New Note is Cause for Celebration

A newly discovered note from Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov, the Chief of Staff of the office of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, calls the date of 20 Cheshvan, 5702, the date of the establishment of Bais Rivkah schools.

The auspicious day of Chof Cheshvan, which also marks the birthday of the Rebbe Rashab, marks the founding the flagship Chabad girls school in Brooklyn which is named for Rebbetzin Rivkah, the wife of the Rebbe Maharash, the note reads.

To mark the school’s 75th anniversary, the students were addressed by Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, the Chairman of the Board of Bais Rivkah, who shared the early history of the school and how dear the moisad was to the Rebbe.

The girls also read a first-hand account from the school’s first student, Mrs. Laya Block of London, Ontario, who described the school’s first days with 3 students learning in various local Shuls.

She described the first day of school at an old house at the corner of Riverdale and Newport Streets in East New York, Brooklyn, rented by her father Rabbi Eliyahu Nachum Sklar obm, and the beginning days under the directorship of Dean Rabbi Y. Jacobson and teacher Rebbetzin Chave Hecht.

“When I graduated, there were 30 girls in the school,” Block wrote. “Bais Rivkah, started by the Frierdiker Rebbe and now guided by the Rebbe, has truly gone ‘Mechayil el Chayil,’ from strength to strength, and continues to do so. The warmth, the closeness, the Mesiras Nefesh of its humble beginnings were the foundation upon which the Bais Rivkah of today was built. We who were part of it feel fortunate to have had such a great z’chus. Ashreinu Mah Tov Chelkeinu.”