R. Elh·anan’s warning against sending an infant to the wet nurse’s home or even
leaving him/her in a Jewish home alone with the wet nurse at night manifests
a fierce objection to this practice. We see from this source, that the rabbis were
not discussing a mere overnight stay, but a much lengthier one. It follows from
this that some Jewish children were sent to the homes of wet nurses for ex-
tended periods, at least during the day. In summary, these sources seem to in-
dicate differing attitudes toward these issues. The more lenient approach al-
lowed Jewish children to be cared for in Christian homes, certainly during the
day, and, in some cases, at night as well. The more stringent approach required
them to remain at home and under constant Jewish supervision.
Other sources that discuss the employment of Christian wet nurses also re-
late to the presence of Jewish children in Christian wet nurses’ homes. The
basis for these discussions is the thirteenth-century composition Sefer haTeru-
mahwritten by R. Barukh b. Isaac of Paris (d. 1211).^113 As Simh·a Emanuel
has demonstrated, R. Barukh was a French scholar, and not of German origin
as thought in previous research.^114 R. Barukh says:
“A gentile woman may nurse an Israelite child if others are standing by, but not if
she is on her own.” This ruling implies that one may not give the son of an Is-
raelite to a non-Jewish woman unless others are standing by her or, at the very
least, if there are Jews coming and going. But it does not seem that having an Is-
raelite woman standing by her is a requirement. This applies to the domain of the
heathens. But in the domain of Israel, it is allowed in any case.... And if the Is-
raelite woman goes out of town, she should not leave her son alone with a hea-
then woman. But if there are Israelite women in the city, it is permissible, since
they are used to coming there and making sure that the Israelite’s son is not alone.
And at the very least, at night it is forbidden to leave him with the heathen alone
after bed time.^115This source seems to point quite clearly to the practice of sending children to
Christian wet nurses’ homes, as R. Yeh·iel of Paris himself suggested. R. Barukh
suggests that these children stayed at the wet nurse’s home during the day. He
did not permit the child to stay in the Christian home without supervision, and
it is clear that he expects Jewish women to drop by and check on the child’s
welfare. The reality he describes is, in any case, not that of a live-in wet nurse.
His attitude toward the question of whether the infants could stay at the Chris-
tian wet nurse’s home at night is less clear. May a child never sleep in a Chris-
tian home, or is this the case only when his mother is out of town? This ques-
tion remains unresolved, but, in any case, the passage clearly documents the
practice, mentioned by R. Yeh·iel of Paris, of sending Jewish children to Chris-
tian homes.
R. Barukh’s opinion is quoted by other halakhic authorities in the thirteenth
century. For example, R. Moses of Couçy, who was the youngest of the partic-
ipants in the Paris disputation, mentions this issue in his Sefer Miz·vot Gadol: