WENGEROFF makes a central claim in Volume II of Memoirs. In a pivotal chapter entitled ‘My Wise Mother Said Two Things’, she asserts that to the reasonable, balanced desire of Jewish mothers to impart to their children ‘the ethics of Judaism, the traditions of its faith, the solemnity of the Sabbath and festivals, Hebrew, the teachings of the Bible … in beautiful and exalted forms—together with the fruits of the Enlightenment, together with the new that west European culture had produced’— to this moderate ‘plea and protest’, Jewish husbands always gave the same answer: ‘The children need no religion!’

She continues:

Wengeroff asserts a stark, globalized claim of gender disparity about tradition and its loss among modernizing Russian Jews. She does not say ‘some men/husbands’, ‘some women/wives’, but generalizes sweepingly. Thus, as we have seen, she says about Kovno, ‘the men no longer kept the Sabbath holy; it did not interrupt the zeal for business … The women, whose very nature clung tenaciously to the ancient ways, would still take care to kindle the Sabbath lights … But her enlightened lord-husband lit a cigarette with them.’