450 delegates representing about 200 branches all over the country and about 1,500 visitors, including many Hassidic women and girls, were present to-day at the opening of the Conference of the Agudist Women’s Organisation, Bnoth Agudath Israel, held in the large hall of the City Building. Madame Sarah Schnirer, of Cracow, the founder of the Bnoth Schools, is acting as Honorary Chairman, and the wives of the famous Raboi of German and of Rabbi Levin of Bedsin are members of the Presidium.
The Bnoth Agudath Israel movement now comprises 200 people’s schools in all parts of Poland, in which Yiddish is the language of instruction and Hebrew is taught as an important branch of teaching, it was reported, and there are in addition several secondary schools in which the language of instruction is Polish, and a teachers seminary in Cracow, numbering in all 6,500 girl pupils, Madame Reisel Rosa, the Chairman of the Warsaw branch said. The organisation has its own building in Cracow, costing 60,000 dollars and publishes three periodicals in Yiddish, “Beth Jacob” for women; “Kindergorten”, for girls still at school, and “Frishinke Blimelech” (fresh flowers) for the younger children.
The programme is observance of the Terah and of Jewish distinctiveness; the maintenance of Yiddish; respect for Hebrew as the sacred tongue, war against free-thinking ideas and supposed magic phrases like the “emancipation of women”; war against the tendency to luxury and opposition to the movement for the participation of women in political conflicts.
Messages of greeting were received from Dr. Nathan Birnbaum, from Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski of Vilna, and from the Central Committee of the Agudath Israel.
The speakers addressed the Conference in Yiddish, constantly quoting passages from the Torah. The Conference has pledged its members to observe Torah and Mitzvoth, and to walk in the way of God. We must be worthy of the piety of our mother Sarah; the modesty of our mother Rebeccah; the tears of our mother Leah; the consolation of our mother Rachel; the prayer of our mother Hannah, and the sword of our sister Judith, may they shield us all, and make us worthy of them, says one of the verses of the hymn of the Bnoth Agudah.
No men were admitted to the Conference, with the exception of the Jewish journalists who were, however, segregated in a special section where they could take their reports without mingling with the delegates.
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