Naomi Seidman

The Secular Jewish Press on Orthodox Women’s Conferences

The last few blog posts documented the founding conference of Neshei Agudath Israel, the women’s organizing of the Agudah. 1929 saw other women’s conferences, including the Lodz conference for the Bnos Agudath Israel, the youth movement for girls and young women, that was held in May. Bnos at that time had been in existence for three years, but already had a few hundred chapters throughout the country. The conference was hailed as a significant religious and political development in the Orthodox press, but others considered the phenomenon of a conference of religiously observant young women intrinsically ludicrous. A satirical column in Haynt, the Warsaw daily, focused on the issue of male speakers at this conference (which we know did include speeches by male Agudah leaders).

The explanatory brackets are my own. Special thanks to Chaim Sniczer for calling our attention to this column.

The Rascal, by the Happy Pessimist
May 24, 1929
The Conference of the Bnos Agudath Israel in Lodz

Cartoon accompanying the satirical article, referencing the Orthodox rule against men looking at women.

As we know, this week the Bnos Agudath Israel convened a national conference in Lodz. At this conference, a member of the Central Committee of the Agudah delivered greetings from the organization. Here is what he said:

“Honorable women!

I will not speak for long, since it says ‘Do not speak excessively with women’ [Pirkei Avot 1: 5].

A woman is a wondrous thing, not to be dismissed with a wave of the hand. The importance of women might be gleaned from the fact that the word “Mitzvah” is grammatically feminine and the word “Aveirah” [transgression] is also feminine and “Oylem hazeh” [this world] is masculine.

Those who say you are fanatical women are lying. At a time when modern women were still going around with their own hair, you were already fashionably dressing à la garcon [NS: lit. like a boy–with shorn hair?]

In the name of the Agudah, I greet you briefly with the brief wish that you might become my footstool [NS: according to Jewish folklore, women who support Torah scholars are privileged to serve as their footstools in the world to come].

We don’t bother with the Zionists, and their Hebrew. We believe in Yiddish. Let them pay respects to the “Lady,” we are going with the “Servant Girl.” [NS: Hebrew was sometimes referred to as the high-born “Lady,” as compared to the simple Yiddish “servant girl.”]

And I have good news for you: The Agudah has manufactured a very long dress, which begins in Lodz and ends in the Central Committee.

I’m done! I beg of you not to start singing, because “a woman’s voice.” [NS: “a women’s voice is nakedness,” i.e. forbidden for men to hear]

After the discussions, the following resolutions were taken up:

To convene a conference on the best chulent in Poland.
To work out a compromise with the Agudah wherein [male] Agudah members relinquish their right to vote in kehillah elections in exchange for the female members of the Agudah ceasing to recite the blessing “Who has not made me a woman.” [NS: the Agudah fought strenuously and successfully to keep women from being able to vote or be represented in elections of Jewish community councils. The blessing “who has not made me a woman” is part of the morning blessings recited by men; women ordinarily substitute “Who has made me according to his will”]
And that Meshulam Kaminer should launch a newspaper called “Di yidene” [NS: Meshulam Kaminer was an Agudah activist, journalist, and from 1925 to 1930 editor of the Orthodox newspaper Der Yid; the term “yidene” is an old-fashioned and often derogatory term for a Jewish woman. For more on Kaminer, see http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2019/02/meshulem-kaminer.html ]

Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow; her 2019 book, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition, explores the history of the movement in the interwar period. Naomi’s book was a finalist in the National Jewish Book Award’s Education and Jewish Identity category and a winner in the Women Studies category.

On the Occasion of our World-Congress [1929]

Over the past few weeks, we’ve blogged about the founding of the Neshei Agudath Israel. We’ve translated coverage of the event from the Bais Yaakov Journal and from Der Israelit. This week, we present Sarah Schenirer’s own words, taken from her Gezamelte Schriften [Collected Writings] (pages 38-43 in this edition) and translated here by Naomi Seidman.

The Eve of the Congress

. . . And so the Orthodox woman has awakened from her long, lethargic sleep and has begun to organize. From day to day her work for society intensifies, with pride she carries our Torah banner of old, around which all the women of Israel will congregate.

