there are some references to older women bewitching women in childbirth,
they seem to be the exception to the rule.
The references to these “bewitching” women and midwives reveal further
details about birth and the identity of those involved in the process. For ex-
ample the author of Sefer H·asidim relates:
In one place where there were many women only few of them were pregnant,
whereas in another place almost all are pregnant. They asked a wise-man and the
wise-man said: “Know that I have investigated [and found] that in the place where
they are pregnant it is because the midwives go with the women to the mikve [lit-
erally, in the text, ‘the house of immersion’] and are happy that the women con-
ceive; but in a place where few women conceive it is because those who go with
the women to the mikve are not midwives and they bewitch the women so that
they do not become pregnant. [And that way] they [the women] will often be men-
strually impure and they will often [need to] immerse [themselves] and give them
[the midwives] a salary. Therefore, one must carefully choose an honest [kosher]
and trustworthy woman, so that she may be trusted when she testifies to proper
immersion, and [she should be] a righteous woman who will not bewitch others
so that they will [not] become pregnant, for it is easy to cast a spell.^142This source traces the very thin line between bewitchment and medicine and
also illustrates one of the ways in which midwives were paid for their services.
This source also reveals that midwives were commonly believed to possess pow-
ers to affect fertility.
Another example of a woman who bewitches others, in this case a woman
in labor, can be found in Rashi’s commentary on the Talmudic story con-
cerning Yoh·ani bat Retavi that appears in the Tractate Sotah. Yoh·ani bat Re-
tavi is mentioned as an example of a “gadabout widow” (Almana shovavit—
BT Sotah 22a) who brings destruction upon the world. The Talmud mentions
Yoh·ani bat Retavi without explaining what she does. Rashi explains:
She was a widow witch, and when the time came for a woman to give birth she
would close her womb with magic and after she [the woman in childbirth] would
suffer much, she [Yoh·ani] would say “I will go and beg mercy. Perhaps my prayer
will be heard,” and she would go and reverse her magic, and the baby would come
out. Once she had a day laborer in her home when she went to the home of the
woman giving birth and her hired help heard the noise of magic rattling in a dish
like an infant making noise in its mother’s womb, and he came and removed the
covers of the dishes and the magic escaped and the infant was born. Henceforth,
everyone knew that she [Yoh·ani] was a witch.^143
Yoh·ani’s magic is also mentioned by R. Judah the Pious who was also famil-
iar with the tradition referred to by Rashi. He states: “She was a woman who
bewitched women so that they did not give birth, since the soul [of the infant]
was in the bowls until she opened [them].”^144 It is important to note that