Bais Chana of Minnesota to Mark 50th Anniversary

In the summer of 1971, a revolution began. It was a quiet revolution, begun at the end of a sober and unassuming residential street in the Lubavitch House of S. Paul, Minnesota. Like all good revolutions, this began with reaching and changing minds.

Bais Chana Women’s Institute, conceived of by Rabbi Moshe and Mindy Feller and Rabbi Manis Friedman, threw open its doors that summer, offering a crash course in Judaism for college-age women. What happened in the ensuing weeks caught them all by surprise as much as it did anyone else.

The learning that summer began with around eighteen participants, grew to forty-two the next summer, and exploded to over 100 in ensuing years. By now, fifty years on, the work of Bais Chana has reached women in the tens of thousands. To mark the fifty years of this unique experience, Bais Chana is creating an album to archive the women of Bais Chana and the impact it has had on their lives. Conceived as a series of books with photos of each and every participant and her family, the aim is to lay the precious books on the Rebbe’s desk before the Rebbe’s birthday, Yud Alef Nissan this year.

“We want every single woman who ever participated, even for a day, in the learning at Bais Chana to be included,” says the long-time rabbi and teacher at Bais Chana, Rabbi Manis Friedman. In a year that has been darkened by discord and illness, r”l, this project promises to be one of light and brocha for each participant and her family.

Though social and cultural norms have altered over these fifty years, the unique nature of the Bais Chana experience unites all its students, and the impact it has had on their lives and the lives of our communities deserves recording.

Rabbi Friedman describes the early years of Bais Chana, “We had women coming straight from ashrams of the Far East, from their participation with the Students for a Democratic Society. They had tried it all; politics, eastern religions, and they were jaded, soul weary. They were looking to find something. What they didn’t expect was to find everything.”

Since then, under the able leadership of Mrs. Hinda Leah Sharfstein, Bais Chana has undergone some adaptation. Though begun for college-age women, it developed sessions for women of all ages beginning in 1990 (and which it now calls Uncamp), and Mom and Kids sessions and Couples Retreats in the 90’s. The program has become a transportable one, with sessions now taking place around the country. Eventually, even more diverse programs were later added – Snorkel and Study for college women, Advanced Learning, Single Jewish Moms Connect, Women 55+, Online Weekly Classes, and Virtual Retreats.

All of these participants, from the students of the earliest years to those tuning in these days to non-stop Zoom classes and online virtual retreats, are encouraged to access the website and register in the album at baischana.org/album.

The Rebbe followed progress at Bais Chana with intense interest, receiving regular updates from the rabbis about its participants and programs. Unprecedented at that time, early on the Rebbe gave permission to call the program after his mother, Rebbitzen Chana Shneersohn’s, name. These albums will be of profound importance, acknowledging the Rebbe’s loving interest in Bais Chana by sharing photos of her many students and their families with him. As Rabbi Friedman explained in a recent farbrengen with Bais Chana alumna, “… this project will give the Rebbe a lot of pleasure and it will bring great bracha and hatzlacha to everyone whose name is there on the Rebbe’s desk.”

Contacting all the students of Bais Chana from its fifty years is a mammoth undertaking. The organizers are gearing up with email and social media campaigns to share the project and to direct women to register themselves, but their databases, while extensive, will not reach everyone. They are asking all women who ever attended Bais Chana for even a day, to register and, more importantly, to reach out to others. They would like each woman to network with anyone she knows who attended to inform them to do likewise. Do not assume that anyone must have already been reached; it is better for someone to be notified several times than never to have heard about the project.

There’s no cost to register. Join the album of Bais Chana alumna at baischana.org/album.