This month all the delegates chosen by religious Jewish women will gather in Vienna to create a world organization of Orthodox Jewish women. It has not been long since we first established the Bnos organization in Poland, and already from the dais of the World Congress the powerful voice of the religious Jewish woman rings out on the world stage. She is no longer isolated either in her thoughts or aspirations, the daughter of Israel who knows the Jewish sources. In every corner of the world she has close and intimate sisters in spirit.

I know full well that many of our pious Jews will look at us with scepticism. We hold sacred the ideal of women’s modesty. ‘She is in the tent’ [Gen. 18: 9] and ‘all the glory of a princess is within’ [Ps. 45: 14]! No doubt a portion of the community will regard our congress with suspicion and fear and see it as a deviation – God forbid – from Israel of old.

But these same pious Jews should know that this conference of Orthodox women is a necessary response to the dangers that prey on our sisters from various secularist directions. Et la’asot lahashem, ‘It is time to act for the Lord’ – from this perspective must our public efforts be understood.

We have recently been hearing about other women’s congresses, which present themselves as if they were the sole representatives of the masses of Jewish women and put forth various resolutions that stand in absolute contradiction to the ideals and aspirations of religious women. Even though no one has appointed them to do so, they take upon themselves the right to proclaim various slogans against the spirit of our Torah and launch false accusations against our Torah sages. Just recently we heard of a women’s congress where certain things were said and written about the agunah question and about women’s suffrage that we Orthodox women would never have dreamed of saying – although we know the meaning of ‘women’s rights’ perfectly well, and no one feels more deeply than we do the plight of the unfortunate agunah. But we also know that the Torah and Jewish law are supreme. And that is why we religious women, just like religious men, submit to the Torah and Jewish law, which always works for our benefit and happiness.

Our congress is necessary right now for just these reasons. From our speakers’ podium it must boldly be proclaimed that all those other women have no right to speak in the name of the religious Jewish woman. The aims, approaches, and ideals of the great masses of religious Jewish women must be made clear before the whole world. The Jewish world must know that thousands and tens of thousands of Jewish women all over the globe cling to the Jewish religion and wish to continue to spin the golden thread of Jewish tradition.

But that does not mean that we do not have many problems requiring internal resolution. Family purity, luxury and fashion, the education of our children, and so on. The weightiest issue we are facing now is how to combat the public school system, which increasingly threatens the Jewish family.

Our task must also be to find ways and means to fight for the protection of the Jewish daughter and her moral improvement.

It will be a great day when we come together to collectively consider how to improve Jewish family life and return the sanctity to Jacob’s tent.

It will also be a great sanctification of God’s name before the eyes of the world that our congress is taking place at the same time as the second World Congress of Agudath Israel. The honor and esteem of Orthodox Jews will be strengthened when, at the same moment as the sons of Israel declare in ringing tones their faithfulness to the God of Israel, the daughters of Israel proclaim to Orthodox Jewry: ‘We are with you!’

During the great days of the month of Elul this year, we will fulfil ‘We will go with our sons and our daughters, for we must observe the Lord’s festival’ [Exod. 10: 9], and this will be remembered for generations as the great holiday of the revival of the entire Jewish people!

After the Congress

We find ourselves in the splendid hall of the Bayerischer Hof, the same hall in which twenty-one years ago a conference in honour of the German writer Herder was held. Oh, how happy it made me in those days to take an interest in German literature! Many Jewish girls and women sat in this room then, gazing in rapture at the lecturers.

Who could have dreamt in those days that all these years later Jewish women from every corner of the globe would gather in this very room to spread the ideal of Torah?

From every corner of the world, from every country in which a Jewish heart beats we have gathered. The writing on the banners, ‘Not by might, nor by power’ [Zech. 4: 6] and ‘May all unite in a single fellowship (agudah ahat) bear witness to what is transpiring here. The aim of this gathering, ‘to organize the Jewish girls and women of the world under the banner of Agudath Israel’, fills every heart with passion and exaltation.

Mrs. Goldschmidt, the daughter of Dr Löwenstein from Zurich, calls on Jewish women to work together, to unite on behalf of the Torah and yiddishkeit. Her voice resounds powerfully, the voice of an authentically Jewish feminine heart, which penetrates deeply into the soul.

Soulful and moving are the words of the Gerer Rebbe’s wife. ‘All beginnings are difficult’, but as hard it is, a beginning must be made! The gathered women listen with bated breath to her emotional speech, which moves them to tears . . .

