Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz. Elisheva Baumgarten

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      By framing menstruation as a covenantal sign, medieval rabbis intensified and perpetuated the position of women’s purity relative to their husbands and to Jewish society. This served to diminish the already marginal role that women held in communal prayer.¹⁶³ Gender roles, domestic responsibilities, and the laws of menstruation converge in relation to the topic of whether men should instruct and supervise their female relatives on purity practices, an issue that arises with fair regularity in this geographic region. It is hardly surprising that Judah the Pious and other medieval rabbis suggested that fathers teach their daughters the laws of niddah rather than entrust their wives with this sacred obligation.¹⁶⁴

      Ironically, a logistical question embedded in this study remains virtually untouched: Throughout these discussions of women remaining outside the synagogue, precisely which architectural structure were they avoiding? The lack of data on this seemingly basic question characterizes the sources available from the Jewish community in this region and time period. Excavations from medieval cities (e.g., Cologne, Worms, Speyer, and others) have pointed to an archaeological feature that appears to have been innovated during the High Middle Ages, a frauenschul (a women’s synagogue) in the form of a separate prayer space adjacent to the main sanctuary.¹⁶⁵ Evidence from other communities, such as Prague, also points to synagogues with galleries for women’s prayers that were adjacent to the main sanctuary, while other locations, such as Regensburg and Erfurt, had no such area. Are such women’s synagogues the physical setting for textual descriptions of limitations on entering synagogues? Furthermore, did these constraints apply to all menstruants in the Jewish community? Were women without husbands, namely widows and divorced women, expected to perform the public aspects of the laws of niddah? Or did these practices only apply to married women? These more nuanced questions are not addressed in medieval rabbinic sources. Archaeological excavations from urban sites in Germany reveal that ritual baths (mikvaot) were first built in many communities from the late twelfth to the late thirteenth century, almost always beside the synagogue.¹⁶⁶ These findings contribute to our understanding of pious practice in Ashkenaz during this era, since such structural remains offer yet another indication of a growing communal concern with purity.

      Thus, we see that during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a process that began with rigorous ritual observance by a few women led to the absence of menstruants from the synagogue. As women’s practice of menstrual restrictions became defining aspects of female Jewish identity and Jewish communal purity, women were increasingly distanced from the institutional and geographic center of their community. What began as a personal expression of piety became a justification for the marginalization of women in the synagogue.

      However, the intensification of these restrictions did not necessarily preclude menstruants from approaching the synagogue vicinity or block their knowledge of communal life within its walls. On the contrary, the imposition of physical distance may have elevated women’s awareness of synagogue activities and their longing to return. The exclusion of women from the synagogue during their times of impurity may have accentuated the centrality of the synagogue in medieval Jewish life.

      A number of medieval sources refer to women attending synagogue services during the week, on the Sabbath, and on holidays. In one responsum, Rashi tells of a woman whose servant came to synagogue, beckoning her Jewish employer to leave services so they could discuss an urgent matter.¹⁶⁷ So, too, Isaac b. Abraham (Ritzba, twelfth century) tells of a woman who initiated the procedure of “interrupting of services” to present a claim against her purportedly impotent husband, which the community could then address.¹⁶⁸

      The sources suggest that women, like men, attended daily and festival synagogue services, although such descriptions are always in the context of specific events rather than as a normative or expected practice. Fusing synagogue etiquette and piety, Sefer Hasidim reprimands men and women who arrive late for services or leave early, and praises those who are present throughout by promising that such devotion will ensure them respectable places in heaven.¹⁶⁹ Comparing the instructions for men at prayer in Sefer Hasidim with the eulogy that Eleazar of Worms composed about his wife, Dulcia, we see that she is described as having fulfilled many of those observances.¹⁷⁰ Dulcia attended prayers (coming early and staying late) and recited additional psalms and petitions, including some that were particular to Hasidei Ashkenaz. Dulcia also led women in prayer and taught liturgical prayers to her female peers. Her presence in the synagogue was an expression of her personal devotion, which went beyond her participation in daily and holiday practice to include preparing wicks for synagogue candles and standing throughout all prayers on Yom Kippur.¹⁷¹

      One could discount the abundant pious practices attributed to Dulcia as unrepresentative if such descriptions did not also appear on numerous epitaphs from the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Tombstones memorialize women with descriptions of their piety (e.g., praying with great devotion, arriving early for synagogue services, and praying with a positive and pious attitude).¹⁷² Yemima Hovav has shown that remarks on piety in connection to prayers were distributed quite evenly among epitaphs for men and women during the early modern period.¹⁷³

      Given the textual evidence that attests to women’s participation in synagogue life, the rabbinic instruction that women absent themselves from this vital institution during menstruation underscores the prioritization of female purity over other expressions of piety. In contrast, Jewish men’s concerns about their own purity did not diminish rabbinic advocacy of their synagogue attendance. Rather, medieval writers emphasized that men should pray in private and attend synagogue prayers without interruption despite their state of impurity. By comparison, irrespective of their high level of participation in synagogue prayer, women’s access to the sacred was ever more constricted by their status with respect to impurity during the High Middle Ages.

      CHAPTER 2

      Jewish Fasting and Atonement

      in a Christian Context

      I knew that Jews and Christians did not observe the same rules of fasting.

      —Herman-Judah, A Short Account, 92, ll. 1128–29

      As the previous chapter demonstrated, pious practices were often linked to precise times and places. This chapter further examines pious practices as they related to eating and abstaining from food, with a specific focus on fasting. Just as culinary norms—what is eaten; when, where, and with whom; and, of course, how food is prepared—constitute individual and communal understandings of belonging, belief, and status, so too fasting serves to signify social and religious identity in all cultures.¹

      During the past century, anthropologists have assessed the many roles that food plays in communal and self-definition,² and they have also demonstrated the dynamic nature of these symbols.³ The phenomena that have been elucidated by this research are hardly limited to modernity; they were manifested in pre-modern life and religion as well. Jewish dietary laws offer a prime example of practices whose constant elements and changing factors have been studied in great detail. These precepts were initially set forth in the Bible and continued to develop through late antiquity and the Middle Ages according to each era and location, ever integrating local realities while preserving ancient traditions. Within the Jewish community, dietary practices cultivated a preoccupation with food and bound the acts of preparing and eating meals within the group.⁴ In each generation and setting, these instructions effectively separated Jews from their non-Jewish neighbors.

      The significance of fasting for medieval Jews was not dissimilar to the meanings imbued in culinary practices, and in many ways refraining from food and drink complemented dietary regulations. The roles of food and fasting in daily rituals and in rhythms of commemoration and celebration are among the primary СКАЧАТЬ