Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination: Jewish Cultural Studies Volume 5 9781906764661, 9781786948533

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JEWISH CULTURAL STUDIES V O L U M E

F I V E

The Jewish Cultural Studies series is sponsored by the Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Section of the American Folklore Society in co-operation with the Council on the Anthropology of Jews and Judaism of the American Anthropological Association. Members of the Section receive volumes as a privilege of membership. For more information see . The Section is also the sponsor of the international Raphael Patai Prize, given to an outstanding student essay in English on Jewish folklore and ethnology. The chapter in this volume by Tsila Zan-Bar Tsur is a revision of a paper that received the prize in 2014. For more information, see the website listed above or visit .

THE LITTMAN LIBRARY OF J E W I S H C I V I L I Z AT I O N

Dedicated to the memory of Louis Thomas Sidney Littman who founded the Littman Library for the love of God and as an act of charity in memory of his father Joseph Aaron Littman and to the memory of Robert Joseph Littman who continued what his father Louis had begun ‫יהא זכרם ברו‬

‘Get wisdom, get understanding: Forsake her not and she shall preserve thee’ prov. 4: 5

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization is a registered UK charity Registered charity no. 1000784

Jewish Cultural Studies v o l u m e

f i v e

Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination Edited by

MARJORIE LEHMAN JANE L. KANAREK and SIMON J. BRONNER

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press

2017

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street, Liverpool l69 7zu, uk www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/littman Managing Editor: Connie Webber Distributed in North America by Oxford University Press Inc, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, ny 10016, usa © The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Catalogue records for this book are available from the British Library and the Library of Congress ISBN 978–1–906764–66–1 Publishing co-ordinator: Janet Moth Copy-editing: Ezra Margulies and Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz Proof-reading: Agnes Erdos Index: Caroline Diepeveen Production, design, and typesetting by Pete Russell, Faringdon, Oxon. Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall

For our foremothers ‫ אל תטש תורת אמך‬Do not forsake the instruction of your mother ‫ כי לוית חן ]היא[ לראשך‬For [it is] a graceful wreath upon your head. (based on Proverbs 1: 8–9)

Editor and Advisers editor Simon J. Bronner The Pennsylvania State University

a d v i s o r y

b o a r d

H a y a B a r - I t z h a k , Yezreel Valley College, Israel D a n B e n - A m o s , University of Pennsylvania, USA J o n a t h a n B o y a r i n , Cornell University, USA M i c h a e l B r e n n e r , Ludwig-Maximilians University, Germany M a t t i B u n z l , Wien Museum, Austria Mikhail Chlenov, State Jewish Maimonides Academy, Russia Fernando Fischman, University of Buenos Aries, Argentina S a n d e r L . G i l m a n , Emory University, USA H a r v e y E . G o l d b e r g , Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel R u t h E l l e n G r u b e r , independent scholar, Italy B a r b a r a K i r s h e n b l a t t - G i m b l e t t , New York University, USA A n d r á s K o v á c s , Central European University, Hungary M i k e l J . K o v e n , University of Worcester, UK S u z a n n e D . R u t l a n d , University of Sydney, Australia J o a c h i m S c h l ö r , University of Southampton, UK L a u r e n c e S i g a l , independent scholar, Paris, France J e f f r e y S h a n d l e r , Rutgers University, USA S t e v e S i p o r i n , Utah State University, USA J o n a t h a n W e b b e r , Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland J e n n a W e i s s m a n J o s e l i t , George Washington University, USA M a r c i n W o d z i n´ s k i , University of Wrocl aw, Poland /

Acknowledgements This volume initially arose out of a concern for gender and family in Jewish scholarship: we recognized the availability of numerous Jewish sources that mention mothers, but found a paucity of scholarship on their significance. More specifically, wishing to further her research on mothers in talmudic literature, which began with an article entitled ‘Dressing and Undressing the High Priest: A Talmudic View of Mothers’ (Nashim: A Journal of Women’s Jewish Studies and Gender Issues, 2014), Marjorie Lehman opened up the conversation on Jewish motherhood with the suggestion that we edit a volume for Jewish Cultural Studies on the role of mothers in Jewish culture. Together we began a shared project to enhance the visibility of mothers and call attention to them as an analytic category essential for narrating Jewishness. We began by making interdisciplinary connections to contemporary cultural work such as Joyce Antler’s You Never Call! You Never Write! (2007) and Jonathan Boyarin’s Jewish Families (2013), along with fresh historical enquiries such as Elisheva Baumgarten’s Mothers and Children (2013). As co-editors we put out a call for essays that yielded over fifty impressive proposals. Encouraged, if somewhat overwhelmed, by the response, we navigated through them, choosing a set that would best represent Jewish mothers, mothering, and motherhood, while enriching our sense of Jewish culture (or Jewish cultures). In the process, we became increasingly convinced that there was much to be said about the ways in which mothers shape Jewish culture and are shaped by it. Interestingly, not one essay proposal focused on the stereotypical yiddishe mama or explored how the Jewish mother, who became the butt of Jewish comedians’ jokes in the twentieth century, also became a ‘recognizable commodity’ in mainstream America, unfortunately used to embody the ‘monstrous qualities of all American mothers’, in Antler’s words. This absence moved us to discuss representations beyond the stereotyped Jewish mother of popular culture. With the array of different depictions of mothers we received, we understood that we had joined a much wider and thought-provoking discussion on gender and family in Jewish culture. Publishing a book on mothers became for us an important undertaking both as a way to present motherhood as a central locus for comprehending Jewish culture and also to broaden the discourse about mothers and motherhood in general. With immense gratitude we single out Shira Kohn and Jessica Cooperman, who as chairs of the Women’s Caucus at the Association for Jewish Studies made our project the focus of a roundtable session devoted to interdisciplinary work on gender. Before this volume reached its final form we were able to receive

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a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s feedback, and have several of our contributors from different fields in Jewish studies talk to one another directly, invigorating the discussion that animates this book. We acknowledge all of our authors who, through their powerful insights into mothers, made this project an incredibly rewarding one. We admire them all not only for the quality of their work, but for the passion with which each of them embraces their discipline. We want to acknowledge Jewish Cultural Studies series editorial board members Haya Bar-Itzhak, Dan Ben-Amos, and Steve Siporin, who served on the Raphael Patai Prize committee and were charged with the difficult task of selecting the cream of a hearty crop of papers, one of which appears in this volume. Numerous other colleagues played important roles in offering cogent critiques and encouragement. We are grateful for the careful readings of Elizabeth S. Alexander, Carole B. Balin, Mara Benjamin, Anne Golomb Hoffman, Karina Hogan, Amy Kalmanofsky, Debra Kaplan, Verena Kasper-Marienberg, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Rebecca Kobrin, Rachel Kranson, Gail Labovitz, Hartley Lachter, Anne Lerner, Laura Levitt, Julia R. Lieberman, Margaret Mills, Edward Silver, Miriam Udel, Burt Visotzky, and Andrea Weiss. We are also indebted to Shannon Hodge at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal for help with locating images for the volume. We are grateful to Timothy Lloyd, executive director, and Lorraine Cashman, associate director, of the American Folklore Society for working so well with the society’s Jewish Folklore and Ethnology section. Marcy Brink-Danan also deserves credit for her leadership of the Council on the Anthropology of Jews and Judaism and promoting the Jewish Cultural Studies series. We acknowledge our home institutions—the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), Hebrew College, and the Pennsylvania State University—for providing an incredible community of faculty and students. Thank you for creating environments where we can engage in new research projects and for supporting us in the path towards publication. At the Pennsylvania State University, we benefited from the capable editorial assistance of Brittany Clark and Cory Hutcheson. Also at Penn State, the support of Gregory Crawford, director of the School of Humanities, and Anthony Buccitelli, director of the campus’s Holocaust and Jewish Studies Center, was important and highly appreciated. JTS provided the resources for an additional copy-editor, Baynon McDowell, who deserves much praise for grappling with so many different writing styles and learning about so many fields within Jewish studies. Support from provost Alan Cooper at JTS was vital in ensuring that this project reached its final form. As this volume proceeded, Simon Bronner lost his mother Betty, born Basia Wolbromska in Da˛browa Górnicza, Poland. In her remarkable life journey from Poland to Germany to Israel and finally to the United States, she had a profound impact on his scholarly drive and appreciation for things Jewish and cultural. Her

a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s

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passing affected all the more his thinking about, and commitment to, the subject of this volume. Not to be forgotten is the mother of his children, Sally Jo Bronner, whose dialogues on gender and family, and role as a yeshiva teacher, inspire him. Marjorie Lehman thanks the women in her life who continually take the time to ‘mother’ her. Thank you to Carole B. Balin, Diana Heller Friedman, Rebecca Kobrin, Amy Kalmanofsky, and Laura Hamburger Radensky. Thank you to sister Nancy Lehman Leibowitz and sister-in-law Deborah Krinitz Lehman, who in supporting Lehman through this project kept her laughing and sane. And thank you to her ‘adopted’ sister, Abby Knopp, for her wise perspective on all matters in life. Heartfelt thanks to her mother, Sheila Krauser Lehman, and mother-in-law, Leah Abramowitz Klapholz, who have helped her leap over every hurdle with strength and gratitude. Lehman wants to declare that they are all the best mothers she knows. She further wishes to acknowledge that life would not be complete without the utterly supportive and loving men in her life—her father, Wallace B. Lehman, her father-in-law, Henry Klapholz, her brother, Daniel Lehman, and her brothers-in-law, Marc Klapholz and Samuel Leibowitz. But she singles out her loving, encouraging, and most supportive husband, Ari, and sons, Jonah and Gabriel Klapholz, for mothering her and for making mothering the greatest thing she does. Jane L. Kanarek thanks her mother, Anna Clare Victoria Kanarek (née Kriseman), for supportive advice from experience, back-up babysitting, and love through the journey of motherhood, teaching, and writing. As a South African immigrant, a physician, a baker of incomparable chocolate cakes, and a mother of three, she continues to be a role model. Thanks also to Judith Kates for continued support and advice in navigating the worlds of feminism, Talmud, academia, and motherhood. Finally, thank you to Andrew Halpert, a true partner in parenthood to Lev, Tal, and Adin. Being their mother is an utter joy. We conclude with another special thank you to our colleague Carole B. Balin, who co-authored the essay in this volume on Hava Shapiro with Wendy I. Zierler and who helped us at every stage of this project to overcome its challenges. In May 2015, with an adventurous spirit, she led Lehman to Slavuta over cracked roads in a taxi with no seatbelts so that they could visit Shapiro’s birthplace and home. As they searched for the gravestone of Hava’s mother, Menuhah, in the Jewish cemetery, they could only revel together in the memory of great mothers like her who paved the way for them to be contributors to Jewish communal life and scholarship today. Reading the honorific title ishah h.ashuvah (‘woman of note’) on many gravestones in the Slavuta cemetery, while at the same time thinking about the arc of this volume, left them thinking about the array of mothers who preceded them and were anchors of Jewish life. We dedicate this book to them.

Contents Note on Transliteration

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Introduction: Reimagining Jewish Mothers

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marjorie lehman, jane l. kanarek, and simon j. bronner

P A R T I . IDEALIZED MOTHERS 1

Cooking, Cuddling, and Candle-Lighting: Motherhood in Award-Winning Jewish Children’s Literature

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e m i ly s i g a l o w

2

The Jewish Mother’s Prayer: Mothers in Late Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Jewish Women’s Prayer Books

41

krisztina frauhammer

3

Nene Mesl-e Na¯n—‘Mother is Like Bread’: The Perception of Motherhood and Folklore Expressions among the Jews of Afghanistan

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tsila zan-bar tsur

4

Mothers and Children in Ottoman Jewish Society as Reflected in Hebrew Sources of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

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ruth lamdan

P A R T I I . CONSTRUCTIONS AND CONTESTATIONS OF MOTHERS 5

Like Mother Like Daughter: Mother–Daughter Relations in Babylonian Talmudic Stories

105

moshe lavee

6

The (Re)production of a Maskilah: The Mother–Daughter Bond between Menuhah and Hava Shapiro

129

carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler

7

Maurice Sendak’s Jewish Mother(s)

149

j o d i e i c h l e r- l ev i n e

8

The Jewish Mother as Metonym for Community in Postwar America josh lambert

169

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c o n t e n t s

P A R T I I I . ACTIVIST MOTHERS 9

The ‘Mothers’ Who Were Not: Motherhood Imagery and Childless 185 Women Warriors in Early Jewish Literature c a ry n ta m b e r- r o s e n a u

10

Motherhood as Motivation: American Jewish Women in Action, 1890–1940

207

m e l i s s a r. k l a p p e r

11

‘Two Voices Heard in Castile’: Rachel and Mary Weep for Their Children in the Age of the Zohar

225

s h a r o n ko r e n

12

‘Where Was Sarah?’ Depictions of Mothers and Motherhood in Modern Israeli Poetry on the Binding of Isaac

255

dalia marx

P A R T I V . RE-EMBODYING MOTHERS 13

Depictions of Childbirth in Rabbinic Literature: The Innovation of 285 a Genizah Midrashic Text shana strauch schick

14

Upending the Curse of Eve: A Reframing of Maternal Breastfeeding in BT Ketubot

307

miriam-simma walfish

15

The Biblical Root ’mn: Retrieval of a Term and Its Household Context

327

deena aranoff

P A R T V . REC ASTING MOTHERS 16

Mothers and Ma’asim: Maternal Roles in Medieval Hebrew Tales

345

elisheva baumgarten

17

On Teachers, Rabbinic and Maternal

359

mara h. benjamin

Contributors

377

Index

383

Note on Transliteration The transliteration of Hebrew in this book reflects consideration of the type of book it is, in terms of its content, purpose, and readership. The system adopted therefore reflects a broad approach to transcription, rather than the narrower approaches found in the Encyclopaedia Judaica or other systems developed for text-based or linguistic studies. The aim has been to reflect the pronunciation prescribed for modern Hebrew, rather than the spelling or Hebrew word structure, and to do so using conventions that are generally familiar to the English-speaking reader. In accordance with this approach, no attempt is made to indicate the distinctions between alef and ayin, tet and taf, kaf and kuf, sin and samekh, since these are not relevant to pronunciation; likewise, the dagesh is not indicated except where it affects pronunciation. Following the principle of using conventions familiar to the majority of readers, however, transcriptions that are well established have been retained even when they are not fully consistent with the transliteration system adopted. On similar grounds, the tsadi is rendered by ‘tz’ in such familiar words as barmitzvah. The distinction between h. et and khaf has been retained, using h. for the former and kh for the latter; the associated forms are generally familiar to readers, even if the distinction is not actually borne out in pronunciation, and for the same reason the final heh is indicated too. As in Hebrew, no capital letters are used, except that an initial capital has been retained in transliterating titles of published works (for example, Shulh. an arukh). Since no distinction is made between alef and ayin, they are indicated by an apostrophe only in intervocalic positions where a failure to do so could lead an English-speaking reader to pronounce the vowel-cluster as a diphthong—as, for example, in ha’ir—or otherwise mispronounce the word. The sheva na is indicated by an e—perikat ol, reshut—except, again, when established convention dictates otherwise. The yod is represented by i when it occurs as a vowel (bereshit), by y when it occurs as a consonant (yesodot), and by yi when it occurs as both (yisra’el). Names have generally been left in their familiar forms, even when this is inconsistent with the overall system.

i n t r o d u c t i o n

Reimagining Jewish Mothers marjorie lehman, jane l. kanarek, and simon j. bronner

From Sarah in the Bible to Philip Roth’s Mrs Portnoy, images of the mother have been a hallmark of Jewish culture. Hallowed by some, excoriated by others—mothers have been depicted, on the one hand, as all that is good and sacred in the Jewish family, and on the other, and far more frequently, as overbearing, guilt-inducing, and interfering (Antler 2007: 3; Baum, Hyman, and Michel 1976: 236–7; Rich 1976: 203; Sered 2000). Working to disentangle motherhood from idealized notions of the Jewish family and stereotypes of the Jewish mother, this collection of essays on motherhood in the Jewish cultural imagination presents a complex, nuanced, and robust perspective on the subject. The essays included in this volume emphasize the variety of identities held by mothers as well as the vast array of cultural and social patterns that characterizations of mothers reflect. As these essays show, Jews have used motherhood across time and place as a way to construct and comprehend their culture. Writers, activists, rabbis, artists, printers, and poets have projected, created, engaged, and contested Jewish culture by relying on the trope of ‘the Jewish mother’, often breaking away from biological conceptions of motherhood. Our overarching goal in bringing these essays into dialogue with one another is to ensure mothers a more prominent analytical place in the narration of Jewishness and to call attention to the ways in which mothers both shape and problematize Jewish culture. We aim to differentiate Jewish mothers from the larger category of ‘women’ and to mark motherhood as a central analytical category for understanding Jewish culture. Each author seeks to understand depictions of Jewish mothers as able both to construct Jewish culture and to be constructed by it. Theories of culture based on family patterns, such as those that regard the mother–child bond as the basis for the reproduction of culture, have been less predictive regarding the idea of motherhood within specific ethnic-religious communities (see Keller, Poortinga, and Schölmerich 2002; Róheim 1971). Contributors to this volume therefore approach the Jewish community as a highly diverse and non-static ethnic-religious culture. The authors write about the meaning of Jewish culture by analysing the identity of the mother and the practice of motherhood in the Jewish imagination. These expressions of culture are, therefore, representations of experiences that at times convey a sense of history,

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i n t r o d u c t i o n whether ‘real’ or fantasized, but equally a desire for cultural change (Bronner 2008). As these essays locate mothers, motherhood, and mothering in societal contexts often organized by more rigid and hierarchical understandings of gender, they also comment on how these themes engage with or undermine prevailing belief systems. While it is true that gender produces, preserves, and challenges social hierarchies within the Jewish family and the Jewish community, often privileging men over women, we recognize that mothers are often (but not always) bound to a larger family structure that often (but not always) includes fathers. The study of masculinities has alerted us to the need to examine fathers for what they tell us about the complexity of Jewish culture; that is, fathers are distinct from the larger category of ‘men’ and, more specifically, distinguished from, for example, male priests, rabbis, slaves, students, and political leaders (Baader, Gillerman, and Lerner 2012; D. Boyarin 1997; Lehman 2015a, 2015b; Rosen-Zvi 2013). Contributors thus recognize that the idea of motherhood is shaped by the perception of difference between fatherhood and motherhood as well as between changing historical and social patterns of fathering and mothering roles in Jewish culture (J. Boyarin 2013; Bronner 2008–9; Nash 1986; Waxman 1984). However, because mothers are so prominent in the popular imagination of Jewish parenthood (as well as in the transmission of Jewish culture), this volume uses the mother as the central point from which ideas of Jewishness emanate. That said, our intention is to spur other kinds of analytical works on the imagined constituents of the Jewish family, including further study on children and childhood, recognizing gaps that require further scholarly investigation and analysis (Kanarfogel 1985; Luszczynska 2014; Stow 1987; Ta-Shma 2006). This book is not intended explicitly to negotiate issues related to the status of mothers in the Jewish community today. Along with Adrienne Rich, in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), many writers have commented on the personal experience of mothering, drawing on the disciplines of anthropology, gender studies, psychology, history, and literature (see Chodorow 1978; Friedan 1963; O’Reilly 2004; Ortner 1972; Patterson 1986; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). These feminist thinkers have subjected the institution of motherhood and the practice of mothering to varied analyses, suggesting ways to harness the power of mothering to work within or to release it from the restrictions of patriarchy and male control (O’Reilly 2004: 2; Rich 1976: 14, 205–11; Umansky 1996: 2). Their writing is a feminist enterprise in the sense that they view motherhood as an institution that can constrain, regulate, and dominate women, ‘degrading female potentialities’ (O’Reilly 2004: 4; Rich 1976: 13). And while we agree that Jewish motherhood has its own history that needs to be narrated in an effort to recognize the agency Jewish mothers have had and can have, despite patriarchal constraints, our focus is on thinking about mothering and motherhood as cultural practices that are re-evaluated and redesigned based on changing

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societal factors (O’Reilly 2004: 4–5). The lens of motherhood enables us to highlight the complexities of Jewish cultures in a variety of time periods. These perspectives also contribute to the wider discourse on mothers and motherhood (see Glenn 1994: 3–4).

