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

In examining the nuclear family, I have detailed the daily praxis as well as
the division of labor between men and women, fathers and mothers, in me-
dieval Jewish society. While these divisions of labor were sometimes the result
of religious beliefs and their interpretation, we also witnessed how medieval
cultural understandings and concepts shaped common practice in ways differ-
ent than those of previous generations. Many components of medieval family
life remained constant throughout the Middle Ages and were a direct contin-
uation of more ancient practices. This applies to attitudes as well as to expected
behavior of children and their parents. The sources of the period attest both to
concern and care for children, and to the awareness of childhood as a unique
period of life. At the same time, we find different parenting practices that pre-
sent variations of more ancient models, and we find competing medieval atti-
tudes toward parenthood.
Despite the clear continuity of various traditions throughout the Middle
Ages, we can also discern a number of changes in the lives of medieval parents
and children. While at times these changes are small and almost inconse-
quential, in other cases they are more substantial. Together, they present a so-
ciety that altered and reshaped itself over time. Many such examples have been
discussed in the different chapters of his book and I will not repeat them here.
Rather, I will point to number of such changes and link them to some of the
more general conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence. Some of the
variations derive from new social patterns that changed over time. For exam-
ple, in the eleventh century, a divorced woman with a young infant could re-
marry fairly quickly, if she desired to do so. Her counterpart 150 years later
would have faced nearly insurmountable barriers to such a remarriage and
would have been required to wait longer. While it is easy to point to the legal
precedent that instituted this change, I attempted to outline the social cir-
cumstances that were the impetus for the legal decision and the dilemmas such
women faced as single mothers of young children. The relentless battles that
the different rabbis waged against the marriage of women with children under
age two demonstrated how pressing these issues were.
Examining the nuclear family and its daily and ritual life also offered us a
new view of Jewish society and of some of the tensions that existed within it—
both between families and along gender lines. Our ability to hear women’s
voices, voices one has to pry out of the male rabbinic narrative that character-
izes most of the medieval Jewish sources, was greater when examining sites of
tension. When discussing birth, we heard the midwives’ voices mediated by
their “colleagues,” the circumcisers. It was not always possible to hear these
voices, and in some cases we had to make do with a look at women’s behavior
and attempt to deduce their attitudes and stances from their described actions.
For example, in the case of birth rituals, we hear of women’s desires and ac-
tions most clearly when the male rabbinic authorities oppose them. Although
in many cases my conclusions pointed to society’s eventual acceptance of the

CONCLUSIONS 185