page_title: Judith Grunfeld
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Judith Grunfeld / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Judith Rosenbaum later Grunfeld. Judith Grunfeld born Judith Rosenbaum (December 18, 1902 – May 14, 1998) was a Hungarian born Jewish German teacher. She taught teachers in Poland and then led a Jewish school of girls, which was evacuated throughout the war to a small village. This pic may date from 1928 (guess). This is her fund raising - which she did from 1925 to 1929
context_page_description: Judith Grunfeld born Judith Rosenbaum was a Hungarian born Jewish German teacher. She was a pioneer of the revolutionary Bais Yaakov girl's education movement. She taught teachers in Poland and then led a Jewish school of girls, which was evacuated throughout the war to the small town of Shefford.
context_section_description: Grunfeld was born in Budapest in 1902, but she was educated and raised in Frankfurt where she attended the Hirsch Real Schule before going on to Frankfurt University.
  It was Rabbi Jacob Rosenheim of Agudat Yisrael who persuaded her to abandon her dreams of going to Palestine, but to go to Krakow and join Sarah Schenirer fledgling school that was trying to teach girls from Jewish backgrounds. Schenirer had no great education but she was to change the way that women were regarded within Jewish culture. They aimed to teach girls and their teachers and get them to appreciate their culture and religion. For five years from 1924 she was involved with teaching teachers at the Beit Yaakov teachers' Seminary. She also had to raise the funds and this would involved some travel. In 1929 the school was adopted by the Orthodox "Agudat Yisrael" now that Rabbi Jacob Rosenheim was its President.
  She married lawyer Isidor Grunfeld on 22 November 1932. He was a lawyer in Würzburg until 1933.
  When the Nazis' rise to power prompted them to move to Israel, but finding no work there they moved to London. In London she was employed at the girls' Jewish secondary school and by 1934 she was the head teacher. The school had been running since 1917, but two years after she started the board of education refused to recognise the school. Grunfeld's leadership led to improvements and new buildings were found for her school and the boys school. In 1938 to 1939 a large number of refugees arrived in the UK and Grunfeld's school gained a share and by the outbreak of war the school had 450 pupils. Three days later the whole school was evacuated north to the town of Shefford in rural Bedfordshire. The school was to remain in Shefford until 1945. She and her husband moved to Bedfordshire and her husband would commute to his job leading the Jewish court (London Beth Din). In 1943 their fourth child was born. In 1947 she was said to have surprised the school when she gave birth to her fifth and last child as no one was aware that she was pregnant.
  In 1954 a heart attack led to her husband's early retirement from the London Beth Din, but he would continue to write. The following year Judith retired to start twenty years of caring for him, although she still gave talks internationally. He died in 1975.
  In 1980 she published "Shefford: The Story of a Jewish School Community in Evacuation, 1939-1945", telling the story of her time leading the evacuated school.
caption: Judith Rosenbaum (later Grunfeld) on a fund raising trip for the school in Krakow
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