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Oberlin Professor Translates 19th-Century Russian Jewish Woman’s ‘Extraordinary Testimony’
Shulamit Magnus
AUGUST 31, 2000--Pauline Wengeroff, a Russian Jewish woman of the 19th century whose memoirs testify to the breakdown of traditional Jewish society in Russia, is the subject of several forthcoming books by Shulamit Magnus, associate professor of Jewish studies and history.
"The memoirs are well known to specialists, but they had never been fully translated," says Magnus, who joined the Oberlin College faculty in 1997. This summer she continued work on her translation of the memoirs and on her annotation, commentary, and critical introduction to them. The University of California Press will publish Magnus's edition of Wengeroff's memoirs.
A few snippets of Wengeroff's writing appear in Lucy Dawidowicz's source anthology, The Golden Tradition, but they never received scholarly treatment, "which is truly remarkable," Magnus says.
Wengeroff (1833-1916) grew up in a learned traditional Jewish family and came of age during the Jewish Enlightenment movement in Russia, which advocated cultural reforms in traditional Jewish society, particularly in education and family life. The push coincided with tsarist russification policies and brought about a profound transformation of Jewish society in the Russian Empire, including, according to Wengeroff, the relations between men and women.
"The work is marvelous literature, as well as extremely precious first-person testimony to the passage from traditionalism to modernity," says Magnus, "It is also an unprecedented act of writing and consciousness by a Jewish woman who does no less than refract an entire age in Jewish history through the experience of women.
"In her work, Wengeroff details the rich spiritual and ritual lives of traditional women, and their trauma at being (she alleges) forcibly modernized by upwardly aspiring, culturally reckless, Jewish men."
Magnus's work has proceeded in part with the help of a National Endowment for the Humanities translation grant and a Legacy Grant for Historical Research on Jewish Women. While she is on sabbatical in the coming year, Magnus will work on a book about the memoirs--their context and their historical and literary significance.
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