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

Christian positions. First, however, a few words concerning divorce and change
are in order.
One of the most famous developments regarding Jewish family law in the
Middle Ages in Ashkenaz concerns divorce and occurred during the tenth or
eleventh century, the same period in which Christian scholars were reassess-
ing and severely limiting divorce in Christian society. According to Jewish law,
the divorce writ (get) is given by a man to his wife. Consequently, if a woman
instigated a divorce claim, a refusal on the part of her husband, to give her a
writ of divorce, was a major obstacle. The famous Takkanot (Statutes) attrib-
uted to R. Gershom (ca. 960–ca. 1028), MeHor haGolah(Light of the Exile),
decreed that a man cannot marry two women and, more important, that a man
cannot divorce his wife against her will. Although different interpretations of
this decree have been suggested, and the exact date at which his mandates be-
came law is debatable, there is no doubt that these issues were central during
the formative years preceding the Crusades, and that R. Gershom’s rulings
were the standard from the twelfth century onward.^64
The problem of infertility was just one issue linked to the ban of bigamy and
that of divorce without the wife’s consent. However, infertility is an important
instance, since it was a condition to which R. Gershom’s prohibition against
divorcing a woman against her will did not apply. In cases in which the woman
was found to be infertile, the situation was governed by the gendered obliga-
tion of procreation. According to Tractate Yevamot, a woman is considered bar-
ren if she has not borne a child during a ten-year period. I such cases, her hus-
band was expected to divorce her and marry another woman, so that he might
fulfill the religious obligation of procreation. During the Middle Ages in
Ashkenaz, men were expected to wait ten years before initiating such a divorce
process. Once ten years had passed, men were supposed to divorce their wives
and move on. According to the tradition passed down by different legal au-
thorities, and despite R. Gershom’s ruling prohibiting divorcing a woman
against her will, in this case, the religious obligation demanded that the man
divorce his wife. Yet the influence of R. Gershom’s ban complicated matters.
If prior to his ruling, a man could have married a second woman in order to
demonstrate his virility, he now had to divorce his first wife in order to do so.
In cases in which both husband and wife claimed that the other was to blame
for infertility, the ban limited opportunities for justifying the man’s claim.^65
Attitudes toward the issue of female infertility changed during the course of
the Middle Ages as well. Elimelekh Westreich has argued that during the tenth
and eleventh centuries, in the case of couples who tried to conceive for ten
years without interruption and failed to do so, female infertility was cited as le-
gitimate cause for divorce. In these cases, R. Gershom’s ban notwithstanding,
the man was supposed to be forced to divorce his wife and marry another
woman. In the twelfth century, this approach underwent substantial change.
Subsequent to the ruling of the Ra’aban (R. Eliezer b. Nathan, (ca. 1090–ca.

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