Mothers and Children. Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe - Elisheva Baumgarten

estate and were not allowed to remain in the family house. In other places, they
had more rights. The specific economic and social circumstances surely influ-
enced the decisions made by widows regarding remarriage.^82
In Christian society, young widows who decided to remarry sometimes had
to make difficult decisions. In certain cases, the deceased husband’s family
would refuse to give them any part of the deceased husband’s estate and even
take custody of any children from the previous marriage. Hence, many wid-
ows were in a no-win situation. If they were not wealthy enough to survive on
their own, remarriage was a necessary choice. However, in some cases, the
price of remarriage was the relinquishing of their children. Furthermore, in
the case of young widows, society was often uncomfortable with these young
unmarried women, as they feared that they would tempt other men and en-
danger the morals of society.^83 Even in cases in which these women returned
to their father’s homes after becoming widows, their families often urged them
to remarry as quickly as possible, so as not to burden their families.^84
Comparing the social circumstances of Christian society with the neigh-
boring Jewish society is a complicated matter. First of all, we can assume there
were proportionately more women who could potentially remarry in Jewish so-
ciety than in Christian society: Mortality of spouses was probably similar in
both societies, but the option of divorce, which existed in Jewish society, did
not exist in Christian law. Second, no one has thoroughly investigated widow-
hood in medieval Ashkenaz. Cheryl Tallan, who has written a number of arti-
cles on the topic, has emphasized the advantages enjoyed by wealthy widows,
but little work has focused on the less fortunate.^85 Jewish widows were sup-
ported by their husband’s estate and lived in their husband’s house until they
decided to remarry. Alternatively, a widow could demand her ketubbah and
terminate her financial connection to her deceased husband’s family. There
were, however, often complications in these procedures. Many responsa indi-
cate that widows often had to contend with financial claims made by their de-
ceased husband’s family and his children.^86 Furthermore, the sources rarely
enable us to distinguish between younger and older widows and between the
pressures to remarry on women in either category. Based on the sources and
the surrounding European culture, one can assume that Jewish widows, espe-
cially young ones, felt a need to remarry fairly quickly. The discussions of how
quickly widows and divorcées could become engaged or get married after the
dissolution of their previous marriage testify to this.^87
In the case of remarriage, we can see that despite the belief in the “natural
love” of mothers for their children, under certain conditions, this love was not
trusted as sufficient. If mothers were suspected of not cherishing their children
when they were desperate to remarry, stepmothers were often portrayed as an
outright danger to their stepchildren. Sefer H·asidim portrays good stepmothers
as exceptions to the rule:

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