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Beth Jacob of Borough Park is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school for girls. A bais yaakov school, it includes an elementary school, a secondary school under the name Beth Jacob High School, and an undergraduate seminary called Beth Jacob Teachers Seminary.
Background[edit]
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, the Haskalah, a powerful movement in Eastern Europe that was tried to quell Jewish observance, attracted many Orthodox Jewish youth, including thousands of religious girls. While many observant boys studied in yeshivas which instilled in them Jewish values, the girls, who did not attend Jewish schools, had a higher chance of becoming influenced, and many went on to marry irreligious men.[1]
To counter the Haskalah's influence, Sara Schenirer opened a school called Beth Jacob (or Bais Yaakov in Hebrew) in Kraków, Poland, where Jewish valued were instilled in the students. While many rabbis opposed the new concept, the leader of Orthodox Jewry at that time, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, as well as the Gerrer Rebbes, supported it.[2] Founded in 1925 with twenty-five children, her students went on to set up more Beth Jacob schools, with 230 branches by the time of Schenirer's death in 1938, with 27,000 students.[3][1]
In the United States[edit]
There were many after-school programs, called Talmud Torahs , that Jewish children would attend after public school. There were several full-day programs, namely the Ramaz and Yeshiva Rabbis Moses Soloveitchik schools, that girls attended, but they were both coed. There was even the Shulamith School for Girls in Brooklyn which catered strictly to girls, but still was very different than the European Beth Jacob schools because of its Zionist leanings. The school most similar to Europe's bais yaakovs was the Beth Jacob Hebrew School for Girls, founded in 1925 by Rabbi Binyomin Wilhelm and modeled after Sara Schenirer's schools. However, it didn't offer a full day program; rather it was an after-school Talmud Torah which was especially attractive in that was the first all-girls Talmud Torah.
History[edit]
First years[edit]
Vichna Kaplan, formerly a Bais Yaakov teacher in Brisk, Poland, arrived in the United States in 1933.[1][4] She soon set out to establish a Beth Jacob school in America for high school and post-high school girls, and brought her case to Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz, one of the leaders of Orthodox Judaism in New York at that time. Rabbi Mendelowitz agreed to send his two daughters to Mrs. Kaplan's school, an addition to five other neighborhood girls, the first Bais Yaakov seminary in America was created.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).
The school grew quickly and another class was soon added. In addition the evening classes, an afternoon class was soon added as well for the high schools girls (the post-high school students had work during the day and only came in the evenings). At some point, the school grew to as many as fourty-sixty students with several classes. By 1942, there were students not only from from Williamsburg, but from Washington Heights, Brownsville, East New York, and the Bronx as well. Among the teachers was Basya Bender, a refugee from World War II.[4]
Mrs. Kaplan's focus was not to simply teach her students about Judaism; rather she aimed to teach them how to be teachers of the next generation. Aside from teaching basic Jewish subjects of Chumash, Nevi'im, Dikduk, Halakha, and Jewish history, there were lessons in teaching skills and psychology. One summer, Mrs. Kaplan ran a three week course for potential pre-school teachers.[4]
Beth Jacob High School[edit]
In 1944, Mrs. Kaplan and her husband, Rabbi Boruch Kaplan, established a formal high school in Williamsburg with thirteen girls, eight of them from the Bais Yaakov of Williamsburg elementary school, which had been established by Rabbi Avraham Newhouse in 1941. Rabbi Kaplan bought a building on South Eighth Street in Williamsburg to serve as the high school building. After World War II, many European Jews arrived in New York from Shanghai, China where they had escaped to during the war. Among them were Rabbi Uri Hellman, Rabbi Yehoshua Godlewsky, Rabbis Yosef Liss, Rabbi Leo Adler, and Rabbi Shlomo Rottenberg,[a] who were all given positions in the high school. The first graduating class was the class of 1947 with nineteen girls. By the 1950s, there were hundreds of girls enrolled in the school.[4]
Borough Park[edit]
In 1958, another branch was opened in Borough Park, Brooklyn on the corner of 15th Avenue and 45th Street. Rabbi Hellman soon left the Williamsburg branch to become the principal in Borough Park. Soon, two more branches was opened in Crown Heights and the Bronx. The Crown Heights and Bronx branches didn't last long and the original school in Williamsburg closed in 1978. However, the Borough Park branch grew exponentially and in 1980, there were six parallel classes in every grade.[4]
- ^ a b c Fendel, Rabbi Zechariah (2003). Charting the Mesorah: VOL. IV - The Era of the Later Acharonim. Hashkafah Publications. p. 41.
- ^ Ganz, Yaffa (December 1995). Sand and Stars: A Jewish Journey Through Time: From the 16th Century to the Present. Brooklyn, NY: Shaar Press. p. 225. ISBN 0899060374.
- ^ Zakon, Rabbi Nachman (June 2003). The Jewish Experience: 2,000 Years: A Collection of Significant Events (Second ed.). Shaar Press. pp. 182–183. ISBN 1-57819-496-2.
- ^ a b c d e Leibowitz, Rebbetzin Danielle S. (June 2016). Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan: The Founder of the Bais Yaakov Movement in America. Feldheim Publishers. ISBN 9781680252491.
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