In the Old Yishuv, it was a bit anomalous for a woman to exert so much influence on public policy and education.
Document :Jerusalem
Time: 1898
When Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin’s first wife passed away at a young age, he married Sarah Sonia Retner, subsequently known to history with the appellation “Brisker Rebbetzin.” Descended from the Noda B’Yehuda and the great philanthropist Yehoshua Zeitlin, she entered the marriage as a wealthy woman. With the signing of the kesubah, she was said to have told her husband, “Mazel tov! Don’t take your kallah’s blessing lightly.”
In 1877 they moved to Eretz Yisrael, where she immersed herself in establishing the Diskin Orphanage and Yeshivas Ohel Moshe, among a myriad of other projects benefiting the beleaguered local population.
In the Old Yishuv, it was a bit anomalous for a woman to exert so much influence on public policy and education. She usually worked behind the scenes and in concert with her illustrious husband, leading the struggle against expressions of modernity in Yerushalayim, and often raising the ire of the press and the “more enlightened” community.
The newly founded Kollel America was one noted beneficiary of her formidable organizational skills. Ostensibly instituted to help US immigrants to the Holy City, it stayed independent of the Vaad Kol Hakollelim, and the Diskins’ support was a source of tension for a while, but it also afforded them the protection of the American consul, who saw the project as something of an honorary consulship — though its links to the US were murky at best.
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