PART I
Its beginning was sad but in the end, it is flourishing
— Beis Yaakov, whose beginnings were paved with the
efforts and struggles of the few against the many. Few in
number, few in resources but strong in belief and trust,
strong in swimming against the current. We hope that it will
continue to flourish and grow till all the daughters of
Israel will learn only at schools like Beis Yaakov and as
part of independent education.
This is the first of a series that recounts the birth pangs
of the first Beis Yaakov, founded in Jerusalem by Harav
Hillel Lieberman zt'l.
A fresh morning sun accompanied the schoolgirls, stroking
their cheeks with its warm rays. With hurried steps,
schoolbags on their shoulders, the stream of small figures
flowed right and left, each group to their own school.
In those years, before the establishment of the State, those
learning in Beis Yaakov knew how to make do with a little.
The girls knew this practically from their first day at
school. Those who went to other schools looked down on their
friends who made their way to the small Beis Yaakov School
located in the building that Rav Hillel Lieberman rented in
5694. They felt themselves important and scholarly, with a
curriculum including subjects such as nature and algebra,
geography and history, taught at a high level and requiring
great scholastic investment. They looked at Beis Yaakov with
compassionate dismissal. A small place in a modest building
on David Yellin Street where girls learn a bit of this and a
bit of that but didn't attain, in retrospect, any real
"level."
"Where do you study?" one of the neighbors asked little
Shulamit, who walked down the street happily, her schoolbag
on her back. "At Beis Yaakov," the little one answered with
no hesitation. "What! Your parents couldn't find you a school
on a higher level?" wondered the neighbor, wounding the
embarrassed girl in front of her. The neighbor's words aptly
reflected the atmosphere in the street that penetrated many
good homes and caused parents to opt for other places.
The girls in Beis Yaakov concentrated on something else. Most
of their energies were directed towards limudei
kodesh. The level of Judaic classes and dinim,
Chumash, hilchos tefilloh at Beis Yaakov were much more
elevated than those given at the Shpitzer School and the
like, and the girls who silently absorbed the humiliation and
continued to stride each morning to Beis Yaakov, knew deep in
their hearts that in their small school they invested their
efforts in learning what was really important!
Many parents who woke up from their educational illusion and
saw with pain how girls from good homes were straying, began
transferring their students to Beis Yaakov and thus, there
was a constant trickle of students who were accepted to the
higher classes. However, despite the knowledge and the
recognition of the educational quality of Beis Yaakov, there
where still gaps between the young students. These became
more pronounced when the young girls were sent to the nearby
Ruchama School to get eye drops.
There it stood, important in its glory, the school with the
wide classrooms and an ornate synagogue. "The health watch"
with proud students and a full-time nurse answered the call
of the Ministry of Health and dropped the antiseptic drops in
the teary eyes of the Beis Yaakov students who came there in
groups. They returned to their school on David Yellin Street
after seeing the splendor and confidence emanating from
"Ruchama." It seemed fuzzy but close to heart.
The barricades weren't complete, the limits — sometimes
not so defined in their minds, and the advantages of the
other school winked at them. Aliza was brought up in a
chareidi home and all her sisters were sent to learn
in Beis Yaakov but when the time came to register her for
first grade, her parents hesitated. Beis Yaakov fitted their
worldview but Aliza was so tiny, all skin and bones, and at
Ruchama — so they had heard — students got a
glass of hot cocoa every day, free!
"They also learn dinim and pray at Ruchama. We'll send
her there so that she gets strong and grows," they finally
decided. Apparently the glass of cocoa had added value in
those days. Aliza, in contrast to all her sisters, was
registered there. The years passed and at the end of eighth
grade, Aliza refused to attend the Beis Yaakov seminary. All
her friends continued in the "Mizrachi" seminar and she
wanted to be like them.
Fifty years later — Aliza's family is compromising, at
best, while her sisters are running chareidi homes.
All because of the coveted glass of cocoa that Beis Yaakov
couldn't provide for its students.
The Spitzer School was also an object of jealousy. The fancy
school prided itself on the study of science, a real
laboratory and annexes which one could not even dream of at
Beis Yaakov of those days. "The Health Guard" projected order
and organization and looked condescendingly upon the Beis
Yaakov students in whose school there were as yet no such
impressive societies. The huge yard of the school "named
after the nobleman of the house of Lemel" was eye-
catching.
"If only we had a schoolyard the quarter of this size," the
girls of Beis Yaakov sighed while passing the ornate building
on Yeshayahu Street (today a Talmud Torah). "We loved, loved
our Beis Yaakov school and we were jealous," the veteran
students recall the whirlpool of emotions.
The dressed-up girls walking toward the "Evelina de
Rothschild" School also attracted attention. They even had a
head covering for their impeccable uniform with one hat for
winter and another for summer. The British High Governor, who
spread his patronage over the school, gave the girls
permission to attend classes even during days of curfew when
no one was allowed outside. The girls, many of them from
religious homes, felt themselves like nobility, with British
citizenship, in contrast to their friends who remained at
home, watching them with envy. The morning assembly and the
special rules of the school were also something to wave in
front of their friends in whose school they weren't even able
to have a uniform in those days.