One after another the women ascend to the dais, delegates from the United States, England, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. Every speech is well considered, and each boils down to the same thing: let us unite, organize ourselves in order to help the suffering people of Israel! Let us devote our physical and spiritual energies to soothing and healing Jewish suffering! Let us help build the House of Israel!

We find ourselves in an intimate circle in Mrs Bondi’s home when suddenly the question of wigs comes up. One of the delegates, a very intelligent woman and a teacher in the Riga girls’ high school, found herself in an uncomfortable position when the resolution was put forward that all [married] women who wish to belong to the Women’s Union of Agudath Israel must wear wigs. She acknowledges and confesses that she doesn’t cover her hair because none of the young [married] women in her city wear a wig. She is surprised, however, when the delegates from Germany report that all the young religious women in Germany wear wigs, ‘even the most educated ones, with advanced degrees’. The delegate from Riga decides on the spot to start wearing a wig, and also to try to persuade all her female acquaintances to do likewise.

There is so, so much we got from the first international Women’s Congress. Unfortunately, many of our Bnos leaders in Poland were unable to participate in this extraordinarily interesting gathering. But have no doubt, dear spiritual sisters. You were fondly remembered and everyone there was very pleased to hear about your work! Let us devote ourselves to it with renewed energy and sacrifice, since we are now, praise God, already an international organization!

The dais at the Neshei Agudath Israel Women’s Conference at the 1929 World Congress of the Agudath Israel, held at the Bayerischer Hof [Bavarian Court] hotel in Vienna during the same week that the Agudah met at the Sofiansaal Concert Hall. From left to right: Mrs. Fanny Lunzer (London), Rebbetzin Leah Grodzinski (Vilna), Mrs. Henny Schreiber (Vienna), Mrs. Franziska Goldschmidt (Zurich), Mrs. Ernestine Bondi (Vienna), Rebbetzin Feyge Mintshe Alter (Gur), Mrs. Malka Meierovitsh (Riga), Miss Lotka Szczarańska (Sharansky, a teacher at the seminary in Kraków). The speakers included three wives of distinguished leaders and Bais Yaakov supporters from east Europe, Abraham Mordechai Alter (the Gerer Rebbe), Chaim Ozer Grodzinski (Chief Rabbi of Vilna), and Aharon Levin (the Raysher Rov], and two local women, Mrs Bondi and Mrs Schreiber, who served on the Bais Yaakov committee in Vienna and who had family connections to Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Hatam Sofer and Akiva Eiger, respectively. Mrs. Lunzer served on the Beis Yaakov committee in London. Mrs. Meierovitz, a teacher at the Torah V’Derekh Eretz girls’ school in Riga, reported on Bnos in Latvia, while Miss Szczarańska reported on Bnos in Poland. Mrs. Goldschmidt, who chaired the conference, was the daughter of the chief rabbi of Zurich, Tuvia Lewenstein, and headed the international committee that worked to link the women’s initiatives of the Agudah in the two years before the founding of the Neshei Agudath Israel. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum Vienna/Archive, number 003808_1. For more on Rabbi Aharon Levin, see http://aaronlevine.info/reisha/reisha-rav-harav-aharon-levine-hyd/

Der Israelit: From the Women’s Conference (Neshei Coverage Part 2)

Last week’s blog post translated Yiddish coverage of the founding of Neshei Agudath Israel in the Bais Yaakov Journal. This week, we present translation of German coverage from Der Israelit, a long-running newspaper founded by Rabbi Marcus Lehmann in the mid-nineteenth century. The article below appeared in the issue of September 26, 1929.

I’d like to credit Kalman Sporn for bringing this article to my attention, to Gershon Bacon, Michael Simonson for the preliminary translation, and the Leo Baeck Institute for the document.

Aus der Frauentagung
Vienna: September 25

The first meeting was enriched by a wide-ranging lecture by Dr. Judith Rosenbaum, the central theme of which will be discussed below.

