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

for the spiritual welfare of the child was to be favored over concern for his phys-
ical welfare.^145
The response of Christian society to this behavior suggests that Christians
saw and understood what these Jews were doing as a double insult to Chris-
tianity. Not only did they refuse to convert to Christianity, but by killing their
children they expressed the ultimate contempt for the Christian religion.
Scholars have described the tremendous anger with which Christians greeted
the Jewish response to the Crusade. While this anger had many facets, the
shared attitude toward children and the affront to this value that Christians per-
ceived in the deeds of the Jews were certainly components of the Christian
response.^146
These actions of Jewish parents and especially of mothers were described as
“unnatural” and as contrary to the order of society.^147 In Germany and north-
ern France, parenthood was understood in similar cultural terms in Jewish and
Christian society; both societies privileged the spiritual over what was under-
stood as the physical and natural. Looking back at this society from a modern
perspective, we must not judge this preference as evidence of the cruelty or
lack of affection of parents for their children. Rather, attitudes toward children
and childhood should be seen as a reflection of medieval society’s principles
and ideals. The understandings of women and the tasks they were allotted in
child rearing also reflected their place in society and the gender hierarchies of
their communities. Consequently, in order to attain a higher spiritual level,
whether as martyrs or as mulieres spirituales, women were required to abandon
the normative and physical attitudes toward children. This chapter has re-
vealed the shared nature of Jewish and Christian medieval society, and the joint
examination of Jewish and Christian parenting norms demonstrates how the
tensions between the two religious groups were shaped by this shared frame-
work. Jews and Christians used the same symbols and models, and their own
particular and often polemical interpretations derived from a shared heritage
and culture. This shared heritage and value system is expressed even in the ex-
treme and drastic circumstances of martyrdom and Kiddush haShem, in which
the two religions were embattled with each other and at a time when Jews and
Christians were emphasizing the distinction between themselves and their sur-
rounding cultures.

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