The Jewish and Christian attitudes toward procreation as described above,
raise new possibilities for comparative study of Jews and Christians in medieval
Europe. The suggested similarity between the needs and beliefs of Jewish and
Christian families with regard to procreation is central to this book’s argument.
I wish to compare Jewish families to Christian families, rather than to the mi-
nority that chose to live celibate lives. As is clear from studies of birth in me-
dieval Europe, Christian couples were interested in bearing offspring, and,
when children were not born soon after marriage, they sought solutions to the
problem.^31 This argument for a shared attitude toward procreation within fam-
ily frameworks will be the basis of the discussion that follows, where we will dis-
cuss and compare Jewish and Christian attitudes toward fertility and sterility.
Men and WomenBefore we discuss medieval approaches to fertility and infertility, let us briefly
examine the system that emerges from the biological and theological elements
outlined above from a gender perspective. Although I will restrict my discus-
sion to the topic of procreation, these concepts can also teach us much about
the construction of women’s religious identity in general. One of the ideas sug-
gested by the author of Sefer Niz·ah·on Vetusis that having children is a char-
acteristic of the God-fearing man. Thus, although both men and women were
involved in procreation, it was considered a gendered task and was incumbent
only upon men. Jewish women were not obligated to perform the command-
ment of procreation. This religious understanding was based on the biological
understandings, which serve as both reason and justification for the exclusion
of women. Although Amoraic sources do debate women’s obligation to pro-
create, medieval sources are emphatic on this point. The medieval commen-
tators, first and foremost Rashi, repeat the Talmudic interpretation of the verse
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and conquer it” (Gen. 1:28) and ex-
plain: “It is man’s nature to conquer, it is not woman’s nature.”^32 This expla-
nation assumes that women are not naturally inclined to certain types of ac-
tivity. This “biological” explanation is not limited to women’s inability to
perform procreative commandments. In cases of other commandments from
which women are exempted, we find similar explanations.^33
This view accords with the medieval medical understanding of women as
receptacles of the fetus, whose bodies were designed to protect the baby dur-
ing pregnancy.^34 Thus, in Christian religious thought, the Virgin Mary served
as the mediatrix between God and humanity by protecting Jesus in her womb
throughout her pregnancy; as such, her example became a paradigm to be im-
itated by medieval women.^35 Jewish texts also present this view of women’s
bodies—as containers for the fetus on its way to this world.^36 The Jewish texts
adopt Galen’s two-seed theory.^37 According to this theory, both mother and fa-