Mothers and Children
Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe
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This book presents a synthetic history of the family--the most basic building block of medieval Jewish communities--in Germany and northern France during the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children, it also advances recent efforts to write a comparative Jewish-Christian social history.
Elisheva Baumgarten draws on a rich trove of primary sources to give a full portrait of medieval Jewish family life during the period of childhood from birth to the beginning of formal education at age seven. Illustrating the importance of understanding Jewish practice in the context of Christian society and recognizing the shared foundations in both societies, Baumgarten's examination of Jewish and Christian practices and attitudes is explicitly comparative. Her analysis is also wideranging, covering nearly every aspect of home life and childrearing, including pregnancy, midwifery, birth and initiation rituals, nursing, sterility, infanticide, remarriage, attitudes toward mothers and fathers, gender hierarchies, divorce, widowhood, early education, and the place of children in the home, synagogue, and community.
A richly detailed and deeply researched contribution to our understanding of the relationship between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors, Mothers and Children provides a key analysis of the history of Jewish families in medieval Ashkenaz.
About this Author
Elisheva Baumgarten is Lecturer in the Department of Jewish History and the Gender Studies Program at Bar Ilan University.
Reviews
"Winner of the 2008 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Gender Studies, Association for Jewish Studies"
"Winner of the 2005 Koret Jewish Book Award in History, Koret Foundation"
"Runner-Up for the 2005 National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies category, Jewish Book Council"
"Baumgarten's writing of Ashkenaz medieval history as seen through a gender perspective advances a more inclusive reading of Jewish history."
"[T]horoughly researched and lucidly written. . . . Baumgarten has opened an erudite and well-constructed window into an area of Jewish life . . . that has long eluded sustained productive treatment by modern scholarship. She has advanced the field considerably in this estimable work."---Ephraim Kanarfogel, American Historical Review
"[Baumgarten's] scholarship is thorough and meticulous, and her judgment is intelligent and reliable. . . . She has thus made a major contribution in so carefully and convincingly delineating the interconnections of medieval Jewish and Christian family life."---Sarah Lipton, Medieval Review
"In Elisheva Baumgarten's erudite and captivating chronicle of Jewish family life in the Middle Ages, several surprising revelations may cause us to rethink our presumptions about medieval Jewish women. . . . Baumgarten displays not only mastery of Jewish sources, but a considerable familiarity with Christian texts and anthropological literature."---David Wolpe, The Jerusalem Post
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