was careful. When he was once a sandek and his wife was not with him, he com-
manded that the child should be brought to him at the synagogue. For it is the
way of women to catch onto the cloth of the one entering the birthing chamber
to bring the child and escort him to the commandment [of circumcision]. And
he [Maharil] said: If Maharam was careful that a woman not enter the men’s sec-
tion, among the men, he [Maharam] also was [careful] that a man not enter among
the women, as the more one distances himself from women, the better it is.^88It is clear from this passage that the Maharam’s ruling forbidding women
to serve as ba’alot brit in the synagogue had become commonly accepted by
the late fourteenth century, although we might read the repetition of the pro-
hibition as a sign of continuing tension around this issue.^89 This source iden-
tifies gendered spaces filled with tensions. The space of birth, the birthing
chamber, was women’s space. Maharil suggests (and attributes his suggestion
to Maharam’s [R. Meir’s] instructions) that men should avoid entering this
space; he also reports the difficulties encountered by men who do enter this
women’s space. The synagogue, or at least the men’s section in the synagogue,
is clearly men’s space, and women were not to be admitted. This idea of two
gendered spaces, the Kindbetterin’s room and the synagogue, and the tensions
linked with them in the context of the circumcision ceremony, is evident in
a passage from Sefer Leket Yosher, the fifteenth-century book by R. Joseph b.
Moses (1423–1490). He reports one incident in which these tensions became
unbearable:
Once there was a circumcision and the women were delayed in coming to the
synagogue and a prominent [rich] man was the ba’al brit... and he said to the
rich man: “Sit at my house.” And when the women arrived at the synagogue with
the infant he sent the shammes to the women [and said]: “Stand there and wait
for us for as long as we have been waiting for you.” And the women stood re-
proached until everyone knew of their foul deed, and the whole community
thanked him with the exception of one scholar who said that it was an insult to
the child, and that they [the women] should have been punished differently.^90In conclusion, while many scholars have pointed to R. Meir’s restriction of
women’s role in the circumcision ceremony, few have attempted to specify
what this role actually was and to follow the arguments conducted around it.
The study of the role of the ba’alat brit, utilizing the variety of sources that refer
to it, rather than merely the prohibition as it appears in Sefer Tashbez·, brings
to light a complex social setting and the tensions it contained. When examin-
ing the ba’alat brit in the context of the circumcision ritual as a whole, and not
just as an aspect of female religious activity, this change takes on a new mean-
ing. The role of the ba’alei brit was of great importance in the medieval cir-
cumcision ritual, as was that of co-parents in the baptism ritual. This change
in women’s roles evokes a context much wider than that of circumcision.^91 We