Chapter Three
ADDITIONAL BIRTH RITUALS
R. Judah said: Three persons require guarding, namely a sick
person, a bride groom, and a bride.
Rashi: “A sick person: For his luck has turned bad and as a
result the demons torment him. And also a woman who gives
birth.”
—Berakhot 54b and RashiAlthough the circumcision ritual was the central birth rite celebrated in
medieval Jewish society, it was not the only one. Circumcision was part of a
ritual sequence that was designed both to usher the newborn into the com-
munity and to protect the baby from harm. This chapter will examine three
birth ceremonies customary in the medieval Ashkenazic world: the Holle-
kreisch, the Wachnacht, and the Sabbath when the parturient first left her
house (Shabbat Yez·iat haYoledet). The exact details of these three ceremonies
are not well known, as they are not treated as extensively as the circumcision
ceremony. Indeed, they are only hinted at in sources from the High Middle
Ages and are described in greater detail only in fifteenth-century documents.
Moreover, unlike the previous discussion of the circumcision ritual and bap-
tism, the Jewish rituals and their Christian parallels examined in this chapter
were not an ancient or essential part of Jewish or Christian practice, nor did
they determine Jewish and Christian identity. The differences between cir-
cumcision and baptism, on the one hand, and the rituals examined in this
chapter, on the other, will enrich our analysis of the comparable elements in
the ceremonies and provide a fuller understanding of the attitudes and beliefs
about birth.
The Hollekreisch and Wachnacht rituals were ceremonies for the infant,
and they will be discussed in the first part of the chapter. The Sabbath ritual
was a ceremony for the mother after birth. However, since this ceremony is
linked to the Hollekreisch, and since the analysis of this ritual increases our
understanding of the ritual process of birth, I have included it in the discus-
sion in the second part of this chapter. All three rituals will be compared to par-
allel Christian practices. The chapter will conclude with a summary discus-
sion of the ritual birth process as a whole, as described in this chapter and in
the preceding one.