Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement:A Revelation Eliyana R. Adler (bio) As Naomi Seidman states in her introduction, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition is not "an exhaustive or a comprehensive history of the establishment of the movement" (4). Nonetheless, the book raises a plethora of intriguing questions and insights. Many of them will alter the way that scholars look at the phenomenon and motivate further research and reflection. The discussion of early influences and models in the fifth chapter highlights Seidman's grounding in the historiography of the period as well as the deep and creative thinking that make the book such a pleasure to read. While others have noted that Bais Yaakov drew from both German Orthodoxy and Polish Hasidism, Seidman articulates how the seemingly incompatible strands came together to form a uniquely productive whole: "But Bais Yaakov did not merely seek to catch up with the most educated of central European women, but also to surpass them, by adding to Frankfurt Orthodoxy an element of its own: the Hasidic enthusiasm that characterized Polish Jews and which could make an educated Jewish girl also a passionate, strictly observant, and fervently devout one" (154). Further, she unpacks some of the elements of both Hasidism and the Yeshiva world that Schenirer appropriated and repurposed. Seidman writes with sensitivity about how a spiritually and intellectually astute woman turned exclusion into inspiration. Her exploration of Schenirer's role as the movement's "rebbe" is particularly interesting. Although acutely aware of the ways that Hasidism bifurcated the Jewish family, Seidman demonstrates how Schenirer's innovations replicated this process: "Bais Yaakov often claimed to be rebuilding the traditional family devastated by modernity, but its more immediate [End Page 268] effects in the high-status circles of the seminaries, working teachers, and Bnos leaders were to displace or replace the family, taking young women away from their home lives and into the 'total institution' of a seminary, summer camp, or youth group" (189). Remarkably, this was accompanied by an original justification and ongoing discourse built on the sanctity of the traditional Jewish family. To this already heady combination, Seidman adds in tantalizing details about Schenirer's own family and their brief public appearance at the end of her life. The woman who so many considered a matriarchal figure actually had a mother of her own, as well as a little-known second husband. It is a testament to Schenirer's vision, her singular status, and the movement's public relations that this has remained submerged for so long. In her discussion of secular influences on Bais Yaakov, Seidman correctly stresses the ideologically fluid milieu of interwar Poland. Families, as well as girls, could hold multiple allegiances consecutively—and even simultaneously. Moreover, as she proves by example, there is something to be gained by examining the sites of overlap: "The proximity of Bais Yaakov to certain modern ideologies which it also saw as rivals is not just of heuristic interest, a way of understanding its character as an 'old-new' social phenomenon. It has real sociological implications for the way its history played out in the larger landscape of interwar Polish Orthodoxy" (185). In this section, it is indeed the sociological questions that interest Seidman. She writes with attention to the subtle shifts in rhetoric and recruiting strategies that allowed Bais Yaakov to thrive in the chaotic and competitive environment of the Second Polish Republic. Somewhat surprisingly, there is far less focus on the educational give-and-take between the various institutions and movements. The success of the Zionists pushed Bais Yaakov to generate a stance on the Land of Israel, and the socialist movements' popularity influenced Bais Yaakov's outreach to workers. Yet we do not learn how the schools these other movements sponsored may have influenced the curricula or educational policies of Bais Yaakov. Elsewhere we are told that the educational environments in Palestine and the United States in the 1930s led to [End Page 269] the introduction of instruction in Hebrew and an English-language journal, respectively, but the reader is left to wonder how educational innovations in the Yavneh, Tarbut, TSYCHO, and...