SCHENIRER, SARAH

SCHENIRER, SARAH (1883–1935), educational pioneer, founder of the beth jacob school network. In Orthodox writings, Schenirer's life and work are described in the mythic, legendary terms usually reserved for renowned male rabbinic figures. Born to a ḥasidic family in Cracow, Schenirer received a formal education in Polish public schools until the age of 14, when she took up work as a seamstress to help support her family. In a short autobiographical sketch, she notes that from childhood she was drawn to Jewish learning and was of a pious temperament. As a young woman, she grew alarmed by the situation of her female contemporaries, exposed to the attractions of secular culture and with little Jewish knowledge to help preserve their identity. In Austrian-ruled Galicia, where Jews enjoyed equal rights from the late 1860s and compulsory public education existed, many rabbis and communal leaders had discussed the need for Jewish education for girls, but in the end it was the dedicated amateur, Sarah Schenirer, who made this a reality. By her own account, the impetus for her initiative came during her family's stay as refugees in Vienna after the outbreak of World War I. The evening lectures of Rabbi Dr. Flesch, a disciple of the Neo-Orthodox approach of samson raphael hirsch , inspired her to return to Poland and translate her ideas about education for girls into practice. Her first school, opened in Cracow in the fall of 1917, gave supplementary religion lessons to young girls after their studies in public school (this would be the nature of most of the later schools as well). By the time of Schenirer's death in 1935, the Beth Jacob school network in Poland had grown to 227 schools with over 27,000 pupils. Schenirer's disciples also would found schools in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Lithuania, Palestine, and the United States. Schenirer played a major role in the expansion of the network, traveling to dozens of towns throughout Poland and addressing meetings of parents and young girls, convincing them to set up local Beth Jacob schools. Schenirer was aided in her quest by the endorsement of leading rabbinic figures and by the adoption of Beth Jacob by the Agudat Israel movement. Agudah provided Beth Jacob with financial assistance, logistical guidance, and a literary forum, the Yiddish-language Beys-Yankev Zhurnal. Schenirer's personal dedication and charisma were supplemented by the organizational professionalism of Dr. Leo Deutschlander and by young, educated women he recruited from Germany to help staff summer training courses and, later on, the central teachers' seminary in Cracow founded by Schenirer. Schenirer cooperated with Deutschlander in the seminary's administration, and was instrumental in the founding of the Benot Agudat Yisrael youth movement for students and graduates of Beth Jacob. She composed curricular materials and wrote plays and articles on the holidays and moralistic themes. Her collected Yiddish writings (Gezamelte Shriftn) appeared in 1933 and later in Hebrew translation (see bibliography). Little is known about her personal life. Schenirer was evidently married for a very short time and divorced in her late twenties. Late in her short life she married Rabbi Yitzhak Landau, grandson of the Rebbe of Radomsk. She had no children of her own, but devoted her life to the hundreds of young women she taught and for whom she served as a model of feminine personal piety and learning. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Atkin, "The Beth Jacob Movement in Poland (1917–1939)" (diss., Yeshiva University, 1959); P. Benisch, Carry Me In Your Heart: The Life and Legacy of Sarah Schenirer, Founder and Visionary of the Bais Yaakov Movement (2003); R. Manekin, "Mashehu Ḥadash Legamrei: Hitpatteḥuto shel Ra'ayon ha-Ḥinukh   ha-Dati le-Banot ba-Et ha-Ḥadashah," in: Masekhet, 2 (2004), 63–85; Z. Scharfstein, Gedolei Ḥinukh be-Ameinu (1964), 226–43; S. Schenirer, Em be-Yisrael: Kitvei Sarah Schenirer, 3 vols. (1955); D. Weissman, "Bais Yaakov – A Women's Educational Movement in the Polish Jewish Community: A Case Study in Tradition and Modernity" (M.A. thesis, New York University, 1977); S. Pantel Zolty, "And All Your Children Shall Be Learned": Women and the Study of Torah in Jewish Law and History (1993). (Gershon Bacon (2nd ed.)