The Education of Orthodox Girls

Founder of the Bais Ya‘akov network of schools, Sarah Schenirer was born in Kraków into a family of Belzer Hasidim. She grew up in an environment in which women learned domestic trades; nonetheless she was fortunate to study religious works with her father. In 1915, Schenirer heard a sermon in Vienna that inspired her, and despite a traditional prohibition against women learning Torah, she opened a religious school for girls, which she did with blessing of the third Belzer Rebbe (Yisakhar Dov Rokeaḥ, 1854–1926) in 1917. Initially an afterschool program, the Beis Ya‘akov programs flourished with the endorsement of the Chofetz Chaim, who publicly declared the prohibition against women learning Torah no longer applied, after which Agudas Yisroel took over and systematized the program. Schenirer was a consummate teacher, writer, and advocate who devoted her entire being to this project. She was arguably the most influential twentieth-century Orthodox Jewish woman—when she died in 1935, her Bais Ya‘akov school system was the largest Jewish educational network in the world. Her legacy has been sustained by her countless students and nephew, Tulo Schenirer, who survived Mauthausen and Plaszów as a child.