"I Will Suffocate in Such Narrowness!" An Orthodox Student's Reflections on the Kraków Bais Yaakov Seminary in Interwar Poland
"I Will Suffocate in Such Narrowness!" An Orthodox Student's Reflections on the Kraków Bais Yaakov Seminary in Interwar Poland
Academic scholarship on the Bais Yaakov Orthodox women’s educational movement in interwar Poland, and its flagship institution, the Kraków teacher’s seminary, is based almost entirely on official and semi-official literature and post-WWII memoirs. My talk will consider a critical perspective on the seminary’s ideology, educational level, and methods found in a hitherto unnoticed diary of an Orthodox Polish-Lithuanian student at the seminary. The diary provides much information about the daily life of the seminary students, inside and outside the institution, their diverse demographic backgrounds, and their feelings about their teachers, including the legendary Sarah Schenirer.
Professor Emerita Rachel Manekin, of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies will discuss her recent work on the lives of young Jewish women in Poland in the early 20th century. Did the famed Bais Yaakov schools for girls create meaningful opportunities for education? In what ways did they actually limit the educational horizons for the Jewish young women they sought to educate?
This event will be taking place in-person in Susquehanna Hall 4116, as well as via Zoom.