Prior to World War I, traditional Jewish parents in Eastern Europe provided their daughters with, at the very most, a few years of formal religious education. If girls received any schooling beyond that, it would be at a secular institution; it was common, in fact, even for prominent Orthodox rabbis to send their daughters to secular schools. This all changed thanks to a Galician Jew named Sarah Schenirer, who founded a network of girls’ schools—known as Bais Yaakov—that grew rapidly in the 1920 and 30s; today, most ḥaredi girls attend Bais Yaakov institutions. Schenirer has since become a hero in ultra-Orthodox circles. But the popular version of her story, writes Leslie Ginsparg Klein, muddles some key details:

[According to most accounts], Schenirer first secured the approval of the major rabbinic figures of her time—most notably Israel Meir Kagan, known as the Ḥafetz Ḥayyim, a sort of living symbol of non-ḥasidic piety—before launching her grassroots educational movement in 1917. Some argue that she secured this approbation even before she began laying the foundations for her project in 1915. . . . [They claim] she obtained the approval of not only the Ḥafetz Ḥayyim, but also the Gerer rebbe [then the leading rabbi of Poland], and Rabbi Ḥayyim Ozer Grodzinski [the equivalent figure in northern Russia, among others]. . . .

However, there is something problematic about this account. . . . [T]he Ḥafetz Ḥayyim’s letter in support for Bais Yaakov . . . was written sixteen years after Schenirer opened the first Bais Yaakov school in Krakow. In fact, the declarations of support from the Grrer rebbe and Grodzinski were likewise issued a number of years after she had established [her flagship school in her native city of] Krakow. The only exception was the Belzer rebbe, who gave Schenirer a verbal blessing for her future labors. . . .

Schenirer seems to have gone to the Belzer rebbe, Yissachar Dov Rokeach, because she came from a family of his followers; at the time Rokeach was among Galicia’s most prominent ḥasidic rabbis, and also among the most conservative. Yet his approval consisted only of the words “blessing and success,” conveyed via Schenirer’s brother. Klein explains, therefore, that it was not the sanction of rabbinic leaders that paved the way for Schenirer’s educational innovations, but rather her school’s success that won her their support.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.