- As opposed to the lack of such encyclopedias in Ashkenaz, we possess such texts from Italy
and Spain. See, for example, R. Menah·em Ibn Zerah·, Z·eida laDerekh(Warsaw, 1880), Part 1,
Rule 3, chs. 13–14; and in medical manuscripts from Italy, MS Cambridge Ms. Dd. 68/10 (four-
teenth century), fol. 22a–23d. The difference between Ashkenaz and Spain or Italy in this instance
reflects the more general difference described above concerning medical texts from these differ-
ent locations. Supra, chap. 1, pp. 45–46. - Shah·ar, Childhood, 53–54; Berkvam, Enfance et maternité, 47–49; Schultz, Knowledge of
Childhood, 73. - In addition, as they believed that personality traits could be transmitted to the nursing infants
through the milk they suckled, medieval people were reticent to feed their children animal milk.
See Grieco, “Breast-feeding,” 21. - Shah·ar, Childhood, 53–55; Eadem, “Infants, Infant Care, and Attitudes toward Infancy,”
283–91. - For example: Klapisch-Zuber, “Blood Parents and Milk Parents,” 132–63.
- Vanessa Maher, “Breast-feeding in Cross Cultural Perspective,” in The Anthropology of
Breastfeeding(Oxford and Washington, D.C., 1992), 1–35, 9–11; Ortner, Making Gender, 14,
27–31. - Hastrup, “Breast-Feeding Patterns,” 91–108. This idea is also expressed succinctly in
Klapisch-Zuber’s “Including Women,” 2:3: “The roles assigned to women are assigned not by
virtue of women’s innate characteristics (their ability to bear children or their relative physical
weakness compared to men) but by virtue of a series of arguments that taken together, constitute
an ideological system.” - R. Menah·em Ibn Zerah·, Z·eida laDerekh, Part 1, Rule 3, ch. 14.
- A summary of this topic can be found in Shah·ar, Childhood, 1–6. This direction in research
was very popular in the seventies among psychoanalysts. For example, De Mause, “Evolution of
Childhood,” 1–79, esp. 26–39. - Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families, 136–48.
- Shah·ar, Childhood, is an outstanding example of this approach. In addition, see Hanawalt,
The Ties That Bound; Gottlieb, Family in the Western World; Berkvam, Enfance et maternité. Some
early modern scholars disagree over these same issues, as summarized in Cunningham, Children
and Childhood. - Ephraim E. Urbach, “Al Grimat Mavet biShegagah uMavet ba’Arisa,” Asufot1(1987): 319–
- Urbach (p.322) discusses a responsum of R. Meir b. Barukh (Maharam). See chapter 5 for fur-
ther discussion of this responsum. - Simh·a Goldin, “Beziehung der jüdischen Familie,” 211–56; Kanarfogel, “Attitudes toward
Childhood,” 1–35. In the appendix he brings a list of sources that discuss breast-feeding; Ta-Shma,
“Children in Medieval Germanic Jewry,” 263–80; Samuel Kottek, “HaHanaka beMekorot haYa-
hadut : Historia veHalakha,” Sefer Asia4(1983): 275–86. - See introduction, pp. 2–3.
- Some of the halakhic issues concerning breast-feeding have been summarized by Yisrael Z.
Gilat, “The Obligation of Nursing Children,” Diné Israel18(1995–96): 321–69 [in Hebrew]. - BT Bekhorot 7b.
- On the margins of this discussion of breast-feeding obligations, we find a certain discomfort
with the practice of breast-feeding. The Tosefta discusses whether or not breast-feeding is compa-
rable to “sucking from an abomination,” Tosefta, Niddah 2:3. Although this point of view did not
prevail, it does come up in some of the sources. - BT Berakhot 31b. This idea is expressed in other cultures as well. See the examples brought
by Grieco, “Breast-feeding,” 24. - Ketubbot 5:4, 9.
- BT Ta’anit 27a; Mishna Niddah 1:4. Like old women past menopause, pregnant women,
and sterile women, a nursing mother was not obligated by the same laws as all other women.
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