Reading the Archives

The apocryphal Holocaust story of the 93 Bais Yaakov girls who committed suicide rather than be taken as prostitutes by German soldiers is well known in Orthodox circles, and has been the subject of poetry,

With the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, formal operations abruptly ceased in the Bais Yaakov school network in Poland. The schools, still closed for the summer holiday, did not reopen for

The section “Bnos Pages” (Bnos-bleter) was launched in issue 105 of the Bais Yaakov Journal, published in May-June 1933. The first essay, which introduced the new section to the readership of the journal and explained

Among the goals of the Bais Yaakov Project was the digital upload and analysis of the official publication of the Bais Yaakov movement in Poland, the Bais Yaakov Journal. The journal, edited by Eliezer Gershon

There is a beautiful old map of Bais Yaakov schools, done in 1931. I misdated it in my book on Bais Yaakov, and someone named Robbert Baruch wrote to tell me that. It turned out

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

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

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

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

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

A few days ago I visited my mother for the first time since the pandemic began. On previous visits, we’d pull out the Scrabble board and play a game or three. But since I began

Among the new offerings in the relaunched Bais Yaakov Project website is a section devoted to Polish press coverage of Bais Yaakov in the interwar period. But what can we discover about the movement from

האם מייסדת תנועה לחינוך חרדי של בנות היא האחראית לתחייתו של חג האהבה העתיק ביערות פולין

The story of the 93 Bais Yaakov girls from the Krakow Teachers’ Seminary, who killed themselves rather than be taken as prostitutes, appeared in the New York Times on January 8, 1943, about six months