Legitimizing the Revolution: Rhetorical and Intertextual Strategies in the Discourse of the Beis Yakov Movement

• History

The founders of the Beis Yakov movement for Orthodox girls’ education were compelled to navigate between parents and rabbis concerned with halachic restrictions on girls’ study and young girls more interested in socialism than Orthodoxy. They sought to ground their innovations within a textual tradition that lacked warrant for girls’ education or for the value of youth, womanhood, and female community. This lecture will illuminate the strategies by which Beis Yakov activists overcame these difficulties. With Naomi Seidman, Koret Professor of Jewish Culture, Graduate Theological Union.