Sarah Schenirer

Sarah Schenirer (; ; July 15, 1883 - March 1, 1935 (yartzeit 26 Adar I 5695) was a Polish-Jewish schoolteacher who became a pioneer of Jewish education for girls.

Schenirer is best known for beginning a change in the way women were perceived in Orthodox Judaism. In 1917, she founded an afternoon school in her apartment that was later used as a model by the Agudath Yisrael in its Bais Yaakov (lit., "House of Jacob") school network in Poland, with worldwide lasting effect.

Early life Sarah Schenirer was born to Bezalel Schenirer (of Tarnów) and Reizel in Kraków, Poland.

Her friends in her Polish school called her "the female Hasid".

Vienna During World War I, Schenirer and her family fled from Poland to Vienna. While there, she became influenced by Rabbi Moshe Flesch, His sermons had emphasized the role of women throughout Jewish history, which inspired Schenirer. Later on, Flesch accepted Schenirer's invitation to "please visit our school." However, he agreed to take her to see the Belzer Rebbe in Marienbad, who gave her his blessing in two words: "Mazel uBrocha." and he in fact refused to encourage the girls of his Hasidim to go to Bais Yaakov. According to the diary of a seminary student, Bracha Levin, Schenirer did tell the Belzer rebbe of her intentions of teaching young girls, to which he gave his approval, provided that she did not teach Hebrew. This was an assurance she could give, since she did not speak that language. And later on, she consulted with him on a halakhic matter concerning her school.

A review of Sara Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement states that Schenirer was "a prolific writer: her essays, plays, memoir and textbook on Judaism played a major role in establishing Bais Yaakov'''s culture at the outset."

Personal life Sarah Schenirer was raised in a Belzer Hasidic family. She married young, but was divorced from her first husband. 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. Schenirer died from cancer, at the age of fifty-one.

Legacy

By 1939, there were about 250 schools established, and over 40,000 students in Bais Yaakov schools. The admiration was mutual, and the girls within the movement called her "Sarah Imeinu", which translates to "Our Mother Sarah", an honorific evoking the Biblical matriarch Sarah. She had no children of her own; the girls of the movement filled that void for her.

The influential twentieth-century Hebrew-language educator and publisher Zevi Scharfstein profiled Schenirer in his 1964 work Great Hebrew Educators (גדולי חינון בעמנו, Rubin Mass Publishers, Jerusalem, 1964).

Literary references 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.

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

Excerpts from the diary of Bracha Levin, written when she was a student at the Krakow Bais Yaakov seminary, and which provide new details of Sarah Schenirer's interactions with students, have recently been published by Rachel Manekin.