Frau Sarah Schenirer - כו אדר ראשון

Yahrtzeit Yomi #971!! כו אדר (ראשון) Frau Sarah Schenirer Mother Of Generations שרה בת ר׳ בצלאל שענירער אשת רב יצחק לאנדא (1883 - 1935) ------------------------------------------- She was a dedicated educational and social activist, an extraordinary teacher and an exceptional writer. Sarah Schenirer, zichronah l’vracha, was one of the most important figures in the history of Jewish education. Schenirer, a seamstress from Kraków, saw the urgent need for a system of formal Jewish education for girls, an innovation that was necessary to stem the tide of the Haskalah movement which lured many Jewish girls away from the ideals of the Torah. The youngest of nine children, Frau Schenirer founded Bais Yaakov in 1918, but not without first overcoming some considerably substantial societal and political obstacles. In his later years, a group of men came to the home of the Chofetz Chaim ZTL to inform him about a new breach in the ramparts of Torah tradition: the Bais Yaakov women’s seminary that had been established in Kraków. They argued that the Torah forbids all such innovations and cited the Gemara (Sotah 20a) as proof to their position. While they were trying to persuade the Chofetz Chaim to condemn the seminary, a second group arrived to ask for his blessing for the same institution. The first group was confident that they had proven conclusively that the existence of such a seminary was strictly forbidden, and they were confident that the elderly sage would denounce the newcomers