Moses have nursed from a non-Jewish wet nurse?” Their argument is that since
according to Jewish law a non-Jewish woman is permitted to nurse a Jewish
child, Pharoah’s daughter could have hired an Egyptian wet nurse. Why, then,
did Miriam search specifically for a Jewish wet nurse? The answer given by the
commentators is as follows:
She suggested [hiring] a Jewish wet nurse because Moses had already been
brought to Egyptian wet nurses and had refused to nurse from all of them. And
why did he refuse? God said: “A mouth that will converse with me, shall it nurse
from an impure woman?”^80
This literary topos of a child who refuses to nurse from a foreign woman is
also well known in medieval Christian literature. Narratives of the Virgin
Mary’s infancy also discuss her refusal to nurse from anyone except her mother,
as do tales of Jesus’ infancy.^81 Nicholas Orme relates one such story that re-
flects national pride, rather than sanctity. In it, an English child, the son of roy-
alty, refuses to nurse from a French wet nurse. Stories of saints also emphasize
the fact that their mothers nursed them, and that they were not given to wet
nurses. For example, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 –1153) and Catherine of Si-
enna (1347–1380) are both mentioned as having been nursed by their moth-
ers.^82 Some medieval stories emphasize the importance mothers accorded to
nursing their children themselves. The Duchess of Bourlon, who lived during
the eleventh century, is said to have been especially careful that her children
not be nursed by anyone other than herself. One day, when she was at church,
her son cried until a wet nurse was brought to pacify him. When she discov-
ered this, she tried to force him to throw up what he had nursed, but did not
succeed in doing so. The legend held that, as a result of this incident, this son
was not as successful as his brothers.^83 This story and others helped promote
maternal nursing. The beliefs promoted did not, however, restrict the practice
of hiring wet nurses; in many cases, the mother herself nursed along with a wet
nurse.^84
While one could generalize from this topos and view it as a directive for
motherly nursing, at least in the case of Moses, the commentary focuses more
on the fact that he refused to nurse from an Egyptian woman than on his in-
sistence on his mother. This focus on the consequences of nursing from a non-
Jewish woman seems to be relevant for medieval Ashkenaz, where Jews fre-
quently employed Christian wet nurses.
Jews and ChristiansAs noted above, there was no legal prohibition against Moses’ nursing from an
Egyptian woman. The Midrash’s author’s concern was for his own purity.
While this concern could, theoretically, have influenced Jewish practices re-
lated to employing non-Jewish wet nurses, in reality, the employment of non-