Discovering Mothers Hava Shapiro, an early twentieth-century maskilah and author of Hebrew literature, referred to herself as ‘the mother of all living’ (Gen. 3: 20) as she looked to the first biblical mother, Eve, to redefine Jewish motherhood. Recalling the power of biblical mothers who chart the course of Israelite history, Shapiro cast herself in Eve’s image as a literary progenitor, hoping that her stories would assume a generative place in the history of literary works written in Hebrew (Balin and Zierler 2014). Invoking a biblical mother such as Eve also conjured an image of empowerment and agency, as Shapiro intended to carve out a prominent and lasting place for her work in the Hebrew canon. The Hebrew Bible depicts biblical mothers like Eve as persuasive, empowered, and effectual (Bronner 2008: pp. ix–xi). Both named and unnamed biblical mothers provide provocative models, one after the other, of women acting of their own accord—of mothers who are agents of their own fate (Frymer-Kensky 2002: p. xv). Hava Shapiro thus embraces one aspect of Eve’s persona, reinventing the biblical Eve in order to reinvent herself. Yet the image of Eve, a mother whose actions in the Garden of Eden, according to many rabbinic sources, brought the punishment of the pains of childbirth on all women, also casts a negative light on birthing children, ostracizing women for the very activity that makes them mothers. The interpretation of childbirth as punishment deserves re-examination from a feminist perspective, but we note that biblical and rabbinic law reinforces this connection by requiring women to bring sin offerings after giving birth (Lev. 12: 6; Cooper 2004: 453; Sicker 2013: 188–92). The very first biblical narrative about a mother projects a paradox, leading those of us who look to Eve to see her motherhood as simultaneously empowering and disempowering. Eve encapsulates the complexity of motherhood, signifying the problematization of motherhood as early as the biblical period. Significantly, no other biblical women, that is, wives, sisters, daughters, or maidservants, appear more prominently and are more central to the Bible’s narratives than its mothers. Biblical mothers, who over and over again reverse their barrenness to ensure the continuity of the Israelite line, have attracted much attention in modern feminist scholarship—whether in unpacking the difficult relationship between motherhood and feminism (Diquinzio 1999: pp. x–xi); or as a way of acknowledging the patriarchal arc so central to the narratives, and thus highlighting its effect on the depiction of mothers (Bal 1988: 197–230; Exum 1993: 60–7; Fuchs 1989: 151–66; Pardes 1992: 39–59); or as a way of seeing

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i n t r o d u c t i o n motherhood as an institution capable of challenging cultural, social, political, and religious values and ideas (Bronner 2008: pp. x–xi; Otwell 1977: 1–13). However, depictions of mothers in other areas of Jewish culture have received far less attention, a scholarly lacuna that this volume addresses. To cite one example, the trope of the barren mother striving to produce Israelite descendants, central to the Bible, does not pervade talmudic literature (Cook 1999: 10–24; De Troyer, Herbert, Johnson, and Korte 2003: 83–5; Fuchs 2000: 44–90; Lehman 2014). While much talmudic legal material invokes mothers in its discussions about inheritance, marriage contracts, contraception, childcare, vows, and ritual obligations, aggadic stories about mothers are far more varied than their biblical precedents. Talmudic mothers are far from the biblical agents of change who leave their mark on an unfolding history. In fact, many of the Talmud’s narratives include characterizations of mothers ranging from overbearing, self-centred women who venerate their sons (BT Kid. 31b and its parallel, JT Kid. 1: 7, 61a) to overly protective mothers (Tosefta Yoma 1: 22–3; BT Yoma 35b and its parallel, JT Yoma 3: 6, 40d; and BT Eruv. 65a), and mothers who successfully raise daughters (BT Ket. 63a), as well as mothers who ensure that their husbands leave home to study Torah with master teachers, despite long periods of time spent away from family (BT Ket. 62a–63a; D. Boyarin 1993: 107–32). Yet, strikingly, scholarship on mothers that focuses on the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds is far less prominent than biblical scholarship on mothers. As images of mothers are hardly random in any literature and are socially constructed by the authors who describe them, the dearth of analyses of talmudic depictions of mothers, as well as the failure to place them in dialogue with biblical characterizations, merits attention (Hays 1996). Scholars have observed that rabbinic culture grants primacy to the master–disciple relationship over the parent–child relationship. Seeking to reproduce its own culture of Torah study, rabbinic society depended upon the success of a model in which the strongest social tie lay between a rabbi and his pupil, rather than between a mother and her son (see Alexander 2013; Bronner 2008–9). This model contrasts sharply with that of biblical patriarchy, in which birthing an Israelite nation is rooted in the continuity of a biological line. Numerous biblical narratives of barren women ascribe to them an unassailable yearning for sons, accentuating the importance of creating an Israelite bloodline. Thus cultural continuity depends on mothers and motherhood in both biblical and talmudic culture, but the ways in which these two literatures portray the roles of mothers and motherhood are quite different. Mothers as imagined by the rabbis of the Talmud critique the biblical construction of culture through biology in the hope of reconstituting Jewish culture as a society committed to Torah study with a rabbinic, usually non-parental, master. Given this unique role, studies of mothers and their varied depictions in talmudic literature are a scholarly desideratum. Oddly, the ‘iconic’ status of mothers in Jewish family life has had little impact

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on scholarship, even beyond that of the rabbinic period. Avraham Grossman’s Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe (2004) brings to light a range of important and under-studied sources on medieval Jewish women. Yet only nine pages out of its total of 281 (Grossman 2004: 131–3, 198–203) are devoted to the topic of mothers, while far more discussion revolves around wives. Since wives are often (though not always) also mothers, this omission is striking. Thus, even when it is possible to ‘read for mothers’, modern scholars gravitate towards wives as subjects. This interpretative move may be linked to a focus on a rich legal rabbinic literature dealing with issues that affect women in their lives as spouses, rather than as mothers, such as the laws of betrothal, divorce, and levirate marriage, menstrual laws (nidah) and sexual relationships (represented respectively by the talmudic tractates Kidushin, Gitin, Yevamot, Nidah, and Ketubot). Each of these legal categories affects women as mothers (for example, the legal custody status of a woman’s children from her first marriage following a divorce or the death of her husband), and yet mothers are not the primary focus of scholarship. Undoubtedly, ‘reading for mothers’ requires us to work against the grain, that is, to read beyond the dominant concerns of a text or culture, in order to consider and uncover moments when women who are wives also appear as mothers. Our intervention in focusing on mothers is to ‘mark’ them and break from a long tradition of placing all women into one larger category when speaking about Jewish culture (see Baskin 1998; Baumgarten 2004; Clark 2001: 407; Hyman 1995). Yet, recognizably, another factor may lie behind this lack of scholarly attention to motherhood. In the popular imagination, women are often connected with the realm of nature and not culture, promoting essentialist understandings of motherhood as ‘natural’, and therefore instinctual (Baskin 1998: 16). This move roots images of mothers and mothering in their biology, idealizing mothers as natural, universal, and unchanging (Glenn 1994: 3). In this way, as feminist theorists have argued, women become reproductive bodies, instruments of reproduction alone, reduced to a material form with only one tool at their disposal. On this view, it is motherhood and the ability of women to procreate that define one as a woman (Brossard 1983: 13; De Beauvoir 1952: p. xviii; Huffer 1998: 15). Building on the cultural linkage between women and nature, after surveying different types of medieval Jewish sources Elisheva Baumgarten attributes the absence of instructions regarding parenting to the view that mothers’ love for their children was considered so natural that offering advice seemed unnecessary (2004: 158–65). At least in these male-authored sources, instruction may have been considered a subversion of the very idea of motherhood, which many wanted to believe came naturally to women and firmly differentiated them from men. Furthermore, if mothers were instinctively wedded to home life and tending to the needs of their families, they presumably became less compelling than men in the Jewish popular imagination. This may account for why they are not as

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i n t r o d u c t i o n visible as men in medieval Jewish source material. Expectations that men would be productive and active forces in public life attracted greater interest. Judith Butler, among others, has criticized those who make universalist claims, highlighting the weaknesses of transcultural structures of femininity, maternity, and sexuality (Butler 1995; see also Allen 2005: 235). In fact, such universalist beliefs are particularly prominent in Jewish culture because of the familiar representations of the Jewish mother (Antler 2007: 2). For example, in American Jewish culture the image of the yiddishe mama as not only an ‘emblem of unstinting love’ but also an ‘excessive, overprotective, neurotically anxious’— not to mention guilt-inducing—presence to her children, has contributed to this essentialized picture of motherhood (Antler 2007: 2–3, 17; see also Allen 2005: 236). The stereotype (see Fig. 1) has become so firmly entrenched in the popular culture of American literature, film, television, and theatrical comedy that it has achieved a type of uncritical, universal appeal. Unfortunately, it limits the potential to see instances where mothers disrupt idealized images and thus thwarts explorations into what these disruptions may suggest. Still, the lack of cultural analysis focusing on mothers and motherhood should not be attributed solely to the impact of an essentialist perspective. To a much larger degree it is connected to a charged relationship between mothering and feminism, that is, to the political dimensions of motherhood. While most people have a stake in the social organization of mothering, as we are all ‘born of

Figure 1 Gertrude Berg as Molly Goldberg from the television programme The Goldbergs (1951). Bureau of Industrial Service for CBS Television, public domain

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woman’, and mothering is an important source of female identity, motherhood nevertheless provokes a tremendous degree of conflict (Hays 1996: p. ix; Rich 1976: 11; Ruddick 1989). Some theorists have argued that the biological connection of women to motherhood ties them more closely to home and children, thus limiting their sense of political and social feminism. Additionally, according to feminist psychological theory, the unique ability of women to gestate produces an envious response among men, who, in order to distract attention from the mother’s role, project, or even symbolically appropriate, the childbearing role and the rhetoric of ‘giving birth’. They thus present themselves as being ‘productive’ in the public sphere (a phenomenon often referred to as ‘womb envy’, ‘pregnancy envy’, or the ‘male myth of creation’ in response to Freud’s idea of ‘penis envy’; see Bettelheim 1962; Dundes 1988; Kittay 1984) in order to draw attention away from mothers’ roles. Mothering challenges feminism and feminist theory as women try to carve out more equitable roles for themselves in their domestic lives as well as in the public sphere (Diquinzio 1999: pp. viii–xiii). For some, like Lynne Huffer, who engage in feminist theoretical work with the hope of creating a ‘postpatriarchal lesbian utopia’ that unravels patriarchal stereotypical constructs, the urge to promote cultural studies of mothers informed by a patriarchal culture is problematic (Huffer 1998: 2–20). In addition, because mothering is so intertwined with the central values of Judaism, including family and childrearing, to such a degree that some religious leaders refuse to see mothering as a woman’s choice, feminist scholars have shied away from a hermeneutic that places mothers at the centre of their analytical enterprise, preferring to think about wives in the home, or women in public roles outside it, whether they are mothers or not (Hyman 1995). With motherhood as its focus, this book emerges out of our belief that the distinctiveness of culture, the variations within one group of people who selfidentify as Jews, rests precisely on the fact that culture transcends natural givens (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974: 3–5). Culture can shape nature and employ it for its own purposes, whether to express it or to contest it. Thus, as anthropologist Sherry Ortner, among others, has argued amid the current of first-wave feminism, culture is more powerful than nature. Its variability, even its superiority, ‘rests precisely on the ability to transform—to “socialize” and “culturalize” —nature’, she writes (1972: 11; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974: 3–5; Rubin 1975). Following Ortner, as well as second- and third-wave feminists who continue to uphold her perspective, the essays included in this volume present both historical and social variations in the representations of mothers in Jewish sources, supporting the idea that motherhood is socially and intellectually constructed and is far more than the product of nature or instinct. In presenting these essays we also build on the observations of the historian Joyce Antler who, in one of the few studies of Jewish maternal representations,

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i n t r o d u c t i o n argues that each generation of Jews manipulated the mother-image (Antler 2007: 2). For example, mothers absorbed the pertinent issues in Jewish culture of the time in which they lived and thus exposed the complexities of living within both Jewish and general society. More to the point, in twentieth-century American culture, the Jewish mother, according to Antler, became a ‘vessel into which the cultural contradictions of a society grappling with ethnic, gender, class and racial tensions could be poured’ (Antler 2007: 7–9). Taking this approach into consideration, we draw attention to the diversity of depictions of mothers, some of whom parallel more dominant and idealized notions of the Jewish mother, and some of whom do not. Certainly, this variety of representations challenges the centrality, and accuracy, of the yiddishe mama as the predominant cultural icon of Jewishness, pointing to the need to rethink the ways in which mothers moulded Jewish culture and in which Jewish culture, in turn, shaped them.

Narrating Motherhood By placing authors from a wide variety of time periods and geographical locations in conversation with one another, we highlight the many ways in which motherhood both shapes and is shaped by Jewish culture. This comparative approach draws us away from a more historical conception of motherhood, in which we search for a developmental trajectory over time, focusing on particular features as ‘typical’ of an earlier time period or specific geographical region and others as ‘typical’ of a later time period or different region. By dividing the essays into five thematic sections—‘Idealized Mothers’, ‘Constructions and Contestations of Mothers’, ‘Activist Mothers’, ‘Re-embodying Mothers’, and ‘Recasting Mothers’ —we emphasize cultural patterns and the specific ways in which they manifest themselves in a range of contexts. Our narrative arc begins with essays that offer idealized views of the Jewish mother, and ends with possibilities not only for reenvisioning our work as scholars, but also for reimagining Jewish mothering. Driving our decision to open this volume with a section entitled ‘Idealized Motherhood’ is the idea that resisting stereotypical depictions of the Jewish mother necessitates beginning with an array of depictions of the ideal mother. The authors of these essays reveal the ways in which ‘traditional’ motherhood is a core element of societal maintenance in the face of seemingly challenging social and cultural counter-forces. These idealized visions have acted to stabilize and construct specific social structures within Jewish communal life, albeit in different ways. Yet as much as the essays in this section are concerned with depictions of motherhood and of maintaining a particular vision of the past, they also present mothers as critical to a Jewish future. In fact, images from the title page of the Venice Haggadah printed in 1609 exemplify this point. While several panels present us with idealized visions of

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Figure 2 Haggadah, Venice, 1609. Title page showing images of women preparing for Pesach. Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

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Figure 3 Haggadah, Venice, 1609. Verso of the title page showing an image of a woman performing the search for h.amets. Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

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mothers (and/or) wives preparing matzah in what is the most home-centred festival rite, the Passover Seder, this Haggadah also calls our attention at the outset to the fact that women, in the most generative way, are the mothers of this holiday (Fig. 2). They make it happen in accordance with the guidelines of Jewish law, even taking responsibility for searching for the final breadcrumbs by performing the rite of bedikat h.amets (Fig. 3) (Hauptman 2010: 86–91). And while these women may be portrayed at the beginning of this Haggadah in a stereotypical way, as kneaders of matzah dough, in the bottom panel on the title page they are also depicted baking alongside other women around a table, outside the confines of their homes and without their children, as if to critique the image of mothers who inhabit private spaces only doing chores (Fig. 2, bottom panel). In this regard, these mothers become a community paralleling that of men, who typically gather in the public spaces of the study house and synagogue, often with their sons, as well as outside their homes to slaughter and cook the Passover lamb (Fig. 2, top panel). We begin with Emily Sigalow’s essay for its discussion of the idealization of Jewish motherhood in contemporary award-winning Jewish children’s books. Such books portray mothers and mothering stereotypically, as associated with private, domestic Jewish practice and childrearing. In contrast, they feature fathers as central figures in public Jewish ritual observances and civic leadership, and as responsible for children’s formal education. In presenting the pious, domestic mother and the more publicly oriented father, these books not only reinforce, even esteem, a particularly gendered conception of what it means to be a mother, but also encode these gendered stereotypes within the formative experiences of Jewish early-childhood education. These children’s books promote an uncomplicated idealization for children of what it means to live within a Jewish culture, ignoring (and perhaps even attempting to counter) the varieties of contemporary family structure that include interfaith, same-sex, and single parents. In contrast to Sigalow’s analysis of contemporary North American children’s literature, in the next chapter Krisztina Frauhammer examines the genre of nineteenth-century Hungarian Neolog Jewish women’s prayer books. She argues that these prayer books must be read in the context of emancipation and the increasing secularization of Hungarian society. Through the creation of prayers that sanctify a vocation of motherhood and child-rearing, charging mothers with passing Jewish identity on to their children in the home, these Neolog prayer books imagine the Jewish mother as a bulwark against secularization. As much as they imagine Jewish women as caretakers and transmitters of tradition, they simultaneously invest mothers with the power to recreate this tradition in the face of emancipation. Mothers are thus idealized and entrusted with the past for the sake of the future, enabling fathers to become part of public life outside the home. By reading Sigalow and Frauhammer one after the other, and thereby

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i n t r o d u c t i o n encountering two examples of mothers located within the domestic economy, one may appreciate the contrast between contemporary mothers who are entrusted with maintaining one particular aspect of Jewish cultural life—the home —targeting the young child, and mothers who are charged with bearing responsibility for the future of the entire Jewish people. Placing Ruth Lamdan’s essay on Ottoman Jewish society from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries alongside Tsila Zan-Bar Tsur’s picture of Afghani motherhood highlights the powerful role mothers play within these cultures, while nonetheless conforming to idealized notions of the Jewish mother within the family circle. In each culture, the mother’s praiseworthiness surfaces, with husbands and sons glorifying her for serving as a protective force. Ottoman mothers played active roles in the legal structure of family life, involving themselves in the betrothals and divorces of their sons and daughters and taking on a sense of agency in attempts to maintain guardianship over their children in the event of their own divorces. Like their Ottoman counterparts, Afghani mothers are also nurturing. However, Zan-Bar Tsur captures the ennobling manner in which they turn the everyday chore of bread-making into a protective cultural force. All family relationships, including those revolving around mothers, stepmothers, grandmothers, mothers-in-law, and daughters-in-law, are conducted through bread, known among the Afghani Jews as na¯n. Such a bread-dependent relationship depicts mothers and grandmothers as not only responsible for keeping their families together, but also as essential both for ensuring the birth of children and grandchildren and for protecting their sons from wives who commit adultery or their grandchildren from evil stepmothers. Zan-Bar Tsur points to the way the function of bread-baking in cultural memory produces a key metaphor for the Afghani Jewish family. Each of these four essays takes readers through four different idealizations of the Jewish mother. Each depiction challenges them to think about the stereotypes that define motherhood and how they function. Sigalow and Frauhammer confront prescriptive cultural images that establish mothers as custodians of home and children, as preservers of a Jewish past and guardians of a Jewish future. Lamdan and Zan-Bar Tsur follow by revealing how such idealized images also locate mothers as powerful cultural agents of Jewish continuity. The essays grouped in the next section, ‘Constructions and Contestations of Mothers’, challenge the perception of mothers as passive players in the enactment of culture. Moshe Lavee describes a process where mothers are essential to the replication of a particular cultural model of authority and yet also challenge the very structure that they work to support. Lavee, who turns to the Babylonian Talmud and its depiction of mother–daughter relationships in two cycles of talmudic narratives, argues that the Talmud uses this relationship to promote the value of father-husbands leaving home to study Torah for long periods with master-rabbis, while accentuating the problems inherent in such a model. The

