Part V
A Difficult Struggle
The neighborhood of Musrera, located east of Meah Shearim
— was an Arab neighborhood which was conquered in the
war and abandoned by its residents. As a frontier town on the
border with Jordan, it was then populated by new immigrants
of Sephardic origin. The Bais Yaakov school in the
neighborhood opened its gates to the children of the new
immigrants who wandered around aimlessly among the houses and
fields and their parents, coping with the difficulties of
absorption and a livelihood, found it difficult to keep an
eye on them.
It was a pioneering school that operated under sub minimal
conditions. The dark-afternoon hours were not illuminated
with an electric bulb, simply because the place had no
electricity. But very quickly, groups of children gathered
there, joking around among themselves, glancing at the
Israeli teachers who wanted to impart knowledge to them.
Registration for the school was taken care of by teachers and
even seminary students, who went from house to house at the
behest of Rav Lieberman to speak with the parents and explain
to them the importance of a school that provides a Torah
umitzvos education.
"In the Talpiot neighborhood, as well, there was a large
transit camp of immigrants," says a veteran student. "A group
of us went on rounds among the houses in order to convince
the girls to come and learn at Bais Yaakov. The list grew and
soon a Bais Yaakov school was opened there. We did the same
thing in the neighborhoods that were built near Katamon for
the immigrants, in the German neighborhood and in Bakka where
immigrants settled en masse.
"We would go into the homes," says another registrar, "and
ask the parents: 'Do you have school-aged children? Do you
want them to learn about kashrus? About Shabbos? About
the holidays?' The parents, most of whom were traditional,
answered: 'Of course, of course,' and we would continue:
'There's a Bais Yaakov school that teaches children to
respect their parents, to listen to them, to keep
mitzvos.' The faces of the parents would light up and
they wasted no time in adding the name of their daughter to
the list in our hands.
"The next stage was to teach those parents (who often didn't
know how to read or write) the name of our school: 'Bais
Yaakov — Agudas Yisroel'. After we practiced with them
this important code, we would continue on to the next
house."
Some of the veteran immigrants had already heard about Bais
Yaakov. One of the fears that sometimes came up, words that
others had put in their mouths, was that the school wasn't up
to par (the claim was ridiculous, considering the fact that
many of the girls hadn't learned at all before or were at a
lower level than any school). The devoted registrars were
quick to declare that all subjects taught in the general
schools were also taught at Bais Yaakov and in fact the
school was certified by the Ministry of Education for
adhering to its standards! "The school is at a high level and
the main thing is that the children there receive a good
education!" they concluded, knowing this was especially
important to the parents.
When they were dealing with immigrants who had just arrived
and there were problems communicating, the registrars took
with them someone who knew the language spoken in the transit
camp and thereby added one name to another, one student after
another to Bais Yaakov.
The technical description that appears here looks slight
compared to the difficulties in the field. The members of the
general education and the state religious education fought
bitterly against Bais Yaakov and spread nasty rumors to make
it difficult for the students and their parents. Not only the
"level" came into play. There was also the poor structures of
the Chinuch Atzmai schools in contrast with the luxurious
buildings of the general education and everything around it:
laboratories and gyms, rich libraries, assembly halls . . .
in general. In fact, almost never did Bais Yaakov manage to
cope with the state riches that influenced "their" education.
The successes that Bais Yaakov chalked up were mainly due to
the devoted teachers and principals, the likes of which were
hard to find in both branches of the state education.
And of course, not everything was so rosy. Take Ein Karem, an
Arab village to the southwest of Jerusalem, with sleepy stone
houses that flowed down the mountain to the flourishing green
valley where a life-giving spring originated. Vineyards and
olive orchards surrounded the isolated and charmingly
peaceful settlement. The Arabs who had been living there had
abandoned it during the war and their houses were situated
beside the new immigrants who had nothing, but continued to
adhere to the tradition of their forefathers which they had
kept in their countries of origin. "Here, too, we can open a
Bais Yaakov!" the public activists knew, and within a short
time the diligent registrars were sent there and began their
work going from house to house.
"We got a week off school for the important task," says S,
who was one of those active in it. "Every day for a week, we
would go out to Ein Karem for our strenuous work which went
till two in the afternoon, and in our mind's eye we could
already see the wonderful school about to be built there. The
immigrants received us with undisguised joy. In the course of
their short stay in the country, they had already discovered
that many of their brothers were not Torah observant and that
the education provided in the general school system was not
to their liking.
"In order to obtain permission to open a school in the area,
we had to present a list of twenty-four registered students,
which would make up a standard class. In that week of
registration, we gathered many more than that and with a
flourish of victory we presented the appointees at the
Ministry of Education the list of names and beside it the
signatures of the parents, which was then given to the
Ministry of Education. We thought that the school would be
started in a matter of days."
"But there were those who took care to torpedo the whole
thing. A `devoted' social worker who worked with the
immigrants received the list from concerned persons in the
Ministry of Education. She wandered among the immigrants,
warning them with a threatening countenance that whoever
sends their daughter to Bais Yaakov will immediately lose
their job. The immigrants who only a week earlier had happily
registered their daughters to the chareidi school were quick
to reverse their decisions. The fear for their livelihood won
out.
"At the Bais Yaakov Center, they didn't give up. Before long,
the registrars were armed with an official letter stating
that if someone sent his daughter to Bais Yaakov, he would
not lose his job. However, the threats had already done their
job. The frightened immigrants were afraid to risk their
meager bread and again Bais Yaakov didn't open in Ein
Karem."
