Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The ultra-Orthodox seamstress who determined the fate of Jewish women

Haaretz   Schenirer wrote of the dissonance in the community, as "Carolin": 

“And as we pass through the days before the High Holy Days...fathers and sons travel, and thus they are drawn to Ger, to Belz, to Alexander, to Bobov, to all those places that had been made citadels of conceited religious life, dominated by the figure of the rebbe’s personality. 

“And we stay at home, the wives, daughters, and the little ones. We have an empty festival. It is bare of Jewish intellectual content. The women have never learned anything about the spiritual meaning that is concentrated within a Jewish festival. The mother goes to the synagogue, but the services echo faintly into the fenced and boarded-off women’s galleries. There is much crying by elderly women. The young girls look at them as though they belong to a different century. Youth and the desire to live a full life shoot up violently in the strong-willed young personalities. Outside the synagogues, the young girls stay chattering; they walk away from the synagogue where their mothers pour out their vague and heavy feelings. They leave behind them the wailing of the older generation and follow the urge for freedom and self-expression. Further and further from the synagogue they go, further away, to the dancing, tempting light of a fleeting joy.”[...]

Of course, a century later in Orthodox girls’ schools, no one taught us about Schenirer’s secular studies. Nor did anyone tell us about the testimonies that those who knew her have given since, stories which would fit all too awkwardly into a hagiography: that she had been married previously at an early age but soon afterwards got divorced (some say her husband was not religious enough for her, others claim it was childlessness which drove them apart), that she studied the Mishna in the original Hebrew without Yiddish translation, that her lectures were attended both by men and women. 

After Schenirer’s death, religious leaders went to great lengths to describe Schenirer as a "modest, pious woman." As Shoshanah Bechhofer writes in her 2005 dissertation on the subject, a “movement that represents change [in] a religious community that reveres tradition” must “celebrate its innovator without celebrating the idea of innovation”. And so, it was decided that, if ambition contradicts the traditional ideal of female piety, Sarah Schenirer’s memory would have to evolve first and foremost as a paragonof modesty, a modern-day redeemer of the daughters of Israel. And so, she has become today exactly what she once mourned in her diary: a woman wrapped in shawls rather than words, a perfectionist in “clothing the body” but not so much in clothing the seeds of the soul - or the mind, for that matter.[...]

14 comments :

  1. You know what would be interesting? A collection of all the statements by major rabboniim at the time opposing her Beis Yaakov initiative and detailing all the terrible things it would cause for Judaism.

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    1. Eilu V'Eilu. Some are for and some are against. Nothing unique or unusual at all. Some girls schools don't even teach Rashi today since that is Torah She'bal Peh, which is assur for girls.

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  2. that she had been married previously at an early age but soon afterwards got divorced
    ..
    according to Dr Anne Ruth Cohn whose mother was a colleague of Schenirer
    she wanted to break off the engagement, but there had been tenaim. and since there are sources that say better a divorce than broken tenaim. she arranged with a rav, to marry and divorce the next day. so according to this it is unlikely the divorce was because of childness

    http://hirhurim.blogspot.co.uk/2005/05/r-shlomo-wolbe-ztl.html

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    1. benny - --- your cite doesnt discuss sarah schnierer. plz repost.

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  3. This article is laced with complete untruths and a vivid imagination.

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    1. Your comment is filled with facts and information.

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    2. What is the article authors sources for all her claims about Sara Schneir?

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  4. I cannot comment on the truth of the article, but its contentions are silly.

    Sara Schreiner is supposed to have been a pious and modest woman. I don't see how any of the facts here contradict that. So she was divorced. Presumably for a good reason. So that makes her not pious or not modest?

    So she studied Mishna at one point. Again, so what? There have been many pious women who privately studied Mishna and even gemara. The real issue is did she make it part of her curriculum at her schools for girls. AFAIK, the answer to that is NO.

    Her lectures were attended by men and women. Where were these lectures held? Did they sit separately? What were the lectures about -- girl's education (which I suspect)? What men were there -- educators who wanted to learn something about education from her?

    Sara Schreiner was not a cartoon character. If that is a chiddush to anyone, then they are fools. That she was modest and pious is not contradicted by anything here.

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  5. Great commentary from the "oilam" so far.

    I was wondering if what she started was totally novel. Do we know if there were already classes going on, albeit not as formal? Could it be that there were teachers teaching without the proper training, and no uniform standard?

    With R Chaim Volozhin, that is certainly the case. I'm not diminishing the importance of his Yeshiva or the movement it created and shaped at all Chas veshalom. We all know however, that the father of the yeshivos was not the first to conceive. Is that the case for the mother of Bais Yaakov??

    The story he tells with a Belzer Rebbe, gives me reason to suspect that it wasn't that novel of an idea by then.

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  6. Sara Schreiner was not a cartoon character. If that is a chiddush to anyone, then they are fool
    ......

    tal
    I suspect that the establishment would cover up the fact that she learnt mishnayos or men attended her shiur. apart from that I agree with your comments.

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  7. The claim she studied Mishna and that she gave lectures to men is fanciful and without basis in reality. The rest of the article may have factual errors as well.

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    1. Rebitzen Kaplan would as a student of hers know about this if it were true ! So its totaly fabicated !
      and Reb Boruch Kaplan Of brookllyn NY teachers seminary her Husband
      Was atalmid of Brisker Rov in Poland

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  8. The education of women was backed by the Chofetz Chaim and Belzer Rebbe both known to have Ruach HaKodesh. That is why it was accepted,although it was an innovation at the time with plenty opposed. If she read this or that, I don't know, but I do know that Reb Elchonon Wasserman, the major student of the Chofetz Chaim, went to Telzeh Yeshiva where he insisted on reading in public a Russian newspaper every day, and took lessons in German with other students. He was later in life to write many articles that spoke to people in their secular language and were thus successful. HE trained for this from youth and surely with the bessings of his rebbes and Rosh Yeshivas.

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