a change in Christian women’s and children’s participation in religious ritual
life as well. In the High Middle Ages, the age of confirmation was postponed
and women’s religiosity was sharply curtailed.^6 While these changes can be ex-
plained by internal developments within the church and Christian society, the
close comparison of Jewish and Christian culture has helped us identify these
trends as a part of more general, wider processes affecting members of both re-
ligious traditions.
Joint explanation does not exclude internal explanations of specific changes
within each tradition, but expands our understanding of both internal com-
munity issues and more general matters. This approach recognizes the social
reality in which Jews and Christians lived as close neighbors as well as their
shared intellectual milieu. While it does not detract from the clear religious
distinction between Jews and Christians that existed in medieval society, it en-
ables a better understanding of the shared aspects of medieval life, some of
which transcend presupposed differences and transgress boundaries.
Furthermore, our attempt to compare Jewish and Christian society in gen-
eral, rather than in specific instances, allows for a systematic study of medieval
Jewish society that examines the Jews as an integral part of their surroundings.
This study has shown that not only were there many similarities between the
way Jews and Christians chose to live their lives, but that the daily contacts be-
tween Jews and Christians were constant and numerous. The Jewish family,
which some have portrayed as a haven in which Jews were isolated from their
non-Jewish neighbors, was not an insular environment. Contact with Chris-
tians was part of everyday family life.
One aspect that has stood out in this study is the wealth of contact between
Jewish and Christian women. Jewish and Christian women were medical col-
leagues and they met as neighbors. Christian women worked in Jewish homes,
and Jewish children were cared for in Christian homes. The study of women,
Jewish and Christian, is the result of the recent interest in women’s and gen-
der studies, areas of interest that have developed methodologies for uncover-
ing the lives of women in the past and examining their lives in the context of
the society within which they lived. These issues have only just begun to be
addressed in medieval Jewish studies, and it is my hope that many more stud-
ies addressing the place of women and gender understandings and conceptions
will be undertaken in the coming years.
We may ask whether the connections between Jewish and Christians
women that were central to our discussion were the exception to the norm or
typical of contacts between Jewish and Christian men as well. While the con-
tacts between Jewish and Christian men were probably more frequent than re-
search to date has demonstrated, I would argue that Jewish women were par-
ticularly immersed in the lives of their Christian neighbors, because so many
of their daily contacts revolved around the home and child care, in which there
was employment of, and frequent contact with, Christian women. As such,
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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