Jewish wet nurses was widespread, and medieval Jewish sources express no dis-
comfort with the practice of hiring them.
In medieval Christian society, wet nurses were employed in one of two ways:
Either the wet nurse lived in the infant’s house or the infant was sent to the wet
nurse’s home. Families that could afford to employ a wet nurse in their home
opted to do so, whereas poorer families resorted to sending their infants to the
wet nurse’s home. According to Jewish law, the first option was the preferred
one, if the wet nurse was not Jewish. The Mishna in Avodah Zara states clearly
that a gentile woman may nurse a Jewish child only when she is on the Jewish
woman’s premises.^85 While it seems that most of the women employed by Jews
as wet nurses were Christian, there were some Jewish wet nurses as well.
It is impossible to generalize about the patterns of employment of Jewish
wet nurses. Most of the sources that discuss their employment, like many of
the sources that discuss the employment of Christian wet nurses, talk about
Jewish women who worked in the homes of their employers. It seems that
many of these Jewish wet nurses were single women who had given birth, poor
women, and/or women who were widowed or abandoned by their spouses.^86
R. Isaac b. Moses quotes the case of such a woman in his compendium Sefer
Or Zaru’a. This woman began her career as a wet nurse as a divorcée after the
birth of a child. It is unclear what the fate of her child was. Perhaps it died
at birth and perhaps she gave him/her to a wet nurse. In another case, that
of “Rachel” and “Leah” from Germany, examined above, we saw another ex-
ample of a Jewish wet nurse whose marital status was unclear, but who, I
suggested, was widowed, as she was conducting her own business negotia-
tions.^87 It is interesting to note that the patriarchal responsibility over choos-
ing a wet nurse can be found throughout the Middle Ages in medieval Ashke-
naz, despite the tremendous freedom Jewish women enjoyed in business
negotiations.
The sources do not allow us to determine whether there were more Jewish
or Christian wet nurses employed in Jewish homes. However, the extensive dis-
cussion of the employment of Christian wet nurses demonstrates that Chris-
tian wet nurses were commonplace in Jewish households. The little known to
us on the demographics of the Jewish community also supports this conclu-
sion: There were more Jewish women in need of wet nurses than Jewish
women who could provide this service. Consequently, the Jews had to look out-
side their communities for women who could fill this need.
Our knowledge of the employment of Christian wet nurses in Jewish homes
stems from a variety of sources, written by both Jews and Christians. One im-
portant source of information is the papal documents that address the em-
ployment of Christians by Jews, which make it clear that Christian wet nurses
lived in Jewish homes.^88 Warnings against this practice were issued repeatedly
during the Middle Ages, especially from the end of the twelfth century on.^89
Based on the frequent reissuing of this prohibition, it seems that the employ-
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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