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centrality and power of the father–son relationship is disrupted when sons become disciples of male rabbinic masters. In contrast, mothers are portrayed as successfully transmitting to their daughters the value of sending husbands off to study with a master. The mother–daughter relationship thus becomes crucial to the creation and replication of a society that valorizes rabbinic authority and the ideal of Torah study. However, it also highlights problems with the model. Only the mother–daughter relationship functions properly. In fact, when sons listen to fathers and leave their wives and families in order to study, an element of family dysfunction surfaces. On the one hand, this vitiates the very framework of the master–disciple relationship, but on the other, it promotes the rabbinic fantasy that families can remain intact while supporting this master–disciple model. The virtue of the mother–daughter relationship and its potential to provoke cultural change comes to the fore in the relationship between the pioneering maskilah Hava Shapiro and her mother Menuhah. Carole B. Balin and Wendy I. Zierler turn to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and to the writings of Shapiro, who depicts her mother Menuhah as fulfilling a traditional maternal role in nurturing her love and commitment to Hebrew literature. Yet it was also Menuhah who gave her daughter the agency, and even the intellectual tools, to revolt against traditional conceptions of women, that is, to break free from a well-entrenched patriarchy that might prevent her from contributing successfully to the Hebrew literary canon. In the talmudic story cycles examined by Lavee, the mother–daughter relationship is central to the replication of a cultural value (Torah study) which excludes women. In contrast, the mother–daughter relationship depicted in Balin and Zierler’s essay acts to contest a previous cultural model in favour of a completely new one—that of traditional mothers passing on Hebrew literacy to their daughters, and nonconforming daughters, in turn, writing Hebrew literature. The power of Jewish writers to use mothers in their work in order to subvert culture also figures prominently in the essays written by Jodi Eichler-Levine and Josh Lambert. In contrast to Sigalow’s presentation of the ways in which children’s literature idealizes the mother, Eichler-Levine offers an analysis of bestselling children’s author Maurice Sendak’s images of Jewish mothers that are destabilizing because of their complexity. Sendak’s work constructs Jewish mothers who dwell outside the typically Jewish legal constructions of motherhood and the gendered institutional confines of American Jewish life. Instead, he reflects on his own American experience against the backdrop of the post-Holocaust world of his mother, drawing and writing mothers with all of the complexities he experienced. His stories thus sometimes echo the ‘overbearing’ Jewish mother, but they also convey the limited power and emotional absence of his own mother. His mother figures are, according to Eichler-Levine, ‘messy, difficult women, haunted by the ghost of his own mother, Sadie Sendak’. In fact, the mothers that Sendak brings to children build upon a mix of transgressive tropes. In so doing,

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i n t r o d u c t i o n Sendak’s literal and metaphorical ‘Jewish mothers’ provide different models of Jewish motherhood in mid-twentieth- to early twenty-first-century America. They raise the difficulties of living in relation to other human beings by contesting the stereotypes of mothers and, at the same time, offering an image of a man able to see himself as a mother in his generative role of producing stories for American children. Interpreting a different type of cultural revolt, Josh Lambert considers the way in which the mother–son relationship depicted in Adele Wiseman’s novel Crackpot (1974) functions as a feminist critique of the Jewish mother in postwar America. He identifies a maternal character who affirms traditionalism and parochialism, acting as the guardian of identity and a bridge between the old world and the new. When Hoda, the protagonist of Crackpot and a prostitute, decides to continue having sex with her son Pipick (who does not know Hoda is his mother), she views herself as creating a relationship through which she can pass on to him the Jewish culture she learned from her father’s stories. This incestuous relationship models a picture of community that is simultaneously dependent on and yet independent of genealogy, open to all those who wish to become a part of it. Lambert argues that this novel vision of the Jewish mother is consonant with other Jewish cultural trends of the late 1960s and early 1970s such as feminism and the h.avurah movement, both of which shunned racialist conceptions of Jewishness yet still articulated a desire for continuity. Lavee’s mother–daughter trope as well as the mother–child pairs of Menuhah and Hava Shapiro and Hoda and Pipick, not to mention Sendak’s mothers, become vehicles for thinking ‘about’ as well as thinking ‘with’ a new Jewish future, one that retains elements of the past, but that also courageously imagines their new embodiments. Elaborating on this dynamic of mothers as agents of cultural change, the third group of essays focuses on the theme of ‘Activist Motherhood’. While these essays range widely in time and space, they share an understanding of motherhood and mothers as engaged in the political task of societal critique and even, at times, societal transformation. Caryn Tamber-Rosenau describes the ways in which the biblical and apocryphal stories of three childless women warriors—Deborah, Jael, and Judith—paradoxically use the language and imagery of motherhood to cast these women as figurative mothers. Applying queer theory, and more specifically the concepts of gender performance and reproductive futurism, TamberRosenau argues that the extension of metaphorical motherhood to these three childless women undercuts the expectation that women are always mothers who bear children. The use of the vocabulary of motherhood enables the biblical and apocryphal texts to portray Deborah, Jael, and Judith comfortably as women who assume the mantle of leadership while simultaneously destabilizing the patriarchal assumptions of a biblical society that links mothering with childbirth and childrearing.

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Much as the language of motherhood in these biblical texts enables women’s leadership, Melissa R. Klapper turns to maternalism, which she defines as ‘a collective belief in gender difference based on motherhood as the foundation for reform’ (Klapper 2013: 4). She argues that maternalism was a crucial ingredient in the activism of Jewish women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus in the fight for suffrage Der Fraynd, the socialist Workmen’s Circle monthly publication, linked the origins of the women’s rights movement to prehistoric matriarchal societies. The peace movement exhorted Jewish mothers to pass on the value of peace to their children, instructing them, as only a mother could, about the evils of war. As Jewish women moved into more public arenas and joined with women of different ethnic identities, maternalism provided them with a framework and language for maintaining Jewish identity within a wider societal sphere. Deborah, Jael, and Judith fight for the particular survival of the people Israel, while the activists of first-wave feminism advocate universal suffrage and peace. Yet in both cases the language of motherhood provides the basis and grounding for their activism. Sharon Koren’s essay on Jewish culture in Castile from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries returns to two early mothers, Rachel and Mary, and examines their respective transformations in Jewish mystical literature and Christian theology. Whereas the mothers described by Tamber-Rosenau and Klapper spur cultural transformations, the metamorphosis of Rachel into a symbol of the Shekhinah (immanent presence of God) is an attempt to cope with the particular cultural situation of exile within the dominant Christian culture of the time. Rachel becomes the divine mother suffering for her children in exile. In place of an activist maternalism, the theological transformation of Rachel enabled Jews to respond to the Christian devotion to Mary on a cosmic scale, in order to grapple with their exilic condition. Existential crisis also illumines Dalia Marx’s essay on contemporary Israeli poetry about the binding of Isaac, or the akedah (Gen. 22). In analysing a series of poems that portray Isaac’s mother Sarah, Marx argues that these texts strive to embody and construct the history of the State of Israel. Whereas earlier poems entwine Sarah with collective questions of post-Holocaust faith and Jewish national fate, more recent texts turn to individual destiny. Sarah as a motherfigure in the Jewish poetic imagination struggles with the tensions between an instinctual maternal impulse to preserve life and an ideology rooted in the sacrifice of sons for the sake of the creation and preservation of the State of Israel. These poems reconstruct the biblical story of Sarah, giving mothers the voice that Sarah lacked at the moment of the akedah, with the purpose of inscribing and critiquing Jewish statehood. Indeed, depictions of mothers in this section address issues facing Jews at various historical junctures, ironically using the stereotypical characterization of the nurturing, protective, peace-loving, and selfsacrificing mother to struggle against and cope with war, exile, and the world’s social ills.

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i n t r o d u c t i o n The fourth group of essays turns to a theme implicit in many of the other pieces but made explicit here: ‘Re-embodying Motherhood’. With a focus on the body of the mother, these essays deal with childbirth, nursing, and the physical care of children. Shana Strauch Schick analyses an early medieval midrashic text, Midrash h.ad shenati, that is unique in its depiction of childbirth. While rabbinic texts marginalize women’s experience of childbirth, this midrash grants subjectivity to the physical experience of the labouring mother through its depiction of Rebekah’s birthing of Jacob and Esau. Although it is difficult to determine the cultural provenance of this text, it nevertheless reframes this birth story, transforming it from its common cultural signification of the nation of Israel (Jacob) and its eternal struggle with the Other (Esau) into one about mothers’ physical pain during labour and childbirth, making the birth experience itself culturally visible. Miriam-Simma Walfish’s essay also confronts a tradition that denies mothers’ subjectivity in a core experience surrounding childbirth, that of breastfeeding, and locates an ancient Jewish voice that restores that subjectivity. Early rabbinic texts render the breastfeeding mother as subservient to father and child, with breastfeeding viewed as part of the household economy. However, a further motif in these same texts that discusses the potential pain of breastfeeding constructs the mother as a subject to whom a husband must defer in decisions regarding this practice. Walfish argues that contemporary discussions of breastfeeding reflect a similar lack of attention to maternal subjectivity and suggests that rabbinic texts can counter this present-day cultural attitude towards the mother, once again making a mother’s personhood more perceptible. While Strauch Schick and Walfish restore maternal subjectivity to the bodily experiences of childbirth and breastfeeding, Deena Aranoff restores the maternal figure to the etymological development of a key religious term, the Hebrew root ’mn, commonly translated as ‘faithfulness’ or ‘constancy’ and less commonly as to ‘rear’ or ‘nurse’ a child. Aranoff argues that the more abstract meanings of faithfulness and constancy are outgrowths of this word’s more concrete maternal associations, the provision of an infant’s physical needs. Thus Aranoff recovers cultural traces of the maternal activities involved in childrearing in biblical terminology and simultaneously traces maternal disappearance through the ways in which the meanings ‘to rear, nurse’ become muted abstractions. She points to the fact that culture is embedded within language and that therefore the physical activities of childrearing have had a linguistic impact on the elite literature of ancient Israel. More significantly, Aranoff, Strauch Schick, and Walfish restore the subjectivity of mothers over their bodies, of their own physical experiences as mothers. They search beneath a dominant voice that denies this subjectivity, and move the physical experience of motherhood from the cultural margins to the centre. The final essays in this volume point towards the future, challenging readers to reconstruct conceptions of motherhood. In this section, ‘Recasting Mother-

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hood’, Elisheva Baumgarten analyses a series of stories from the early thirteenthcentury northern French Sefer hama’asim that describe mothering and forms of agency that challenge stereotypical characterizations of medieval Jewish mothers. In focusing on specific references to mothers in these stories and underscoring mothers’ public prominence and their active interventions within the nuclear family, Baumgarten recasts scholarly understandings of medieval Ashkenazi Jewish life and thus encourages readers to rethink perceptions of mothers in contemporary Jewish culture. By focusing on stories about women who are both mothers and wives but focusing on their role as mothers, Baumgarten exposes the multiplicity of resources available for understanding Jewish motherhood. She challenges scholars to consider a wider frame of reference for the study of motherhood and to look more carefully at texts for references that might otherwise have been overlooked. In making mothers visible she asks scholars, whatever sources they analyse, to notice mothers and thereby rethink the category of mothering. In contrast to Baumgarten, whose perspective emerges from her background as a historian, religious studies scholar Mara Benjamin offers a constructive theology. Turning to the master–disciple relationship and a rabbinic culture that replaces the parent with the sage-teacher, Benjamin asks readers to imagine the parent engaged in childcare and childrearing as a metaphorical sage. Overturning the cultural hierarchy of the primacy of ritualized Torah study, she challenges readers to envision the quotidian tasks of childrearing, primarily gendered as maternal teaching or maternal work, to be Torah. She writes that the parent as sage embodies Torah in the practices ‘of attention, care, and openness to the other’. Indeed, since all ritualized Torah study points to these values, she advocates a shifting of cultural perspectives for a fuller understanding of Torah, in which maternal work becomes the foundation upon which later learning rests. Ultimately, Benjamin uses ancient values set forth in rabbinic literature to critique rabbinic culture on the one hand, and to recast motherhood on the other, making a mother’s everyday tasks more visible and significant to Jewish identity and continuity. In this volume we point towards a study of Jewish culture that shifts the lens of analysis from women and wives to mothers, and that prompts scholars to reconsider motherhood and mothering within the patriarchal contexts of home and society. Each author has questioned the stereotypes of Jewish mothers, offering a more diverse understanding of motherhood and its representations. We have argued that, at its core, thinking ‘with’ and reading ‘for’ mothers disrupts the tendency to view mothering as merely instinctual and natural. This is a significant analytical move, especially when seeking insights into the culture of ethnic-religious communities in which men and women have been imagined (often incorrectly) to occupy different spheres—women within and men outside the home. Indeed, we have found that mothers and motherhood raise issues of power and

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i n t r o d u c t i o n agency not only within families and therefore within the home, but also in Jewish culture and society outside the home. The essays included in this book do more than add information to our sense of history. They encourage us to ‘rethink’ mothers and mothering in ways that diverge from our inherited education about Jewish history and culture. To focus on mothers as an analytical category should help us expand our understanding of Jewish culture, seeing it in all of its diversity and nuance, and ultimately lead us to think differently about the way Jewish life was and can be led.

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chodorow, nancy . 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley, Calif. clark, elizabeth a. 2001. ‘Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History’. Church History, 70: 3. cook, joan e. 1999. Hannah’s Desire, God’s Design: Early Interpretations of the Story of Hannah. Sheffield. cooper, alan . 2004. ‘A Medieval Jewish Version of Original Sin: Ephraim of Luntshits on Leviticus 12’. Harvard Theological Review, 97: 445–59. de beauvoir, simone. 1952. The Second Sex. New York. de troyer, kristin, judith a. herbert, judith ann johnson, and annemarie korte, eds. 2003. Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity. Harrisburg, Pa. di q u i nzi o, pa t ri ce. 1999. The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism and the Problem of Mothering. New York. dundes, alan. 1988. ‘The Flood as Male Myth of Creation’. In Alan Dundes, ed., The Flood Myth, 167–82. Berkeley, Calif. exum, cheryl j. 1993. Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narratives. Sheffield. friedan, betty. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. New York. frymer-kensky, tikva . 2002. Reading the Women of the Bible. New York. fuchs, esther. 1989. ‘The Literary Characterization of Mothers and Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible’. Semeia, 46: 151–66. —— 2000. Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman. Sheffield. glenn, evelyn nakano . 1994. ‘Social Constructions of Mothering: A Thematic Overview’. In Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Rennie Forcey, eds., Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, 1–29. New York. grossman, avraham . 2004. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, trans. Jonathan Chipman. Waltham, Mass. hauptman, judith. 2010. ‘“The Matter is Entrusted to Women”: Women and Domestic Rituals’ (Heb.). Sidra, 24–25: 86–91. hays, sharon. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, Conn. huffer, lynne. 1998. Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures: Nostalgia, Ethics, and the Question of Difference. Stanford, Calif. hyman, paula e. 1995. Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women. Seattle, Wash. kanarfogel, ephraim. 1985. ‘Attitudes Toward Childhood and Children in Medieval Jewish Society’. In David R. Blumenthal, ed., Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, vol. ii. 1–34. Chico, Calif. keller, heidi, ype h. poortinga , and axel schölmerich, eds. 2002. Between Culture and Biology: Perspectives on Ontogenetic Development. Cambridge. kittay, eva . 1984. ‘Womb Envy: An Explanatory Concept’. In Joyce Trebilcot, ed., Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory, 94–128. Totowa, NJ.

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i n t r o d u c t i o n klapper, melissa r. 2013. Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890–1940. New York. lehman, marjorie. 2014. ‘Dressing and Undressing the High Priest: A View of Talmudic Mothers’. Nashim, 26: 52–74. —— 2015a. ‘Imagining the Priesthood in Tractate Yoma: Mishnah Yoma 2: 1–2 and BT Yoma 23a’. Nashim, 28: 88–105. —— 2015b. ‘Rabbinic Masculinities: Reading the Ba’al Keri in Tractate Yoma’. Jewish Studies Quarterly, 22: 109–36. luszczynska, magdalena. 2014. ‘Framing Father–Son Relationships in Medieval Ashkenaz: Folk Narratives as Markers of Cultural Difference’. In Simon J. Bronner, ed., Framing Jewish Culture: Boundaries and Representations, 151–71. Oxford. nash, stanley l. 1986. ‘Israeli Father and Sons Revisited’. Conservative Judaism Magazine, 38: 28–37. o’ reilly, andrea, ed. 2004. From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Born. New York. ortner, sherry b. 1972. ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’ Feminist Studies, 1(2): 5–31. otwell, john h. 1977. And Sarah Laughed. Philadelphia. pardes, ilana. 1992. Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach. Cambridge, Mass. patterson, yolanda astarita. 1986. ‘Simone de Beauvoir and the Demystification of Motherhood’. Yale French Studies, 72: 87–105. rich, adrienne. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York. róheim, géza. 1971. The Origin and Function of Culture. New York. rosaldo, michelle zimbalist, and louise lamphere, eds. 1974. ‘Introduction’. In Women, Culture and Society. Stanford, Calif. rosen-zvi, ishay. 2013. ‘The Rise and Fall of Rabbinic Masculinity’. Jewish Studies: An Internet Journal, 12: 1–22. rubin, gayle. 1975. ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex’. In Rayna R. Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women, 157–210. New York. ruddick, sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston. sered, susan. 2000. ‘Introduction: Mothers as Icons’. Nashim, 3: 5–14. sicker, martin. 2013. Reflections on the Book of Leviticus. Bloomington, Ind. stow, kenneth. 1987. ‘The Jewish Family in the Rhineland in the High Middle Ages: Form and Function’. American Historical Review, 92: 1085–110. ta-shma, israel m. 2006. ‘Children in Medieval Germanic Jewry’. In Israel Ta-Shma, Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought, 127–41. Cambridge, Mass. umansky, lauri. 1996. Motherhood Reconceived: Feminism and the Legacy of the Sixties. New York. waxman, chaim i. 1984. The Jewish Father: Past and Present. New York.

