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Bais Yaakov, Orthodoxy, and Punk Rock

During the March 20-21, 2023, [or 27-28, Adar 5783] conference “Bais Yaakov in Historical and Transnational Perspective,” I was suddenly immersed in the world of Bais Yaakov scholarship. Submerged in the intricate semiotics of this subsection of a subsection of frumkeit, I gained an awareness of how large Bais Yaakov looms in Orthodoxy history. What distinguished this group of scholars, anthropologists, historians, and literary critics, some OTD, others very much on the path, and others male, was that their focus on Orthodox Jews was squarely on what might seem a marginal group within it–Orthodox girls. The conference reminded me of the battle cry “Girls to the Front!” of The Punk Singer herself, Kathleen Hanna, in her Bikini Kill days. So if you are with me, I am going to take you through the Bais Yaakov Conference through the lens of the riot grrrl manifesto to draw out and elaborate on what I witnessed, a display of feminist and punk scholarship. The title of the riot grrrl manifesto, HISTORY IS A WEAPON, was appropriate for a conference so immersed, after all, in history. But so is the rest of the manifesto, as far as it may seem from the academic and heymish world of the conference. The manifesto is a series of lines, each beginning with the word BECAUSE:

BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how what we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.

Naomi Seidman’s book, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition (2019), evoked this riot grrrl punk spirit by unapologetically centering women and, more precisely, girls. The Bais Yaakov movement originated in Poland and spread across the European continent and the globe, transforming and reshaping itself to its new contexts, swimming with or against the currents of Orthodoxy and in the process shaping generations of girls across the globe. Entangled with her work on the Bais Yaakov Project, the conference embodied the momentum of Seidman’s more-recent efforts to document and collaboratively explore this history.

From the beginning of this two-day conference, it was evident that the gathering was not just another intellectual forum, along with others regularly convening under the roof of the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Rather, it was a tribute and celebration of Sore Schenirer, founder of the school system. The conference, falling on the heels of Schenirer’s Yahrzeit, was in some sense a spiritual continuation of Schenirer’s legacy, as Seidman remarked in her opening comments.

This earnest connection to Schenirer evokes a relationship beyond the present generation. Throughout the conference, the presenters, both scholars and community members, spoke of the vast reach of Bais Yaakov. It would take the use of new methodologies to map, new theories of social network analysis, to see and conceptualize these global connections, and to help others see them on the website.

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other’s work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

Matching the global reach of Bais Yaakov, the conference was supported through multi-institutional partnerships between co-sponsors at the University of Toronto, York University, Fairfield University, and the University of Wroclaw. Seidman did not shy away from pointing out that all of the representatives of these institutions were “dudes.” Unlike the former Bais Yaakov girls around the table, these men came to study Bais Yaakov as outsiders to the highest degree, in a field in which both the objects of study and the scholars have fallen into patterns of sexual segregation. The invitation to “outsiders” was deliberate, encouraging scholars of Hasidism and Yiddishism and Orthodoxy to allow girls’ and women’s voices to come to the forefront and to rethink their scholarly research agendas along the way. It is a radical and necessary reconfiguration of Jewish Studies to hold an academic conference where men are the minority (and not a particularly vocal minority, either).

BECAUSE we don’t wanna assimilate to someone else’s (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.

Even under this utopian Amazonian vision, the first session, “Bais Yaakov Contexts,” featured talks by Glenn Dynner (Fairfield University) and Wojciech Tworek (Wroclaw), and accordingly, both papers looked at Bais Yaakov through a male Orthodox gaze–a stumbling start in an otherwise female-dominated discourse. Dynner’s paper approached the normalization of girls’ Torah study in schools in the context of Orthodox opposition to secular Yiddish and Hebrew education or assimilationist Polish. Tworek’s paper sought to find evidence of Bais Yaakov’s unofficial relationship with Chabad in Interwar Poland. These papers evoke a previous gap in the study of global Orthodoxy and provide context for the inhospitable environments in which Bais Yaakov emerged.

BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives.

