4 - ‘So Shall You Say to the House of Jacob’: Forging the Discourse of Bais Yaakov

Summary

Rabbi Yose the Galilean was once walking on a road when he met Beruriah, whom he asked, ‘Which road shall I take to go to the city of Lydda?’ She replied, ‘Foolish Galilean, did the Sages not say, “Do not talk overmuch with women” [Avot 1: 5]? You should have said “Which way Lydda?”’

(BT Eruv. 53)

CONFERENCE REPORTS are not usually counted among the great works of human drama, but Rabbi Menahem Mendel Hayim Landau's record of the 1903 Kraków rabbinical congress is an exception to the rule. He recalls the pain of the rabbi from Cairo who organized the international event with such high hopes, only to see his efforts dashed at every turn; the rage of the conference attendees at those who dared to bring up the problem of Orthodox women who had turned to prostitution; and the deep shame felt by Landau himself, and no doubt many others, at the impotence of the Orthodox rabbinate in the face of the challenges raised at the conference. A particularly poignant and illuminating moment came during a discussion of the causes of young women's defection from their Orthodox upbringing. Along with the absence of educational institutions that could cement their attachment to Torah, and of reliable teachers and tutors who could teach them without corrupting them in the process, one speaker raised a warning about the dangers posed by girls and women reading for pleasure. Their immersion in Polish novels, which were filled with immorality and love stories, rendered the Orthodox world unappealing to them: after encountering the heroes that populated these novels, they disdained the yeshiva boys chosen by their parents to be their husbands. Against this threat, Rabbi Pinhas Horowitz declared that ‘it was incumbent on the rabbis to compose or persuade others to compose, under rabbinical supervision, books in non-Jewish languages for Jewish women, which would include tales of Torah giants and the history of the Jewish people, and which could inspire their hearts to love Torah and Israel’.