Sarah Schenirer saw a problem and she fixed it. By making tough choices and staying strong she found a way to change people's minds and force them to include women in Jewish education. She opened her first school in 1917 with only twenty five students. And by 1933 when she stepped down as the official head of the Bais Yaakov movement there were 267 schools all across Poland with over 38,000 students enrolled.
In 1935, at age fifty-two, Schenirer died of cancer. Even after stepping down she stayed involved with Bais Yaakov for as long as she was physically able.
After the Holocaust Schenirer's students opened Bais Yaakov schools in North America and Israel restarting the movement and emulating their teacher. Today hundreds of thousands of Jewish girls are being educated all around the world in Jewish schools. Be it in one of the hundreds of Bais Yaakov schools in North America and Europe or public Bais Yaakov schools in Israel, or even a Modern Orthodox girls' school or co-ed school, all of these girls are the spiritual daughters of Sarah Schenirer and owe their Jewish education to her.
Schenirer had married young, but soon divorced her first husband before having any children. [1] She eventually remarried, but remained childless. All of her students referred to her as "Sarah Imeinu" (our mother Sarah); they all considered her to be a mother to them.
[1] I did not cover this matter in depth because Schenirer’s biographers do not go into depth on the matter in respect of her privacy.