SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT were the beginnings, sixteen years ago, after Sukkot 5699 [1938]. The conditions were difficult, our raw material—the students—were young and these ideas were foreign to them. Our chances of success were slim indeed. But fervour and idealism raised the flag of Bais Yaakov on American soil, leading to the full realization of a dream.

The seminary began quietly exactly as had happened in Kraków— without pomp, in a small private room at 156 South Ninth Street in Williamsburg. Just one evening class, with seven students.

But the words of instruction were like a revelation. With great thirst the innocent American girls swallowed the light of the Torah. And from these meagre beginnings the number of students grew, and a few months later it was already necessary to move the seminary to a larger location with two rooms, on 240 Keap Street, and within a short time we had a staff of three of the best graduates of the Kraków seminary.

And very quickly the seminary also outgrew Keap Street. The young institution was blossoming. The reverberations could hardly have been anticipated. Jewish New York was recognizing a new world, the new-old idea of giving their daughters a Jewish education. Girls found their way to the seminary from near and far. And again, our overcrowding had, by the end of 5701 [1941], led us to the old yeshiva building on 505 Bedford Avenue.

In 5704 [1943/4] the seminary took the enormous step of moving into the present large school building at 143 South Eighth Street. Into ‘a palace’, as people then said. A vessel that held within it great potential and true blessing. And it was there on South Eighth Street that the glorious pages of the history of the Bais Yaakov Teachers’ Seminary in America began to be written.

A Bais Yaakov high school was also established on South Eighth Street. It grew ceaselessly, both in numbers and in quality. Students streamed from the most distant cities in America. From Canada and Mexico. From Brazil, from Uruguay, from Argentina.