Standing Before God: Purity and

      Impurity in the Synagogue

      Blessed are you … who has sanctified us with his commandments … separating us from impurity and cautioning us to beware of menstruants and (their) discharges.

      —Eleazar b. Judah, Sefer Rokeah, #317, p. 195

      Rashi and his students produced a number of books that detail the customs observed in their communities.¹ In several such works, there is a recurring passage that describes a practice attributed to select women of their time:

      There are women who refrain from entering the synagogue when they are menstrually impure although they do not need to do so. So why do they do this? If they believe that the synagogue is like the Temple, then why do they enter even after having immersed?² … In that case, one should avoid entering the sanctuary forever, [that is] until a sacrifice is brought in the future (after the arrival of the Messiah). But if the synagogue differs from the Temple, they should surely enter. After all, we [men] are all impure due to nocturnal emissions and [exposure to] death and insects, yet we [still] enter the synagogue. Thus we deduce that [a synagogue] is not like the Temple, and women may [also] enter. But in any event, it is a place of purity and [these women] are acting admirably (yafeh hen osot).³

      According to this text, some medieval Jewish women avoided the synagogue when they were menstruating, even though this practice was not required by halakhah, and their decision was considered praiseworthy. As in most religious cultures, medieval Judaism valued engagement in communal prayer in a specially designated venue as a preferred manner of communicating with God. In the medieval Jewish context, prayer services were primarily conducted in the synagogue⁴ and necessitated the presence of a male quorum.⁵ In this citation attributed to Rashi, certain women who were accustomed to attending prayers with their congregation chose to express their devotion to God and respect toward their community by refraining from entering the synagogue during their menstrual cycles.⁶ Their decision can be read as paradoxical, since presence rather than absence often defines piety.

      As noted in the introduction, the search for popular piety straddles the boundaries between the individual and communal spheres. Each Jew who engaged in religious practices, both “pious” and conventional, did so in anticipation of ultimately being personally judged by God. However, their actions were also expected to have bearing on the standing of the congregation as a whole. As such, concerns about corporeal purity were understood to have ramifications for individuals and for the entire community.

      This chapter discusses the heightened sensitivities to physical purity and impurity that led to pious practices which influenced participation in synagogue prayer.⁷ By tracing the development of observances that relate to corporeal purity in medieval Ashkenaz, this chapter investigates how presence (and absence) in the synagogue came to signify piety and the extent to which concerns about bodily purity became correlated with gender.⁸ After examining the evidence for these practices and their developments among Ashkenazic Jewry during the High Middle Ages, I then situate this data within the framework of Christian customs that were associated with female and male bodily purity and access to sacred spaces, especially entering the church to celebrate Mass. This contextualized investigation leads to the conclusion that the medieval Christian environment provides essential data for understanding the development of Jewish customs and ideas on the relationship between personal purity and communal participation in sacred spaces.

      Absence and Presence in the Medieval Synagogue

      It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the synagogue was the institution par excellence of medieval Jewish life, as the setting where the community prayed, shared meals, conducted legal discussions, celebrated and commemorated life-cycle rituals, and gathered in times of joy and crisis alike.⁹ The synagogue symbolized Jewish distinctiveness for adherents of other religions while it constituted a common space for Jews themselves.¹⁰ “Interrupting prayers” (a juridical procedure that involved imposing a break during prayer services so an individual’s complaint could be voiced and addressed) and herem (excommunication—the ultimate punishment, regularly exercised in medieval Europe) were effective precisely because of the close-knit nature of the Jewish community and the constant interdependence that bound the average Jew to the synagogue and related communal institutions.¹¹

      Prayer services were typically held in synagogue: twice a day on weekdays¹² and with more elaborate formats and schedules on the Sabbath, festivals, and fast days. Almost all medieval communities, except for the very smallest, had at least one synagogue,¹³ which would be located in buildings designated for communal purposes or in dedicated rooms within private homes.¹⁴

      Despite serving as the venue for a full range of Jewish communal gatherings,¹⁵ few studies have examined the synagogue as a center for social interaction, a forum for communal policies and religious politics, and a locus where piety was constantly expressed, monitored, and assessed. Among the scholars that have noted the social significance of the synagogue, Israel Abrahams opens Jewish Life in the Middle Ages by describing the synagogue as the “centre of social life” and illustrates this idea with several examples. The vast geographic and temporal sweep of his focus, however, on medieval Europe from north to south and on sources from the tenth to eighteenth centuries, precludes a comprehensive discussion of his claims.¹⁶ In his study of the function of the synagogue in the late Middle Ages, Jacob Katz primarily treats the synagogue as a religious setting, with minimal attention to its other roles.¹⁷ In more recent contributions to this line of inquiry, Robert Bonfil has discussed the synagogue in comparison to the medieval church and as a focal point of Jewish social life. He emphasizes the synagogue as a general meeting place where Jews from all strata of society would encounter each other and where the sacred and the profane would meet, emblematic of Jewish time and space.¹⁸ Alick Isaacs depicts the synagogue as a social center by focusing on the Torah, through public readings and other rituals related to it.¹⁹ Simha Goldin has explored the role of the synagogue in social mediation and community gatherings, especially as a setting for the socialization of children.²⁰

      In contrast to these studies, most research to date has traced the history of specific synagogue-based prayers or religious practices, subjects that pertained most directly to learned male members