Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T18:47:10.238Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

Introduction

Naomi Seidman
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

IT SEEMS IMPORTANT to acknowledge at the outset the unusual circumstances of my involvement with my subject-matter: I attended Bais Yaakov of Boro Park for elementary school; a Bais Yaakov high school in Brooklyn and then one in Queens; Michlalah Jerusalem College for Women (a slightly more ‘modern’ seminary or institute of higher learning for young women); and, finally, another Bais Yaakov seminary in Brooklyn. All these schools, arguably including Michlalah, are more or less direct descendants of the school system that Sarah Schenirer founded in interwar Poland. The one in Boro Park, along with its high school counterpart two blocks away, were actually among the first Bais Yaakov schools to be established in the United States. Nevertheless, this book is no natural outgrowth of my personal history: shortly after my last stint in the seminary in Brooklyn, I left the Orthodox world, and—at least in my academic research— have rarely looked back. Rather, it is the product of an unplanned encounter that took place, entirely appropriately, in Kraków, the city in which Sarah Schenirer resided nearly her entire life.

In the summer of 2010 I brought a group of students from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where I was teaching, on a study trip to Poland. We launched our trip with a week at the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków. As anyone who has attended the festival knows, it is among the most interesting and vibrant Jewish cultural phenomena in the world today, and there was more than enough going on to occupy my time and thoughts. But what stayed with me from that week was the memory of a group of four or five young women I ran into in the courtyard of the famous Remuh Synagogue in the Kazimierz quarter of Kraków. It was clear to me the instant I set eyes on them that they were Bais Yaakov girls: the cut of their long skirts, their hairstyles and blouses, their gait and posture, their voices, even their faces. In that same moment of recognition, it also occurred to me that they must have been travelling back to New York or another Orthodox centre in North America after having spent a post-high-school year at a seminary in Israel, in exactly the way I had travelled with two schoolmates after my year at Michlalah.

Type
Chapter
Information
Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement
A Revolution in the Name of Tradition
, pp. 1 - 14
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Naomi Seidman, University of Toronto
  • Book: Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement
  • Online publication: 10 July 2020
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Naomi Seidman, University of Toronto
  • Book: Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement
  • Online publication: 10 July 2020
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Naomi Seidman, University of Toronto
  • Book: Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement
  • Online publication: 10 July 2020
Available formats
×