After nightfall on the Shabbat, the second, well-attended gathering of Agudah women took place at the Bayerischer Hof [Hotel]. In her role as the chairwoman, Ms. [Franziska] Goldschmidt-Lewenstein from Zurich opened the evening with a report on the “International Working Committee of Agudah Girls’ Organizations,” which was established in 1927 Frankfurt am Main at the National Agudah Conference. This committee emerged out of the need for increased collaboration among girls’ organizations, to support activities within each of the countries and groups by exchanging reports, sharing practices, and convening conferences. At that point, only Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland were represented within the committee. The Central Office, based in Zurich, worked to accomplish its task by circulating reports and letters to this membership.

With the opportunity of the World Congress, the General Assembly of the Agudah declared its support for a gathering of women’s and girls’ groups; according to Mrs. Goldschmidt, the already existing international committee was now, at the Women’s Conference in Vienna, expanding to form a truly “International Association of Agudah Women.” The point of this expansion was to strengthen build on each other’s strengths. In particular, it was important to form women’s groups following the example of Hamburg, Breslau, Berlin, Poland and Latvia, which would strengthen women’s commitment to the Agudah and create opportunities for girls’ activities, even after they are married. The Central Office was committed to developing a working agenda, educational curriculum, and list of recommended reading in the next weeks and sending it out to all member groups.

The gathering was attended by unelected delegates of their respective countries (the Women’s Congress was organized at the last minute, for various reasons), but unanimously authorized by the General Assembly of the Agudath Israel, which officially recognized and enthusiastically greeted the “International Association of Agudah Women’s and Girls’ Organizations”.

Miss [Lotka] Szczarańska, a teacher at the Bais Yaakov Seminary in Kraków, spoke next, delivering an extensive report on the necessity, development and activities of the Bnos Agudath Israel in Poland, which works with exemplary discipline and passion. As of 1929 there are about a hundred Bnos groups with roughly 10,000 members, as well as some groups for Agudah women. The speaker described the achievements of the Bnos groups in the social sphere, including visits to the sick, volunteering for patients in non-Jewish hospitals, aid and support for new mothers, tutoring for children with learning difficulties, distributing food and clothing to impoverished Bais Yaakov pupils, and Tu Beshvat gifts of fruit to invalids, orphanages, and camps. They raise funds by strictly collecting small daily donations from each member, which works very well from a financial perspective. These small amounts are supplemented by periodic donations collected from families.

This past year, the first leadership program was held in the Carpathian Mountains. Young women from Bnos chapters all over Poland were instructed in leadership by teachers from both Eastern and Central Europe. The Bais Yaakov Journal helps spread the Bnos idea and enables intellectual exchange among participants. The report emphasized the need for further input from abroad, and in the name of the Bnos Organization of Poland, strongly supported the establishment of the international association.

The second report was delivered by Mrs. [Malka] Meierovitch, a teacher at the Torah and Derech Eretz School in Riga. There, too, founding Jewish schools for girls is very difficult, but the Bais Yaakov committees are doing their utmost to overcome all obstacles. Riga’s delegates are counting on help and material support from the International Association.

Mrs. Betti Wreschner from Breslau reported on the successful activities in the social realm of the women’s group in Breslau, and its intentions to expand its cultural activities this upcoming winter. Miss Halpern [possibly the ceramic artist Anna Halpern] and Miss Bisher from the Netherlands, and Mrs. Bella Schlesinger and Dr. Pollack from Vienna participated in the debate that followed.

In regards to the Land of Israel, Mrs. Miller reported on the conditions of the schools in Tiberias and called on the international association for assistance.

Dr. Rosenbaum from Frankfurt and Kraków again clearly highlighted the guidelines of the newly established International Association. Mrs. Bondi from Vienna brought the conference to a close with the invitation to all participants to work together to fulfill the aims of the Agudah’s women’s movement in each of their countries.

The Founding of the World Organization of Orthodox Women

At the Second World Congress of Agudath Israel in 1929, Bais Yaakov was represented by various activists, and the Neshei Agudath Israel, a women’s branch of the organization, was founded. The Bais Yaakov Journal covered the excitement leading up to the event as well as the speeches and moments of interest after the congress. Below is a translation of the coverage which appeared in Issue #47 of the Journal. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing translations of ther Journal pieces about the Congress, as well as some speeches as they appear in Sarah Schenirer’s Collected Writings, along with some analysis of the event.

The dais at the Neshei Agudath Israel Women’s Conference at the 1929 World Congress of the Agudath Israel, held at the Bayerischer Hof [Bavarian Court] hotel in Vienna during the same week that the Agudah met at the Sofiansaal Concert Hall.

