Rememberings: The World of a Russian-Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century

The Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies: Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture

by Pauline Wengeroff, Henry Wenkert (Editor), Bernard Dov Cooperman (Editor)

Memoir (translated from the German) of a Jewish woman in 19th-century Russia, with scholarly introduction and analysis.

Pauline Wengeroff's memoir tells what it was like to be a Jewish girl and a Jewish woman in 19th-century Russia, as foundations of faith and tradition eroded around her
No other work like this survives.

Wengeroff details her traditional Jewish life in mid-19th century Russia and then the many changes brought on by the Jewish Enlightenment.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Jewish

306 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Frieda Vizel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pauline Wengeroff's memoir is a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman through the nineteenth century (1833-1916), at a time of much cultural change. Her story begins at her very simple, very religious and content childhood in her parent's orthodox Jews home, and follows her life through marriage, enlightenment, change in religiosity and the anti-religious environment in which her children were raised in Russian and Lithuanian cities (some of whom converted to Christianity due to anti-semitism). Throughout the memoir, Pauline Wengeroof comes off as a woman of extreme conviction, strong character and high intelligence. She was fiercely loyal to her religious tradition, and while she wasn't a fanatical woman, she grieved the changes she experienced around her. She was not a woman who sought change, and her inability to hold on to what was dear to her in tradition and conservatism was relayed so powerfully I couldn't help but sympathize with her.

While she grew up with the upmost emphasis on tradition, she describes the pressure she faced later in life to abandon her kosher kitchen. The powerful diary entry she records on the day she stopped keeping a kosher kitchen, of her inner turmoil upon giving it up (akin, she says, to an operation), as well as the way she justified it as a sacrifice for the sake of ending the mockery of religion in the home while also using this sacrifice to get a promise from family to let her observe Passover completely, all of this spoke to me of a woman of such independent strong character who was so true to herself despite all external pressure.

She lamants the change from the older generation in which the mother was the strong female in the home to the enlightened "macho" male who, once enlightened, sought submission from the overly "manly" wife and to put the women back into place by re-feminizing them and making them submissive to men. Wengeroff felt that these new ideals disempowered her and made her an "object" to her husband. These feminist philosophies she relays were very fresh and well articulated.

Of all the memoirs I have read of modern Jews in Europe, this is by far the most interesting, engaging and informative. Highly recommended.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not much of a Jew, but have read a lot in trying to be a less worse one, or at least trying to understand what it would feel like to be a good Jew. Great works by great men: Franz Rosenzweig, Samuel Raphael Hirsch, Eliezer Berkowitz, Strauss, Jonas, and Scholem. Good works by good men: Neusner, Jonathan Sacks. Books that I am told I should respect but don't - anything by Buber. And books by those whose reputations I don't understand, like Wyschograd.
But I have never read anything that gives as full a picture of the innerness of Judaism than this book, by someone I've never heard of. She blows everything else away in her account of the phenomenology of Jewish life as felt by a girl in a pious orthodox business family in Brest-Litovsk, a family which was not alienated, not oppressed (they had good relations with the government are revered the Czar), and best of all, was not Hasidic.
But that's not all - she then goes on to show the self-transformation of Jewish life in Eastern Europe through the 1840s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, before antisemitism affected it as she experienced it - through a decision to become European, enlightened, like the Germans. And throughout this transformation, which she encounters through the lives of Talmud students lodged in her wealthy father's home, through the religious disillusionment of her husband, whom the Lubavitcher Rebbe dis-enchants (for a change), through the travails of her children, with Russian names, who try to have careers in the cultural-media-educational establishment of the Russian empire - it is she, and her mother, who sustain and represent the faith, who confront the wavering menfolk, egrandfathers. fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and sons-in-law. The women are the only ones who discern what has been lost and the shabbiness of what is being substittuted.
I've been reading in the history of the Jews and of Judasim for years, and I've never come across anything like this that shows the felt life of Judaism in one who is not an intellectual, a saint, a scholar or a fraud.
There is an afterward by a scholar - I'm not sure who - and I don't wish to be unkind, but the essay begins by wondering way Wengeroff writes in such a "gendered fashion." Any one page of Wengeroff has more substance on the place of Judaism in the lives of Jewish women, and the "place of women in Judaism," than all the labors of the Jewish and feminist establishment on this boring question in the last 50 years.
The book is filled with vivid anecdotes, beautifully told and brilliantly pointed. I'm not going to give a single example, becasue I intend to quote them in my own work for as long as my figurative hand can hold a metaphorical pen.

[Lgordo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed this.

[Gutman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 100+ year old conservative (and, as conservative thinking tends to be,) nostalgic, memoir. The author takes us through the second half of the Russian-Jewish 19th century (primarily, the reign of Alexander II) and the tumultuous times that they were.

A woman from a respected traditional ('ultra-orthodox') Jewish family, she saw her life change drastically as the Jewish communities felt the impact of the Enlightenment, and she mourns the loss of the simpler, and in her eyes purer and better, lives of her parents' generation (if you don't know what I mean, think conservative talk-radio, etc.).

Parts were quite moving, and while I didn't come across any substantial new information there, it was a worthwhile period piece to read. We often may forget that many of those who stepped away from traditional Judaism did so almost against their will, and she certainly tries to express that.
She neglects, to my frustration -- since she seems to take it as a given -- to delve into what the benefits were in the Enlightenment, and other than a few passing passing remarks, she doesn't talk about the specific rewards that she enjoyed from the world that had opened up to her and her family (which she seems to mourn, when things to a turn for the worse after Alexander II's passing).

