"I feel so crazy, like flying the coop": The Lesser-Known Sarah Schenirer. Side Reflections on Naomi Seidman's Book

Abstract

"I feel so crazy, like flying the coop"1:The Lesser-Known Sarah Schenirer. Side Reflections on Naomi Seidman's Book Joanna Lisek (bio) Writing an academic monograph about a person who became a legend in her own lifetime is a difficult challenge involving two kinds of temptation. First, there is the urge to unmask or demythologize, which is certainly necessary when writing about venerated people but risks creating an antihero and downgrading the very real achievements upon which the subject's fame is founded. The second temptation is that of hagiography: we must be extremely cautious about accepting at face value the many sources on venerated individuals that reduce their flaws or ignore cracks in their coherent, fixed image. Certainly, these challenges present themselves when writing about the life and work of Sarah Schenirer, founder of Poland's first Orthodox school system for girls. Naomi Seidman successfully avoids those hazards in Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement, which describes the career of the famous leader of religious renewal among Jewish women and provides a background for the contexts and dynamics of the Bais Yaakov movement, a "revolution in the name of tradition" according to the book's subtitle. Seidman's seemingly oxymoronic formulation highlights the tensions between tradition and innovation and between continuity and change that shaped the very character of Bais Yaakov schools and the movement's social relations. An extremely valuable aspect of the book is its broad context, which allows the reader to see Schenirer's work against the background of the changes taking place at that time not only within Orthodox Judaism itself but also in the emergent feminist, socialist, Zionist, and Yiddishist movements. Seidman shows that Schenirer's work was not a single case, but part of a larger discussion initiated at the beginning of the twentieth [End Page 272] century about the system of religious education for Jewish girls; and that the pattern of femininity propagated by Bais Yaakov was an Eastern European version of the transformation of Western European Neo-Orthodoxy under the leadership of Moses David Flesh. The unquestionable asset of Seidman's argumentation is its analysis of the tension between marginalization, charisma, and institutionalization in the development of Schenirer's movement. Seidman argues that the marginalized position of women within the Jewish Orthodoxy served as a stimulus for the movement's radicalism and progressiveness, as well as its willingness to draw upon the experiences of secular movements. The feminine domain was less strictly controlled, since it was not a priority for Orthodox leaders—according to Seidman, this neglect contributed to the acceptance of Neo-Orthodoxy within the Bais Yaakov movement. Seidman considers Schenirer's gender a kind of alibi or "escape clause," since it allowed her to implement her ideas directly without getting embroiled in rabbinical discussions about the scope of women's Torah studies. That does not mean, however, that Schenirer was unfamiliar with male strategies of Halachic discourse; on the contrary, she readily applied them in texts directed toward her students. Simultaneously, as Seidman shows, Schenirer's role as a leader was marginalized as the movement became institutionalized and politically powerful. This suggests a common tendency in social movements, parties, and even literary or artistic groups: in the preliminary, formative period women play meaningful roles—they might even be the face of movement. But as a group or movement stabilizes and the internal hierarchy is fixed and becomes a source of prestige and power, women are often side-lined (Seidman demonstrates this through the celebratory opening of the new Teachers' Seminary building in Cracow, during which Schenirer did not even make a speech). Moreover, Seidman demonstrates that Schenirer herself expressed her concerns about the expansion of the movement at the expense of its female activists. Nevertheless, despite some attempts on the part of the Agudat Yisrael party leaders to diminish Schenirer's role, the movement's powerful sisterly relations seem to have prevented [End Page 273] this from happening. Also, Seidman very convincingly shows the discrepancy between the traditional pattern of femininity propagated in the discursive aspect of the movement and the profile of its female activists, who were often single, childless, and working as teachers away...