From left to right: Mrs. Fanny Lunzer (London), Rebbetzin Leah Grodzinski (Vilna), Mrs. Henny Schreiber (Vienna), Mrs. Franziska Goldschmidt (Zurich), Mrs. Ernestine Bondi (Vienna), Rebbetzin Feyge Mintshe Alter (Gur), Mrs. Malka Meierovitsh (Riga), Miss Lotka Szczarańska (Sharansky, a teacher at the seminary in Kraków).

The speakers included three wives of distinguished leaders and Bais Yaakov supporters from east Europe, Abraham Mordechai Alter (the Gerer Rebbe), Chaim Ozer Grodzinski (Chief Rabbi of Vilna), and Aharon Levin (the Raysher Rov], and two local women, Mrs Bondi and Mrs Schreiber, who served on the Bais Yaakov committee in Vienna and who had family connections to Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Hatam Sofer and Akiva Eiger, respectively. Mrs. Lunzer served on the Beis Yaakov committee in London. Mrs. Meierovitz, a teacher at the Torah V’Derekh Eretz girls’ school in Riga, reported on Bnos in Latvia, while Miss Szczarańska reported on Bnos in Poland. Mrs. Goldschmidt, who chaired the conference, was the daughter of the chief rabbi of Zurich, Tuvia Lewenstein, and headed the international committee that worked to link the women’s initiatives of the Agudah in the two years before the founding of the Neshei Agudath Israel.

Courtesy of the Jewish Museum Vienna/Archive, number 003808_1. For more on Rabbi Aharon Levin, see http://aaronlevine.info/reisha/reisha-rav-harav-aharon-levine-hyd/

On Thursday, Elul 7 [September 12, 1929], the first World Congress of Orthodox women’s organization was launched in the hall of the “Bayerischer Hof” Hotel in Vienna. This Congress was initiated and organized by the International Agudath Israel Office in Vienna. Approximately a hundred delegates and another few hundred guests from throughout Europe, the Land of Israel, and the University States attended the Congress. Participants from Poland included: The Gerer Rebetzin, [Feyge Mintshe Alter], Rebbetzin [Dobe] Levin (Rzeszów, or Raysha), Rebbetzin Grodzensky and Mrs. Shaub (Vilna), Mrs. Schenirer and Miss [Lotka] Szczarańska as representatives of the Central Office of Bnos in Poland.

Mrs. [Franziska] Goldschmidt (Zurich) chaired the opening session, explaining, among other things, that the Congress had been convened by order of the International Executive Committee of the Agudath Israel. The present Congress emerged from the “International Committee of Agudah Women and Girls” that was founded two years ago, and which already encompassed many countries; the present Congress is a culmination of the work of this group, which would now be transformed into the “World Union of Orthodox Women’s Organizations.”

Mrs. [Ernestine] Bondi (Vienna) gave the keynote address, saying, among other things:

Before we move on to our own work, I want to recall with a heavy heart recent events in the Land of Israel. Since those sorrowful days when our brothers and sisters were murdered in the Holy Land, we have all been filled with sadness and grief. Our sacred land has again been drenched in the innocent blood of our sons and daughters. The last remnant of our ancient glory, the Western Wall, for which we have yearned since our childhood, has been stormed by our enemies. Our spiritual heroes, the yeshiva students of Hebron, heroically fell for the sanctification of God’s name and the entire Jewish people are united in the sorrow of “Rachel cries for her children” (the audience remained standing during this eulogy).

Dear participants! This is the first time—Mrs. Bondi continued—that Agudath Israel is convening Orthodox women and girls from the entire world, in order to work together under its banner. Let me greet you all with the warmest greetings. Let generations to come truly remember this hour as a momentous historical occasion. We are all united here in one intention: To resolve the questions of Jewish women’s lives in the spirit of our Torah and tradition. Our first task is dedicated to the education question. Our great leader, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, long ago warned us to take as great care for the education of girls as of boys. Our task is first of all to bring Jewish girls closer to the sources of Jewish knowledge. Our young women must acquire a religious consciousness that can protect them from the dangers of modern life. We must organize employment agencies that will allow women workers to avoid work where they will have to desecrate the Sabbath. And just as the World Congress is taking up these questions, so too must we work intensively along the same paths.

