course, not uniquely Jewish. It might even have been of greater importance in
Christian sources. In Christianity, the origin of pain and death during child-
birth was also assigned to Eve.^97 Christians, like Jews, believed that women who
gave birth without pain were not in Eve’s lot. In Christian tradition, the Virgin
Mary was regularly characterized as not having suffered at birth, while in Jew-
ish tradition, only the midwives in Egypt were ascribed this quality.^98 In fact,
as Ulrike Rublack has recently shown, women who did not suffer during child-
birth were viewed with tremendous suspicion.^99 Pain during childbirth was the
lot of women and they were expected to bear this pain with perseverance.^100
Birth was also a symbol of the mundane world and its trials and tribulations.
A central source in this connection was Midrash Yez·irat haValad(The Midrash
of the Creation of the Newborn), which was well known in medieval Ashke-
naz.^101 The Midrash is based on Tractate Niddah(BT Niddah 30b–31a) and
appears in Midrash Tanh·umaas well as in medieval works such as Likutei ha-
Pardes, attributed to Rashi, and other medieval manuscripts. The Midrash has
two versions; one describes the fetus’s encounter with the world before leaving
the womb and after being born, whereas the other explains the creation of a
fetus in great detail. According to the Midrash, the creation of the embryo is
the product of cooperation between God, man, and woman, and is assisted by
an angel called Layil (Night) “When a man comes to have intercourse [le-
shamesh mitato] with his wife, God calls the angel responsible for pregnancy
and says: “Know that tonight this man is sowing the creation of a man.” The
Midrash also explains how the fetus is created:
R. Eliezer says the man sows white and the woman sows red and they mix with
each other and from them the fetus is created according to the will of God....
The white that the man sows, from it the bones and tendons and brain and nails
are formed, as well as the white in the eyes. The red that the woman sows, from
it the skin and flesh and blood are created, as well as the black in the eyes. Spirit
and soul and image and wisdom... and courage—they are given by God.^102The Midrash describes the time spent by the fetus inside his^103 mother’s womb
and divides this period into three parts. It also explains that the sex of the baby
is determined within the first forty days. These understandings are medical ex-
planations that can be traced back to Aristotle’s medical treatises on obstet-
rics.^104 For example, it was believed that the male’s soul is formed forty days
after conception, and the female soul eighty days after conception. These num-
bers also explain the duration of ritual impurity after birth, as mentioned in the
Bible: forty days for males and eighty for females.^105 Consequently, medieval
Jewish sources instruct expectant fathers to pray for the birth of a son during
the first forty days of a pregnancy.^106 After these first forty days, they believed
that the gender of the child had been determined; thus, they prohibited pray-
ing for a specific gender.^107
Although medieval writings discuss the centrality of the father in the for-