Session two included a pre-recorded lecture from Joanna Degler (Wroclaw) on Sore Schenirer’s Polish diary. Degler’s findings show the influence of Polish feminist public lectures on Schenirer in the years before she founded Bais Yaakov, which stood in some tension with the speakers in the first session, emphasizing how Bais Yaakov saved girls from secular Polish influence. In 1994 Irena Klepfisz penned an essay on Yiddish women writers titled “Queens of Contradiction”—yet the case of Bais Yaakov may usurp, or at the very least, rival that title. Following Degler was a paper expressing one such contradiction. Kalman Weiser (York University) spoke of Solomon Birnbaum’s Yiddish spelling system, which reflected Orthodox ways of speech and pushed against secular Yiddishist YIVO standardization; this system garnered approval from Sore Schenirer herself. Schenirer thus was influenced by Polish and secularizing forces while maintaining the distinctiveness and richness of Orthodoxy in developing her schools. Dainy Bernstein (University of Pittsburgh) and Nechama Juni (Carleton College) embraced the legacy of these early choices that presently queer the experience of the Orthodox girls while maintaining the strength and ardency of Orthodoxy, whether intentionally or inadvertently.

In yet another strategy to push forward Bais Yaakov research and align this research with cutting-edge digital humanities, Dikla Yogev (University of Toronto) and Marcin Wodziński (Wroclaw) co-presented on digital humanities methodologies for approaching the immense datasets from the archives. Through machine learning and social network analysis, Wodziński and Yogev argued that we should rethink our assumptions about centrality and power in both Hasidic dynasties and in Religious-Haredi networks. Thus, key players reveal themselves where once research may have ignored them or did not notice their existence. Recognizing a wider set of players in creating Orthodox culture than the better-known leaders shifts and broadens our way of understanding on community structure, social control, and leadership.

BECAUSE we are interested in creating non-hierarchical ways of being AND making music, friends, and scenes based on communication + understanding, instead of competition + good/bad categorizations.

The atmosphere of the conference even pushed for a rethinking of the term “Bais Yaakov Girls” at least in OTD, or mixed OTD and still on the derekh company. The singer M Miller suggested that “Bais Yaakov students” was a more apt term to describe the certainly self-selecting group who joined the conference either as participants or as performers. As became evident in my immersion in the world of Bais Yaakov, performance is more than welcomed and is, in fact, quintessential to the lived experience of being a Bais Yaakov student.

Performance is essential also in that there is a Bais Yaakov accent unique to those who grow up in the system; their Hebrew (and once Yiddish) are inflected uniquely and signal their educational background. Performance through dress is part of an Orthodox girlhood of long skirts. Performance was the central topic in session four. Leslie Ginsparg Klein (Women’s Institute of Torah Seminary and College) delivered a paper, “Snap! Clap! Snap! Clap!’ The Diversity and Uniformity of Bais Yaakov Education and Culture Across North America,” initiating performance from the Bais Yaakov alumni in the audience. Audience members from a wide age range erupted with “Jews from over the world” to Ginsparg Klein’s call “Snap! Clap! Snap! Clap!” The call and response dissolved the boundary between expert and audience, if only for a brief moment.

One could not remain a closeted Bais Yaakov alumni at this conference. While performance was not obligatory, it was almost second nature. The impulse towards performance may have been as a part of “production,” which Ginsparg Klein described as a hallmark of the Bais Yaakov experience, where girls come together in musical, theatrical, or dance revues; they are involved in every step of the process of orchestrating a professional quality performance. Seidman’s own paper, “Acting Like a Bais Yaakov Girl: Gender, Piety, Performance,” looked at the roles that the Bais Yaakov schools enable young girls to play, from male and female roles to Jewish variations of secular plays, with stage directions taken from both Hollywood and rabbinic authorities. Transgressive performances of Orthodoxy were staged in the Polish spa town of Rabka in the 1930s, as Ula Madej-Krupitski (McGill) explained: Rabka was a popular destination for many Jewish families and Bais Yaakov girls during the interwar period. In the countryside, the students would experience certain girlhood freedoms while playing the part of their fall-through-spring selves for visitors.

While the performance and empowerment of these girls may displace us from their context in Orthodox—now Ultra-Orthodox circles— due to their clearly radical flavor, these other modes of performance remind us that Bais Yaakov schools succeed not through the overthrow of norms but rather through normalizing local Orthodox mores, whatever those might be.

