the case of Sefer Assaf, it is questionable to what extent the cures he suggests
were really used, as some of them seem very exotic. Moreover, due to their lim-
ited literacy, it is not clear if midwives could have used the book.
While references to midwives’ practices may be found sporadically in a num-
ber of manuscripts, especially from the fourteenth century onward, only one
text provides a glimpse into midwives’ actual practices.^137 This text is the third
chapter of the well-known circumciser’s manual KHlalei haMilahwritten in the
early thirteenth century by R. Jacob and his son R. Gershom haGozrim, the
circumcisers (literally, the cutters).^138 The third chapter contains explicit ref-
erences to its writer, R. Gershom, and therefore can be dated to the first third
of the thirteenth century.^139 R. Gershom recorded the practices of the mid-
wives in his vicinity and thus provides precious evidence of their actions.
R. Gershom’s manual is of great importance for understanding birth in me-
dieval society. First of all, it gives us a glimpse of cures used by Jews during birth,
which included cooking herbs, smoking substances under the birthing chair,
as well as the recitation of a variety of chants and incantations. The cures listed
in the manual are similar to those listed in some of the medical treatises of the
time, such as Hildegard of Bingen’s Physica and Curae et Causae. More im-
portant, the inclusion of the birthing instructions in a circumcisers’ manual en-
ables us to better understand birth and its place in medieval Jewish society.^140
Why was a circumciser interested in birth? If the practice of birthing was the
job of women, performed in a female space to which no man was privy, in-
cluding, by his own account, R. Gershom himself, why is he recording the
cures? These questions bring us back to some of the questions raised concern-
ing the involvement of men in the birthing process. The appearance of this cir-
cumciser in a central locus, passing on information he learned from midwives
to other midwives by way of other circumcisers who read his manual, illustrates
the intricacy of the politics of childbirth. Here we find a man placing himself
in a position of authority regarding care of women in labor. If most midwives
did not know how to read, then any circumciser who could pass on this infor-
mation gained a new authority over childbirth. It would seem that this is fur-
ther evidence of the deep involvement of patriarchy in the affairs of birth.
While R. Gershom’s treatise can be seen as a sign of male interest and, to a
certain extent, intervention in the world of the midwives, it also provides valu-
able affirmation of the midwives’ knowledge and authority. The “wise mid-
wives” (meyaldot h·akhamot) are the ultimate authorities. They know how to
expel the placenta and to identify and prevent miscarriages. They also know
how to ward off evil spirits and deal with other problems that come up during
birth. This stamp of approval of the midwives’ authority is of great significance
if we compare it with the situation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
when midwives were often accused of witchcraft. As scholars have suggested,
this accusation was specifically early modern and is not common in medieval
Christian sources.^141 The same can be said of the Jewish sources. Although
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(Rick Simeone)
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