14 Facts About Vichna Kaplan

Vichna Kaplan was a Russian-born American Orthodox Jewish teacher and school dean who, together with her husband Rabbi Boruch Kaplan, brought the Bais Yaakov movement to America.

Vichna Kaplan later opened the first Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary, which provided teachers for all Bais Yaakov schools that subsequently opened in America and Israel.

Vichna Kaplan Eisen was born in Slonim, Russian Empire, around 1913.

Vichna Kaplan applied to the Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary in Krakow at the age of 16.

Vichna Kaplan's application was rejected because she lacked a government-recognized high school diploma; her uncle had not allowed her to attend the non-religious gymnasium school.

Vichna Kaplan wrote to Sarah Schenirer and was accepted to the seminary after taking private lessons to earn her diploma.

Vichna Kaplan's teaching skills were noticed by Rabbi Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav, who praised her ability to imbue students with Torah knowledge and fear of Heaven.

The couple was engaged by mail in 1936 and married on August 8,1937, eleven days after Vichna Kaplan arrived in New York City.

Vichna Kaplan started the school with seven students around her dining-room table in Williamsburg in 1938.

In 1944 Vichna Kaplan was able to transform the Bais Yaakov into an all-day high school.

Vichna Kaplan hired many graduates of the Krakow seminary to teach in the first Bais Yaakov high school.

The fiftieth yahrtzeit gathering for Schenirer in Madison Square Garden in 1985, which Vichna Kaplan organized, was attended by thousands of students of Bais Yaakov schools established in Hasidic, yeshivish, and Modern Orthodox communities with staff members drawn from the Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary.

Still active as dean of the Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary, Vichna Kaplan died on August 20,1986.

The Rebbe sent a message to Rabbi Boruch Vichna Kaplan "thanking him for making it easier for his boys to find suitable shidduchim ".