The following subjects (which I doubt are part of any Bais Yaakov seminary curriculum today) were also taught:
Polish literature, history, and geography; German language (with the goal of providing teachers the ability to read by themselves the original writings of Rav Hirsch as well as selected classical works); gymnastics; and handicrafts.
From the above it is clear that seminary today is quite different from what it was in Krakow during the time of Sarah Schenirer.
Professor Yitzchok Levine
(Via E-Mail)
Editor’s Note: Dr. Levine writes the popular monthly feature Glimpses Into American Jewish History for The Jewish Press; this month’s installment can be found on page 38.
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The Reform Movement And Zionism
Thank you for Saul Singer’s interesting column “The Reform Movement’s Rejection of the Balfour Declaration” (Collecting Jewish History, Jan. 30).
I was, however, confused by Mr. Singer’s claim that “their Orthodox brethren […] base their Zionism on the very Torah rejected by Reform Jewish leadership.”
It makes it sound a little like you are claiming that Reform leaders reject the Torah!
Is what you are getting at that today’s Reform leaders reject the Zionist use of the Torah, though they may be Zionists for plenty of other reasons?
That would correspond to my experience of Reform attitudes toward the Torah and the state of Israel.
Ben Denckla
(Via E-Mail)
Saul Singer Responds: Thank you for your comment and for your excellent question.
It is, and has always been, a central tenet of the Reform movement to deny that the Torah is the authentic word of God and to reject the historical reality of the Sinaic revelation. Reform Judaism views both the Oral and Written laws as a product of human hands, not as divinely given; that the laws of the Torah merely reflect their time and have lost their binding force on future generations; and that the Torah reflects only the historical development of Judaism, which is subject to change based upon contemporary morals and does not represent a God-given truth for all time. As such, it is beyond dispute that Reform leaders reject the Torah as the eternal word of the living God of Israel.
Though the Reform movement was historically and powerfully anti-Zionist, as I show in my article, there are indeed many individual Reform Jews today who are, in every sense of the word, dedicated, devoted, and devout Zionists. However, their embrace of Reform Judaism strips them of the most powerful pro-Israel argument of all: that, as the Torah repeatedly emphasizes, the God of Israel expressly gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people as “an eternal inheritance.”
Here is the very first comment on the Torah written by Rashi, universally recognized as the dean of biblical commentators:
Rabbi Isaac [said to be Rashi’s father] said: It was not necessary to begin the Torah [whose main purpose is to teach the mitzvot, or commandments] with this verse [“In The Beginning, God created . .”] but, rather, from [the first mitzvah in the Torah, blessing the New Moon, which was not given until Exodus 12:1]. And what is the reason that the Torah begins with Genesis?…. Because if the nations of the world should say to Israel: “You are robbers, because you have seized by force the lands of the seven nations [i.e., Canaan]”, they [Israel] should say to them “The entire world belongs to God; He created it and gave it to whomever it was right in his eyes. Of His own will he gave it to them [i.e., Canaan] and of His own will He took it from them and gave it to us.”
Think about how remarkable this is. First, almost one and a half of the Five Books of Moses were written principally to establish the Jews’ divine right to the land of Israel. Second, Rashi’s foresight is almost stunning in its accuracy, as virtually the entire contemporary world claims that Israel stole the land from the Palestinians – who, by the way, never existed as a people throughout the entirety of human history, but that is another topic for another column. And today we stand proudly and tell them: “The God of the Bible, who created the world, gave it to us.”