In truth, more than once, Rav Lieberman, who ran the school
and even taught there during that time, tried to enstate a
uniform that would unite all the school's students. But these
were futile attempts. The uniform, together with a beret with
the symbol of Beis Yaakov, was worn only for a short time. In
the days when, for the most part, girls wore second-hand
clothes, and the relatives from America sent what they could,
there was no way to order a blue skirt and blouse the color
of the sky. That's where the initiative ended (to be taken up
again after the Second World War).
Slowly but surely, despite the schools radiating around it,
Beis Yaakov grew, promising a true Jewish education, walking
in the light of gedolei hador without veering right or
left.
In the days of terror and shelling that preceded the war of
5708, and during the war itself, the street outside beckoned
to the Beis Yaakov girls to join it for its humanitarian
gestures and acts of chessed. The students, with
compassionate hearts and the enthusiasm of youth, felt the
pressure of general society, waiting expectantly to see if
they would lend their hand to help. And so, the girls turned
to the principal to ask for permission to be in the hospitals
to help and support the injured in those frenetic days. In
order to add weight to their request, they asked: "Can it be?
Is it permissible to stand by indifferently at such a
difficult time? It is compassion and pikuach neffesh!"
Among the girls were students who today are important
teachers and rebbetzins.
Rav Hillel Lieberman was aware of the atmosphere in the
street. He even descended into the depths of the whirlpool of
emotions that overwhelmed the girls, blurring the main
problem in a guise of public service and duty. But he was
definitely not confused. "All this is known to Maran the
Brisker Rov and our Torah leadership," Rav Lieberman
explained to them with determination, "and they decide the
matter. If they have told our girls not to volunteer in the
hospitals, you have no permission to go there, even if you
don't understand why. And about this it is said, 'You shall
not deviate from the word that they will tell you, right or
left.' (Devarim 17). Even if your leader tells you that right
is left and left is right."
Without any unnecessary explanations, discussion or
philosophical debate, he informed the girls of the guiding
principle of Beis Yaakov. Not everyone understood it in those
days and they again felt, perhaps even more so, that they
were a minority against a majority. However, certainly when
they grew up — they understood better.
*
Tu B'Shevat, the New Year for trees, was devoted at Beis
Yaakov to learning the laws of terumos umaasros
— a topic of which people from abroad weren't aware.
They tasted new fruits and practiced the laws of which
blessings take precedence. Not far away from the ornate
building of the Ruchama School blew other winds. They went
out to plant trees amid much ceremony and the eyes of the
girls wandered wonderingly, "Why them and not us?"
The "Tachkemoni" boys' school (today a traditional Talmud
Torah) was also a neighbor. There, in the spirit of Zionism
and pioneering, were held ceremonies and parties, which more
than once attracted the attention of the Beis Yaakov girls.
On the eve of Shavuos, the girls' eyes followed the colorful
parade that went out of the "Tachkemoni" school. The ceremony
of bringing "the first fruits" took place in honor of the
Keren Kayemet and the sheep at the front drew everyone's
stares like a magnet. He was decorated with flowers and
followed by children carrying decorated baskets of fruits and
vegetables.
The Ruchama School did not lag far behind. The same day, a
splendid parade carrying sweets left the school for the
offices of the Jewish Agency.
"Why don't we have that?" the girls' looks questioned again
and again. "What's wrong with a colorful parade and this kind
of celebration?" Without big words, without lengthy
explanations that little girls couldn't fathom, Rav Lieberman
said with characteristic serenity but with a decisive tone:
"They are going there, and we are going here."
"Things that were said in simple honesty, calmed us down,"
says Mrs. Dina, "even though we were little girls. And maybe
because of that, we well understood the solid
hashkofoh. The knowledge that your path is not our
path and we mustn't even approach it."
"The principal knew how to impress in us the feeling of pride
that this isn't our path," sums up the Rebbetzin Ezrachi (nee
Chadash), "and he places his heart in the path of Hashem."
During those days, when Beis Yaakov was in the minority and
without a budget, the principal of Ruchama, Professor Feivel
Meltzer (the son of Maran Hagaon Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer
zt'l) approached Rav Hillel Lieberman with what
sounded like a strange request: "Let's make an agreement,"
the principal asked, whose school had a much larger
enrollment than Beis Yaakov, "Let's not compete with each
another. You don't take my students, and I won't accept your
students."
Rav Lieberman smiled. He felt like the poor man dressed in a
fur coat, so to speak, and, amused by the idea, asked, "Which
of your students would come to my school?" Only a few years
later, the Ruchama school faded out until it closed
completely while Beis Yaakov is flourishing and growing.
*
The blessed increase wasn't foreseen even in the most
optimistic forecasts. In the days that preceded the opening
of Beis Yaakov, Rav Lieberman arrived at the apartment that
was rented at 26 David Yellin Street and asked himself: "What
will we do with such a large apartment?" The apartment had
two rooms and the foyer seemed big enough even
optimistically. In those days, when the Jews in the country
numbered all of 600,000, and only a small minority of them
were Torah- and mitzvah-observant in every sense of the word,
it seemed that the dream of 1,000 Beis Yaakov students seemed
much too optimistic.
[to be continued]
