Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz. Elisheva Baumgarten
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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 traveling.162
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