A Polish-Jewish schoolteacher born on July 15, 1883, Sara Schenirer became a pioneer of Jewish education for girls. Highly intelligent, with a strong desire to study, as a young girl, she was envious of her brothers’ opportunity to learn and interpret the Torah and wished she had similar opportunities. Recognizing her interest in education, her father provided her with a steady stream of religious texts translated into Yiddish.
Her situation was not unique as opportunities for women’s education in those years were sparse. The assimilation of her girlfriends troubled her and in response to her efforts to stem the tide of assimilation, they began to call her “the little pious one.”
Self-taught but keenly aware of the glorious role women had played in Jewish history, Sara decided to initiate some type of educational activity for the women of her community. When a lecture series which she organized for adult women failed to improve the situation, Schenirer began to dream of establishing a school for young girls.
By 1939, there were more than 250 schools with an enrollment of more than 40,000 students in Bais Yaakov schools. Although she never had any children of her own, her students considered her their mother and greatly revered her. Tragically, most of her students lost their lives in the Holocaust, but a few surviving students transplanted her mission and ideals in their new homes in the US and Eretz Yisroel. Her vision inspired not only her generation but each successive generation since and more than one million students have benefited from Sara’s belief in the Jewish woman.
