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

Jewish and Christian women’s interactions can be seen as a channel and a link
between Jewish and Christian society.
While some instances demonstrated great similarity between Jewish and
Christian society, in other cases we saw significant differences. Some of these
differences resulted from an intentional effort to separate the two societies and
religious identities, while in other cases I suggested that the difference was the
result of the distinction between a minority and a majority society. In all these
instances, we can only identify the nature of these differences and similarities
by examining the Jewish communities within the wider cultural milieu. Chris-
tian practices that have previously been read in light of theological outlooks or
religious motivations, such as churching or co-parenting, may be seen in a dif-
ferent light when compared with changes in Jewish practice. When examin-
ing Jewish practices, we have seen a great degree of similarity to Christian prac-
tices. These comparisons underline the fact that differences between Jewish
and Christian society were not always organized around theological or reli-
gious motivations, and in some cases the same practices were upheld by Jews
and Christians and supported by different explanations.
Our examination of the family as a unit, and of mothers in particular opens
a new area of historical inquiry into medieval Jewish history and offers a richer
understanding of Jewish life in the past. This study is a first step toward a more
depthful social history of Jewish families in medieval Ashkenaz that will in-
clude other stages in family life as well as a fuller economic and cultural his-
tory. The focus on the close contacts between Jews and Christians and the
world they shared opens new vistas for research and encourages historians of
both Jewish and Christian society to search for and learn from these compar-
isons. By comparing and filling in the blanks when necessary, we can piece to-
gether a larger picture of the knowledge shared by Jews and Christians, men
and women, in medieval society, and we can identify avenues along which Jews
and Christians learned and appropriated ideas that were incorporated into
both Jewish and Christian cultures. It is my hope that by examining the strate-
gies medieval Jews used both consciously and unconsciously, while preserving
their identity and introducing change and innovation into their daily and rit-
ual lives, we have allowed voices that had not yet been heard be sounded. We
can learn from this inquiry that isolation is not necessarily the only way for a
minority group to maintain distinct national and religious identities and to sur-
vive as a minority.

CONCLUSIONS 189