At the Centre of Two Revolutions: Beit Ya’akov in Poland between Neo-Orthodoxy and Ultra-Orthodoxy

Every haredi child knows about Beit Ya’akov (Bais Yaakov), the extensive network of haredi educational institutions for girls, ranging from kindergartens to vocational teacher-training seminaries. Equally well known in the haredi community is the story of how Beit Ya’akov began. Its founder, Sarah Schenirer (1883–1935), is often labelled the ‘mother’ of all haredi women¹ and has become an iconic figure—the only woman in haredi society to have inspired a foundation myth. However, recent investigations into the history of Beit Ya’akov reveal a much more complex picture than the standard haredi narrative would allow. In contrast to the myth, which celebrates Schenirer as sole founder and director of Beit Ya’akov from its inception until her death, we know that others made signifi-cant contributions to the success of the institution. First among them were Dr Leo (Samuel) Deutschländer (1879–1935), who set the organization on a sound financial and pedagogical basis and thus spearheaded its rapid expansion, and Dr Judith Rosenbaum (later Grunfeld; 1902–98),² one of his collaborators.

The early history of Beit Ya’akov can be divided into three periods. In the first, 1918 to 1923, the school was founded and managed exclusively by Sarah Schenirer. During the second period, 1923 to 1935, Beit Ya’akov was absorbed by Agudat Yisrael and put under the professional direction of Leo Deutschländer. Under his leadership the organization gathered tremendous momentum. It grew from eight schools with an enrolment of 1,130 students in 1923 to fifty-five schools with 7,340 students by 1926, and it was during this period that the whole organization adopted the educational philosophy of torah im derekh erets (Torah study together with secular knowledge). In the third period, 1935 to 1943, after the deaths of both Schenirer and Deutschländer, Rabbi Judah Leib Orlean (1900–43) was appointed director. As I have shown elsewhere, this period marked a conservative turn in the development of the institution.³

In the present chapter, I focus on the two earlier periods, from the foundation of Beit Ya’akov in 1918 to the appointment of Orlean in 1935. Within that framework, I identify the most influential factors and figures that shaped the development of the Beit Ya’akov network prior to the Holocaust, addressing the question of how and why the myth of Sarah Schenirer came to overshadow Deutschländer’s crucial contribution to its expansion, while also highlighting the revolutionary character of Beit Ya’akov’s educational system as it developed under his leadership.

The educational crisis leading to the founding of beit ya’akov

Before the establishment of Beit Ya’akov, Orthodox boys and girls throughout the Jewish communities of eastern Europe traditionally underwent a totally different educational experience. While most of the boys attended ḥeder and yeshiva, the majority of girls were sent to the public schools and gymnasia, where Russian or Polish language and culture dominated the curriculum.⁴ A small minority of girls joined the boys’ ḥeders, or went to special ḥeders for girls,⁵ or else they were sent to private schools with a maskilic or otherwise modernist curriculum.⁶ The Jewish education the girls received in these modern schools was rudimentary and in most cases inclined to an ideology that was at odds with their parents’ beliefs, while the Jewish education received by the girls who were sent to the public schools was informal and limited to basic religious instruction at home. Gutta Sternbuch, a native of Warsaw, describes in her memoirs the schools of her home town prior to the opening of the Warsaw Beit Ya’akov school in 1928. She notes that the Polish government had opened schools for Jews which, while being closed on the sabbath, were otherwise devoid of Jewish character. They provided no instruction in Jewish subjects, for which the responsibility was entirely left to the girls’ families.⁷ About her own Jewish education at home she writes:

My mother would occasionally read to me from the...