PA RT

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Idealized Mothers

o n e

Cooking, Cuddling, and Candle-Lighting: Motherhood in Award-Winning Jewish Children’s Literature e m i ly s i g a lo w

In the opening scene of the award-winning picture book Rivka’s First Thanksgiving (2001), the child protagonist, Rivka, draws at the kitchen table. Her mother stands behind her, cuddling her baby sister. Her grandmother enters the kitchen, carrying a jar of hot apple sauce. Both mother and grandmother are in aprons and housedresses, with their hair pulled back loosely in buns. They peer over her shoulder, looking inquisitively at her picture. They both remark that she is drawing a quite funny-looking kotchka (Yiddish for duck). Rivka corrects them, explaining she is drawing a turkey for Thanksgiving! The story setting is 1910, the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Rivka draws to introduce her traditional Polish immigrant mother and grandmother to the American holiday of Thanksgiving. This kitchen scene—with all four female characters gathered together, laundry drying on the clothesline behind them, hot apple sauce in grandmother’s hand, soup simmering on the stove, baking supplies and a recipe box resting prominently on the counter, and children nearby—captures the stereotypically traditional way many award-winning Jewish children’s books portray Jewish women and mothers. In Rivka’s First Thanksgiving, mothers do all the housework and childcare: they cook, clean, shop for groceries, and care for the children. They facilitate all facets of domestic Jewish life. In contrast, fathers never participate in any form of housework; they engage less frequently with children. The men work outside the home and serve as the religious leaders, decision-makers, and authority figures. The rabbis are bearded men, to whom women quietly defer.1 Although we might assume that Jewish children’s literature written at the start of the twenty-first century would represent Jewish mothers and motherhood in a variety of ways, I illustrate in this essay that contemporary award-winning books like Rivka’s First Thanksgiving overwhelmingly paint a picture of one type of woman: the pious, domestic Jewish mother. Of concern here is not the historical accuracy of these representations of Jewish mothers, or—in the case of Rivka’s

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First Thanksgiving—whether or not Jewish mothers in the Lower East Side of Manhattan around the start of the twentieth century were largely homemakers. Rather, this essay is concerned with the choices that children’s book authors make when they select what stories to tell and how those choices bear on the production and continuation of particular ideas about Jewish mothering and motherhood. Making use of a content analysis of over three decades of winners of the Sydney Taylor Jewish Book Award, a prestigious annual honour given by the Association of Jewish Libraries to an outstanding Jewish children’s book, I argue that modern award-winning Jewish children’s literature plays out and reinforces stereotypes that associate mothers and mothering with private Jewish practice, domestic service, and childrearing, while associating fathers and fathering with public religiosity, leadership, and education. These gendered stereotypes do not vary over the three decades of books I examined. As I conclude, they participate in the perpetuation of a system of religious relations in which Jewish fathers are higher in status, more powerful, and more authoritative than Jewish mothers.

Background and Function of Jewish Children’s Literature American Jewish children’s literature written in English dates back to the early nineteenth century. The first Jewish books for children were religious works, including Bible paraphrases, Hebrew primers, and instructional or educational books (Patz and Miller 1980). After the influx of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe to the United States in the 1880s, demand increased for Jewish children’s literature written in English on subjects that would appeal to American Jewish children (Silver 2008). Although it is difficult to pinpoint the first work of fiction written for Jewish children to be published in America, Jonathan Sarna argues that Samuel Williams Cooper’s Think and Thank (1890), a biography of Sir Moses Montefiore, was one of the first books expressly written by an American author for American Jewish children (1989: 34). By the 1940s, modern, fantasy-filled and profusely illustrated Jewish children’s books grew in popularity in the United States. The later nationwide boom in children’s literature in the 1980s further accelerated the growth (and sales) of Jewish children’s books over the next thirty years (Sarna 1989). As of 2006, the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL), the American governing organization for Jewish libraries, librarianship, and literature, reported that it held over 1,500 Jewish children’s book titles.2 The popularity of the Jewish national book programme, named the PJ Library, suggests that Jewish children’s books have a broad acceptance among the American Jewish community. The PJ Library, a programme funded by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, mails free Jewish children’s books and music to families raising Jewish children across North America on a monthly basis. More than 140,000 families in the United

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States and Canada are members of the programme and receive free Jewish children’s books every month.3 The wide circulation of Jewish children’s literature throughout North American Jewish communities—achieved in a formal setting by educators in Jewish religious schools and informally by families in the home —suggests that it plays an important role in contemporary American Jewish culture. In consequence, this literature has emerged as a powerful vehicle in the socialization of Jewish children in America. Even before young children can read on their own, they listen to stories that expose them to a world outside their immediate circle of family and friends. Books transmit social values and expectations from one generation to the next. Through reading and being read to, children learn what is customary and appreciated in society, as well as what is not acceptable and forbidden. Much sociological research has demonstrated how children’s literature has communicated quite specific messages to young children: it perpetuates ideas about standards of masculinity and femininity and promotes gendered stereotypes and social expectations (Clark, Saucier, Khalil, et al. 1993; Hamilton, Anderson, Broaddus, et al. 2006; Kortenhaus and Demerest 1993; McCabe, Fairchild, Grauerholz, et al. 2011; Weitzman, Eifler, Hokada, et al. 1972). And experimental research has shown that these gender biases and stereotypes actively shape children’s preferences, self-concepts, and activities (Martin and Little 1990; Schau and Scott 1984). Children’s books are thus both important indicators and inculcators of cultural norms; they are what sociologist Wendy Griswold (2008) calls ‘cultural objects’, which both convey and create some part of the larger system referred to as culture. As cultural objects, they both reflect and perpetuate these ideas about Jewish motherhood, perhaps even more so than other cultural carriers because Jewish children’s literature tends to place a central emphasis on the family and because of the important tradition of book culture in Jewish life. Thus, examining Jewish children’s books as ‘cultural objects’ illuminates the nature of contemporary stereotypes about Jewish motherhood and the process by which these stereotypes are reproduced. In order to examine popular ideas about mothers and motherhood in Jewish children’s literature more deeply, I analysed three decades of winners of the Sydney Taylor Jewish Book Award. The AJL awards the Sydney Taylor Medal to the book published in the preceding year that has made the most distinguished contribution to Jewish children’s literature. The award was established in 1968 in honour of the author of one of the best-known and widely read classics of Jewish children’s literature: Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family books. In 1981, the AJL created a special award for younger readers (as well as an award for older readers, and then later for teen readers). The younger reader award goes to picture books, while the older reader awards are typically given to non-illustrated chapter books.

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The Sydney Taylor Book Award reviewers base their evaluation on six criteria: (1) accuracy (dates, spelling, and empirically verifiable facts); (2) ageappropriateness; (3) authenticity (Jewish beliefs, characters, settings, and experiences, which should be portrayed without sentimentality, distortion, or stereotyping); (4) depth of Jewish content; (5) positive focus and values; and (6) sensitivity (promotion of respect for and understanding of Judaism as well as sensitivity to the differing levels and forms of Jewish observance). The award committee reviews submissions from both Jewish and non-Jewish publishing houses. My colleague Nicole Fox and I analysed all the Sydney Taylor Award-winning young reader books from 1980 to 2013, a total of thirty-one books.4 I chose to focus on award-winning books because they represent one measure of what is the best of published Jewish children’s literature. Within sociology, there is precedent for sampling award-winning books (Flannery Quinn 2006; McCabe 2011; Weitzman et al. 1972). I limited the sample to the ‘Younger Reader’ award-winners because I was primarily interested in how ideas of gender and religion are presented to pre-reading children, who are in the earliest stages of forming their relational, gendered, and religious identities. Fox and I evaluated this sample of Jewish children’s books through a content analysis of both illustrations and text. We developed a standard code sheet on which we tallied frequencies and wrote detailed summaries about: (1) male and female visibility; (2)parent–child interactions; (3)nurturing and expressive behaviour; (4) division of household labour; (5) occupational roles; (6) religious practices and ritual; (7) references to the past; (8) presentation of God; and (9) racial and ethnic diversity.5 The only religious practices mentioned in these books were those related to celebrating the sabbath. Although I paid careful attention to potential changes over each decade, the sample was not large enough to make substantial claims about observed patterns or trends, none of which appeared to vary appreciably by decade. Throughout the analysis, I deliberately compared and contrasted representations of mothers and fathers in order to delineate the differences in their ritual and material lives. This sample of award-winning books is not representative of Jewish children’s books overall. Precisely because they are chosen according to set criteria, the books in this sample are likely to have a greater depth of Jewish content, a more ‘positive’ focus on values, and a greater sensitivity towards differing levels and forms of Jewish observance—more so than non-award-winning books. This suggests that what we find in these award-winning books might understate what we find in Jewish children’s books more generally.

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Ritual Lives of Jewish Mothers and Fathers: Private versus Public Judaism Mothers and fathers practise Judaism in opposite ways in the Sydney Taylor Award books. Mothers largely engage in Jewish, and particularly sabbath-related rituals in the home, performing what Marion Kaplan (1991: 64) calls a ‘domestic Judaism’, or a Judaism dedicated to practising and maintaining Jewish laws and customs in the domestic sphere. In contrast, these stories present fathers who practise Judaism more publicly and communally. Table 1 highlights the differences in religious practice between mothers and fathers.

Table 1 Ritual practices Mothers

Preparing for shabbat Lighting candles Baking challah Attending synagogue Text study Jewish leadership

Fathers and men

No. of books

Mean instances per book

No. of books

Mean instances per book

7 4 4 4 0 1

2.3 1 1 1.5 0 2

1 1 1 11 4 13

2 2 1 1.8 2.6 1.7

Within the home, performing sabbath rituals lies at the heart of what it means—ritually—to be a Jewish mother in this sample of books. Fourteen mention the sabbath and highlight it as a day set apart from the rest of the week. They generally speak about the sabbath as a generic day of rest, rather than a day of formal religious observance or restriction. Only one book, entitled Hannah’s Way (2012), mentions keeping the sabbath according to halakhic prescriptions. Rather, Jewish families in this sample primarily observe the sabbath by sitting down for meals and marking the day with family visits and get-togethers. The framework of halakhah as a motivating factor for these practices is not mentioned. Books that feature the sabbath generally illustrate a process of preparation for the day by shopping, cooking, and cleaning, and—importantly—they show mothers as overwhelmingly engaged in these preparations. Seven books show Jewish women preparing for the sabbath by cooking, cleaning, and shopping, in contrast to one book that shows men preparing for the sabbath. In none of the books do mothers complain about shouldering these responsibilities or speak of them as a burden. Rather, they are shown as proud and seemingly glad to be engaging in these activities.

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Similarly, it is the mother who is portrayed as the parent lighting the sabbath candles. Although the commandment to light the candles on Friday evening before the start of the sabbath applies to both men and women, it has traditionally been viewed as the province of women (Shulh.an arukh, ‘Orah. h.ayim’, 263: 3). These children’s books overwhelmingly follow this view. Of the books that contained the ritual of candle lighting, mothers light the candles in every one except for Joseph Who Loved the Sabbath (1986), in which Joseph, the main character, is single and childless and has only himself to rely upon. Thus, Joseph’s lighting the candles does not seem to be an act of gender reversal so much as an act of necessity. As with candle-lighting, the books in this sample almost exclusively show the mother as the adult baking challah, the sabbath bread. Again, the one instance of a man baking challah occurs in Joseph Who Loved the Sabbath, a book in which no woman is present in the home (1986). The content, pictures, and even title of Mrs. Moskowitz and the Sabbath Candlesticks (1983) illustrate the importance of the sabbath to Jewish mothers in this sample. This book tells the story of Mrs Moskowitz, a grey-haired woman who moves with her cat Fred from her house to a new apartment. She worries that the new apartment will never feel like a home. Shortly after she moves in, her son Sam brings her a box she had left behind at her old house. As she unpacks the box, she finds a pair of sabbath candlesticks. Cleaning them brings back memories of the many sabbath dinners she enjoyed in her old house. The rediscovered candlesticks also motivate Mrs Moskowitz to make her new apartment feel more like a home, which she does by preparing the apartment for the sabbath. She sweeps the floors and cleans, and then goes shopping to buy the supplies needed for a sabbath dinner. Back at her apartment, she bakes a challah and begins cooking the sabbath meal. She sets up a small table, on which she places her kiddush cup, a covered challah, flowers, and her newly polished candlesticks. After all this preparation, she welcomes her children and grandchildren into her new apartment for the sabbath. The story concludes with the message that celebrating the sabbath with one’s family has the power to transform a house into a home. Although the sabbath plays an important role in the lives of Mrs Moskowitz and other Jewish mothers in this sample of books, no other Jewish practices or rituals figure prominently in Jewish women’s lives. While a number of books show scenes that feature fathers (and men more generally) praying and/or struggling with God, not a single book shows a mother engaged in a public or private communication with God. In contrast to the depiction of mothers, fathers are not presented as ritually observant inside the home. In fact, authors show fathers fulfilling few of the Jewish commandments which they are traditionally obligated to perform. They do not, for example, recite the sabbath blessing over wine or the blessings after the sabbath meal inside the home. None of the books show fathers praying three times daily, donning tefilin (phylacteries), or wearing tsitsit (knotted ritual

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fringes). In books set in contemporary times, the men do not wear a kipah (head covering) in everyday life and only wear one when they are in synagogue or at a funeral or a holiday celebration. When stories take place in eastern Europe, men often wear hasidic dress and kipot, signalling that the story takes place in the more distant past. Overall, the award-winning books show fathers, and men more generally, as religious participants, leaders, and teachers outside the home. Performing these activities as ‘public Judaism’ defines the ritual and religious lives of Jewish fathers. Fathers (and single men) attend synagogue on the sabbath, but these books never show or talk about Jewish mothers engaged in similar religious practices. However, the books do occasionally portray mothers attending synagogue with their families on holidays or for funerals. Nearly three times as many books show fathers and men attending and praying in synagogue as those that depict mothers in the same way (Table 1). This pattern conveys the message that attending synagogue is an extraordinary event for a mother and an ordinary one for a father. These books almost always depict Jewish fathers, rather than mothers, as the religious leaders—clergy, prayer leaders, community leaders, etc.—outside the home. Thirteen books show men and fathers as religious leaders, compared to only one, New Year at the Pier (2009), that shows a woman leading Jewish worship. All the rabbis in every book analysed are men (and fathers). Although New Year at the Pier features a woman cantor, all the other books feature solely fathers or rabbis heading services as the prayer leader, directing a funeral service, blowing the shofar (ram’s horn) on Rosh Hashanah, teaching children Jewish texts, or performing Jewish rituals, such as conferring adult status on a boy at his barmitzvah. New Year at the Pier (2009), the stark exception to these rules, tells the story of a young boy, Izzy, and his preparation for the tashlikh ritual on Rosh Hashanah by reflecting on his behaviour and apologizing for his wrongdoings. The story concludes when Izzy and his family (which includes his mother and his sister) gather with the community at the pier to symbolically cast away their sins by throwing bread into the water. At the pier, Cantor Livia, who wears a colourful long dress, sings alongside Rabbi Neil. However, the story never mentions whether Cantor Livia is married and/or a mother. New Year at the Pier was the only book that had a clear egalitarian and progressive religious bent: the cantor is a woman, she plays the guitar on Rosh Hashanah, only some men wear kipot, many women wear trousers, the rabbi and cantor are called by their first names (Rabbi Neil and Cantor Livia), and Izzy’s mother seems to be a single parent. In a personal communication, April Halprin Wayland, the author of New Year at the Pier, explained that her experiences of liberal Judaism had shaped her thinking about the plot and cast of the story. She wrote the book to capture how her southern California beach town’s Reform Jewish community celebrates the New

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Year. Wayland deliberately sought out a secular publishing house (Dial Press) for her book, in the hope of reaching a broader audience. However, she also said she did take measures to try to make the book more appealing to more traditionally observant Jews: she used the word ‘synagogue’ rather than ‘temple’, changed the story so that the main characters were not writing on Rosh Hashanah, and, following strictly Orthodox custom, avoided spelling out the Hebrew name of God. She did not, however, go so far as to make the cantor a man, as she wanted to reflect her own experience of hearing a woman cantor leading a tashlikh service on a California pier. Wayland did not view her decision to portray the cantor as a woman as radical or transgressive but rather as a reflection of the Jewish community to which she belongs. In terms of religious instruction, fathers always appear in the books as the parent who teaches children Jewish texts, while women and mothers never appear teaching texts or receiving any religious instruction themselves. Fathers, rather than mothers, are actively involved in informal education too, through the telling of biblical and midrashic stories and imparting a love of Torah to children. The book When Zaydeh Danced on Eldridge Street (1997) illustrates the way men (in this case, a grandfather) teach Jewish values to their children. The story begins when the main character, Zessie, visits her grandparents’ house while her mother is in the hospital having her baby brother. At their house, Zaydeh, her grandfather, quizzes her: ‘So, do you know what today is?’ Zessie suspects it is a festival but does not know which one. Zaydeh, who ‘shook his head sadly at his granddaughter’s ignorance’, tells her that it is the holiday of Simhat Torah, a celebration of finishing the Torah reading for the year, rolling it back, and beginning all over again. Although Zaydeh, a stern, hunched-over little man, intimidates Zessie, she agrees to go with him to a Simhat Torah party at his shul (synagogue). At the shul, Zaydeh invites Zessie to ascend the bimah (reading platform) to see the Torah for the first time. After leaving the bimah, she asks Zaydeh, ‘What is Torah? What does it mean? I know it’s important, but why?’ With eyes ‘popped wide open’, Zaydeh tells her that the Torah is the five books of Moses that were given to the Jewish people by ‘God in heaven’ to tell the Jews how to live as Jews in the world. His personal opinion, he says, is that it is a ‘kiss from God to the Jewish people to show His love’. Zessie spends the rest of the festival singing and dancing with her grandfather, parading the Torah around in the streets. At the end of the book, she concludes that the Torah is the ‘most precious treasure of all, the wonder of wonders’. When Zaydeh Danced on Eldridge Street demonstrates the important role that fathers and grandfathers play in imparting a love of Torah and Judaism to children. No books in this sample, however, convey the message that mothers or grandmothers also play an important role in instilling in children a love for Torah, scholarship, and/or Jewish texts. Since we found no significant developments in the storylines of the books published over a period of time, it does not seem that their authors were reacting

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to changes within the American Jewish community, such as the ordination of women rabbis in various wings of Judaism. Rather, it seems that these authors wanted to preserve the memories of, or at least wax nostalgic about, the culture of a traditional Jewish patriarchy.

