Sarah Schenirer (; ; July 15, 1883 - March 1, 1935 (yartzeit 26 Adar I 5695) was a Polish-Jewish schoolteacher who became a pioneer of Jewish education for girls. Although Samson Raphael Hirsch's 1853-established Realschule provided girls with "rigorous elementary and secondary school education," and "thousands of girls in Russia attended female-only cheders in the 1890s," Schenirer's accomplishment was to begin a change in the way women were perceived in Orthodox Judaism. In 1917, she founded an afternoon school in her apartment that was later used as a model by the Agudath Yisrael in its Bais Yaakov (lit., "House of Jacob") school network in Poland, with worldwide lasting effect. Early life Sarah Schenirer was born to Bezalel Schenirer (of Tarnów) and Reizel in Krakow, Poland. Her parents were both scions of influential rabbinic families. Her father provided her with religious texts that he had translated into Yiddish. In her memoirs, she describes herself as the unassuming and withdrawn daughter of Belzer Hasidic parents. She was intelligent and had a strong desire to learn, and was envious of her brothers' opportunity to learn and interpret the Torah. Schenirer would write later in life: Her friends in her Polish school called her "the female Hasid". She attended elementary school for seven years. She then became a seamstress. Vienna During World War I, Schenirer and her family fled from Poland to Vienna. While there, she became influenced by Rabbi Moshe Flesch, a disciple of Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Modern Orthodox Judaism. His sermons had emphasized the role of women throughout Jewish history, which inspired Schenirer. Later on, Flesch accepted Schenirer's invitation to "please visit our school." After her first marriage ended in divorce, Schenirer occasionally attended plays, and public lectures for the women; at one Friday night meeting of the Zionist Ruth Organization, she was pained to observe them lighting candles on Shabbat (Saturday), in violation of halakha (Jewish law). Bais Yaakov schools Schenirer returned to Kraków in 1917, where the inspiration she received in Vienna led her to seek to establish a school for girls. She initially approached her brother, who suggested that the idea was controversial. However, he agreed to take her to see the Belzer Rebbe in Marienbad, who gave her his blessing in two words: "Mazel uBrocha." In Schenirer's own description of the meeting, she stated that she wanted to "lead Jewish girls in the path of Judaism", without