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

ideas and behavior recommended by the male legal authorities, the exposure
of the social negotiation processes within the halakhic and textual sources was
the key to understanding the society’s values.
The attempt to include Jewish women in the medieval historiographic tra-
dition is a recent one. As such, the aspects of women’s lives discussed in this
book are a first step toward a fuller picture of women’s lives. When looking for
information relating to women, we found it easier to locate when examining
topics such as motherhood and birth, which have inherent female aspects. Fur-
thermore, since these women are presented as part of their communities and
surroundings, the study of medieval women reveals many new aspects of their
society. At the same time, we saw important male involvement in matters that
have traditionally been considered of female concern, such as issues around
the Kindbetterin, as well as constant contact between women and areas that
have traditionally been considered male. For example, when studying mid-
wives we learned about medical practice within the Jewish community, a prac-
tice that often refers to women only in passing. In a different case, when dis-
cussing attitudes toward overlying and the death of children, we found a richly
documented practice of penances and ways of atonement that have until now
been studied in almost exclusively male terms.
One can conclude that motherhood is not only an important topic of re-
search in and of itself, but also a key to understanding other aspects of Jewish
society. Women had many roles, and motherhood was a central one. By look-
ing for mothers and information on women as mothers, we may learn much
about other aspects of society that have little to do with being a mother, but, as
they touch on the lives of women, they are discussed in similar contexts.
From a methodological point of view, studying women along with children
and the wider community (rather than women alone) sheds light on various
aspects of society and elucidates the complexities of medieval life. Limitations
placed on female religious practice took on new meanings when such change
affected children as well. While the Jewish society in question was a patriar-
chal one, our examination shows that the divisions between male and female
realms were not always straightforward. One of the central conclusions of this
book, as illustrated through observations on the changing ceremony of cir-
cumcision, was that women’s place in religious ritual underwent substantive
change during the thirteenth century and that these changes were part of
broader social changes.
As other studies, first and foremost Ivan Marcus’s Rituals of Childhood, have
shown, and as was described briefly in the appendix to chapter 2, the partici-
pation of male children in religious rituals changed during the course of the
thirteenth century. Whereas previously young boys were encouraged to per-
form a variety of commandments—such as wearing z·iz·it and donning
tefillin—in the thirteenth century, these obligations were postponed until after
age thirteen. While age thirteen has always borne special significance within

186 CONCLUSIONS