The Material Lives of Jewish Fathers and Mothers This sample only occasionally featured men as single or childless (four of the thirty-one books contained a central male character who was both single and childless). In contrast, women were always represented as wives or mothers. Womanhood and motherhood are inextricably linked in these books, while fatherhood is separate from manhood. In other words, these books do not define and delimit men by their procreative capacities, as they do women. The only images of non-married women are those of widows. About 10 per cent of the books contain stories with a young widow raising her children alone after her husband’s death. Daddy’s Chair (1991), for example, deals with the story of a young boy named Michael, who struggles to come to terms with his father’s death from cancer. Michael does not want anyone to sit on his father’s special chair, the seat where he and his father used to play draughts and watch television. Michael’s mother tries to comfort him, explaining that, ‘Sometimes good people like your daddy die, no matter how much they want to live.’ Eventually, Michael begins to accept his father’s death and views the special chair as a place to sit whenever he wants to think about and remember his father. Daddy’s Chair, along with the other stories that feature young widows with children, associates lone mothers with widowhood, that is, with profound loss and sadness. Although the widowed wife motif has a visible presence in this sample of award-winning books, not a single book deals with the struggles of a widower or the challenges facing a single father. Instead, the representation of single men in these books is one of contentment. In Joseph Who Loved the Sabbath (1986), for example, the main character, Joseph, is a single man who works all week long for Sorab, his rich, greedy boss. On the sabbath, however, Joseph stops working and celebrates the day. He says his prayers, and then ‘shared a meal with some friends, and they sang sabbath songs together. Sometimes he played a game, sometimes he read. Joseph enjoyed the sabbath.’ It is interesting that Joseph is never discussed or shown as having a family. This book makes clear that Joseph, though single and childless, is able to enjoy life in much the same way as a man with a wife and family. No book in this sample, however, suggests that a woman could similarly enjoy life as single or childless. And not a single book suggests that Jewish mothers could be in a same-sex marriage or could be divorced. These books also paint an image of Jewish mothers that makes them look remarkably similar: that is to say, they are white, apparently Ashkenazi, women. The representation of Izzy’s mother in New Year at the Pier (2009) is the only

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exception. The book makes no reference to Izzy’s mother as having a husband (though it does not affirm that she is single either), and she looks somewhat Asian.6 Stephane Jorsich, the book’s well-regarded, non-Jewish Canadian illustrator, had complete autonomy over the illustrations, and drew Izzy’s mother as a thin, smartly dressed woman with straight, jet-black hair and dark eyes, a look strikingly different from that of all the other mothers in this sample, the majority of whom look like Rivka’s mother from Rivka’s First Thanksgiving: white, Ashkenazi-looking women who wear aprons and housedresses, and have their hair pulled back in a bun. In terms of their day-to-day lives, Jewish mothers in this group of books are largely engaged in three types of domestic labour: cooking, cleaning, and cuddling—far more often than fathers (see Table 2). Mothers are the only parents shown doing any of the household cooking and cleaning. Images of Jewish mothers commonly show them in the kitchen, cooking food for their families, mopping or sweeping the floor, washing dishes, or hanging laundry up to dry. In addition to the cooking and cleaning, many books show mothers, much more so than fathers, engaged in nurturing behaviours with their children. Mothers cuddle children, read them stories, hold their hand, and kiss them over twice as often as fathers, even in the books that show fathers engaged in some form of caretaking behaviour. These books convey an image of Jewish motherhood as a life of domestic service and childrearing. In doing so, they build an image of the Jewish mother who acts completely differently from the Jewish father, delineating and maintaining clear boundaries between mothers and fathers, women and men. Most of the award-winning books paint tender and loving images of mothers taking care of their children; the notable exception is Sholom’s Treasure (2005), a book that features a verbally and physically abusive stepmother. A work of biographical fiction, this story tells a picture-book version of how the Yiddish author Table 2 Material practices Mothers Fathers Grandmothers No. of Mean No. of Mean No. of Mean books instances books instances books instances per book per book per book Nurturing 13 behaviours Domestic 9 work Work outside 2 home Educating 1 children

Grandfathers No. of Mean books instances per book

2.2

9

1

6

2.7

6

3.7

2.4

0

0

5

2.4

2

1.5

1

8

2.6

1

1

3

1.7

1

2

1

3

1

5

2

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Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovitz, 1859–1916) became a writer. Sholom’s Treasure loosely follows the tale of Sholem Aleichem’s life and experiences with his cruel stepmother. Early on in the book, Sholom’s mother passes away. After her death, his Uncle Pinney says to his father, ‘You will do what every Jew does . . . You’ll marry again. A man needs a wife.’ His father does remarry, ‘not for love, but for labour’, as he needs a wife to take care of his twelve children. Sholom’s stepmother is furious about this burden, and she ‘lashed out at the children with whippings and sharp words’. When the children cry, she teases them and has her own ‘mocking name for each one’. The stepmother, the book says, is capable of simultaneously ‘snarling at one and smacking another’. In contrast to the warm and affectionate presentations of mothers in other books, this story does not present a loving relationship between child and stepmother; nor does it paint a positive picture of stepmothers or blended families more generally. The journeys of fathers in these books are different. They work outside the home and provide financially for their families. In some cases, fathers work as pedlars, farmers, or even as employees in general stores (as is the case in Hannah’s Way). Other books show Jewish fathers in prominent professional positions as political leaders, social justice activists, or important teachers. Only two books briefly mention mothers as working outside the home, and in both these instances, the mother works only because the family is in a desperate financial situation. The book that best illustrates the professional differences between mothers and fathers is As Good As Anybody (2008), which draws a parallel between the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. A work of historical fiction, this story begins with King’s boyhood, describing how he was ‘mad at everyone’ because of the constant discrimination he experienced. He marches into his father’s church, stamping his feet with frustration. His father, an important preacher, tells him, ‘You are looking down when you should be looking up . . . The way things are is not the way they always have to be.’ The story progresses as Martin grows up to be a minister and leader just like his father. The book then turns to the story of Abraham Heschel as a young boy. Abraham, too, is upset about the discrimination he experiences, a discrimination that comes from being a Jew in Warsaw in the early twentieth century. His father, a prominent rabbi, tells him, ‘Walk like a prince, not a peasant.’ As a boy, Abraham studies and prays with his father, and, like Martin King, follows in his father’s footsteps and becomes a rabbi. After Hitler rises to power in Europe, Abraham flees Poland for America, where he ‘marched all over speaking out for peace and equal rights’. The story culminates in the famous 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin and Abraham walk together. Although the story highlights the influence of King’s and Heschel’s fathers on their lives, the book pays very little attention to their mothers’ influence. The mothers appear in only two scenes, and in both their appearances are brief: they

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tenderly hug their sons and offer them words of encouragement. The book does not mention the work that the mothers do (in or outside the home) or talk about how they, too, serve as role models for their sons. This absence is particularly notable given that Alberta King, Martin Luther King’s mother, had an active professional life, first as a teacher and then as a music director and founder and director of the Women’s Council at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her husband was the pastor. She was also active in the Young Women’s Christian Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Carson 2001). Abraham Heschel’s mother, Reizel Perlow, was born into a family of prominent rabbis, but her influence on her son’s professional path is invisible in this book (Kaplan 2007). Although As Good As Anybody conveys an important message about the imperative to fight for justice and equality, it also—more subtly— communicates the message that fathers and men are role models for activism and leadership, while boys go to their mothers for physical affection and emotional support. Although the books in this sample do not characterize Jewish mothers and grandmothers in discernibly different ways, they do, by contrast, represent grandfathers very differently from fathers. The books frequently show grandfathers in much more nurturing roles than fathers. Grandfathers cuddle and engage with their grandchildren, taking a much more active and emotional role in children’s lives than fathers. In several cases, the grandfather represents the traditional past, while the father represents a more assimilationist experience of wanting to integrate into American society. Storytelling, particularly about the traditional past, is of particular importance to the grandfather role in the books. Castle on Hester Street (2007), for example, centres on the relationship between a young girl, Julie, and her story-loving grandfather. Julie’s grandfather tells her tales of his immigration to the United States from eastern Europe. He shares fantastic, embellished stories about Moishe the goat from the Old World. Moishe, he explains, pulled a solid gold wagon—like a shooting star—from their village in Russia and leaped across oceans singing songs. He also tells her about his work in the Old World, selling buttons made from diamonds, emeralds, and rubies—buttons as big as ‘saucers that people could use as sleds in snow’. Julie’s grandmother ultimately puts an end to the grandfather’s fantasizing, insisting that Julie hear the truth about how hard life was for the Jews in Russia. She tells Julie, matter-of-factly, that Jews came over from Russia on a crowded boat in miserable conditions and how her grandfather sold buttons small enough to fit through buttonholes. Julie’s grandmother serves as the voice of reality, while her grandfather plays the role of the dreamer and affectionate caregiver, nurturing her imagination. Grandfathers do engage in domestic labour in these stories. Although they never cook, they are shown cleaning and washing dishes, among other household

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duties. In Something for Nothing (1992), a grandfather works in the home by sewing a blanket for his infant grandson. Once the blanket grows ragged, the grandfather offers to repair it and turns it ‘round and round’ with his scissors as his ‘needle flew in and out, in and out’—eventually, he turns the blanket into a jacket. One might think this was the end of the story, but over the years, the grandfather keeps sewing the fabric, transforming it next into a waistcoat, a tie, a handkerchief, and finally a button. This book thus promotes an image of grandfathers who sew and work within the home. While the typical father in these books has no domestic responsibilities, the grandfather figure tends to tell stories, interact with children, and engage in domestic work, albeit perhaps sometimes his own version of such work. In this way, Jewish grandfathers in this sample seem to experience a freedom to do or perform ‘grandfatherhood’ in a manner reminiscent of motherhood. I suspect that, for Jewish grandfathers, age has attenuated the stereotypical practices associated with fatherhood. Greater status and competence are attached to younger men (Ridgeway 2011: 46–8). As fathers turn into grandfathers, they grow less physically capable, powerful, and dominant, becoming more like the women in these books. Thus, as fathers age ‘out of their prime’, they become, in a categorial or relational sense, more like mothers, and take on attributes associated with Jewish motherhood: more nurturing, domestic, and expressive.

Conclusion The books surveyed paint a picture of the Jewish mother who quietly and devotedly performs sabbath rituals within the confines of the home, keeps house, and cares for children. Mothers’ activities occur outside the purview of society; they are ordinary, frequent, and predictable. In contrast, the representation of Jewish fatherhood in these books is one of public religiosity, education, and leadership. Fathers hold nearly all the public religious positions of power. Their religious activities largely take place outside the home, are socially important, and are extolled. The images and stories of Jewish mothers in this selection of books were nearly all alike, but the characterizations of Jewish fathers varied (i.e. father-as-rabbi; father-as-communal leader; father-as-Torah scholar, etc.). By conveying the message to children that fathers are the public leaders and mothers are the domestic keepers, these books play out and reinforce the old trope of Jewish men as ‘performers’ and women as ‘facilitators’, even if these stereotypes no longer reflect the increasingly egalitarian nature of contemporary American culture (Rosman 2007). These stereotypes about motherhood and fatherhood matter to Jewish society because they reproduce and reinforce general status beliefs that elevate Jewish fathers over mothers by presenting them as more central to the things that society values the most, such as leadership, professional status, and wage-earning (Ridgeway 2011). They thus participate

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in and sustain a system of religious relations in which Jewish fathers are higher in status, more powerful, and more authoritative than Jewish mothers. These gendered stereotypes have the potential to spread to different spheres of social life and shape behaviour and judgement. They may contribute to a general sense of unimportance among girls and privilege among boys, particularly in relation to their religious lives and capabilities. As children read these books— or have the books read to them—the differences between mothers and fathers that the stereotypes suggest are both internalized and reified. As experimental research has shown, gender biases in books influence children’s preferences, self-concepts, and activities (Schau and Scott 1984). Studies have demonstrated that exposure to gender-stereotypical reading materials results in children conforming to such roles (Martin and Little 1990). By implicitly or explicitly acting on these stereotypes, children grow into adults who perpetuate the differences and inequalities between Jewish mothers and fathers that the stereotypes suggest. In addition to promoting stereotypes about how Jewish mothers should act, the books in this sample also create an ideal about how Jewish mothers should look. This idealized image of Jewish motherhood—one that is heterosexual, married, Ashkenazi, and white—does not reflect the variety of types of Jewish mother in contemporary society or across time and geographical context. The one-dimensional model of Jewish motherhood—this ‘ideal type’—promoted in these books has the potential to make children (and their parents) feel alienated or self-conscious if their family looks different from the version of Jewish motherhood presented there. Of concern in this essay are the choices that authors of children’s books make when they select the stories to tell, and how those choices bear on the production of particular ideas about Jewish mothering and motherhood. Authors of Jewish children’s books tend to emphasize the same themes and stories over others, apparently without recognizing that history, let alone fictional stories, can be told from various perspectives. Authors have the freedom to write any type of story, and need not select stories that produce stereotypes associating men with agency and leadership and women with domesticity and personal relationships. For example, Richard Michelson could have written As Good As Anybody (2013) to emphasize the influence that Martin Luther King’s and Abraham Heschel’s mother had on these two leaders’ lives. Other authors could have written stories that featured women rabbis and leaders, like New Year at the Pier (2009), to provide young girls with religious role models. Studies of picture books in America consistently demonstrate gender inequality in characters, content, and pictures (Hamilton et al. 2006; Kortenhaus and Demerest 1993; McCabe et al. 2011; Weitzman et al. 1972). In one of the earliest studies of gender representations in picture books, Weitzman et al. (1972) found that female characters were under-represented in titles, central roles, and pictures in Caldecott award-winning children’s books. They concluded, ‘most chil-

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dren’s books are about boys, men, and male animals, and most deal exclusively with male adventures’ (1972: 1128). Weitzman’s study illustrated that awardwinning books tended to portray boys as active leaders and girls as passive followers; men tended to work outside the home and possess career skills, while women performed domestic responsibilities. Yet the clearly marked gender stereotypes of mothers and mothering in these award-winning Jewish children’s books remain surprising in light of the fact that, as an ethno-religious group, American Jews are notable for their socially liberal and egalitarian attitudes (Smith 2005). Arguably, the nature of the stereotypes identified in this study constructs idealized gender types within American society, in a broader sense, in an effort to portray Judaism as fundamentally different from the larger culture. Perhaps the nostalgic attachment that many of the authors display to stories of a traditional Jewish past desensitizes them to the patterns of gender stereotyping within the stories they cherish, especially as they consider their audience of young children. As Jewish life grows increasingly secular and intermarriage more commonplace, the structure of the Jewish family, if not of the Jewish community, is changing to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families and parents-by-choice within its sphere. These authors may be helping to sustain an imaginary reality about Jewish mothers in an attempt to reach back to the past for well-ordered and gender-specific memories. Such an attempt would put aside all the conflicts and tensions that characterized the Jewish family in the decades when the stories took place, as a way of concealing anxieties the authors might feel about the changing nature of American Jewish life. As Joyce Antler has observed, the portrayal of the Jewish mother ‘offers a gauge with which we can measure Jews’ anxieties about their place in American society’ (2008: 10). The nostalgic attachment shown by children’s authors to images of the traditional Jewish mother thus seems to convey a larger and more generalized anxiety about questions of inclusiveness and acceptance of different types of mothers within Jewish society. As these anxieties abate, perhaps new Jewish children’s books will showcase a wider variety of representations of the Jewish mother: traditional and non-traditional; single and married; privately pious and publicly prayerful. Alongside stories of fathers who lead Jewish communities and fight for social change, these new books might also include stories of women and mothers who do the same.

Acknowledgements I wish to thank the Helen Gartner Hammer Scholar-in-Residence programme at the Hadassah Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University for the financial support that enabled the writing of this article. I also wish to thank Nicole Fox, who assisted greatly with the coding of the children’s books.

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Notes 1

Although all of the adult women in Rivka’s First Thanksgiving defer to the rabbis, Rivka, as a young girl, challenges and engages with rabbis and shows how that engagement can effect change.

2

Association for Jewish Libraries homepage, , accessed 5 Jan. 2013. However, the Association for Jewish Libraries has no systematic data about how and in what numbers their books are used by preschool teachers, religious school teachers, parents, clergy, and children.

3

Judy Federbush and Meredith Lewis, personal communication, 4 Aug. 2015. The programme also reaches families in Israel (in Hebrew and Arabic), Mexico (Spanish), and the United Kingdom and Australia (English).

4

Nicole Fox assisted with the writing of the code-sheet and coding of the children’s books. No young reader award-winner was chosen in 2004.

5

The code sheet and method material are available on request.

6

This information was acquired through personal communication with April Wayland, the author, who also thought that Izzy’s mother in the illustrations looks Asian, perhaps Japanese.

References Books Analysed in Sample adler, david. 1987. The Number on my Grandfather’s Arm. New York. blanc, esther , and tennessee dixon (illustrator). 1989. Berchick. San Francisco. davis, aubrey, and duscan petricic (illustrator). 2003. Bagels from Benny. New York. freedman, florence, and robert parker (illustrator). 1985. Brothers—A Hebrew Legend. New York. gershman, sarah, and kristina swarner (illustrator). 2007. The Bedtime Sh’ma. Oakland, Calif. gilman, phoebe. 1992. Something from Nothing. New York. glaser, linda. 2012. Hannah’s Way. Minneapolis, Minn. goldin, barbara d., and erika weihs (illustrator). 1991. Cakes and Miracles: A Purim Tale. New York. heller, linda , and boris kuliko (illustrator). 1982. The Castle on Hester Street. New York. hershenhorn, esther, and rosanne litzinger (illustrator). 2002. Chicken Soup by Heart. New York. hirsh, marilyn, and devis grebu (illustrator). 1986. Joseph Who Loved the Sabbath. New York. hoestlandt, jo , and johanna kang (illustrator). 1995. Star of Fear, Star of Hope. New York. jaffe, nina , and elivia savadier (illustrator). 1993. The Uninvited Guest. New York. kimmel, eric, and ciora carmi (illustrator). 1990. The Chanukkah Guest. New York.

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—— and john muth (illustrator). 2000. Gershon’s Monster: A Story for the Jewish New Year. New York. krensky, stephen, and greg harlin (illustrator). 2006. Hanukkah at Valley Forge. New York. lanton, sandy, and shelly haas (illustrator). 1990. Daddy’s Chair. Minneapolis, Minn. michelson, richard , and raul colon (illustrator). 2008. As Good as Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr. New York. oberman, sheldon, and red lewin (illustrator). 1994. The Always Prayer Shawl. Honesdale, Pa. polacco, patricia . 1998. The Keeping Quilt. New York. pomerantz, barbara, and leon lurie (photographer). 1983. Bubby, Me and Memories. New York. rael, elsa o., and maryann kovalski (illustrator). 2001. Rivka’s First Thanksgiving. New York. —— and marjorie priceman (illustrator). 1997. When Zaydeh Danced on Eldridge Street. New York. schur, maxine r., and kimberly b. root (illustrator). 1995. The Peddler’s Gift. New York. schwartz, amy. 1983. Mrs. Moskowitz and the Sabbath Candlesticks. Philadelphia. schwartz, howard, and kristina swarner (illustrator). 2010. Gathering Sparks. New York. silverman, erica, and mordicai gerstein (illustrator). 2005. Sholom’s Treasure: How Sholom Aleichem Became a Writer. New York. sofer, barbara. 1995. Shalom Haver. Minneapolis, Minn. stillman, marci, and pesach gerber (illustrator). 1998. Nine Spoons: A Chanukkah Story. Jerusalem. wayland, april h., and stephane jorisch (illustrator). 2009. New Year at the Pier: A Rosh Hashanah Story. New York.

Other Sources antler, joyce. 2008. You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother. New York. carson, clayborne. 2001. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York. clark, roger guilmain, jessica saucier, paul khalil, and jocelyn tavarez. 2003. ‘Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Presence of Female Characters and Gender Stereotyping in Award-Winning Picture Books between the 1930s and the 1960s’. Sex Roles, 49: 439–49. flannery quinn, suzanne m. 2006. ‘Examining the Culture of Fatherhood in American Children’s Literature: Presence, Interactions, and Nurturing Behaviors of Fathers in Caldecott Award-Winning Picture Books (1938–2002)’. Fathering, 4: 1: 71–96. griswold, wendy. 2008. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. New York.

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hamilton, mykol, david anderson, michelle broaddus, and kate young. 2006. ‘Gender Stereotyping and Under-Representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-First Century Update’. Sex Roles, 55: 757–65. kaplan, edward k. 2007. Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972. New Haven. kaplan, marion. 1991. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. New York. king, martin luther, 2007. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., vol. vi: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948–March 1963, senior editor Clayborne Carson. Berkeley, Calif. kortenhaus, carol, and jack demarest. 1993. ‘Gender Role Stereotyping in Children’s Literature: An Update’. Sex Roles, 28: 219–32. mccabe, janice, emily fairchild, liz grauerholz, bernice pescosolido, and daniel tope. 2011. ‘Patterns of Disparity in Titles and Central Characters’. Gender & Society, 25: 197–226. martin, carol, and jane little . 1990. ‘The Relation of Gender Understanding to Children’s Sex-Typed Preferences and Gender Stereotypes’. Child Development, 61: 1427–39. patz, naomi m., and philip e. miller . 1980. ‘Jewish Religious Children’s Literature in America: An Analytical Survey’. Phaedrus, 7: 19–29. ridgeway, cecilia l. 2011. Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World. New York. rosman, moshe. 2007. How Jewish Is Jewish History? Oxford. sarna, jonathan d., ed. 1989. JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988. Philadelphia. schau, candace g., and kathryn p. scott. 1984. ‘Review of 21 Cause and Effect Studies’. Psychological Documents, 76: 183–93. silver, linda r . 2008. The Jewish Values Finder: A Guide to Values in Jewish Children’s Literature. Chicago. smith, tom. 2005. Jewish Distinctiveness in America: A Statistical Portrait. New York. weitzman, lenore, deborah eifler, elizabeth hokada, and catherine ross. 1972. ‘Sex-Role Socialization in Picture Books for Preschool Children’. American Journal of Sociology, 77: 1125–50.