BECAUSE we see fostering and supporting girl scenes and girl artists of all kinds as integral to this process.

The first day culminated with an ensemble performance led by Basya Schechter, with M Miller and the Kol Isha choir. Kol Isha evokes the prohibition for men to hear women singing and simultaneously recalls the punk-infused recentering of women’s voices, this time in a literal sense. Kol Isha, comprising a number of former Bais Yaakov students from Toronto, backed up Basya with instruments in hand and ecstatic vocal harmonies. Together they brought to life some of the Bais Yaakov songbooks. Basya, recalling their Bais Yaakov education and with the choir nodding in agreement behind her, described how she had no formal musical training but rather learned “music from the soul.” Former Bais Yaakov schooling experiences layered themselves on the individuals standing before the audience, and it was clear that still, to this day, in every song they performed, there was improvisation, playing as a collective by channeling deep within the individual—the soul led, and the rest followed. The rising and swelling of the music exemplified the mystical energies of chasidus with the re-gendering of lyrics and the swapping of “acceptable” gender roles by the performers. Or, as Basya explained, this is the alt-nay–old/new.

BECAUSE we recognize fantasies of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things.

The second day of the conference included more Zoom papers than in-person speakers, mirroring the transnational reach of Bais Yaakov. In session five, “Bais Yaakov and the Agudah” Ilan Fuchs (American Public University) brought forward the forgotten history of Orthodox Socialism in the interwar period; Nathan Cohen (Bar Ilan) presented the literature that Bais Yaakov Press was publishing, as reading material for its students; and Iris Brown (Ono Academic College) explained how and why the Agudath Israel founded youth movements for girls as a second front (after the school system) against assimilation. In all three of the papers, Orthodox politics, education, and engagement with youth were explored as richer and more complicated than might seem.

BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.

In session six, “Bais Yaakov in Transnational Perspective,” Rachel Manekin (University of Maryland) complicated the enthusiastic portraits put out by the Bais Yaakov schools by presenting the diary of an unhappy, philosophically tormented, and exploited Bais Yaakov teacher; Michal Shaul (Herzog College), focusing on post-Holocaust Israel, spoke about the development of Holocaust education in ultra-Orthodox Israel contexts. Mari-Masha Yossiffon (University of Toronto) zoomed in from Buenos Aires, where she presented the findings from her fieldwork, where four different Bais Yaakov schools serve different parts of the community. The final session included a surprise from Nomi Levenkron (Kinneret College, Tel Aviv University, and Hebrew University), who shared her research on Miriam Brunner, a Bais Yaakov teacher and terrorist (freedom fighter?) in an Israeli Ultra-Orthodox underground. Tzippora Weinberg (NYU) presented her case for the distinctiveness of Bais Yaakov in Lithuania, where Bais Yaakov was not a school system but rather a network of women’s Torah study on the highest level; Weinberg argued that, in Lithuania, this was Torah “for its own sake,” rather than–as in Poland–to serve other purposes. Yogev concluded the day by demonstrating how social network analysis could illuminate the symbolic or real power of women in the network, focusing on both Sore Schenirer and some of the most famous among her students, the legendary 10 women who survived Auschwitz together.

BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own meanings.

The conference proper ended with a concluding conversation. Along with showcasing the Bais Yaakov Project website, the conference participants were also invited to reflect: Where do we go now? Who wasn’t a part of this conversation that should have been? Finally, what does it mean to have an academic discourse centered on girls and women in which very few male scholars have devoted their energies? Perhaps this conference might signal a new era in which the feminist scholars and former Bais Yaakov students who paved the way for this field will be joined by others with different scholarly agendas and social locations.

But the conference wasn’t yet over: For those not rushing off the airport, there was a trip to the Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto to view Bais Yaakov resources from the Nathan and Solomon Birnbaum Family Archive and Seidman’s personal Bais Yaakov archive. Among the photographs and Bais Yaakov journals, an apron lay screen-printed with the paragon of Jewish womanly virtue, a true balebusta, lighting candles, hands waving before her, with her son looking on. Her natural hair was possibly covered twice over, signifying deferential piety along with her long sleeves. There she lay, screen-printed on a kitschy apron, framed by the words “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” and “BETH JACOB SCHOOL,” the English spelling sign of a temporary more-Americanizing moment of Bais Yaakov history—another Queen of Contradictions.