I do not have to remind you again—the speaker continued—that from this moment when we belong to Agudath Israel, our mission is to support all the Agudah’s activities both in the diaspora and the Land of Israel. We must pay special attention to supporting the Bais Yaakov schools. We must also work energetically in the fields of social work and care for orphans. The work of the Agudah, which is based on the principles of “Torah, avodah u’gemilut hasadim” (Torah, Temple worship [or prayer], and good deeds),” must find worthy in us, Orthodox women and girls. We must fulfill the principle of “His house is his wife”—the Jewish woman must embody in herself the construction and protection of the Jewish home, to maintain the pure and holy Jewish family life. That is how the entire Jewish people will be revived and renewed through Agudath Israel.

We have all come with truly good intentions—the speaker concluded—to get to work, and when our intentions are transformed into deeds, our newly formed international organization of Agudah women will be a blessing for all the Jewish people (applause).

Rebbetzin Alter (the Gerrer Rebbetzin): I wish you the best of success in your sacred work. “All beginnings are difficult,” but our sincere desire to work for the Agudah among Jewish women, and our unity, will certainly result in the realization of our holy endeavors. May God help us and grant that our next meeting will be held in in our Holy Land (sustained applause).

Mrs. Schenirer: I greet this World Congress in the name of the Bais Yaakov schools of Poland. I cannot describe my joy in prosaic words. We see here the awakening of the Jewish woman to her exalted mission. The holy sage said: “Any gathering that is for the sake of heaven will conclude on solid ground”, and we can certainly say that this is true of our present Congress. I hope that we will see bountiful fruits of this gathering, and that the Torah ideal will continue to inspire broader and broader circles of women (long applause).

Professor Maierovitsh (Riga, Latvia): I greet you in the name of the Bnos chapters in Latvia. This gathering today must give us strength and courage to face our opponents, and our unity will surely fortify our youth movement.

Rebbetzin Hirschler (Pressburg, Czechoslovakia) delivered extensive welcoming remarks, discussing the significance of the Agudah’s women’s movement for the revival of the Jewish people and Jewish family life.

The chairwoman concluded by reading aloud a long letter from the editorial board of the Bais Yaakov Journal.

A Letter from Bais Yaakov Teachers in Bergen Belsen

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the rare artifacts that survive from the post-war period in Europe. One of the artifacts that give us a glimpse into this extraordinary period is a letter written from the Displaced Persons camp in Bergen-Belsen. Below is a translation of that letter, as published in the August 9, 1945, issue of Shaarim.

A Call from Bais Yaakov Teachers in Bergen Belsen

The letter as it appeared in the August 9, 1945, issue of *Shaarim*.

The London-based Yiddish weekly of the Agudas Israel, “Yidishe Vokhntzayt (no. 53),” recently published a letter by Rivka Horowitz, a Bais Yaakov teacher, in the name of the Bais Yaakov teachers and Bnos members in the camp to Bais Yaakov and Bnos teachers abroad.

Dear friends, may you be well,

I am writing to you from a desolate town in Germany, where we all ended up, having wandered by various routes after our time in harsh labor camps. There is much that should be said about this experience but I will leave for another opportunity.

You do not know me, and I do not know you, but that does not prevent me from turning to you for help.

There is no time now for me to tell you everything we went through, and more particularly what a hell it was for an observant Jew. But I want to stress one fact: The truth of our faith stood out absolutely clearly, particularly in these experiences and tortures. Armed with faith, a faith inscribed in the heart, it is possible to walk the path of the most unbearable suffering, and remain pure. Rather than abandoning the ways of modesty, it was particularly there that religious Jews recognized the value and power of modesty. Rather than trampling on decency and love, there they understood how important these are in life, and what life is like—without them.

It was for that reason that religious Jews even in the camps based their lives on different principles—and left the camps with something different, something their own.

Most importantly, religious people did not lose their moral compass.

Tragically, only a few such people managed to survive. The greatest, and best, of these went the fiery way of the ovens. A few survivors were dispersed to various refugee camps. Among these survivors are to be found, in Bergen Belsen, a group of members of the Agudah, including some women. A few of the most serious of these women are Bais Yaakov teachers and Bnos members from Sandz, Krakow, Sanok and elsewhere.