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The Jewish Mother’s Prayer: Mothers in Late NineteenthCentury Hungarian Jewish Women’s Prayer Books krisztina frauhammer

‘A woman’s prayer embraces an entire world . . .’ kiss, Mirjam, 1

Rabbi Arnold Kiss (1868–1940) wrote the eloquent words above in the foreword to the 100th edition of his prayer book Mirjam (1939), published during the time of the emancipation of Jews in eastern Europe. With this artful comment, he also reveals a larger agenda about women’s prayers and their function. In this essay, I explore the world of Neolog Jewish women’s prayer books published between 1890 and 1935, focusing on prayers for mothers and the advice and knowledge they convey regarding motherhood. The rift between the Neolog and Orthodox communities was institutionalized following the 1868–9 Hungarian Jewish Congress. In time, they became two separate currents.1 Mirjam was one of the most popular prayer books published in this period; its first edition went to press in 1898, with many further editions and printings. The role of these newly envisioned prayer books became especially important with the changes brought about in the nineteenth century by the emancipation of Jews. Their contents sanctified the vocation of motherhood and the role of mothers in rearing children, thereby bestowing upon women the responsibility for the survival of Hungarian Jewry. Mothers came to be seen as powerful supporters of the national culture, and at the same time as guardians of the Jewish tradition, to which they were to hold on in the wake of sweeping cultural shifts occurring in eastern Europe and affecting virtually all aspects of Jewish family and communal life. Suddenly, mothers were described as having a key role over and above their husbands, enabling them to impart the Jewish tradition to their children. This change took place in the context of the emergence of bourgeois nuclear families. It was they who were to ‘shape the home into a blessed place of friendship and good deeds’ (Neuda 1903: 169). Drawing on the forewords, meditations, and

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prayer texts written in Hungarian prayer books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I explore how the genre of prayer books portrayed mothers as a central cultural force holding the power to avert the sociopolitical processes and secularizing trends that affected Jews during this period.

Jewish Emancipation and the Idealized Role of the Mother The history of central European Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is also the history of their rapid collective rise in society and, concurrently, their swift modernization (Heinsohn and Schüler-Springorum 2006: 10). No other social group in the German linguistic and cultural territories underwent embourgeoisement on such a large scale and as successfully as the Jews, according to Simone Lässig (2004: 13). Her observations are also valid for Hungary. During the nineteenth century, laws were enacted in Hungary, similar to those in Germany, which made it possible for Hungarian Jews to settle in urban areas, acquire property, and establish industrial plants (Toronyi 2010: 26). The process of emancipation changed the political and social status of the Jews from that of a marginalized people into citizens with a wide range of rights. They were granted the opportunity to become an integral part of the social and economic structure of the country (Frojimovics 2008: 41). They were able to participate in daily life under the same legal conditions as the non-Jewish majority, and to join in the establishment of a modern Hungary (Toronyi 2002: 10). Additionally, when legal equality was achieved in 1895 with the official acceptance of the Jewish faith (it was declared a received religion) by Hungary’s government, it opened up cultural opportunities unknown to the Jews before this point (Toronyi 2010: 26). Access to new careers and new educational opportunities became a catalyst for their upward social mobility (Lässig 2004: 101–213, 659–60). These changes had an especially strong impact on Judaism because this new environment created a space in which Jewish and bourgeois ideas could be integrated. We see this, for example, in the reforms introduced to synagogue services, including the delivery of sermons in Hungarian (Lässig 2004: 243–326, 660–2). At the same time, in the late nineteenth century Jews had to face the challenges posed by modernity: the rationalization of tradition, the decline of religious authority and institutional legitimacy, and the individualization of religious practice (Glässer 2012: 67). Under the influence of these processes of secularization and emancipation, new Jewish communities emerged in Budapest and other major cities out of a desire for religious renewal. These communities turned towards the advancing European cultures and their patterns, attempting to tailor their daily lives and religion to these frameworks (Glässer 2012: 67). The secularization of assimilating Jews, their decision to turn away from reli-

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gion or failure to practise it, became an urgent problem. Religious leaders were especially concerned about the role of mothers because they expected them to continue to play an important role in the religious education of their children and in the preservation of traditions, despite knowing full well that mothers were also exposed to this trend towards secularization and the upward mobility of their families. Neolog Jews in particular, who were a distinct faction of middle-class Hungarian Jews committed to integrating into Hungarian society while embracing some level of reform within Judaism, had much to look forward to, but also much to fear. More particularly, the assimilation of Jews in Hungary had a great effect on women. Wives and mothers assumed the bulk of the responsibility to adopt and adapt to the national culture, while at the same time maintaining traditional Judaism in their home life. There is no doubt that women took an active role in the formation of a Jewish middle class, since one of the loci for this phenomenon was the family itself. Women were entrusted with family life, while men seized the opportunities now open to them and entered the realm of business and politics, often abandoning Jewish practice in the process (Hyman 2006: 29). Chief Rabbi Leó Singer, who compiled an advice book composed of spiritual readings, Kötelességtan (1907), wrote poetically about his idealized view of the ‘gender divide’, reflecting the increasing pressure placed on rabbis to find solutions to the negative effects of emancipation and assimilation: Men think with their minds, women with their hearts; the power of the mind, therefore, is placed in the hands of men, while the power of love is placed in the hands of women. Men obtain the earthly fruit necessary for existence through hard work; the tame, weak hands of women plant flowers for solace. Men are called from the home: by their jobs and their occupations and their struggle for a material existence; women transform the sweet home of the family into a shrine and wipe the sweat from the face of their husbands, create a home for those who struggle, and bring happiness to those who suffer. Like guardian angels, women safeguard the purity of family life and their home as well as maintaining and educating Jewish identity in the hearts of their children. It is from women that children should learn gentleness, compassion for those who suffer, and faith and trust in God. (Singer 1907: 20)

Once they entered the middle class, Jewish women had far more opportunities to establish contacts with non-Jewish women. Together they organize leisuretime activities, attended salons, and joined charitable organizations (Kratz-Ritter 1995: 25; Toronyi 2002: 15). Children were increasingly supervised by French or English governesses who successfully brought the model of western middle-class behaviour into the Jewish home at the cost of attachment to the Jewish tradition. With few available Jewish governesses, Jewish families often ended up hiring Catholic tutors to teach and care for their children. These tutors would perform their duties on the basis of their own Catholic upbringing and religious principles. Miksa Szabolcsi (1817–1915), the editor-in-chief of the Budapest Neolog

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Jewish weekly Egyenlo´´ség, reported regarding the wife of a Jewish banker that if she ‘should awake one day to find that somebody had baptized her child so that nothing could be done about it by then, she would feel very happy’ (Szabolcsi 1898). Concerned about the presence of Catholic governesses serving in Jewish families, Arnold Kiss, a prominent Budapest rabbi, claimed that Jewish women did not bother with the religious life of their children. Jewish families had begun to acknowledge, and even incorporate into their home life, Christian symbols such as Christmas trees, Easter eggs, pictures of Father Christmas, and so on (Kiss 1898). Ferenc Hevesi (1898–1952), chief rabbi of Budapest, in the foreword to his prayer book Fohász, pointed out that Jewish observance had become far less public and communal. He claimed this was especially true of mothers, for whom the home replaced the synagogue and whose prayers could become the free education of their children (Hevesi and Hevesi 1930: 4; Scho´´ner 2008). But this was probably wishful thinking on Hevesi’s part, as Kiss clearly warned of the dangers that existed even within the Jewish home: Something must be done about these things. The house is burning above our heads. The Jewish house. I go from house to house, looking for the Friday evening, for the charitable Jewish spirit, the simple lifestyle, the devotion between spouses, the power of love, support for the poor and miserable. I have difficulty finding the two candles. They are always readying themselves to go to a ball; there is no eve of the sabbath. (Kiss 1898)

Low birth rates (due perhaps in part to a consistent practice of birth control), a high divorce rate, a larger proportion of single women, and the development of industry and trade, not to mention improved access to education, enabled women to acquire a greater degree of independence and freedom and to rise to positions of leadership (Konrád 2002: 15–16; Kratz-Ritter 1995: 25). But progress and traditionalism blended in the figure of the mother in particular, as she experienced the pull of the outside world and at the same time faced the challenge of maintaining some level of Jewish tradition in her home (Kaplan 1997: 295–303). Indeed, her position in the family unit made her the trustee of a form of ethnic belonging. In the course of the social and economic transformations of the nineteenth century, and in line with the general socio-historical trends of the age, motherhood became a key to conceptualizing the ideal Jewish woman; at the same time, it epitomized the cultural tensions experienced by Neolog Jews, who sought to embrace the benefits of emancipation and secularization (Kaplan 1997: 37; Prestel 2006: 106). Jewish thinkers of the time were grappling with how and in what form Judaism would survive. A series of articles published in 1898 in Egyenlo´´ség focused on the role of mothers, equating a passive attitude towards Judaism on their part with serious consequences for the future of Jewish children (Kiss 1898). Leó Singer attributed the principal cause of the indifference and estrangement witnessed within the community towards Hungarian religious institutions to the fact that ‘a substan-

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tial part of our co-religionists and in particular Jewish women and mothers are not familiar with and do not know all that our religion demands’ (Singer 1907: 4–5). A few issues later Arnold Kiss pointed out: The lack of the warm, honest, noble spirit does indeed hurt me deeply and wound my soul, one which used to be present in the homes of our women at the time of the tkhines [women’s prayers] . . . according to the Jewish saying, the wife is the house, the everything, and the most valuable item in a husband’s fortune. This means that as the wife is, so too is the entire house. The husband lends the house and the family external decoration and authority with his job, character, and the power of his social position and fortune, and the woman, however, brings back a great deal more in return to the family home. (Kiss 1898)

Facing this urgent situation, rabbis such as Kiss argued that the answer lay with mothers. He called on Jewish mothers to pray every evening with their children before putting them to bed (Kiss 1898). Similarly, Fanny Schmiedl Neuda (1819– 94), whose husband was a rabbi and a member of the Reform movement in Nikolsburg (Mikulov), warned of the consequences that the Jewish community would face if it failed to rise to the challenge of modernity. Her description of the dire situation in which Hungarian Jewry found itself, in her prayer book Stunden der Andacht, nonetheless carried a glimmer of hope. She noted that only mothers, gifted with ‘the nobility of feeling and deep religiosity’ that are unique to women, could harness an internal, spiritual power significant enough to ensure the birth of another generation of Jewish children (Neuda 1903: 172). In her mind, mothers possessed something instinctual that only they could draw upon to maintain a connection to the Jewish tradition. Her eight-page essay at the end of her prayer book offers guidance to Jewish mothers on how to set an example for their daughters. In it, Neuda opposes the practice found in wealthier Jewish houses in which all of the girls’ energy was ‘dissipated on piano playing, opera singing, and learning languages’ (Neuda 1903: 169). Indeed, as she implores mothers, ‘We must give [our girls] books, carefully selected books that have been read with the strict eye of a responsible mother or governess’ (Neuda 1903: 173). Mothers were to resist the influence of Hungarian culture and prepare their daughters for a sacred twofold vocation—that of wife and mother. The goal was to mould daughters into priestesses tending the altar of their home (Kratz-Ritter 1993: 295). Neuda writes in the afterword to her prayer book: What a significant influence [a woman] has in her capacity as mother! Indeed, the performance of the woman as mother and the educator of her children is of inestimable importance. The influence of the four pillars of her homeliness spreads through entire generations and for generations to come. . . . Her singing, her words, her admonitions and example penetrate every pore of the young soul and create a wellspring of good, virtue, and religion that will make her children happy throughout their lives and will continue to radiate, to bring blessings to later generations. (Neuda 1903: 169)

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And so, with great idealism, Jews of the time pinned their hopes on Jewish mothers, despite the fact that these mothers also contributed to the abandonment of Jewish practice and tradition. Indeed, the trend of escaping into family life was a defensive technique that was not unique to the Jewish community. As Richard Sennett points out in his work on the formalization of public life in Europe in the nineteenth century, the family increasingly came to represent an ideal moral value system, superior to public life (Sennett 1998: 30). Many saw in the family the elements that would reverse the effects of cultural change occurring in the public sphere, and in that respect Jews were no different from the rest of society. The prayer books published during this period by male Neolog authors in Hungary call attention to the need for women of all ages to take responsibility for imparting a sense of deep religious devotion to their families. It is worth reflecting on the fact that those who drew the attention of the Jewish public to this matter were not Jewish mothers and women, but (with the exception of Fanny Neuda) men in leading public and communal positions. Male leaders devised remedies for the collapse of Jewish religious affiliation in the form of prayer books for women, imagining that the preservation of Jewish tradition lay primarily with mothers. Neolog Jews built on the tradition of tkhines—Yiddish devotional compositions for women—in order to address the spiritual breakdown that threatened their communities. In taking on this task, Neolog intellectuals imposed their own desire to promote a type of moderate reform within Judaism. The authors of the Neolog prayer books hoped that by presenting ideas in the Hungarian language and in an emotional manner they could lead mothers back to the religion of their forefathers and encourage the regular practice of prayer. They anticipated that their newly composed tkhines in Hungarian would strengthen the identity of Jewish women who could not read Hebrew or Yiddish, reconnecting them with their children, and ultimately, their children with Judaism. They saw in this process a guarantee for the religious upbringing of future generations (Kratz-Ritter 1995: 34–5, 47–9). As a result, these new prayer books constructed an ideal image of the Neolog Jew—culturally emancipated, but religiously engaged as well.

Modern Prayer Books: An Instrument of Women's Religious Education Recognizing the shortage of published works available to women, Neolog leaders of individual Jewish congregations throughout Hungary sought to fill this void in a way that would help them achieve their own goals.2 In the pages of Egyenlo´´ség, in 1898, the renowned journalist Samu Haber wrote: The religious education of the female generation that began attending school after emancipation was legislated is all wrong; women know precious little of the prayer book

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of their ancestors. Not only do they not understand it, but they also do not feel the old spirit. (Haber 1898)

Dávid Kaufmann, a professor at the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest, writing in 1893, made a similar argument: In order to raise the standard and cultivate religious knowledge, particularly among our girls and women, it is vitally important to create a Jewish ‘popular literature’. In the past we had such a literature, but we have lost those works. There is an urgent need to compile new works that will have a beneficial influence and take the place of the old writings. (Kratz-Ritter 1995: 34)

New prayer books were specifically designed to compensate for the shortage of devotional literature for women. They were to lead women back to the forgotten traditions of the tkhines, but in a new form. Ferenc Hevesi reiterated these views and pointed to solutions that lay in his prayer book, Fohász, claiming that ‘Every person must remain faithful to the religion in which his or her mother taught him or her to pray.’ It is clear that, for Hevesi, religion, prayer, and motherhood were intimately linked. He believed that one could develop a sense of religious commitment, and even learn about Judaism, through prayer. In his mind, producing a good prayer book would ‘put into lively motion the dogmatic and moral content of religion’ through the mother, bringing to the fore emotions that were essential to developing deep piety (Hevesi and Hevesi 1930: 5–6). In this period, women were becoming active readers and this further spurred the efforts of the Neolog rabbis and leaders to publish new prayer books. It is well known that in the course of the nineteenth century European women joined in new educational endeavours. Secular as well as religious publishers realized that they needed to take their demands, tastes, and interests into account (Nagydiósi 1957: 193). Women readers, including Jewish women, had a greater appreciation for secular literature than their predecessors, and as a result, regardless of religious allegiance, women’s magazines and inexpensive novels became enormously popular (Lyons 2000: 354). These all contained descriptions of the novelties of modern bourgeois urban life: the worlds of fashion, theatre, and the salon. Such developments strengthened the desire of religious leaders to provide women with spiritual reading matter and prayer books that addressed their new freedoms but at the same time conformed to Jewish religious traditions. Prayer books that were marketed from the end of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century were designed to appeal specifically to mothers’ needs. Besides translations of synagogue prayers (for example, the Shemoneh Esreh), prayers for the cemetery, and prayers mentioning the three mitsvot incumbent upon women (separating the challah dough, lighting the candles before the sabbath, and family purity laws), they also contained prayers that suited the lives of modern, middle-class Jewish women and that had moral import. These prayer books were organized thematically as follows: common prayers, prayers for the sabbath and for the festivals of Passover and Sukkot, prayers for memorial days

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and for mourning, and various prayers tailored to women’s needs. In this final section the authors attempted to provide texts for prayers connected to all the possible eventualities and difficulties in the life of a mother. There were prayers to become pregnant, prayers recited when expecting a child, prayers for the birth of a daughter or son, for the blessing of a child, for a young mother’s first visit to synagogue, for the happiness of a child, for infant children, for sick children, for the children of a sick adult, for children who needed to be fed, for the circumcision of a son (berit milah), for a son’s barmitzvah, for the naming of a daughter, for a daughter’s batmitzvah, for the wedding of a son or daughter, for the happy marriage of one’s children, for a child who is far away, for a disobedient child, for a good child, for a son who is a soldier, for widowhood, and for stepmothers. Departing from the tradition of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when prayers for women (tkhines) were written in Yiddish and were published regularly, these prayers were written in Hungarian. Even the daily traditional prayers, such as the Shema, were translated. Both the tkhines and the newer prayers focused on enriching women’s devotional practice, touching their deepest spiritual selves by addressing their every concern (Kay 2004: 74; Weissler 1998: 187). Tkhines, in contrast to daily prayers for men, were said mainly at home; readings were voluntary and flexible and could be recited when a woman wished to do so. They were almost always phrased in the singular and often had space for the petitioner to insert her own name, thus making them a very personal address to God (Weissler 1998: 8). It seems that for Hungarian Neolog Jews tkhines were an antiquated form of the type of prayers women now needed in order to enhance their spirituality. Writing new prayers for women would also eliminate some of the superstitious elements evident in tkhines that no longer made sense from a moral, theological, or stylistic point of view (Kritz-Ritter 1995: 31–4). With the emergence of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), the tkhines gradually lost their role in the Jewish liturgical tradition. This was due in large part to the fact that they were written in Yiddish (Kay 2004: 113–15). Jewish reformers (around the time of emancipation) regarded Yiddish as an obstacle to Bildung (cultural assimilation) and a sign of social and cultural separatism (Konrád 2005: 1338). They believed that the use of Yiddish imprisoned Jews in a culturally inferior state and prevented them from sharing in a secular culture that included everything from theatre, literature, and salons to education. By using Hungarian in their prayers, they were expressing the conformity of Neology to the majority nation (Konrád 2005: 1338), as Kiss pointed out on the first pages of his prayer book, Mirjam: Strong patriotic sentiment was manifested in the souls of our women when they took our sweet mother tongue on the enchanting wings of prayer into our temples. For us praying in Hungarian expresses a sacred sentiment in a sacred language. (Kiss 1939: 6)