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.

Remembering Sarah Schenirer in the Gazeta Żydowska

The brief article in the Gazeta Żydowska marking the seventh anniversary of Sarah Schenirer’s death, on Adar 14 (which fell on March 3 that year) is not unusual in itself. The writer, Chaim Storch, praised Sarah Schenirer’s remarkable accomplishments, her travels and speeches throughout Jewish Poland, the impression she made on parents mourning the increasing distance of their daughters from the spirit of Torah, the maternal warmth with which she embraced these girls and young women. All of the points he made are familiar enough from the encomiums by which Sarah Schenirer was remembered in interwar Poland and in the various Orthodox publications that arose after the war. What distinguishes this ode to the founder of Bais Yaakov is the context of its publication in March of 1942, deep into the Holocaust. What do we make of the appearance of such an article, familiar in what it says, shocking in what it doesn’t say, under the catastrophic conditions of that place and time?

To understand this article requires recognizing that Gazeta Żydowska was a Jewish propaganda magazine that appeared two or three times a week from July 1940 to August 1942, under the aegis of the Jewish Councils (Judenräte) of the ghettos of Krakow and Warsaw, under Nazi supervision. But while it published deceptive articles about, for instance, “the sanitary care of the Jews of Krakow” during the very periods of mass deportation, the magazine was also permitted a relatively free hand in publishing literature and articles on social and cultural matters, as long as these kept up a façade of compliance and normalcy. Along with this article about Sarah Schenirer, Storch also published literary pieces in the journal. In this case, too, he seemed to be walking within the line drawn by the censors: Storch spoke about Sarah Schenirer’s accomplishments without mentioning that her schools had been shut down in many locations but also occasionally managed to operate underground; that her successor at the helm of the movement, Yehuda Leib Orlean, had been severely beaten in Krakow and fled to Warsaw, where he was tended by Bais Yaakov teachers; that Sarah Schenirer’s slogan—quoted in the article—“Worship God with joy”—was undergoing existential challenges that she could hardly have imagined.

Was he nevertheless suggesting that some of the love of Torah that Sarah Schenirer had inspired in her students was also manifesting itself in spiritual if not physical resistance? Michal Shaul argues that the fascination with Sarah Schenirer was a feature of post-Holocaust life, when she functioned as a bridge between an irretrievable past and a broken future, for an orphaned generation. But this article is evidence that she was present, on the pages of a Jewish magazine, in the ghettoes, as well. What did she really mean to Storch and his readers, at that moment? The pages of the magazine, produced under the censorship of that period, cannot tell that tale. And Chaim Storch cannot tell us: The database of Holocaust Victims at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum lists his place and year of death only as 1942, Lwów, seven years after the woman he extolled, and perhaps a month or two after he extolled her.

Gazeta Żydowska 1942 – full translation

Gazeta Żydowska, no. 34, 1942, page 3

Author: Ch. (Chaim) Storch

The Exemplary Jewish Woman

(on the anniversary of Sarah Schenirer’s death)

The 14^th of Adar was the anniversary of the death of a monumental Jewish woman – Sarah Schenirer.

Many of us will probably not recognize this name, many of us may not know that such a woman existed. She did exist, though, and she touched the hearts of Orthodox Jews, the hearts of thousands of Jewish girls. The figure of Sarah Schenirer is a symbol of eternal holiness.

Who was she and what did she achieve? How did she earn her place in our memory? For she did indeed earn her holy place!

In small, provincial towns, in bigger Jewish settlements, among the broader Orthodox community, she continuously lived and worked, visiting innumerable places, where she gave her speeches and sermons, gathering young Jewish girls around her and creating for them the Jewish school system, Bais Yaakov.