When we were liberated from the camp and first tasted the taste of freedom, we began to search for the world which we had faith that we would find after everything that happened. We had not expected or believed that the war would end the way it did. Was it for this that the Jewish religiosity of Polish Jewry had been destroyed, its world drowned in an ocean of blood, for things to remain exactly the same as before? Were these not the footsteps of the Messiah?

It is difficult, after living the way we did, to face the ordinary world of before. It is at this threshold that we now stand.

Unfortunately, no one among the individuals assigned to our care can help this kind of survivor. We were assigned to the supervision of an English “Rabbi,” a secular Zionist. It was because of him that we were transferred to a different place, within a month. No one shared with us the purpose of this move, but its effect was to isolate us from the rest of our community. After the British occupiers arrived, we were put in the well-known death camp, Bergen Belsen, from which we were moved first to Bergen and then to Lingen.

The “Rabbi” wanted to turn our group into a secular-Zionist kibbutz. If we had realized this, we would not have left Bergen, but we were made aware of this only later. You can imagine how hard our lives were, there “in goles[1] among Jews”.[2]

You can imagine our joy when we received greetings from you and Orthodox Jewry from Dr. H[3] Klepfish, the military chaplain of the Polish army. These greetings lightened our loneliness and desolation. For surely among you must be organized groups of young religious Jews, in faithful observance of what we had sacrificed the marrow of our being for under such harsh conditions. This knowledge would give us support, and allow us to go on. So we decided to write you this letter. For certainly you will understand what we are feeling, and be moved by our double isolation, in our homelessness and in the lack of an appropriate atmosphere for us, an atmosphere of moral exaltation that seeks something more, “for man does not live by bread alone.”[4]

We need your help. First and foremost, send us newspapers and periodicals and news of our movement. We are living here as if on a desert island, in conditions that are not easy. We lack an environment, food, clothing.

There is not a single Jewish book here. Please send us a Bible with rabbinic commentaries and a Hebrew dictionary. Also Ethics of the Fathers with commentaries, ethical literature, Jewish history, etc.

We think that in the course of time there will be those who find some value in these sacred books, and so there is an urgent need for them. As of now, there are only a few young yeshiva students here who need them, and we ourselves will learn from them, and then go on to teach.

But as you know, we are helpless to do anything here, and we look to you for anything you can do for us. We do not participate in the life here, in our desire to carve out our own corner, more beautiful and substantial, and we long for the moment when we can begin our work anew. Do you know anything about our friends in other camps? And if you do, please send them our regards. That will give us great joy. We will not be left with a connection only to you—and with the longing and anticipation of a better and finer life.

We hope for your immediate assistance, in any form whatsoever, for everything has been withheld from us—we do not ask for your pity, but rather call for you to fulfill the debt of friendship.

Where are the religious survivors of German Jewry? Do you have R. Jacob Rosenheim’s address, and what are our chances of receiving certificates[5]? Do we have any reason to hope in this regard for the help of our activists and people?

With blessings,
Rivka Horowitz

[1] exile

[2] This is the title of Nathan Birnbaum’s 1919-20 critique of secular Judaism and call for the revival of Orthodoxy, an important and popular book among Bais Yaakov students.

[3] Dr. Heshel Klepfish

[4] [Deut. 8:3]

[5] likely certificates to Palestine

Bais Yaakov in the DP Camps

Bais Yaakov of Foehrenwald. Sara (Abraham) Seidman is in the third row, just to the right of the sign.

An Object:

Among the few items my parents brought with them from Europe when they emigrated to America is a Hebrew textbook my mother (Sara Seidman, née Abraham) wrote by hand, from memory, for the Bais Yaakov school she ran in the Föhrenwald Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. The textbook is written on the blank pages of a book of Gestapo order forms, for lack of other paper.

A Letter:

An August 1945 newspaper report in Sha’arim, in the form of a letter from Bergen Belsen signed by Rivka Horowitz, describes conditions in the camp after Liberation. A group of religious women, the most serious of whom were Bais Yaakov teachers and graduates of Bnos groups in Sandz, Kraków, Sanok and elsewhere, had come together to try to rebuild Jewish life.

Horowitz writes that she will not describe their ordeal of blood, except to say that they survived with their purity and beliefs intact. Rather, she begs her readers to supply her and her group with religious books, for the work they were undertaking.

