Bais Yaakov - History

History

The Bais Yaakov movement was started by seamstress Sarah Schenirer in 1917 in Kraków, Poland. The first school building survives as apartments and is marked with a bronze plaque. While boys attended cheder and Talmud Torah schools (and in some cases yeshivas), at that time there was no formalized system of Jewish education for girls and young Jewish women. Schenirer saw the high rate of assimilation amongst these girls due to the secular influences of the non-Jewish schools that the girls were then attending. She concluded that only providing young Jewish women with a thorough, school-based Jewish education would effectively combat this phenomenon. She started a school of her own, trained other women to teach, and set up similar schools in other cities throughout Europe. She obtained the approval of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (the Chofetz Chaim), who issued a responsum holding that contemporary conditions required departing from traditional prohibitions on teaching women Torah and accepting the view that it was permitted. Following the Chofetz Chaim's approbation, the Bais Yaakov Movement in Poland was taken under the wing of Agudath Israel. The original Bais Yaakov was a seminary of sorts, intended to train girls to themselves become teachers and spread the Bais Yaakov movement.

After World War II, Jews who came to North America, Israel, and other places established girls' schools of the same name, although some claim that the educational philosophy differs slightly from that of the original Bais Yaakov schools.

Besides elementary and high schools, there are also post-secondary schools in the Bais Yaakov system, usually referred to as seminaries. The seminaries run various courses generally lasting between one to three years. There are also post-secondary schools that combine Torah education with practical workforce skills, such as computer programming, education, and graphic arts.