Beth Rivkah Ladies College


Beth Rivkah Ladies College or Beth Rivkah Lubavitch is an independent Orthodox Jewish comprehensive single-sex primary and secondary day school for girls, located on Balaclava Road, East St Kilda in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Established in 1956 and managed by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement's Yeshivah Centre, the College caters for students from Year K to Year 12. By including a comprehensive secular curriculum it is geared in its approach to accommodating children from a non-religious background whose parents would otherwise not agree to enrol their children there. It also serves the purpose of providing an Orthodox Jewish day-school to Orthodox parents who also value a secular education. Most of its students come from non-Chabad families. It is known for its academic excellence, and its matriculants regularly score high in the VCE.

Early history

The school was founded in 1956 by Moshe Zalman Feiglin, Yehoshua Shneur Zalman Serebryanski, and others.
In mid-1956 Rabbi Schneerson sent a letter "To Chabad activists in Melbourne," urging:
Two days later, on 20 Av 5716 , Moshe Zalman Feiglin and his son, Dovid, attended a Farbrengen, a Chassidic gathering, in the court of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe addressed them, saying:
Afterwards the Rebbe wrote to Ya’akov Eliezer Herzog:
The Rebbe made clear what the philosophy of the school was to be. In a letter to Mendel New he wrote of "the vital necessity not only to expand the Yeshivas Oholei Yosef Yitzchok Lubavitch in Melbourne, but also to found, open up, and expand a girls’ school, Beth Rivkah, according to the philosophy of Chabad education."
The Rebbe regarded himself as a direct partner in this enterprise:
The Rebbe allayed the concerns of those who thought the financial burden of maintaining the school too great:
Mrs. Suzi Herz had founded the Herz kindergarten and primary school in 1950. When Rabbi Schneerson called for a girls' school, Zalman Serebryanski and Moshe Feiglin approached Mrs. Herz, and offered to join forces, expanding her school and dubbing it Beth Rivkah, with Mrs. Herz as its headmistress. She accepted the offer, and remained headmistress until she immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1971.

Current administration and policies

The school, as a branch of the Yeshiva Centre umbrella, was under the administration of Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, and Mr. Shmuel Gurevitch However, in 2013 Rabbi Smukler took over as principal of the college as Mr Gurevitch was resigning after 42 years of principal-ship. Rabbi Smukler handed in his resignation at the end of 2018 and left the school mid 2019. After a brief period with interim principals, Dr Shimon Waronker became the new principal in 2020.
Although the students at the school are mostly Ashkenazi Jews, with a large element of Hasidim and other Haredim, Mr. Gurevitch introduced that when Hebrew is spoken it should follow the Modern Hebrew pronunciation. He claimed that this would make the school more attractive to as yet non-observant or minimally-observant Jews, whom he argued would identify more with that form of pronunciation. He claimed that he told this to Rabbi Schneerson, who consented to this.
The school is part of the larger network of facilities of the Yeshivah Centre, which include a youth movement, Jewish studies classes, day camps, and many other initiatives that benefit Melbourne's wider Jewish community.