“Despite the obstacles she faced, she managed to keep kosher and observe the Sabbath. Because of her dedication to her faith, Polish partisans later called her the Swieta Partizanka (saintly partisan) . . . They eventually made their way to Austria where they came to the Bad Gastein and Salzburg displaced persons’ camps. Itke worked there organizing religious schools for girls, Bnos.”

Girls from Bnos Agudath Israel and Beit Yaakov hold a celebration in the Bad Gastein Displaced Persons camp. Pictured are Esther Ass second from the right first row. Her sister Itka is pictured in the middle of the middle row in a light colored blouse.

A Photo

The Holocaust Museum photo archives contain a number of photos of two extraordinarily beautiful sisters, Itka and Esther Ass.

Itka, who had studied for a time at the Kraków Seminary, escaped from the Nowogrodek ghetto in 1943 and joining a number of Jewish and non-Jewish partisan bands, including the one led by the Bielski brothers. Itka, we are told, carried a weapon, as one of the few armed women in the Bielski group.

A photo of the two sisters, reproduced with the permission of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive on our website, shows them seated at a Sabbath table, set with candlesticks and wine, among a group of mostly young women—a child sits on a lap, and one woman appears to be middle-aged—under a sign that reads “Bais Yaakov l’khu venelkha.”

This object, photo, and letter are fragments of the least-known chapter of Bais Yaakov history: the re-emergence of Bais Yaakov among Jews fleeing from wartime threats and among the refugees and displaced persons of the immediate post-war period.

Interwar Bais Yaakov produced a host of documents, and Bais Yaakov in the two major centres—Israel and North America—of more recent history is visible enough as a contemporary phenomenon. But Bais Yaakov in the postwar context was different from either its predecessors or the movement that followed, and the intriguing traces of this culture are available only in fragmentary form.

What we do know is that the immediate aftermath of the war saw the rapid re-emergence of Bais Yaakov schools and Bnos groups, with schools and groups founded in the displaced persons camps of Bad Gastein, Eschwege, Feldafink, Föhrenwald, Frankfurt, Landsberg, and Zeilsheim. Bergen-Belsen had two Bais Yaakov schools and even a rudimentary teachers’ seminary.

By 1951, there were 150 Bais Yaakov schools and Ohel Sarah kibbutzim in Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, France, and (until Soviet regimes shut them down), Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland.

Students and teachers from the Shanghai Bais Yaakov, 1947.

A Bais Yaakov that had served the refugee community in Shanghai continued for a time after the war. A photo of that school shows that the British detention camp in Cyprus, which held Holocaust survivors attempting to immigrate illegally to Palestine, had both a Bais Yaakov school and a few Bnos chapters.

In some camps, Bais Yaakov girls banded together to look for hidden Jewish children, founding orphanages where these children could be brought back to religious observance.

As my mother’s textbooks attests, the cultural practices of Bais Yaakov in the DP camps were necessarily distinct from those founded in the interwar period, or in the post-Holocaust Israel and North America. Bais Yaakov schools and Bnos chapters served a refugee community struggling to rebuild itself with limited resources, with teachers and students who had been orphaned, traumatized, and imprisoned.

For many in the DP camps, it was not all clear where they should rebuild their lives, or how—with many survivors drifting away from religious observance and into other ideological camps. and positions. At least some modesty norms seem to have been loosened within Bais Yaakov, if the photo from Shanghai is evidence.

The re-emergence of Bais Yaakov was aided by the network of connections forged in the interwar movement, but these schools constituted new assemblages, without the old lines of authority or institutional frameworks, without a clear road to the future. In these conditions, improvisation and memory sometimes took the place of established norms, producing, among other artefacts, a handwritten Hebrew text in a repurposed Gestapo order form.

First meeting of Neshei after the war. Antwerp 1949. Naomi Seidman’s mother was the representative from France, seated second from the left.

What was Bais Yaakov at this extraordinary moment of displacement, trauma, and rebirth? What might a close reading of Rivka Horowitz’s letter, the Ass sisters’ photo, my mother’s Hebrew textbook, tell us about what Bais Yaakov was in those years, in those places?

In the coming weeks, we will publish a translation of Rivka Horowitz’s letter.