Notes of a Jew

Born to a prominent rabbinical family in Poltava, Ukraine, Grigory Bogrov was a Russian-language writer, memoirist, and essayist on Jewish issues. Despite his traditional upbringing, Bogrov was sympathetic to maskilic ideals. In 1863, he began composing Zapiski evreia (Notes of a Jew), the three-volume memoir for which he is best known. Serialized over three years in Nikolai Nekrasov’s journal Otechestvennykh zapiskakh, this was one of the first works by a Jewish author that seriously explored issues of contemporary Jewish life in Russia for a non-Jewish audience. Rich in thick ethnographic descriptions of Jewish life, the book was well-received and widely translated, although later critics accused the author of self-loathing for his harsh critique of Jewish life. Bogrov moved to St. Petersburg, where he was deeply involved with the circle of Russian Jewish intellectuals. He famously considered himself an “emancipated cosmopolitan,” bound to the Jewish people through a sense of common fate and persecution, but not by much else. He converted to Russian Orthodoxy shortly before his death in order to marry a Christian woman.