Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz. Elisheva Baumgarten
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Europe in the Middle Ages, they were grounded in antique Judaism. While Jews and Christians continued to debate and discuss menstrual impurity and seminal emissions, contrasting approaches and developments emerged: within medieval Jewish culture, menstruation and its correlated impurity became ever more central, whereas male impurity as well as the relationship between men and angels became a focus of Christian discussions.
It is noteworthy that the geographic scope of the trends and practices analyzed here can only partially be pieced together. While this chapter opens with a source that originated in northern France, the overwhelming majority of the evidence for Jewish practice comes from Germany. Despite this relatively sparse textual evidence, pronouncements concerning the importance of menstrual purity have been attested in contemporaneous writings by French Jews.136
An illustration of the Jewish emphasis on menstrual purity can be seen in Sefer Rokeah. Its author, Eleazar of Worms, introduced the section on niddah with a benediction: “Blessed are you, God of Israel, from this world to the next world, who has sanctified us with his commandments, separating us from impurity and cautioning us to beware of menstruants and (their) discharge.”137 This blessing was not recited liturgically or in relation to any practice. Rather, Eleazar of Worms used it as a rhetorical device in his writing to underscore the gravity of the topics being presented.138 His decision to highlight the significance of menstrual purity in Jewish tradition and in his community, while simultaneously dividing those who adhered to these observances from those who didn’t, mirrored popular sentiment among medieval Jews.
As noted, research by contemporary scholars—including Shaye Cohen, Alexandra Cuffel, Judith Baskin, and David Biale—have demonstrated the bond that tied observance of the laws of menstrual purity to Jewish identity in medieval Europe.139 During the High Middle Ages, scrupulous adherence to menstrual purity came to be understood as a major tenet of the Jewish covenant with God. This principle is reflected in the medieval Jewish response to the classic question: If circumcision, an exclusively male ritual, is the defining sign of the covenant in Judaism, how do Jewish females qualify as members of the covenant? Medieval Jewish scholars departed from the traditional answer—that Jewish women belong to the covenant by association with the men in their families—by providing this novel response: “Since God commanded males (to be circumcised) but not females, we may deduce that God commanded that the covenant be sealed at the locus of masculinity, and the blood of menstruation that women observe so they can inform their husbands of the onset of their menstrual cycles is the equivalent of the blood of circumcision.”140
This idea is stated in similar terms in Sefer Nizzahon Vetus, whose author explains that although Jewish women are not circumcised, they “are accepted [in the covenant] because they watch themselves and carefully observe the prohibitions connected with menstrual blood.”141 These sources suggest that the observance of menstrual purity was vital for Jewish communal identity.
In this vein, many modern scholars have presented medieval Jewish menstrual observances as so unique to Jewish religious culture that it precludes contextualization in a broad European cultural framework except as a symbol of Jewish-Christian difference. To the contrary, this chapter situates Jewish approaches to impurity—menstrual and otherwise—within the surrounding Christian society. From that perspective, the medieval Jewish focus on menstrual impurity may have emerged as a counterweight to the medieval Christian concerns about male impurity.142
I am neither positing that Christian discussions of these issues represent the sole impetus for Jewish preoccupation with them nor that Jewish concerns were primary motivating factors in Christian deliberations. Prior to this encounter in Ashkenaz, both Judaism and Christianity had well-established traditions regarding impurity in the sancta that originated in Leviticus and developed according to their respective trajectories over the centuries. I am suggesting, however, that medieval Jewish ideas and practices were reinforced by contact with Christians and knowledge of their customs. Jews and Christians lived in close proximity and Jewish households often employed Christian domestic workers.143 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