AT ITS HEIGHT in the interwar period, Bais Yaakov generated an abundance of reports, periodicals, and other literature. But for a description of the earliest days of the movement, nearly all that exists comes from the writings of Sarah Schenirer. The stories she told were circulated, amplified, censored, and imbued with the character of legend or tale, becoming a myth of origins that emerged from these beginnings and that in turn kept these memories alive. The mythical character of the accounts of Bais Yaakov's origins has been often noted. Joanna Lisek remarks that she was already a legend in her own time, and compares the stories that circulated in eastern Europe about this ‘simple seamstress’ who achieved greatness with the legends told of early hasidic leaders. Even those who knew her well and worked with her personally could hardly refrain from speaking in such terms. In a 1953 essay, Judith Grunfeld-Rosenbaum introduces her account of the first years of Bais Yaakov by saying, ‘Now we have come to the part of the story that sounds rather like an old-fashioned fairy tale, when the dressmaker turns overnight into a teacher and the workshop into a schoolroom, and the customers, instead of sending in their orders, send their children to be pupils of this school.’ Miriam Dansky, in a biography of Grunfeld-Rosenbaum, is similarly self-conscious about retelling ‘the famous central story’ about Sarah Schenirer's efforts, describing it as ‘the equivalent of a secular “rags to riches” story—a spiritual success story. The early difficult beginnings, the struggles, and then at long last the universal recognition, the overflowing blessing of [Schenirer’s] labor.’ In a much earlier reflection on the mythical origins of Bais Yaakov, Elimelech Steyer suggests that the movement's success depended on the fairy-tale quality of its foundational myth, which was a prime source of the attraction of Bais Yaakov in a cultural arena comprising legends and dreams: