"Pauline Epstein Wengeroff (1833-1916) was born the seventh child of a wealthy and learned Jewish family that could trace its rabbinic ancestors back to the Middle Ages. After difficult years of wandering while her husband established himself professionally, Pauline finally settled in Minsk to live the comfortable life of a bank president's wife. Her children went on to distinguished careers in the literary, musical, and political circles of St. Petersburg.".

"But Pauline could not ignore the fact that personal progress had been achieved at the expense of religious belief and Jewish identity. She had been forced to give up the pious traditions she held dear, and at least three of her children converted to Christianity - the price they had to pay for the right to study and teach in Russian society.".

"And so, in her seventies, she sat down to recreate the world of her childhood, a world structured around strong parental authority and deep religious commitment. When it first appeared in 1908, her memoir received rave reviews for its sensitive and faithful depiction of the Jewish world of the nineteenth century. A second volume devoted to her years of married life quickly followed.".

"Now available for the first time in English translation, Wengeroff's memoir is the earliest record of Eastern European Jewish life written by a woman. Pauline spreads out before us the richness of Judaism and Jewish folk life, the joy and pain of marriage and motherhood, and the personal losses that she, as a Jewish woman, had suffered at the hands of great historical forces."--BOOK JACKET.