Powstanie i rozwój ruchu Bajs Jakow na przykładzie wybranych ośrodków w latach 1917-1939

For many centuries Jewish tradition did not allow women to study the words of Torah. While boys attended cheder or Talmud Torah and sometimes yeshivas, there was no formalized system of education for Jewesses. If a young Jewish girl wanted to study, she had to learn in a public school what led to quick assimilation because she spent much time in a non-Jewish, secular environment. Since the right of obligatory schooling was introduced, women’s education became a great problem. Sarah Schenirer, a seamstress from Cracow, originating from a religious, Hasidic family, saw this dangerous phenomenon and decided to establish supplementary afternoon courses for those girls who attend public schools during the day. These courses were called Bais Yaakov. During hour and a half every day she taught them Jewish studies. Her initiative was approved by the most important activists and religious authorities. After the idea got support from orthodox political party Agudath Israel, similar schools were organized in other Polish, European, American and Palestinian cities, towns and even villages. Some of them had the right of the public school and secular subjects were taught there. Besides elementary, there were also few secondary schools in Bais Yaakov system. In the first year of her work, Sarah Schenirer was teaching 25 girls. Twenty years later, 250 schools operated around the world and approximately 40 thousand Jewesses studied there. The rapidly expanding network of Bais Yaakov schools required many qualified teachers. For that reason in 1925 Schenirer and the activists of Agudath Israel set up a teachers' seminary in Kraków, intended to train girls to themselves become teachers and spread the Bais Yaakov movement. For girls graduated of Bais Yaakov schools who did not want to became a teacher or for young women there were organized special courses which combined education of Torah with practical skills such as: sewing or bookkeeping. The Bais Yaakov organization in Lodz was very important for the whole movement because a publishing house for textbooks and other Bais Yaakov materials was established there, also a monthly journals in Yiddish (“Bais Yaakov”, “Kindergorten”, “Wschód”) were edited in Łódź by Eliezer Gershon Friedenson.