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The desire to achieve linguistic assimilation, while apparent even within the life of the synagogue (as rabbis delivered sermons in Hungarian), made the publication of prayer books in German and Hungarian very appealing to Neolog women. In Mirjam, Kiss made his sentiments clear. Prayer in Hungarian presented women with ‘a sacred relic’. The translation of prayers into Hungarian was a way of replacing one sacred language with another so that Jewish girls and mothers could tap into the old spirit of Judaism and be able to feel and understand it (Kiss 1939: 12–13). Kiss promoted his prayer book among women by laying bare, in the foreword to Mirjam, his belief that the Hungarian language could ‘soothe the hearts of women’ in a way that no other language was able to do. More specifically, by leafing through any of the Neolog prayer books, one can see that their form and content reflect the reform efforts of nineteenth-century Neolog intellectuals aimed at the religious practice of women. On the one hand, the text reveals the objective of the prayer book authors to motivate women and to prompt them to take a more active part in formal religious practices. The inclusion in these prayer books of synagogue prayers, in keeping with the liturgical tradition, not to mention community prayers specifically written for women to say during religious festivals, served this aim. More significant were prayers written in the first person, which served as individual devotional compositions for the home, following the traditional practice of reciting tkhines. The authors hoped these prayers would lead women back to the Jewish tradition and make them aware of their responsibility for transmitting it to their family (Kratz-Ritter 1995: 106–11). In a way, the exclusion of women from synagogue services and ritual practices contributed to fulfilling this hope, as mothers saw the home as the centre of their religious lives (Kaplan 1997: 73). The prestige associated with the duties and responsibilities of motherhood, not to mention those of wife and homemaker, was high at the start of the twentieth century, not only among Jews, but also in the European Catholic, Protestant, and secular cultures of the day. Indeed, this type of domesticity complemented the responsibilities taken on by fathers, who worked outside the home (Schütze 1988: 124). The Neolog prayer books reflected and encouraged this marked separation between the private lives of women and the public lives of men (Sennett 1998: 30). The Hungarian Jewish community exalted mothers. Neolog authors spoke of them as ‘guardian angel[s] of the family nest’, as ‘the priestess[es] of the home and hearth’, and as embodying unassailable matrimonial virtues, carving out a stable and honourable place for them. It was as if the Temple in Jerusalem were metaphorically transferred to the home, and responsibility for its holiness placed not in the hands of male priests or rabbis, but in the hands of women. Mothers became the educational leaders, thereby seizing a mission once bestowed on rabbis and fathers. In Stunden der Andacht, Neuda lauds women who carefully nurtured and taught their

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children, ensuring that their daughters would become ‘priestesses’ of stable ‘domestic altars’ (Neuda 1903: 169). Similarly, the prayer book Al kanfei hanefesh (Krausz 1934) regards mothers as the central force in an overarching religious project: To a real woman, home and family are what the flower garden is for the flower. The only worthy place and circle of her existence, her essence, and her success. . . . Blessed is the family that demonstrates the care of the mother. . . . Happy is the child whose clothing and care bear the external signs of motherly love just as his soul is marked by a caring, ennobling, and character-building upbringing. . . . Such a wife and such a mother may deserve on the part of her husband the most devoted and most faithful love . . . and on the part of her children, deep respect, coupled with admiring love. And if society is nothing but the unity of such families and individuals, the social position of the Jewish woman also improves: it is more than equality with the man. It is already being placed on a pedestal, the basis of which is not romance, but gentleness being fed by the deep appreciation of the spiritual virtues of the woman . . . a pedestal onto which a woman is raised by her own personality. (1934: 170)

Despite this, while much seemed to be changing, nothing changed fundamentally. No matter how much Jews assimilated, no matter how much Neolog Jews wished to convey their own religious agenda in these prayer books, a woman was best able to fulfil herself within her family, among her relatives, in her religion, and, in a broader sense, within society, when she was blessed with a child. In her book on Jewish women, Nahida Remy placed particular emphasis on the value of motherhood: We know the heavy weight that the Jewish way of thinking places on women’s motherhood. The greatest ambition among Jewish women is to become a mother, and the Bible shows numerous examples of the childless mother going to the edge of prohibition— but only that far—to reach her desired goal, which for her represents an indispensable dignity . . . the way motherhood was the greatest joy and honour for a Jewish woman, so too childlessness was her most bitter pain. (Remy 1894: 134)

Many saw barrenness as a punishment from God, and so the biblical example of the life of Hannah was placed before women longing for the blessing of a child in the text of the prayers, in order to give expression to their suffering: My God! I call to you from the sorrowful night of the tortures of my soul: Oh, bless my life with the blessing of a child. You ordained woman to the sacred calling of motherhood so that she could carry under her heart and nourish with her blood the future and be the servant of life, rejuvenating life through sufferings. If I see a child, the longing to be a mother seizes me and I would like to nurture it, caress it, and rock it in my arms. When I am among happy children playing, pains grip me: why do I not have a child whom I could nurture with love and guard with motherly care! . . . Now my life seems empty, empty and bleak. My joy is not complete. There is no unfading beauty in my life. You have blessed me, my Lord, with a good spouse, who does everything to cheer me, but I have no consolation, I have no hope, because I do not know if there is a purpose to

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my earthly existence. . . . Like the heart of Hannah in the Bible, my heart pines in sorrow. And as Hannah implored You, I pray to You as well: You who have listened to her, listen to me as well. (Hevesi and Hevesi 1930: 467–71)

Pregnancy and childbirth remained the most important aspects of motherhood. For this reason, the early modern tkhines collections included prayers for precisely these situations, where giving birth was understood to be painful and dangerous. The new prayer books published in Hungary at the turn of the century continued this tradition, with poetic expressions and sincere, intimate tones, as in this prayer, asking for a safe delivery: In this hour, I pray before You for two lives: one is my own life, the other is that of a still unknown being that I am nourishing with my heart’s blood and whose arrival is my greatest happiness, and who will be my greatest pride. You are initiating me, Lord, with pain for the most sacred vocation—You will arm my weak self with strength . . . You are beneficent above all! I believe in You, who ripens the fruit on the trees in the garden and keeps the trunks strong and healthy as the fruit ripens, and I feel that You will keep me too in strength and health as I cradle my child in my arms and bless Your sacred name again. (Kiss 1939: 376)

This passage from Mirjam clearly shows the anxiety expectant mothers felt at the prospect of impending childbirth. This is understandable considering that before the early twentieth century in Europe giving birth was dangerous for both mother and child—the spectre of death was never far away. Childbirth was associated with magic, sacred elements, and rites shaped by beliefs and superstitions (Deáky-Krász 2005: 97; Lo´´w 1903: 181). Prayer was always the most important of these protective rituals: God talks to me amid the pain. And I pray. Be with me, Almighty and Merciful God. Give me strength in this trying hour. I trust in Your grace and I am filled with the hope of Your clemency, with which You have mercy on Your creation. (Hevesi 1918: 85–6)

Another significant event in the life of the mother was her first visit to synagogue after giving birth. This took place during the third or fourth week after her delivery. Prayer books included texts for this occasion, again paralleling the tradition of the tkhines. These texts were not only reminders to the mother of her religious life and obligations, but also served to bring her back physically to a setting of faith and community, despite the pressures of caring for a newborn. At the synagogue visit, the mother primarily expressed gratitude for the birth and good health of her baby and prayed for strength to fulfil her motherly role responsibly in the future (Pillitz 1890: 120). Similarly, Fohász offers the following prayer enabling mothers to ask for wisdom and insight in order to raise a child properly, in holiness: My God! I do not wish to bring up my child spoiling him and pampering him wrongly and mistakenly. I want to bring him up to be a valuable man. I want to weed the mis-

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takes out of his soul, I want to sift the sinful passions from his heart, I want to tear evil inclinations from his temperament. Gentle love and benign rigour will be my guides in this endeavour . . . I vow before Your Majesty to bring up my child religiously, in the religion of my ancestry, faithful to Your sacred will, in the spirit of the Torah, in the truth of Your teachings. Amen. (Hevesi and Hevesi 1930: 485–6)

In these texts, we recognize an outline of the basic principles of Jewish childrearing. They reflect not merely the desire, if not the exhortation, to meet religious expectations, but also the concerns of the mother for her child as she worries about whether she can fulfil her own maternal role. That the authors of prayer books placed these anxieties in the mouths of mothers suggests that they endowed women with moral authority over their children’s upbringing, thus absolving themselves of the gravity of this responsibility. Somehow, if children failed to embrace their Jewish identity, the fault would lie with their mothers and not with their fathers. This accentuated the weight of the religious duty conferred upon mothers. Accordingly, idealized descriptions and bold criticisms of mothers appeared in Singer’s Kötelességtan (Singer 1907: 89) and in the popular women’s book by Nahida Remy: A caring mother is like a mother bird that does not fly from the tree where her nest and family are. She nurses her babies, she does not entrust them to strangers, but she herself takes care of, nurtures, rears, and teaches her children and leads them on the path of well-being and success. (Singer 1907: 89) Recently, they have been engaging in a bad habit, namely, that they very often entrust their children to the care of paid people. Places to stroll are often full of their children, but where are they? Instead of them (with the exception of very poor families), unscrupulous, indifferent servants, who are cheeky to the point of stupidity, deal with them for hours without knowing or considering what benefits children and what does not. You, Jewish mother, if you want to deserve this name (which has been your pride so far), you yourself should deal with and play with your children. Your husband will have no objections. (Remy 1894: 140)

This may explain why Immánuel Lo´´w (1854–1944), the chief rabbi of Szeged, fittingly described a mother’s task as ‘sacred work’ in his prayer book, encouraging her to take full care of her children. He encouraged mothers to pray not only for a reward from God for weathering the difficulties of mothering, but also to earn their husbands’ love because of their success (Lo´´w 1903: 185–6; Újvári 1929: 548). Ultimately, prayer book authors believed that it was mothers who could build stable and peaceful Jewish homes. They expressed their hopes for harmony between husbands and wives, parents and children, and between siblings (Kaplan 1997: 74; Schütze 1988: 125). Neolog prayer books therefore portray mother–child symbiosis with great emotional richness, and feelings of love, compassion, and nostalgic longing, viewing this relationship as the cornerstone of

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family cohesiveness. Anxiety for the child’s physical and mental development, even loving concern for the mother–child bond, is reflected in many of the prayer texts, once again idealizing the place of the mother in the lives of her children: Lord, I cannot say how much I love my child. Are there words that could express this love, is there a word for the depth of my feelings? No poet can sing of it, no master of words can record the delightful love of my soul and its unbreakable attraction to the one You have given me to enrich my life so, to my dear, tiny child. Lord! I would dearly like my feelings to be returned in the heart of my child! I am afraid that the time will come when I lose his attachment. (Hevesi and Hevesi 1930: 482–3)

This hope and longing are present throughout the prayer texts: May warm parental love burn unquenchably in me, and do not allow me to be distracted from my children by vain longings, the search for fleeting delights. Teach me to educate and protect these innocent young offspring, to feel and hold myself to be their educator, ´´w 1903: 188) in words, deeds, and example. (Lo

Unsurprisingly, Jewish husbands did not have any objections to women taking over the responsibility of childrearing (Neuda 1903: 169). Fanny Neuda noted that fathers did not have a great deal of power over the hearts of their children, as work often kept them away from home. They were frequently engaged with financial matters and professional connections. She embraced the stereotype that men lacked the ability to be as gentle, refined, and soft as women and, therefore, were not as emotionally open to their children as were mothers. In education, just as in adult life, the mother’s expectations of her daughters and sons differed. In prayers recited when sons reached adulthood (barmitzvah), fell sick, or started out in life, mothers prayed for the love of work, an excellent mind, ambition, and a happy career. More specifically, the relationship between mother and son brought to the fore the stereotypical image of the ideal mother as self-sacrificing, willing to suffer any obstacle that daily life threw her way for his sake. For example, in Kötelességtan Singer writes: The Jewish mother for her part gives up everything, only to pass something on to her children; even if she does not show it she would rather starve than allow anything to be lacking either in the material or spiritual well-being of her children. She is tireless in figuring out and planning what would aid her son in acquiring knowledge and a position; if she is a widow, she overcomes the shyness that tends to be the characteristic feature of all single moral women and will hurry to find a patron and a teacher for her son and will endure for him a great deal of sacrifice and humiliation. (Singer 1907: 87)

In marked contrast, mothers prayed for their daughters to be modest and pious, emulating the most famous biblical mothers, Sarah, Rachel, and Leah, and thereby invoking yet another female stereotype. In a meditative prayer written for the birth of a daughter that appears in Fohász, the ideal mother–daughter relationship produces daughters who become entirely like their mothers, protecting

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and shaping the life of the home: A baby girl will always remain the child of the mother. She is attracted to the magic of the home, and her heart and soul will always be attached to her home. She does not long to be part of the outside world; the struggles of life do not turn her heart away from the home. (Hevesi and Hevesi 1930: 464)

As men neglected religious traditions, Neolog leaders hoped that the family would fill the vacuum. The home would become the major locus of expression of Jewish observance and devotion so that Judaism would not be lost. Women became the curators and caretakers of this ‘living’ religiosity in the home. They wove cloth out of the yarn of the everyday, raising their children in the image of the faithful and the devout. In so doing, mothers had the critical power, or so the Neolog rabbis hoped, to shape the cultural and social milieu within which traditional religious feeling could flourish and grow (Kaplan 1997: 94–5; Kratz-Ritter 1995: 38). As long as the mother fulfilled a particular role, the Jewish tradition could survive the changes of the age. In the prayer book Ráhel (1902), Gábor Weisz predicts that If the woman goes to synagogue, if she transplants the atmosphere and teachings she has experienced to her own house, if she applies them according to her talents and brings her children up in this spirit, then she provides the same service for her congregation as the man who actively participates in each matter of the congregation. The child who is brought up in such an atmosphere created by the mother will come to love religion, honour the rituals, and remain filled with eternal gratitude to the parent who made his soul nobler and saved him from the desert of unbelief. The standards of religion can easily be reconciled with all the symptoms of culture and progress because religion is hidden inside the soul, but its blessing influences all our actions. (Weisz 1902: 15)

Conclusion In this essay I have examined women’s prayer books in the urban, middle-class Neolog Jewish communities of Hungary. I have drawn out from these texts a depiction of the role of the Jewish mother at a time of important cultural shifts. The Neolog rabbis and intellectuals responded to these cultural changes via the creation of prayer books for women that contained prayers and meditation texts directed towards the figure of the mother. A close look at these prayer books allows us to form a picture of how their authors tried to shape their readers’ conception of motherhood. They offered the guidance they felt was necessary for mothers to navigate the process of acculturation to Hungarian culture. This special variation on the genre of traditional prayer books, specifically those that were formerly published for women, sheds light on what leading Jewish intellectuals in contemporary Hungary thought about motherhood, its place in society, and how as an institution it could solve the crisis allegedly brought on by the eman-

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cipation of Jews in eastern Europe. Neolog Jews idealized motherhood and considered the mother as the most powerful weapon against the social forces that threatened traditional Jewish observance during their time. They turned her into the guardian of the Jewish faith, trusting her with the mission of ensuring that secular tendencies did not wipe out Jewish tradition altogether (Lässig 2006: 51–2). They wished to build up moral and religiously committed families on the basis of her special, indeed extraordinary, emotional receptiveness and instinctual emotional richness. The prayer books and prayer texts that I have presented here offer a significant self-critique of what was occurring in Hungarian Jewish culture at large. The anxiety and the struggle to identify with modernity while maintaining one’s Jewish identity is palpable. These prayer books had large print runs and appear to have been popular. Arnold Kiss’s Mirjam, for example, was reprinted year after year, 104 times between 1898 and 1948 and three times in German in the years 1907, 1923, and 1929; Fohász was reprinted eight times; and Deborah was published ten times. Yet it is hard to ascertain whether, despite having access to prayers in Hungarian and German, women followed the path that was laid out for them. It is impossible to assess how effective prayer books were in prompting mothers to assume the responsibilities they charted, even if they bought them and read them. As challenges to traditional Judaism arose, Neolog intellectuals relied on the ideal of the mother and the family, as if to hold women back from taking on the leadership positions their husbands assumed outside the Jewish community. Idealizing the mother in the context of Jewish prayer generated a sense of social order, rooted in a firm and age-old conception of gender roles, which set itself against the changes which swept through Hungarian society. Neolog Jews created and included distinct prayers for women that connected them to their responsibilities as mothers, including pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing. No doubt, they used the figure of the mother to critique the very changes they in fact desired, offering us a more accurate picture of what was at stake as Jews grappled with the challenges of modernity.

Notes 1

Following the Congress, Hungarian Jewry split into three culturally and institutionally separate factions: Orthodox (traditionalists), Neolog (progressives), and Status Quo Ante (who stood for ‘unchangingness’). Their statutes were officially recognized by the Hungarian state (Ferziger 2005: 1–5; Katz 1999: 58–68, 185–200; Konrád 2009: 167–70). The most important element in understanding the history and the self-definition of Neolog Jewry was magyarization. This was the sociopolitical acculturation of non-nationals to Hungarian culture (i.e. Hungarianization), either voluntarily or through the pressure of coercive policies that resulted in full identification with the Hungarian nation (Zima 2008: 244). There is no precise information available on the number of members of these

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three movements. However, it is obvious from incomplete statistical sources that they were more or less separated geographically: Orthodoxy dominated in Upper Hungary (historically, Felvidék) and Transylvania; Neology or Neolog Judaism, as it came to be called, was popular in the central, western, and southern parts of the country; while the Status Quo Ante communities were scattered as opposed to being concentrated regionally. Their relative figures in 1900 were: Orthodox communities, 433,663 (52.2%); Neolog communities, 356,948 (43%); Status Quo Ante communities, 39,379 (4.7%) (Frojimovics 2008: 81–4). It is clear that the Orthodox represented a majority in all respects in 19th-century Hungary. At the same time, there was a marked increase in the number of Jews adhering to Neology. This continued increase in the size of Neolog communities was due to the intensive internal migration of Jews to urban areas. Budapest, where Neology dominated, acted as a magnet, drawing people away from other Jewish communities. 2

To elucidate the background of Neolog authors who wrote prayer books it may be noted that Dániel Pillitz was a 19th-century Hungarian rabbi and teacher, the director of the Jewish High School in Szeged (Újvári 1929: 710). Fanny Neuda (born Schmiedl, in Moravia; 1819–1894) came from a rabbinic family. Both her father and her brother were rabbis, and she married Abraham Neuda, a religiously liberal and highly educated man from Nikolsburg/Mikulov, in the present-day Czech Republic (Herlitz and Kirschner 1927–39: 1: 463; Kratz-Ritter 1993: 295). Simon Hevesi (1868–1943) and Ferenc Hevesi (1898–1952) were father and son. Simon was perhaps the greatest orator among Hungarian rabbis. Ferenc became the chief rabbi of Budapest (Scho´´ner 2008). Arnold Kiss (1869–1940) was a famous rabbi in Buda, well known for his remarkable oratory and poetic skills, his literary translations, and public work (Újvári 1929: 483). Immánuel Lo´´w (1854–1944) was the chief rabbi of Szeged, a master of oratory in Hungarian (Újvári 1929: 548). Mór Stern (1883–1944) was a journalist and lawyer in Szatmárnémeti, Satu Mare, present-day Romania (Dávid 2010: 1: 206–7). Gábor Weisz was a 19th-century rabbi and religious educator in Pécs (Szinnyei 1914: xiv. 1482).

References dávid, gyula, ed. 1981–2010. Romániai Magyar Irodalmi Lexikon, 5 vols. Bucharest. deáky, zita, and lilla krász. 2005. Minden dolgok kezdete. A születés kultúrtörténete Magyarországon (XVI–XX. sz.). Budapest. ferziger, s. adam. 2005. Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity. Philadelphia. frojimovics, kinga. 2008. Szétszakadt történelem. Zsidó vallási irányzatok Magyarországon, 1868–1950. Budapest. glässer, norbert. 2012. ‘Ateresz z’kenim. A vallási szocializáció családképe a két világháború közötti budapesti ortodox zsidó sajtó diskurzusaiban’. In Árpád Csipak, ed., Pléróma 1947–2012, 77–109. Óbecse. haber, samu. 1898. ‘Mirjam’, Egyenlo˝ség 17(33): 8. heinsohn, kirsten, and stefanie schüler-springorum, eds. 2006. Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte: Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden 28. Göttingen.

