Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement

A Revolution in the Name of Tradition

Naomi Seidman (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

448 Seiten

2023
Liverpool University Press (Verlag)
978-1-83764-390-5 (ISBN)

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Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov movement she founded represent a revolution in the name of tradition in interwar Poland. The new type of Jewishly educated woman the movement created was a major innovation in a culture hostile to female initiative. A vivid portrait of Schenirer that dispels many myths.

National Jewish Book
Awards 2019 Winner of the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women’s Studies and Finalist for
Education and Jewish Identity.

Sarah Schenirer is one of the unsung heroes of twentieth-century Orthodox Judaism. The Bais Yaakov schools she founded in interwar Poland had an unparalleled impact on a traditional Jewish society threatened by assimilation and modernity, educating a generation of girls to take an active part in their community. The movement grew at an astonishing pace, expanding to include high schools, teacher seminaries, summer programmes, vocational schools, and youth movements, in Poland and beyond; it continues to flourish throughout the Jewish diaspora.

Naomi Seidman explores the movement through the tensions that characterized it, capturing its complexity as a revolution in the name of tradition. She presents the context which led to its founding, examining the impact of socialism, feminism, Zionism, and Polish electoral politics on the process, and recounts its history, from its foundation in interwar Kraków to its near-destruction in the Holocaust, and its role in the reconstruction of Orthodoxy in subsequent decades.

A vivid portrait of Schenirer shines through. The book includes selections from her writings published in English for the first time. Her pioneering, determined character remains the subject of debate in a culture that still regards innovation, female initiative, and women’s Torah study with suspicion.

Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor in the Arts at the University of Toronto. She was previously the Koret Professor of Jewish Culture at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016. Her previous books include Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation (2006) and The Marriage Plot; or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature (2016).

Introduction

PART ONE. Reading Bais
Yaakov
1. ‘In a
Place Where There Are No Men’: Before Bais Yaakov
2. ‘A New
Thing that Our Ancestors Never Imagined’: Beginnings (1917–1924)
3. ‘Building
Bais Yaakov’: Institution and Charisma
4. ‘So Shall
You Say to the House of Jacob’: Forging the Discourse of Bais Yaakov
5. ‘A New
Kind of Woman’: Bais Yaakov as Traditionalist Revolution
‘Bais
Yaakov, Let Us Walk in the Light of the Lord’: Destruction and Rebirth

PART TWO. Collected
Writings of Sarah Schenirer
I. Pages
from My Life
II. Bais
Yaakov and Bnos Agudath Israel
III. The
Jewish Year
IV. Jewish
Women’s Lives: The Sacred Obligations of the Jewish Woman
V. Ten
Letters to Jewish Children
VI. A
Letter from Mrs Schenirer, May Peace Be Upon Her
VII. With
Perseverance and Faith: From Kraków to New York

Appendices
A. Sarah Schenirer’s Diary
B. Sarah Schenirer’s Family Tree
C. Map of Sarah Schenirer’s Kraków
D. Maps of Bais Yaakov Schools, 1935
E. The Bnos Agudath Israel Anthem

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	03.10.2023
Reihe/Serie	The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
Zusatzinfo	3 Maps; 13 Illustrations; Family tree
Verlagsort	Liverpool
Sprache	englisch
Maße	170 x 242 mm
Gewicht	368 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
ISBN-10	1-83764-390-3 / 1837643903
ISBN-13	978-1-83764-390-5 / 9781837643905
Zustand	Neuware