(Jerusalem, 1970), Rosh haShana, 69–71. For this piyut, see Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval He-
brew Poetry, (New York, 1970), 1: 314.
9.I deviate from the JPS translation, “Sarah’s lifetime [sing.],” as his comment is based on the
plural form of the Hebrew.
- Judah b. Samuel H·asid, Perushei haTorah leRabbi Yehuda heH·asid, ed. Isaac Samson Lange
(Jerusalem, 1973), 28, H·ayei Sarah, 23:1. - BT Nedarim 64a.
12.SHP, nos. 367, 1170.
13.SHP, no. 1155. - For example: Jacob Katz, “Marriage and Sexual Life among the Jews at the Close of the
Middle Ages,” Zion10(1945): 22–23, 40 [in Hebrew]. - Cohen and Horowitz, “In Search of the Sacred,” 225–50; Stow, “The Jewish Family,”
1103–1104. - In a broader context, we should note that differences of opinion with respect to procreation
were common in polemics between different religious groups. In antiquity, a variety of groups be-
sides Christians and their opponents, argued for celibacy or procreation—David Herlihy, Me-
dieval Households(Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1985), 23–26.
17.The process for women is described in detail in Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their
Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100(Chicago, 1998), 127–75. See also: John A. Nichols
and Lillian Thomas Shanks, Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Women(Kalamazoo, Mich.,
1984); Penelope Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France
(Chicago and London, 1991), 133–65, 229–47. Kirsten Hastrup discusses these ideas outside the
medieval context in her article: “The Semantics of Biology: Virginity,” in Defining Females. The
Nature of Women in Society, ed. Shirley Ardener (Oxford and Providence, 1993), 34–50, and esp.
40–44. Even when women lived as celibate virgins, the expectations of them were different from
those of men. See Barbara Newman, “Hildegard and Her Hagiographers: The Remaking of Female
Sainthood,” in Gendered Voices, ed. Catherine Mooney (Philadelphia, 1999), 16–34.
18.Caroline W. Bynum, “And Woman His Humanity: Female Imagery in the Religious Writ-
ing of the Later Middle Ages,” in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human
Body in Medieval Religion(New York, 1991), 151–79; Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, 64–100. - Cohen, “Be Fertile”; 231.
- For example, according to R. Eleazar b. Judah, Sefer Rokeah·, no. 353, wheat was thrown on
the bride and groom, and they were told “be fertile and multiply.” - Dyan Elliot, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock(Princeton, 1993),
137–38; Jean Gaudemet, Le mariage en Occident(Paris, 1987), 181–88; Christopher Brooke, The
Medieval Idea of Marriage(Oxford, 1989), 273–80. - Ton Brandenberg, “Saint Anne: A Holy Grandmother and Her Children,” in Sanctity and
Motherhood. Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (New
York-London, 1995), 31–65; Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (eds.), Interpreting Cultural
Symbols. Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society(Athens, Ga., 1990).
23.It should be noted that these conclusions do not shed light on attitudes toward family or chil-
dren in the Early Middle Ages in Jewish or Christian society. These issues warrant a separate study. - Jeremy Cohen, “Conjugal Sex in RaABaD,” Jewish History6 (1992): 65–78, esp. 71–74.
- Dalia H·oshen, The Fire Symbol in Talmuddic-Aggadic Exegesis, Diss. submitted for Ph.D.
Phil. (Bar Ilan University, 1989), 132–57, and esp. 142–45 [in Hebrew]; Eadem, “Sexual Rela-
tions between Husband and Wife,” S’vara3 (1993): 39–45 [in Hebrew]. - MS Oxford Bodl. Mich. 84 (784), fol. 148b. This story does not appear in the printed edi-
tions of Sefer H·asidim.
27.SHP, no. 984, 989. This attitude has been emphasized in the work of Baskin, “Problem of
Women,” 1–18. - This was suggested many years ago by Yitzhak Baer in his article: “The Religious-Social Ten-