It's interesting to see how things change and how the pendulum swings, as I got the impression that she felt that traditional orthodoxy was unlikely to survive...how fascinating it is to see trends wax and wane.

[Azi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it curious that non Hasidic women in Lithuania in the 1850s would shave their heads the morning after their weddings. This was a Hasidic custom, in Lithuania women didnt do this as far as I know.

[Michael Kopinsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written (or edited), interesting, learned a lot about old time Jewish life and the complicated transition towards modernity.

[Eli Mandel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating book!
The first thing that struck me, and possibly the only thing that struck me throughout the first half of the book, were all the interesting minhagim she records.
She mentions that during sefirah they weren't allowed to bathe, nor even soak their feet in cold water during a heat wave, except on erev Shabbos.
The challah on erev Yom Kippur was baked in the shape of a ladder, to signify the Jews' getting closer to Heaven.
The day after Yom Kippur everyone would be at synagogue early in order to confound the slanders of Satan who would love to say to God, "See, Lord, yesterday You forgave Your people their sins, and today nobody shows up. Your house is empty!"
After traveling 800 Russian miles to her future husband's town for her wedding, she discovers that her wedding will take place in a barn according to local custom.

All this was very interesting to me. Although we're all aware that in the old country there were hyper-local, and even familial, minhagim, we rarely hear about them from firsthand accounts, let alone from someone who is simply recounting events and drops them in the manner the gemarah refers to as masiach l'fi tumo.

In fact this manner of her storytelling is what makes the whole book so fascinating. Wengeroff seemed to be under the impression that the Judaism she had grown up with wasn't going to last much longer. Certainly she wasn't writing for people with her background, she expected her readers to be unfamiliar with the things she recalled and therefore included a lot of background information, which of course made it a little boring for me (and made me thankful to the editors for cutting the memoir down from two volumes to one), but it makes for interesting reading nonetheless.

We all know about the reformers, the maskilim, the intellectuals who learned gemara in their youth and became enlightened as adults, but how many firsthand accounts of theirs have we read? Pauline Wengeroff was (to some extent) the daughter of a maskil, the sister, wife and mother of maskilim. Her protestations notwithstanding, she did participate in the process of haskalah. Although she includes a moving diary entry from the time she gave in and allowed her kitchen to be made treif, we have no reason to assume that she avoided eating from her own kitchen.

The book leaves you wishing for more, lots more. You're left wishing you could have interviewed her. To my surprise, there was a substantial Afterward written by the editor which fills in some of the gaps that the author left.
For all her talk about the wonderful patriarchal life she left behind at her father's home, and her almost frantic claims of undying love between herself and her husband, she calls him a tyrant. She calls him a tyrant a few times. And she has the chutzpah to argue with him about their religiosity, which is very un-patriarchal.

One of the most tantalizing hints she drops, and which she herself claims ignorance of, is her husband's visit to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. What went on during that visit that turned him sharply away from religion? We'll never know. It was reminiscent of Solomon Maimon's visit to a chasidic court, where he too was turned off.

Her description of the Pesach seder in their secular St. Petersberg home will sound very familiar to the modern reader who has left the orthodoxy of their youth.
"Pesach was observed even in the most advanced circles. It remained a festival of remembrance - not, to be sure, of the Exodus from Egypt but of one's own childhood in the little towns of Lithuania.
The table was embellished with a stack of matzeh heaped on a tray, a bowl of eggs, green salad, and radishes; and of course there was no shortage of good wine. And yet the gentlemen mostly preferred raisin wine, which reminded them so powerfully of their childhood homes. Prayer and the whole series of old symbolic customs were omitted. There was conversation until midnight, not about the Exodus from Egypt, but about questions of the day, events from the newspapers, news of the stock market.
The meal was lavish, beginning, of course, with eggs dipped in salt water. Then there was peppered gefilte-fish, broth with matzeh balls, and roast. It was a cozy supper with some special items but all it had in common with the seder evening was the name. There was no Haggadah on the table. The Haggadah was stored somewehre in an old wooden box wehre it rested peacefully along with yellowed volumes of Talmud, Bible and old Hebrew books. No questions were asked and hands had been washed at home with perfumed soap. Drinking the wine, there was no special emphasis on exactly four cups. And of course, a game of preference too the place of benshen."

[Ayeesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is one of few memoirs that i've read, and i'm on the fence about what i thought of it.

the first fifty pages had me sold - i loved it. it was witty and humorous and sweetly nostalgic and let's face it, it was told from the perspective of a child, which i thoroughly enjoyed. i liked the writing very much in this section despite the fact that my prof said that the memoir as a whole was very poorly translated (i have to agree that the writing is more subpar throughout the rest of the book - it isn't able to hold those qualities i've mentioned past her childhood and teenage life).

reading about certain rituals (and clothing too) was tedious - it is incredibly detailed (which makes sense given how orthodox she and her family were) and somewhat difficult because of the hebrew words/references used, though it did get easier over the course of reading it.

after reading another piece about gender and the assimilation of jews in the 19th century, though, the last half of the memoir - in which she describes the changes and transformations of jewish life, in her experiences, of course - was completely fascinating.

sometimes it reinforced the points made in the other reading and sometimes it deviated from it - which was good, it made it more tangible and believable i think. i'd found the other reading very interesting and liked that i was able to apply larger examinations of a culture to an individual representation of it.

i also found it incredibly interesting that she chose to end her memoir with the death and funeral of her husband, despite the fact that she lived for about two decades after he died.