea that, in the years between these two statements, the Chofetz Chaim would have undertaken a journey to Warsaw in an effort to dissuade the Gerrer Rebbe from doing what he himself had already ruled was permissible and even obligatory.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 963)