At a time when assimilation, which was rampant in that period, was tearing away the Jewish youth, when older parents watched as their children slowly distanced themselves from Judaism, a solitary Jewish woman appeared on the scene—small, alone, and humble, yet she voiced a call to action. With simple yet passionate words, she addressed these parents. These words were filled with heart and fire. And when she spoke, tears rolled down parents’ faces. What she said moved them – because she ceaselessly laid out the path of how to raise their daughters in the Jewish spirit.

She showed them the way and kept guard.

She taught many Jewish girls, stoking the spark of the Jewish spirit in their souls. And in educating them, she enveloped them in a maternal love, as though they were her own daughters.

Thousands of children – Jewish girls – raise their hands to the heavens with the name of their mentor on their lips : Sarah Schenirer. She left us, but her work remains. In the hearts of thousands of children the fire of learning and faith brightly burns.

Today, when we try to keep alive the spirit of Jewish youth, we repeat her favourite words: “Serve God with joy!”

Seven years ago, one of many thousands of Jewish women departed from us, but her example will be in the hearts of Jewish mothers and of the whole community.

Heroines of the Bais Yaakov Journal

The story of the 93 Bais Yaakov girls from the Krakow Teachers’ Seminary who committed suicide rather than be taken as prostitutes by German soldiers is well known in Orthodox circles. But before it was created, perpetuated, and commemorated in various ways, there were other stories of virtuous women that taught young Orthodox girls how to become good Jewish women, wives, and mothers. Reading the Bais Yaakov Journal, I was often struck by the extravagant if not impossible ideal that was presented to young women: these were stories that recommended that they not only live a Jewish life, but also be prepared to die a holy Jewish death.

The story of Odl in issue 58 (1930) of
Bais Yaakov Journal

One of these stories about a “holy martyr” who died “a terrible death” in order to “sanctify God’s name” is the tale of Odl, published in prose in Issue 58 (1930), and as a ballad in Issue 110-111 (1933). It is the story of a woman from Lemberik (known as Lemberg, and today as Lviv), which took place in 1718. Odl was a bright girl with the best of qualities, from a good wealthy family. She was married off by her father to a promising young scholar, whom she financially supported so that he could devote his time to learning Torah. But the Christians envied her business successes, and they crafted a plan incriminating her in a blood libel: on the eve of Passover, they bribed her Christian maid who helped them enter the home, where they planted the body of a dead Christian child, and claimed that Odl had killed the boy. She was sentenced to be dragged around the city by horses until she was dead. Her final request was just for a few pins: Odl’s act of devotion to God was to pin her dress to her legs, so that even while being dragged through the streets her dress will continue to cover her legs, thus keeping her dignity and modesty intact.

This same story, it should be mentioned, appears in a slightly different form in I.L. Peretz’s story, “The Three Gifts”, where the secular writer ironizes this tale of ultimate sacrifice by having the angels who collect the pins after the girl’s death pronounce them as “useless” but beautiful.

But there was nothing ironic about how the story was retold in Bais Yaakov, not only in the interwar period but afterward, as well. The grotesque and pious story may have left an impression, as well, on the unfortunate young woman who (it seems) threw herself out of a high window in the Krakow Seminary in the autumn of 1934. One piece of evidence reported by the Polish Jewish press suggesting that she had committed suicide rather than had a terrible accident is that the body was found with a dress wrapped around the legs, as if, even in the extremity of her emotional situation, the young woman still upheld the archetypal Bais Yaakov value of modesty. Read our blog post about this incident »

The Jewish holidays were also an opportunity for the Bais Yaakov Journal’s writers to tell tales of virtuous women, some of whom were also martyrs. In issue 49 (1929-1930) Hanukkah becomes a time to commemorate the story of Hannah, who sacrificed her seven sons “al kiddush hashem”. Hannah encouraged them not to give up their Jewish faith, even at the cost of their lives, and she watched them being murdered in front of her eyes. Hannah claims (as she does in rabbinic literature) to be more righteous than Abraham: while he sacrificed one son to God, she sacrificed seven.

