He explains that one can give young children nonkosher food. Yet he stipu-
lates some precautions:
Despite this, one should warn the wet nurse not to eat impure meat or pork and
certainly not to feed them [the infants] impure substances, as it is written: “What
caused [Ah·er to apostasize]... “ And some commentaries on the passage explain,
that some say that when she [his mother] was pregnant with him, she would pass
in front of idolatry, and she smelled something of that min^103 and they gave it to
her and she ate and that minbubbled in her body.... For everything that a woman
eats, the infant eats. And this caused him to turn to evil ways in his old age.^104R. Isaac’s comment expresses the belief, discussed above, that the food a wet
nurse eats influences the infant she nurses, just as any food a person eats influ-
ences who they are. His objection is not commonly found in the sources and,
on the whole, the halakha does not discuss this issue.
Another objection to children’s eating of nonkosher food from wet nurses is
provided in one of R. Meir b. Barukh’s responsa. R. Meir discusses the educa-
tional effect of this practice. His concern is that children will learn to obey their
wet nurses rather than their fathers. After all, their fathers forbid them to eat
nonkosher food, so if they eat the food their wet nurses provide, they are act-
ing against his will. Despite this concern, Maharam allows children to eat the
food of their wet nurses.^105
It is noteworthy that despite their objections—whether they be fear for the
soul and future Jewish character of the child, or concern for the parent’s edu-
cational authority, none of the sources state outright that Jews should not em-
ploy Christian wet nurses. It is also of note that those who raise oppositions to
Christian wet nurses and their practices are German, whereas northern French
authorities seem to find less to criticize in these practices.
In contrast to the attitudes voiced in the Jewish sources, I have already noted
the fierce objections expressed by church authorities to Christian women
working in Jewish homes. The church authorities objected to this practice for
ideological and practical reasons related to the social context of hired Chris-
tian wet nurses. How could Christian women be under the authority of people
who are inferior to them? In addition, the church feared that these Christian
women would be exploited sexually, harassed and humiliated, and, even worse,
convinced to convert and adopt a Jewish way of life.^106
One example of such humiliation appears in accusations raised by both
Pope Innocent III (d. 1216) and Henricus Segusio (1200 –1270). Both accuse
the Jews of forcing the wet nurses who worked in their homes to spill out their
milk for three days after receiving communion. There is no hint or mention of
this practice in any of the medieval Jewish sources.^107 However, this belief is
further evidence of medieval understandings of the influence of the food eaten
by a nursing woman on the feeding child. Since this accusation appears only
in these two sources, it is hard to determine whether or not this was common,