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

Chapter Two

CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM

The baptism of Jews includes a peculiar custom: they per-

form it by cutting.

—Wolfram von Eschenbach, Willelham

In medieval Jewish society, as in all societies, the days after birth were days
of great concern for the newborn and his or her mother. Many ceremonies
were performed to help the society and the family cope with this concern and
to welcome the newborn into their midst. These ceremonies marked the ac-
ceptance of the baby into the community and were designed to protect it from
evil spirits.^1 Jewish boys were welcomed into both their families and their com-
munity by way of the circumcision ritual that took place eight days after birth.
This ritual will be the focus of this chapter. We will discuss the meager infor-
mation we possess on the welcoming of girls into medieval society, along with
additional birth ceremonies in chapter 3.
The circumcision ritual was a central religious obligation and a significant
community event in medieval Europe. We find details concerning the time of
the rite as well as the identity and actions of the participants in a wide range of
texts. Because of its centrality, circumcision provides us with a window into the
organization, hermeneutics, and practices of medieval Jews.^2 As a male ritual,
circumcision reflects, in a condensed form, traditional gender divisions and
understandings within medieval Jewish society. Since circumcision was also
central in medieval Jewish-Christian discussions and polemics between Jews
and Christians, it provides a useful case study for these relations and their so-
cial implications. We may better understand the specific social and cultural
significances attributed to circumcision in the Jewish-Christian context by
comparing it with baptism.
Over the past years, circumcision has been the topic of much research and
discussion. Two books have been written on the topic, and a number of essays
and collections of essays have been published. Nissan Rubin^3 described the
practice of birth ceremonies during the period of the Mishna and the Talmud;
Lawrence Hoffman discussed the development of the circumcision rite in
Gaonic times, devoting special attention to its gendered implications.^4 The
two authors utilize different anthropological approaches to circumcision and
discuss their applicability to Jewish sources.
Both discuss three central approaches to circumcision in anthropological