It is maybe worth mentioning that these tales were written by men (by Y. B. Mandelbaum, Israel Emiat, and Moshe Tzinowitz accordingly) and addressed young girls, teaching them the values they should aspire to. These stories saddened me, suggesting that the male writers of the Bais Yaakov Journal saw women only through the lens of their bodies, praising them only for their sexual modesty, or valuing them only for these extreme acts rather than their everyday virtues. But then I read the story of “Dina the Great”. This piece, published in issue 60 (1930) written by Benjamin Zisman, tells the story of the “Rebbetzin of Brisk”. Dina was born to a wealthy orthodox family and was recognized as a bright child from an early age. Her father encouraged her to learn, and she was determined to prove that she was as smart as the boys, composing a beautiful sermon (drasha) for her twelve birthday. As an older woman, she was appreciated for her good heart and charitable ways. She was a good wife, but her husband died young, and she became a young widow. Dina took her fate into her own hands and decided she should become Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel’s second wife. She wrote him a letter in Hebrew, impressing him deeply. Although he had vowed not to remarry, when he met this remarkable woman, who cited rabbinic passages on why they should be wed, he changed his mind. Thus she secured herself the mate she desired by her intelligence and knowledge.

The story of Odl in issue 58 (1930)
of Bais Yaakov Journal

The story of Dina, unlike the first two, offers young girls and women a different role model. Women, too, might be judged for their intelligence, along with their devotion to God and good deeds. More strikingly, a woman can decide whom she would like to marry and propose to a man. And she can do all that without paying a terrible price for such forthrightness. The Bais Yaakov Journal, that is to say, did not speak in only a single voice on what it meant to be an admirable Jewish woman.

Ka-Tsetnik as a Yeshiva Boy: Yechiel Feiner’s early writing in the Bais Yaakov Journal

Among the many writers of the Bais Yaakov Journal, one name caught my eye – Yechiel Feiner. Feiner was famous—even infamous—as a writer, but under another name at a different time. But that was only after the Holocaust, when he settled in Israel. As a refugee immediately after the war ended he used the name Karl Zetinski, and later in Israel he officially changed his name to Yechiel Di-Nur, but published his works under the pen name Ka-Tsetnik 135633 (KZ is Yiddish for Prisoner of a Concentration Camp, and 135633 was his prisoner number at Auschwitz). These books are controversial: criticized by some as “pornographic Holocaust fiction” for their grotesque violence, lurid sexual scenes, and cannibalism, they are also defended by others as capturing something of the horrors of the Holocaust that no other writer had.

Feiner only published one book of poetry before the war, in 1931, when he was a twenty-two-year-old star student at the famous yeshiva in Lublin. When he found the volume in the National Library of Israel after the war, he borrowed it, tore it to pieces, and sent its remains back to the library with a hand-written letter; he confessed to burning his book, and sent cut-outs from it as the remains, asking the library manager to “Burn it. Like my world and everything dear to me, was burnt in the crematorium of Auschwitz”, and by that asking the manager to become an active participant in his act of destruction. But this book of poetry, it turns out, was not his entire prewar literary output. Among the other articles and short stories that fill the pages of the interwar Bais Yaakov Journal, as I discovered, are four short works of prose written by him. These short stories were written around the same time Feiner published his volume of poetry, appearing between 1930-1932. In them, one can gain a unique glimpse of a (then-Orthodox) writer in the making.

His first piece published in the journal in 1930 (issue 52) is titled “A Children’s Tale: Red Flowers,” and presents a disturbing story, made only more disturbing by the fact that he dedicates this bloody “children’s” tale to the Bais Yaakov school in Proshovitz (perhaps Przeworsk, which did have a Bais Yaakov in 1930).

Once, while strolling, the narrator arrived at a beautiful garden, with beautiful red flowers. The flowers had a powerful and marvelous scent, and he became drunk from breathing the air. Suddenly he realized that the flowers were nourished by the gardener’s blood, and not by water. Upon inquiry, the gardener explained he lives for the flowers, for their beautiful smell. The gardener, the creator of beauty, lived for his creation and paid for it with his own blood. The moral of the story is clear: Feiner, the poet, sees himself as that gardener, who pays with blood for his creation and lives for its beauty.

