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This lecture will trace the revolution in the name of tradition enacted by Sarah Schenirer, a divorced seamstress with an eighth-grade education, who created a girls’ school system, Bais Yaakov, that rescued Orthodox Jewish society at a moment of peril. Bais Yaakov continues to thrive in hundreds of locations today, and Bais Yaakov students consider themselves the spiritual daughters of Schenirer.
Naomi Seidman is a Fellow at the Frankel Institute for Judaic Studies during the 2020-21 year, and the Jackman Professor of the Arts at the University of Toronto. Her book on Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov movement won a National Jewish Book Award for Women’s Studies in 2019.