Conclusions
In these pages, we have followed the lives of children in their early years,
when they were sheltered by parental care. When the boys of medieval Ashke-
naz reached the age of five, six, or seven, they took a step toward independence,
as they began their schooling, accompanied by an elaborate ritual. The path
followed by these boys from this point on is fairly well documented—either
they chose to become scholars, or, in most cases, businessmen. The course pur-
sued by the girls is not as well evidenced. They remained within the home with
their mothers, preparing themselves for their roles as mothers, wives, and fi-
nancial supporters of their future families. In many cases, they too were edu-
cated, although their education was notably different from that of their broth-
ers, focusing on the practical laws of running a household and without the
emphasis on textual knowledge that characterized boys’ education.^1 These
modes of education reflected both the values of medieval Jewish society and
the future roles boys and girls were expected to assume.
The issues of parents and children in medieval Jewish society were exam-
ined within the context of the surrounding Christian world as one chapter of
a wider social history of the Jews. By examining daily life alongside the theo-
logical and ideological debates recorded in the texts written by the medieval
rabbis, we come to understand better the roles of women and children within
their families. We may also situate family and community rituals and daily life
within a wider social and cultural context. Despite the limitations of extant me-
dieval Jewish sources, these texts provide significant information and re-
flections of the social reality of the Jewish families and communities as well as
of the Christian society in which they lived. In this way, I have tried to supply
the other side of the coin to the theological issues that have been so central in
research to date.
This study has sought to further our knowledge of medieval Ashkenazic so-
ciety in three ways. On a descriptive level, I have outlined the contours of fam-
ily life and child care within the nuclear family. The nature of the sources and
the information they provide has led me to organize my analysis around the
stages of life and development of the children, rather than attempt to fully de-
scribe the material surroundings of the family. As such, this study is a first step
toward the writing of a fuller history of family life. Secondly, examining the fam-
ily and the ways in which mothers and fathers cared for their children has re-
vealed some of the communal structures and hierarchies that shaped and were
shaped by the family’s every day needs. On a third level, the study illuminates
the manifold social and intellectual relations between Jews and Christians and
the cultural appropriations of practice and belief in medieval Jewish society.