Search results for ""Author Elisheva Baumgarten""

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.

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In Biblical Women and Jewish Daily Life in the Middle Ages, Elisheva Baumgarten seeks a point of entry into the everyday existence of people who did not belong to the learned elite, and who therefore left no written records of their lives. She does so by turning to the Bible as it was read, reinterpreted, and seen by the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz. In the tellings, retellings, and illustrations of biblical stories, and especially of those centered around women, Baumgarten writes, we can find explanations and validations for the practices that structured birth, marriage, and death; women's inclusion in the liturgy and synagogue; and the roles of women as community leaders, givers of charity, and keepers of the household. Each of the book's chapters concentrates on a single figure or a cluster of biblical women—Eve, the Matriarchs, Deborah, Yael, Abigail, and Jephthah's daughter—to explore aspects of the domestic and communal lives of Northern French and German Jews living among Christians in urban settings. Throughout the book more than forty vivid medieval illuminations, most reproduced in color, help convey to modern readers what medieval people could have known visually about these biblical stories. "I do not claim that the genres I analyze here—literature, art, exegesis—mirror social practice," Baumgarten writes. "Rather, my goal is to examine how medieval Jewish engagement with the Bible offers a window onto aspects of the daily lives and cultural mentalités of Ashkenazic Jews in the High Middle Ages." In a final chapter, Baumgarten turns to the historical figure of Dulcia, a late twelfth-century woman, to ponder how our understanding of those people about whom we know relatively more can be enriched by considering the lives of those who have remained anonymous. The biblical stories through which Baumgarten reads contributed to shaping a world that is largely lost to us, and can help us, in turn, to gain access to lives of people of the past who left no written accounts of their beliefs and practices.

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This sourcebook is designed to introduce students to the everyday lives of the Jews who lived in the German Empire, northern France and England from the 11th to the mid-14th centuries. The volume consists of translations of primary sources written by or about medieval Jews, each source accompanied by an introduction that provides historical context. Through the sources, students can become familiar with the spaces that Jews frequented, their daily practices and rituals and their thinking. The subject matter ranges from culinary preferences and even details of sexual lives, to garments, objects and communal buildings. The documents testify to how Jews enacted their Sabbath and holidays, celebrated their weddings, births and other lifecycle events, and mourned their dead. Some of the sources focus on the relationships they had with their Christian neighbours, the local authorities and the Church, while others shed light on their economic activities and professions. With contributions by members of the "Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe" research team: Neta Bodner, Nureet Dermer, Aviya Doron, Miri Fenton, Etelle Kalaora, Albert Kohn, Andreas Lehnertz, Adi Namia-Cohen, Hannah Teddy Schachter and Amit Shafran.

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This sourcebook is designed to introduce students to the everyday lives of the Jews who lived in the German Empire, northern France and England from the 11th to the mid-14th centuries. The volume consists of translations of primary sources written by or about medieval Jews, each source accompanied by an introduction that provides historical context. Through the sources, students can become familiar with the spaces that Jews frequented, their daily practices and rituals and their thinking. The subject matter ranges from culinary preferences and even details of sexual lives, to garments, objects and communal buildings. The documents testify to how Jews enacted their Sabbath and holidays, celebrated their weddings, births and other lifecycle events, and mourned their dead. Some of the sources focus on the relationships they had with their Christian neighbours, the local authorities and the Church, while others shed light on their economic activities and professions. With contributions by members of the "Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe" research team: Neta Bodner, Nureet Dermer, Aviya Doron, Miri Fenton, Etelle Kalaora, Albert Kohn, Andreas Lehnertz, Adi Namia-Cohen, Hannah Teddy Schachter and Amit Shafran.

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