Baumgarten Mothers and Children

Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-4926-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Reihe: Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Baumgarten, Elisheva

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte des Judentums (Diaspora)
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Mittelalterliche, neuzeitliche Archäologie (Europa)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1

Chapter One. Birth 21

Chapter Two. Circumcision and Baptism 55

Chapter Three. Additional Birth Rituals 92

Chapter Four. Maternal Nursing and Wet Nurses: Feeding and Caring for Infants 119

Chapter Five. Parents and Children: Competing Values 154

Conclusions 184

Notes 191

Glossary 241

Bibliography 243

Index 269

Über Autor(innen)

Elisheva Baumgarten is Lecturer in the Department of Jewish History and the Gender Studies Program at Bar Ilan University.