Regina Lilientalowa was a Polish ethnographer, translator and journalist of Jewish origin. She is known for her pioneering research on Jewish folk rituals and literature.
Life
Gitla Eiger was born to Moses and Fajga Blum, in a family of Polonized Jews, in Zawichost, at the time a part of the Russian Empire. Her year of birth has been variously given as 1875 or 1877. She attended school at Sandomierz. After marriage in 1895 to Nathan Liliental, she moved to Warsaw. Lilientalowa had two children, Stanisława and Antoni. Stanisława became a mathematician, while Antoni joined the Polish army and was murdered in the Katyn Massacre. In later life, Lilientalowa suffered from a progressivelung disease. She died on 4 December 1924 from a failed operation in Warsaw.
Career
In Warsaw, Lilientalowa wanted to pursue higher studies, which was difficult for women, especially those from a Jewish background. To earn a living, she became a history teacher at Polish-Jewish secondary schools. She began to educate herself privately in Jewish folklore, supplementing her studies by attending the so-calledFlying University, which organised courses for women in secret. Under Ludwik Krzywicki, she expanded her knowledge of Jewish rituals and folk literature, and began to publish in Poland's main journals of anthropology, Wisła and Lud. Lilientalowa published her first ethnographic works Przesady żydowskie ; Zaręczyny i wesele żydowskie ; Wierzenia, przesady i praktyki ludu żydowskiego. Her focus shifted from contemporary Jewish culture to historical customs and rituals, which she studied from German and Russian translations as well as the Yiddish Talmud. She later learned Hebrew and Aramaic to delve deeper into Talmudic traditions, resulting in two well-received books, Dziecko żydowskie, and Święta żydowskie w przeszłości i terazniejszości. Her work included considerable material from field investigations in Lublin, Zawichost, and Radomski, using which she demonstrated the evolution of the rites of the main Jewish pilgrimage days, the religious holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and Hanukkah and Purim, which she linked to events associated with nature. Lilientalowa's interest in Jewish folklore led her to translate I. L. Peretz's Yiddish stories into the Polish language. These were published between 1906–1910. She translated Yiddish folk songs from the collections of Saul Ginzberg and Peter Marek. She also published her translations of women's tkhines prayers, focusing on their moral, magical and healing properties.
