certainly demonstrates shared attitudes. While we have no hard evidence of di-
alogue between Jewish and Christian authorities or communities, it is possible
to outline a general trend during the Middle Ages, of authorities who sought to
limit the cases of divorce. This development becomes all the more important
in the Christian medieval context outlined above, in which marriage became
an important sacrament and procreation an important part of this sacrament.
FertilityInfertility is the exception that teaches us about the norm. Although it is not as
easy to provide details about the lives of couples who were fertile, as they are
not mentioned as frequently in the sources, documenting the norm is no less
important. A basic assumption in medieval society was that fertility was the
norm. A couple was expected to have children as quickly as possible after mar-
riage. As R. Meir of Rothenburg stated in one of his responsa: “Most women
conceive and give birth.”^83 Although pregnancy and birth certainly concerned
both men and women in medieval society, the sources we have, written only by
men, provide a very partial glimpse of this reality. Not only were pregnancy and
birth experienced by women, but in those times, these women were cared for
by other women. This is not to say that birth was a private affair; the opposite is
true. As recent research has emphasized, birth was very much a social affair, as
the parturients were attended by a number of women in their communities. But
birth took place in a gendered space, without the physical presence of men. As
such, the extant sources provide only very partial access to the women’s space
of birth. The information we do possess on the birthing space, entirely written
by men, can serve as a commentary on how men and patriarchy saw birth.^84
The gap between the information we have about birth in medieval Europe
and the knowledge that birth was the privileged domain of women has sparked
substantial scholarly interest in the topic over the past two decades. Although
previous scholars dismissed medieval birth practice as a topic too difficult to
examine due to the lack of sources, recently, some scholars, especially feminist
scholars, have been eager to investigate this world.^85 Approaches toward this
topic, however, have changed substantially over time. While early work re-
garding birth treated the birthing process as a female space to which men had
no access and in which common power hierarchies were reversed and women
were “on top,” recent research has suggested that birth must be viewed as an
integral part of patriarchal society.^86 The existence of this female space was not
autonomous and cannot be understood independently of the space of the so-
ciety at large.
While birth in medieval Christian society has been the subject of intense
scrutiny, the study of birth in medieval Jewish society is still in its infancy. Re-
cently, Ron Barkai has published a book on medieval gynecological texts, in