Feiner, with his tendency to Romanticism, continued to publish writings that are full of pathos. In issue 67-68, also published in 1931, Finer contributed an essay on “Art and Criticism”. In this piece, he discusses the creative process and reveals his reaction to the role of literary critics. Finer uses two metaphors to describe the heart of the poet: the heart is the Holy of Holies in the Temple, and the heart is a blue sea, whose turbulence is often hidden from others. The poet’s power of imagination, which creates worlds and burns brightly, is the most “powerful feeling of a creative period”. And then comes the critic, with his logic and lack of imagination, and he cannot understand the poet’s work, he cannot enter the Holy of Holies (kodesh-hakodashim) and behold “the olive oil that burns in the menorah in the poet’s soul”. It is possible that this piece was written after the publication of his first book of poetry, which did not achieve the critical acclaim he hoped for and believed he deserved.

What is so striking about these 1931 works by a young religious poet is not only the slightly overheated and romantic views on literature and poetry – the poet is close to God and pays for his art with his very blood. Even more so is that that Feiner took a sacred image, of the Holy Temple and its sacred inner precincts, and used it for a more secular set of ideas about art, imagination, and the misunderstood artist. Of course it is also remarkable that the Bais Yaakov Journal was happy to publish such work—evidence, perhaps, of its generally open attitude toward young Orthodox artists and writers, even ones as strange as Feiner. It also serves as evidence that Feiner’s lurid imagination, which he described as a product of his Holocaust experiences, may have already been operative in that period before the war, though in much less extreme form.

A video of Feiner at the Eichmann trial »

The Earliest Bais Yaakovs in North America

Among the strange aspects of researching Bais Yaakov is that it is much easier to understand its early history than figure out what it is today. Bais Yaakov lacks a central office or archive, and many of the schools have no online presence. While I was able to see lists of schools in archival material from the pre-Holocaust era, the researchers at the Bais Yaakov Project are using not only the usual methods of Google searches and digital archives but also—and ironically—more old-fashioned methods like word of mouth and interviews with people who have some knowledge of this more recent history.

Every once in a while we get lucky, finding a researcher who knows the terrain intimately and knows how to find what they don’t already know. Frieda Vizel, who leads a walking tour of Hasidic Williamsburg (which is how I met her), is one such person; see her website at https://friedavizel.com. She knows Williamsburg inside and out, and understands where to find the history that is no longer present on the streets. Bais Yaakov of Williamsburg has a special status in Bais Yaakov history, the only school on North American soil that was founded under the umbrella of the Krakow Central Office, with a director, Vichna Kaplan, who had been a prized student of Sarah Schenirer. Despite the difficulty of establishing the school, it got off the ground and spawned many other Bais Yaakovs. But while Bais Yaakov was once part of the Williamsburg Jewish landscape, it has barely left a trace, in a community that aligned itself increasingly with Hasidic groups who formed their own girls’ schools. But those traces of Bais Yaakov remain, for those who have eyes to see. Frieda put together this beautiful walking tour, more virtual than the one she usually leads. But in it, the past comes alive. We hope you enjoy it.

View the Tour »

Sara Imejnu, the Graphic Novel

Just in time for her eighty-seventh yahrzeit, Sarah Schenirer is recognized for what she was–a SUPERHERO!

Krakow now has its very own Jewish, female comic book hero. Though her superpowers differ from Superman’s or Wonder Woman’s, her feats are no less astonishing and remarkable. Her will was stronger than steel, her vision powerful enough to change the course of history, and her convictions defied all odds. The graphic novel, Sara Imejnu, brings to life the revolutionary story of Sara Schenirer and her founding of the Bais Yaakov school system.

Sara Imejnu is a collaborative effort between a trio of young educators: Olga Adamowska, Justyna Arabska, and Marcjanna Kubala. In their respective roles at the Jewish Community Centre Krakow, the MIFGASH Foundation, and Hillel Krakow, they share a common mission of educating Polish students and youth about the rich Jewish culture of Krakow and Poland more generally. In a recent Zoom conversation, Olga, who describes herself as a Jewish feminist, explained that one of the motivations behind creating the graphic novel was the need to portray the Jewish culture and history of Poland before the Holocaust, to show young Poles that the Jewish community was full of colour and life. While there is only one surviving photo of Sara Schenirer, the graphic novel’s detailed illustrations and dynamic backgrounds indeed animate a lesser known side of Sara Schenirer, showing readers how she, Bais Yaakov, and her Orthodox community were more than the black-and-white photos found in textbooks or museums. “You get to see Sara Schenirer at different ages,” says Olga. By sharing and illustrating the story of Sara Schenirer and Bais Yaakov, the graphic novel also shines the spotlight on women leaders in Jewish history and how their important contributions to the community ensured its growth and survival.

