Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz. Elisheva Baumgarten

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СКАЧАТЬ It is likely that Jews knew when their neighbors and employees changed their patterns of church attendance since they saw them regularly enough to be familiar with their daily schedules. Given that Jewish and Christian women exchanged medical and especially gynecological knowledge, Jewish women could have easily heard about their peers’ menstrual practices. Evidence indicates that Christian women also wore specific clothing while menstruating, although, unlike the Jewish women, they did not wear white when bleeding ceased.¹⁴⁴ One could say that a common “ritual instinct”¹⁴⁵ was at work in both societies, founded on common traditions that originated in the Bible and on shared cultural conceptions of blood and impurity.¹⁴⁶

      I propose that this comparative analysis can help explain the assertions in twelfth-century Jewish literature that liken the blood of menstruation to the blood of circumcision and describe it as a symbol of the covenant between God and the Jews. As a minority, Jews were distancing themselves from and defining themselves in contrast to Christian society. On some level, one may also see medieval Christian scholars as continuing on the paths of their spiritual ancestors by defining Christianity according to its divergence from the menstrual practices identified with Jewish tradition.¹⁴⁷

      Christians were aware of Jewish menstrual practices, which they regarded with ambivalence. For example, Christian theologians noted this aspect of Jewish purity when warning their congregants against having sexual relations during their wives’ menstrual cycles. As Peter of Poitiers (ca. 1130–1215) wrote: “The Jews are rarely defiled by the stain of leprosy because they do not approach menstruating women.”¹⁴⁸ Thus, Christians acknowledged this Jewish observance and held shared medical and religious beliefs concerning its merits. At the same time, contemporaneous Christian scholars were actively diverting discussions of women’s impurity from menstruation to birth.

      Jews were aware that Christians had fewer and less exacting rituals associated with menstruation, as evidenced by their pejorative term for Christian men, bo‘alei niddot (those who have sexual relations with impure women). Moreover, in his instructions to Jewish men against having sexual contact with their menstruant wives, Eleazar of Worms not only warned his readers that any child born from such relations would contract leprosy,¹⁴⁹ but he also threatened that failure to observe the laws of niddah would lower their status to the level of their Christian neighbors: “For non-Jews have sexual relations with their wives while they are menstruating, as insects do, and that is why they are sent to hell.” He concluded by stating that any man who had intercourse with his wife while she was menstruating should fast for two hundred and seventy days, be flogged on each of those days, and also give extra charity.¹⁵⁰

      In a cultural environment where managing impurity was a major concern and the anxiety associated with pollution was mounting,¹⁵¹ Jews and Christians alike sought ways to sustain their purity while distinguishing themselves from one other. This competitive piety was manifest in the deeds of Jewish women and Christian men. It was also communicated in each group’s accusations against the other: Jews claimed that Christians were harming themselves by neglecting the laws of niddah and Christians ridiculed Jewish men by depicting them as menstruants.¹⁵²

      Yet, despite their myriad differences, rabbis and priests shared a foundation that was based not only on a common biblical heritage but also on the beliefs and practices that permeated medieval northern Europe. Among their mutual values was an emerging desire among the male elite in each society to resemble angels, as attested in late medieval writings. This aspiration was part of a self-reinforcing hierarchical ethos: the male leadership in both religions agreed on women’s roles and their inferiority to men.

      While holding certain shared beliefs and practices, Jews and Christians also defined themselves vis-à-vis each other. We have seen the centrality of bodily purity in settings for communal prayer, the church and the synagogue. In the Jewish context, we have traced the avoidance of synagogue prayer during menstruation from its inception as a practice that was initiated by pious women to its adoption by religious leaders and its establishment as a standard practice in Jewish society. Customs related to male impurity never became widespread among Jews. Among Christians, we have examined the development of inverse priorities: male impurity became the prime focus whereas concern for menstrual purity was dismissed as a Jewish matter. While it is impossible to study the full range of connections between learned and lay practice and the interactions between Jewish and Christian thought and custom, this discussion confirms gender as a fulcrum point for both dialogue and displaying difference.¹⁵³

      Visible Piety, Visible Practice

      By way of returning our attention to how medieval Jews practiced piety over and above their thinking about purity and impurity as abstract concepts, let us revisit the men and women whose concerns about purity led them to contend with their physicality and their beliefs. Ultimately, menstrual blood and seminal discharges are inseparable from the reality of each individual body. In contemporary societies, such matters belong to the private sphere without necessarily impinging on public knowledge. In the medieval world, at least for those who adhered to the instructions of religious authorities, these issues were far from personal. In the Christian world, men and women were supposed to admit impurity to their confessors. Where it was customary for men and women who were ritually impure to avoid coming to church or approaching the altar during Mass, presumably clerics and laity could readily surmise why women would cyclically distance themselves from attending Mass and taking the Eucharist.¹⁵⁴ In another sign of constant vigilance toward impurity, church seating was separated by gender to quell lust.¹⁵⁵

      As we have seen, menstrual status was also readily visible within Jewish culture. Furthermore, since it was not customary for women to go to the mikveh alone, at least some peers would witness a woman’s visit and know whether she was ritually pure or impure.¹⁵⁶ During the High Middle Ages, limitations on a menstruant’s activities were augmented in both the domestic and public realms. In addition to refraining from synagogue attendance and from physical contact with their husbands—from the mundane sharing of utensils to the intimacy of sexual intercourse—women would cease to cook and bake at this time as well.¹⁵⁷ We have also seen that women donned white clothes on “white days,” and some of their peers would adjust their seating in synagogue to avoid praying behind menstruants. These actions would all have provided communal knowledge of each woman’s level of purity.¹⁵⁸ Such tangible evidence explains how medieval scholars could warn their followers about the dangers inherent to gazing at menstruants.¹⁵⁹ In short, menstrual purity was as much a communal affair as a personal and marital responsibility, since the purity of the entire community depended on women’s painstaking observance of these rules. From one angle, it could be claimed that women performed purity rituals for their husbands’ sakes¹⁶⁰ so that piety insofar as it was linked to menstruation was bound to both women and men. And, returning to our opening theme, the synagogue was a primary location where information regarding purity was conveyed.

      Considering this examination of the commonalities and differences expressed among Jews and Christians, one can understand how personal purity came to reflect the holiness of the Jewish community to such an extent that medieval rabbis identified niddah as the defining symbol of the Jewish people and Jewish women’s covenant with God, and how women’s observance of ritual purity came to represent Jewish distinctiveness.¹⁶¹ The (male) leaders of Jewish communities were using menstrual purity, which they viewed as inherently Jewish, to emphasize the singularity of Jewish practice and, to a certain extent, as a counterpoint to celibacy, a salient element of Christian identity. As a result, in a world where impurity was often associated with sexual relations and corporeality, menstrual purity was a defining factor for Jewish society as a whole. Thus pious Jewish women were commended for immersing in the mikveh at the earliest permissible time even if their husbands were out of town and, consequently, sexual relations would necessarily be delayed. This scenario is illustrated in the writings of Peretz b. Elijah, who recorded that the daughter of Isaac of Evreux (who was also known for his piety) was so strict in her observance that she immersed in the mikveh at her first opportunity, even when her husband was СКАЧАТЬ