Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe

This book deals with family relationships in medieval Jewish communities in Northern France and Germany, concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children. Using a wonderful array of sources, Baumgarten, a lecturer in Jewish history and in the Gender Studies Program at Bar-Ilan University, opens a window for us into aspects of pregnancy, midwifery, birth rituals, nursing, including the use of wet nurses, and childrearing. While there were no sources for this period written by women, Baumgarten draws from medieval responsa, commentaries and medical tractates, ethical literature such as Sefer Hasidim, as well as an approach based on her understanding of issues of gender and society in medieval Europe. She shows how the everyday interactions of Jewish and Christian women, many more than previously supposed, led to numerous shared practices and beliefs, and points out parallel practices and developments as well as central differences between Jewish and Christian practice. Among other things she details the role of the ba’alat brit in the 12th and 13th centuries at the circumcision ceremony – the woman who often would bathe the baby, bring him into the synagogue and hold him on her lap during the ritual, a role that was curtailed by the 14th century. This fascinating and detailed book helps us to have a richer knowledge of the past and a fuller understanding of daily life and what the historians call material culture in the world of our mothers.