Sarah Schenirer

Sarah Schenirer was born to Bezalel Schenirer (of Tarnów) and Reizel in Krakow, Poland.[2] Her parents were both scions of influential rabbinic families.[1] Her father provided her with religious texts that he had translated into Yiddish. In her memoirs, she describes herself as the unassuming and withdrawn daughter of Belzer Hasidic parents. She was intelligent and had a strong desire to learn, and was envious of her brothers' opportunity to learn and interpret the Torah.[2]

Schenirer would write later in life:

"And as we pass through the days before the High Holy Days...fathers and sons travel, and thus they are drawn to Ger, to Belz, to Alexander, to Bobov, to all those places that had been made citadels of conceited religious life, dominated by the figure of the rebbe’s personality. And we stay at home, the wives, daughters, and the little ones. We have an empty festival. It is bare of Jewish intellectual content. The women have never learned anything about the spiritual meaning that is concentrated within a Jewish festival. The mother goes to the synagogue, but the services echo faintly into the fenced and boarded-off women’s galleries. There is much crying by elderly women. The young girls look at them as though they belong to a different century. Youth and the desire to live a full life shoot up violently in the strong-willed young personalities. Outside the synagogues, the young girls stay chattering; they walk away from the synagogue where their mothers pour out their vague and heavy feelings. They leave behind them the wailing of the older generation and follow the urge for freedom and self-expression. Further and further from the synagogue they go, further away, to the dancing, tempting light of a fleeting joy.[3]

Her friends teased her for her desire to learn the Torah and called her "the little pious one."[2] She attended elementary school for eight years.[2] She then became a seamstress.[4]

During World War I, Schenirer and her family fled from Poland to Vienna. [5] While there, she became influenced by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Flesch,[2] a disciple of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Modern Orthodox Judaism. [6] [7] His sermons emphasized the role of women throughout Jewish history, which inspired Schenirer.[2]

Schenirer occasionally attended lectures at the university, where she befriended young Jews who were in a campus program called Ruth, where she observed them lighting candles on Shabbat (Saturday), in violation of halakha (Jewish law). She perceived from this the need for better Jewish education.[3]

Schenirer returned to Kraków in 1917, where the inspiration she received in Vienna led her to seek to establish a school for girls. She initially approached her brother, who suggested that the idea wouldn't catch on.[8] However, he agreed to take her to see the Belzer Rebbe in Marienbad, who gave her his blessing in two words, "Mazel uBrocha."[3] In Schenirer's own description of the meeting, she stated that she wanted to "lead Jewish girls in the path of Judaism," without specifying that she planned to open a school and teach Torah;[9] and he in fact refused to encourage the girls of his Hassidim to go to Bais Yaakov.[10]

Schenirer opened a kindergarten for twenty-five children [2] in her seamstress studio,[5] where she emphasized love of Torah and mitzvos. Schenirer also began to set up lectures and a library for Jewish women.[6] She was admired for her sensitivity and care for others.[4]

After work, Schenirer stayed up late to study the weekly Torah portion and Tanakh:

I enjoyed it tremendously," she wrote, "as it enriched my understanding of the Jewish heritage and its beauty and depth of thought. But I also took a great interest in secular knowledge: education, history, literature. I especially admired the classical works of Polish and German writers. I loved reading them.[3]

The lessons were a blend of Lithuanian-style study of the Hebrew texts, together with Hasidic-style character development. Schenirer succeeded in overcoming initial resistance against this new type of school, receiving the approval of the leading rabbis of the time, such as the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter and Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (known as "the Chofetz Chaim"). Within 5 years, Schenirer's lessons grew into 7 schools with 1,040 students. By 1933, there were 265 schools in Poland alone, with almost 38,000 students.[3]

The main goal of the schools was to

train Jewish daughters so that they will serve the Lord with all their might and with all their hearts; so that they will fulfill the commandments of the Torah with sincere enthusiasm and will know that they are the children of a people whose existence does not depend upon a territory of its own, as do other nations of the world whose existence is predicated upon a territory and similar racial background.[11]

In 1933, Schenirer stepped down as the official head of the movement, but remained very much involved until her death in 1935.[2]

Sarah Schenirer married young, but was divorced from her first husband, either because he wasn't religious enough, or because the couple was childless. Schenirer married again later in life. Although she remained childless, her students would speak of themselves as being her children. They are considered the legacy of Frau Schenirer.[3]

Schenirer was raised in a Belzer hasidic family. She launched her movement only after receiving a blessing from the Belzer Rebbe [12]

On March 1, 1935, Schenirer died from cancer at the age of fifty-one.

Commemorative plaque on first Bais Yaakov school building, Krakow

Sarah Schenirer memorial matzevah (tombstone), Podgorze new Jewish cemetery (Kraków, Poland)

By 1939, there were about 250 schools established and over 40,000 students in Bais Yaakov schools.[6] One of her students was Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan, founder of the first Bais Yaakov high school and teachers' seminary in America. In her will, she wrote: "My dear girls, you are going out into the great world. Your task is to plant the holy seed in the souls of pure children. In a sense, the destiny of Israel of old is in your hands."[13] The admiration was mutual, and the girls within the movement called her "Sarah Imeinu," which translates to "Our Mother Sarah. She had no children of her own, so the girls of the movement filled that void for her.[2]

On the 70th anniversary of Schenirer's death in 2005, an "archival repository" was installed in Jerusalem in her honor. In the same year, some of her women supporters set out on a mission to restore her tombstone. Her original tombstone was destroyed when the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp was built. Her tombstone was restored in 2005. Upon the restoration, the director of the Central Bais Yaakov gave a eulogy for Schenirer, and closed it by saying, "Frau Schenirer, we are not merely placing a memorial on your grave site. We are placing it upon our hearts: for us, and for all the generations who will come after us."[2]

Today there are many Bais Yaakov schools that carry Schenirer's name, including an institute in New York that caters to religious Jewish women and girls allowing them to complete their undergraduate and graduate studies in a religious environment, offering courses in Social Work, Social Sciences, Education, Graphic design and more.

In her novel Peleh Laylah, Israeli author Esther Ettinger, who studied at a Bais Yaakov school as a girl, weaves in passages from Sarah Schenirer's writings.[14]

Her student Pearl Benisch wrote a book about Sarah Schenirer called Carry Me in Your Heart.[15]

The book Rebbetzin Grunfeld: The Life of Judith Grunfeld, Courageous Pioneer of the Bais Yaakov Movement and Jewish Rebirth Artscroll Series, was written by Miriam Dansky about Sarah Schenirer's colleague.

• Gender and Judaism
• Haredi Judaism
• History of the Jews in Poland
• Rebbetzin
• Role of women in Judaism
• Tzniut
• Education in Israel

• "Sarah Schenirer: The Mother of Generations", article in "Jewish Observer"
• The Contribution of German Chareidim to the New Yishuv Archived 26 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine article from Yated Ne'eman
• Remembering Soroh Schenirer — Her Seventieth Yahrtzeit Archived 4 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine article from Yated Ne'eman
• What Do We Know About The Establishment of Beit Ya’akov? by Dr. Yoel Finkelman
• Sarah Schenirer: Revolution in Women's Education, Video Lecture by Dr. Henry Abramson