Working in Krakow, the writers were constantly aware of how much Sara Schenirer was and continues to be part of the city. “Sara Schenirer is very much connected to Krakow, which is our city” explains Marcjanna, “the first Bais Yaakov school was in our neighborhood, where we go to work every day. I pass by this building every day on my way to work, so that is very inspiring.” The first Bais Yaakov teachers seminary was established on Świętego Stanisława Street right by the Vistula River, less than a ten minute walk from JCC Krakow. In the graphic novel, the Krakow scenes show a familiarity with the city’s landscape and its community, firmly situating Sara Schenirer and her revolutionary movement within her hometown. While the origin story of Bais Yaakov and its matriarch is well-known among the Orthodox community, the broader Krakovian and Polish public is largely unaware of their Polish roots. In showing the intimate connection between Sara Schenirer and Krakow, as well as Bais Yaakov’s growth in Łódź and Warsaw, the writers want the graphic novel to show how this revolution in women’s education is as much a part of Jewish history as it is Polish history, and vice versa. Having written the graphic novel in Polish, the writers hope they can bring Sara Schenirer into focus for the broader Polish community.

Sara Imejnu’s illustrations bring historical settings, histories, and characters to life. During the composition of the graphic novel, the writers knew it was crucial to find the right art and design to capture the exact places, communities, and customs of the era. More importantly, they had to find an artist that would capture the essence of Sara Schenirer and her vision of Bais Yaakov. After some searching, they came across the illustrations of Julia Naurzalijeva. Upon seeing her sketches, they all agreed, “This is Sara.” The soft, neutral colour palette effectively foregrounds the interpersonal dynamics between characters, which Naurzalijeva realizes with her organic line work. Whether the bustling streets of Krakow or the meditative Tatra mountains, the backgrounds animate the characters’ movement and dialogue. What is perhaps most striking in Naurzalijeva’s illustrations is the subtle detail of characters’ emotions. The singular facial expressions capture a deep range of emotion, reminding us of the human depth and intensity of the historical narrative: the dismissive glances in Sara Schenirer’s failed educational group for women; the fulfilling satisfaction that fills her first classroom; or the spiritual wonder and awe experienced in the Tatra mountains during an intimate observation of Lag BaOmer. Naurzalijeva’s illustrations truly bring the reader closer to Sara Schenirer.

With the composition and publication of Sara Imejnu, Adomowska, Arabska, Kubala, and Naurzalijeva are beginning a new chapter of cultural awareness and education. Sara Schenirer’s mission of education is not only expressed through the pages of the graphic novel, the text and images continue her work by educating younger generations about their history, culture, and community. An English translation is slated to be published before the summer, which will undoubtedly herald the graphic novel’s spread throughout North America. When asked about other translations, the writers wishfully pondered the possibility of Yiddish and Hebrew editions in the future. Currently at the JCC Krakow, there is an exhibition featuring the graphic novel which runs until the end of April; its illustrations, along with a few other original pieces by Naurzalijeva, are framed and displayed with additional commentary. The release of Sara Imejnu is both a testament to the significance of Sara Schenirer’s herstory and a living expression of her vision’s continuing impact. On Sara Schenirer’s 87th yahrzeit, her memory continues grow and her story is reaching more and more people.

Benjamin Bandosz is a PhD candidate and 2017 Vanier Scholar at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature. He has published on literature, media, and political economy in Deleuze and Guattari Studies, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, and Journal of Canadian Studies. As a translator, Benjamin has worked with multimedia subtitling, academic articles, and archival documents. His critical translation work focuses on Polish-language news media’s translations in diasporic contexts, namely their expressions of nationalism and conservatism.