as expressions of sorrow concerning the death of children, infanticide, and
abandonment, within the still unexplored context of the medieval Jewish
world.
Death and MourningAttitudes toward death and mourning customs for children have been investi-
gated by scholars in an effort to discern the attitudes of parents regarding in-
fant death in the Middle Ages, and the strength of parental attachment to their
children. While Ariès and his followers argued that in the Middle Ages, par-
ents did not mourn the loss of their children, others have worked intensively
to demonstrate parents’ grief at such deaths. The Jewish sources, like the con-
temporary Christian ones, show that death was greeted with sorrow. Within
Jewish sources, however, we find many exceptional instances, in which the sor-
row and grief is not as straightforward. As we investigate this topic in the Jew-
ish sources, a number of gender distinctions concerning the death of children
as well as medieval attitudes toward death will be examined.
Both medieval Jewish and Christian sources warn parents, and especially
mothers, not to mourn the death of their children excessively and inappropri-
ately. Medieval Jewish commentators, like their Christian counterparts, dis-
cuss the importance of accepting God’s judgment and the death of their chil-
dren and not wallowing in grief. A story from BT Mo’ed Katan was often cited
as a model:
R. Judah said as citing Rav, Whoever indulges in grief to excess over his dead will
weep for another. There was a certain woman that lived in the neighborhood of R.
Huna; she had seven sons, one of whom died, and she wept for him rather exces-
sively. R. Huna sent [word] to her, “Act not thus.” She heeded him not [and] he
said to her: “If you heed my word, it is well, but if not, are you anxious to make pro-
vision [shrouds] for yet another?” He [the next son] died, and they all died. In the
end, he said to her, “Are you fumbling with provision for yourself?” And she died.^57This story of the mother and her seven sons is found in a number of varia-
tions.^58 One, that of the mother and her seven sons who were killed as martyrs
during the Maccabean era, will be discussed in the final section of this chap-
ter. Other versions, such as that attributed to Sefer H·asidimexplained that the
woman mentioned in this story sinned when her first son died by refusing to
recognize God’s judgment and will. Her refusal led to the eventual death of all
her sons.^59
The death of children is also explained as the result of other sins committed
by parents. For instance, Sefer H·asidimdiscusses those who sin by lamenting
the death of their children excessively, while failing to mourn the death of a
righteous leader (Z·addik) sufficiently. The author of Sefer H·asidimlinks the re-