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herlitz, georg, and bruno kirschner, eds. 1927–39. Jüdisches Lexikon: Ein Enzyklopädisches Handbuch des jüdischen Wissens, 4 vols. Königstein. Repr. 1987. hevesi, ferenc, and simon hevesi . 1930. Fohász. Budapest. hevesi, simon. 1918. Örök áhitat. Budapest. hyman, paula e. 2006. ‘Muster der Modernisierung. Jüdische Frauen in Deutschland und Russland’. In Kirsten Heinsohn and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, eds., Deutschjüdische Geschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte: Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden 28, 25–45. Göttingen. kaplan, marion. 1997. Jüdisches Bürgertum: Frau, Familie und Identität im Kaiserreich. Studien zur Jüdischen Geschichte 3. Hamburg. katz, jakov. 1999. Végzetes szakadás: Az ortodoxia kiválása a zsidó hitközségekbo˝l Magyarországon és Németországban. Budapest. kay, devra. 2004. Seyder Tkhines: The Forgotten Book of Common Prayer for Jewish Women. Philadelphia. kiss, arnold. 1898. ‘Levelek egy zsidó asszonyhoz’. Egyenlo˝ség, 17(7): appendix 1–2. —— 1939. Mirjam. Budapest. konrád, miklós. 2002. ‘A pesti zsidó no´´ mint allegória’. In Zsuzsanna Toronyi, ed., A zsidó no˝: A Magyar Zsidó Múzeum kiállítási katalógusa, 11–27. Budapest. —— 2005. ‘A neológ zsidóság útkeresése a századfordulón’. Századok, 39: 1335–69. —— 2009. ‘Jews and Politics in Hungary in the Dualist Era, 1867–1914’. East European Jewish Affairs, 39: 167–86. kratz-ritter, bettina. 1993. ‘Fanny Neuda’. In Jutta Dick and Marina Sassenberg, eds., Jüdische Frauen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Lexikon zu Leben und Werk, 295. Hamburg. —— 1995. Für ‘fromme Zionstöchter’ und ‘gebildete Frauenzimmer’: Andachtsliteratur für deutsch-jüdische Frauen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Haskala Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen 13. Hildesheim. krausz, fülöp. 1934. Al kanfei hanefesh: A lélek szárnyain. Sárvár. lässig, simone . 2004. Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum: Kulturelles Kapital und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen. —— 2006. ‘Das deutsche Judentum im 19. Jahrhundert’. In Kirsten Heinsohn and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, eds., Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte: Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden 28, 46–85. Hamburg. lo ´´w, immánuel. 1903. Imádságok zsidók számára. Budapest. lyons, martin. 2000. ‘A 19. század új olvasói: no´´k, gyermekek, munkások’. In Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, eds., Az olvasás kultúrtörténete a nyugati világban, 348–81. Budapest. nagydiósi, gézáné. 1957. ‘Magyarországi no´´i lapok a XIX. század végéig’. In OSZK Évkönyve 1957 (1958), 193–227. Budapest. neuda, fanny . 1903. Stunden der Andacht. Prague. pillitz, dániel . 1890. Deborah. Budapest.

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prestel, claudia. 2006. ‘Die jüdische Familie in der Kriese’. In Kirsten Heinsohn and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, eds., Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte: Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden 28, 105–22. Hamburg. remy, nahida. 1894. A zsidó asszony. Nagyvárad. scho ´´ner, alfréd. 2008. ‘Márk, Simon, Ferenc, Alan és a többiek—egy rabbidinasztia emléke’. Országos Rabbiképzo´´–Zsidó Egyetem (ORZSE) website, , accessed 15 Apr. 2015. schütze, yvonne. 1988. ‘Mutterliebe–Vaterliebe. Elternrollen in der bürgerlichen Familie des 19. Jahrhunderts’. In Ute Frevert, ed., Bürgerinnen und Bürger: Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert, 118–33. Göttingen. sennett, richard. 1998. A közéleti ember bukása. Budapest. singer, leó. 1907. H . ovat halevavot: Kötelességtan. Rimaszombat. szabolcsi, miksa. 1898. ‘Nevelo´´no´´k’. Egyenlo˝ség, 17(43): 1. szinnyei, józsef. 1891–1914. Magyar írók élete és munkái, 14 vols. Budapest. toronyi, zsuzsanna, ed. 2002. A zsidó no˝. A Magyar Zsidó Múzeum kiállítási katalógusa. Budapest. —— 2010. ‘Egy sikertörténet: a zsidóság’. In Gabriella Dománszky, ed., A leheto´´ségek országa: Polgárosodás a 19. századi Magyarországon, 25–6. Gyo´´r. újvári, péter, ed. 1929. Magyar Zsidó Lexikon. Budapest. weissler, chava. 1998. Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women. Boston. weisz, gábor. 1902. Ráhel. Pécs. zima, andrás. 2008. ‘Cult or Spirit? Integration Strategies and History of Memory in Jewish Groups in Hungary at the Turn of the 19th–20th Century’. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 53: 243–62.

t h r e e

Nene Mesl-e Na¯n—‘Mother is Like Bread’: The Perception of Motherhood and Folklore Expressions among the Jews of Afghanistan tsila zan-bar tsur

During my childhood in Israel, I lived with my grandmother and grandfather, Jews who had emigrated from Afghanistan. Every morning my grandmother baked bread and served it at the table, saying, Nene mesl-e na¯n (‘Mother is like bread’). She often changed the order of the words, saying Na¯n mesl-e nene (‘Bread is like mother’). Once she had served the bread, my grandmother would ask me to tell the bread my dreams from the night before. If they were pleasant dreams, we would partake in a ritual of washing our hands and eating the bread, after saying the traditional Hebrew blessing, hamotsi leh.em min ha’arets (‘[Blessed are You, Lord our God], who brings forth bread from the earth’); if they were bad dreams, we would go out to the balcony, crumble the bread, and scatter it for the birds. My grandmother would then say: ‘Oh birds, bless my granddaughter like this blessed, nourishing bread.’1 Later, I learned that Afghani Jews often declared ‘Mother is like bread’ as part of the longer proverb ‘Mother is like bread, and Father is like meat’ (Zan-Bar Tsur 2012: 300–1). This proverb raises questions about the cultural and linguistic implications of the analogies mother–bread and father–meat among Afghani Jews. In Afghani Jewish families, bread-making is delegated to the mother. I have also found evidence of this symbolic relationship between bread and motherhood in the rituals, customs, and narratives of Afghani Jewish folklore, suggesting that it expresses a distinctive world-view. Over the course of ten years I conducted interviews among members of the Afghani community in Israel, especially those from Herat, including in-depth interviews with both women and men (at a ratio of three women to every man). I identified five key narrators among the women who were active in the Afghani Jewish community in Israel. All five spoke Hebrew and Dari, one of the two main

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Figure 1 Afghan bread on display, 2010. Photograph by Jan Chipchase; used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 generic licence

languages of Afghanistan, the other being Pashtu. Dari and Pashtu are usually written in Arabic script, but Jews write Dari using Hebrew script.2 In their descriptions, the elderly informants, who had immigrated to Israel during the 1950s, recounted memories of a culture in Afghanistan that had thrived during the 1920s and 1930s. The women were aware of discontinuities in the cultural context for women of Afghani background in Israel, and this perception of difference shaped their focus on the features of their culture that had not survived. These features had defined their distinctiveness not only as Jews from other lands but also among other Afghani groups. One significant cultural feature, for instance, is that women in Afghanistan lived in communal settings in which several families were under the same patriarchal authority (see Irigaray 2004: 28–35).3 This social organization provided the basis for the definition of womanhood in a way that related directly to a woman’s ability to be a mother.

Definition of a Woman as a Fertile Being Afghani Jews defined a woman according to her stages of development and associated these stages with her femininity. Until her first menstruation, a girl was

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called dokhtar, meaning ‘girl’. Once she began menstruating, she was called zan shod, meaning ‘[she] became a woman’. From that moment and until menopause, she was known as zan, ‘woman’. When she was no longer fertile, she was referred to as khoshk shod, meaning ‘dried-up’, or mard, meaning ‘man’, or sar gozasht, ‘the wise woman’. These variations in naming according to a woman’s changing biological status were expressed in the community’s cultural practices, including its rites of passage, food and cooking, and folk tales. As food was an integral part of Jewish ceremonial life in Afghanistan, the different stages in a woman’s life gained social legitimacy through female food rituals. Afghani Jews marked rites of passage with special ceremonies, food prepared especially for these occasions, and legends and fables told about women, reflecting various aspects of their femininity. The fact that the preparation of food was in the hands of women suggests that Afghani Jews viewed nourishment in a broad sense as the province of women, specifically mothers. One well-established ritual was the ‘red stew’ ceremony performed in celebration of an adolescent girl’s first period. The women of the community cooked a stew made of red lentils, sliced beets, and pomegranate juice. Her grandmother fed it to her, signalling that she was now a fertile woman. She was then subjected to three tests during the ritual —for patience, wisdom, and courage. The test of patience involved untangling a ball of different-coloured threads: this metaphorically indicated whether the girl had the patience necessary to raise a family. In the test of wisdom, the older women would begin telling her a folk tale, and she provided an ending to the story which solved the conflict raised in the narrative. This was considered a reflection of the girl’s resourcefulness and the wisdom with which she would approach life’s challenges. In the test of courage, adults led the girl to the entrance of a cavern and told her to go in and bring water to an old woman who was waiting at the bottom. The test determined whether the youngster had the determination and courage to descend the dark steps and pathway leading to the old lady. Girls who passed these three tests were declared ready for matchmaking and, subsequently, marriage. Another rite of passage, the ‘white stew’ ritual, was reserved for older women going through menopause. The woman received a cooked dish of white rice, almond milk, sugar, and rose water. She was then granted the right to fulfil an important role in the community such as that of midwife, healer, counsellor in life matters, bath attendant, or mourner. Such rituals reinforced the hierarchical organization of Jewish society in Afghanistan (Zan-Bar Tsur 2012: 311-23). Fertility provided the basis for the hierarchy among Jewish women and their status in Jewish society overall. An elderly woman was equal to an elderly man, and superior, in descending hierarchical order, to: a woman who gave birth to male babies; a woman who gave birth to female babies; a widow; a newly married woman; a barren woman; and an unmarried woman. In response to this hierarchy, women formed bonds of support, both in the family and more widely in

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the community. These alliances provided a sense of order; they also existed among men, who were grouped according to their class and the social roles they fulfilled. If the status of a woman depended upon her fertility, motherhood was also the source of her subjugation as she was required to reproduce and perpetuate the group (Chodorow 1978; Rich 1976). Thus one has to consider the particular and complex conceptualization of the term ‘power’ in Afghani Jewish society: the power of a woman’s fertility, being inherent in the female body, was different from the rhetorical and authoritative power granted to a mature woman, which was directed outside her body towards the community where she ultimately became a leader as soon as her reproductive ability ended. Patriarchal forces governed women who could become mothers and raise children. Indeed, Jewish society in Afghanistan, like Afghani Muslim society, was patriarchal; authority was in the hands of the mature men of the community. When a young woman married, she moved directly to her husband’s home. This patrilinear pattern meant that the inheritance of wealth and possessions passed directly from father to son (women were not involved in matters of property). But when they could no longer give birth, women assumed powers that accentuated their wisdom and their ability to serve as active members of Afghani Jewish society. They were practitioners of folk medicine by virtue of the healing powers attributed to them as mothers, and they attended to matters related to informal education. Afghani Jews therefore considered the mother especially powerful in the community in her post-fertile period.

Bread as a Key Symbol in the Concept of Motherhood Bread played a symbolic role in the rituals which marked the different phases of the human life-cycle in Afghanistan. It sanctified the rituals of birth and death, initiation, henna ceremonies, and weddings. It was also the main ingredient in festivals and special feasts, and in fertility and thanksgiving ceremonies. Families appeased good and evil spirits with bread and used it to send messages to each other. Other Central Asian ethnic groups use bread to express gender symbolism, but the Jews lay particular stress on its links to motherhood. The women I interviewed showed a profound familiarity with the feminine code expressed in unbaked dough. Examples were evident in the sayings they used, such as: Vakhti khemir mikonam—dard-e del-em-o migam ‘While I knead dough—I am expressing my heartaches.’ Hame dard-e del man da ¯ ram be-khemir mikonam ‘I am kneading all of the secrets of my heart into the dough.’

In the second example above, there is a direct association between the word

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‘secret’ and the term women used to express their heartaches—dard-e del. In their view, the dough had the power to incorporate emotions, specifically those of the mother kneading it. The dough hid a mother’s secrets, wishes, longings, prayers, thanksgivings, sexual yearnings, and subversive messages. Such sayings granted bread the ability to affect the stomach and the very physical and emotional core of those consuming it. All sustenance could be derived from bread, and it ‘ate’ its way into a range of emotions and qualities that the baker herself had as a mother. Jewish women, usually mothers, baked bread on Mondays and Thursdays. They baked ordinary bread early in the day before the morning prayers. On these days they observed a vow of silence while baking. Baking bread was allocated to pious women and mothers who were accustomed to giving to charity. It was also the case that many of the women who baked bread were poor and were hired to bake bread in other people’s courtyards in exchange for money or food. During the 1930s and 1940s the wage for baking bread at people’s homes was two qeran per loaf. When a woman baked more than seven loaves, the baker could barter for food, such as grain, tea, and sugar. In the Afghani Jewish symbolic system, the mother is likened to bread. The well-known Afghan idiom ‘Without bread there is no life’ (Bi na¯n zendegi nist) suggests that for Afghani Jews there was no life without the mother, both in the biological sense of giving birth and in the sense of nurturing and feeding the family by means of physical and spiritual food. In contrast, the saying ‘Father is like meat’ is based on the fact that meat was a luxury and eaten mainly on the sabbath and festivals. The masculine connection to meat is also a result of the influence of the belief in contagious magic in surrounding cultures, according to which meat gave a man the masculine power of fertility and the ability to produce life. The Afghan father was not always at home, often only returning for special occasions and festivals. Afghan-born informant Shushan, whose mother had died prematurely, told me the following story about herself and her relation to bread: Listen Tsila jon [beloved], I have a proverb for you. Nene mesl-e na ¯ n—a¯gha¯ mesl-e gush [‘Mother is likened to bread and father is likened to meat’], and that is the truth from my life. From the life I had in Afghanistan. We were a wealthy family in Kabul; we lived on Flowers Street. Our servants lived in the yard. We had a gardener, a cook, and a baker. My father used to travel to England with rugs. My father was an important merchant; he was never at home. Once that baker came and gave me the na ¯ n—the bread—hot from the oven. I did not eat it, and I closed my mouth like this [demonstrates]. I did not eat for many days and the poor thing cried and said to me: Dokhtar, bokhor, bokhor [‘Girl, eat, eat’]. She would crumble the bread into small pieces the size of pomegranate seeds and feed me like a baby bird and I . . . [ate] nothing. After a month my father returned and saw I was all bones . . . he cried and asked, Chera ¯ ? Chera¯? [‘Why? Why?’]. I told him that I would only eat my mother’s na ¯ n. Tsila jon, for the first time my father got down on his knees and cried over my mother: Zan-e man chera ¯ ala¯m rafti? [‘My wife, why did you die?’]. My heart also cried: Nene, chera ¯ ala¯m rafti? [‘Mummy, why did you die?’]. I remember this very well; it was during the Holiday of the Flowers [a name given to

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Shavuot]. Afterwards my father took me to the backyard and brought khemir [dough] and asked me, ‘Nene jon, how did Mummy bake bread?’ And I showed my father . . . I took the tablecloth and we started to bake the bread my mother used to make. Bread is mother. Bread is mother. Just as I told you: Nene mesl-e na ¯ n [‘Mother is likened to bread’].4

Her narrative emphasizes that bread, a basic daily commodity which is filling and nourishing, is equated with a mother who takes care of her children. The bread illustrates the mother’s crucial role in family life. Without this basic staple, the key to their sustenance, a family would not be nourished physically or nurtured spiritually and emotionally. At the same time, baking bread cultivated a mother’s personhood and strengthened her connection to motherhood.

Types of Bread and Female-Mother Nicknames In everyday speech, women equate mothers and bread. The similarity between the words nene for ‘mother’ and na¯n for ‘bread’ led to the use of terms for different types of bread as nicknames for mothers. Below is a list of types of bread and the corresponding nicknames that were common in the Afghani Jewish community: 1.

Na¯n-e ta¯ve (‘fry-pan bread’): everyday bread baked in an elliptical shape and eaten daily, including na¯n-e khoshk (‘dried bread’) or na¯n-e oja¯q (‘toast’), which lasted for a long period and was baked from a mixture of wheat and chickpea flour. This was also the nickname given to an industrious mother.

2.

Na¯n-e shaba¯ti (‘sabbath bread’): bread made of white flour baked for the sabbath and festivals. The baking of this bread enabled women to carry out the commandment of setting aside a portion of the dough (originally for the priests, as commanded in the Torah). This was the nickname given to mothers who were ‘women of valour’.

3.

Na¯n-e doma¯di (‘groom’s bread’): a long loaf of bread baked before a wedding which contained almonds, raisins, and pistachios.

4.

Na¯n-e zou (‘birthing mothers’ bread’): bread baked with herbs known for their strengthening qualities.

5.

Na¯n-e avelut (‘mourning bread’): bread baked with a hard-boiled egg and given as a nickname to a mother who was despondent and sad.

6.

Na¯n-e arus (‘doll bread’ or ‘bride bread’): bread dolls baked especially for fertility and childbearing ceremonies. This was the nickname given to a mother who was as beautiful as a bride.

7.

Na¯n-e az ma¯ behtara¯n (‘bread for our betters’—a term for demons): bread served as an offering to evil spirits. This nickname was given to a mother who could heal and knew how to exorcise devils and the evil eye.

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8.

Na¯n-e gap mizanan (‘bread of speaking’): bread sent as a kind of culinary post to pass messages among family members. This nickname was given to mothers who were chatterboxes.

9.

Na¯n-e kheyrati (‘bread of charity’): bread given to dervishes and to the poor of the community. This nickname was given to mothers who frequently volunteered in the community.

In summary, Afghani Jewish women sorted bread into two functional categories: (a) bread baked as food for humans (sabbath bread, everyday bread, bread of charity), and (b) bread baked as food for spirits (bread dolls, bread for ‘our betters’ or demons). This perception of the situations in which bread plays a central role provided the context for the symbolic uses of bread in various beliefs and customs, thereby relating bread to good fortune.

Bread in Belief and Custom In addition to being tasty and nourishing, bread represented a key to good fortune in Afghani culture: Na¯n-o piya¯z—pineh ke va¯z (‘Bread and onion—open the door for good fortune’). In an interview, Berukha explained the association of bread with good fortune by saying that, ‘If a person has bread and onion, then his luck is open. The door is the luck, and the key is the bread. You do not need more than that for luck in life. . . . Bread is mother, onion is simple food, that’s what every person needs.’ Berukha expounded on the belief by telling a story of a childhood experience: My mother was a baker in Herat. Every day she worked in other people’s houses, baking bread for them. From working so much with ovens, she had no eyebrows because they had been singed by the fire. All day she was away and I raised my siblings. But in spite of our being poor, we always had bread that my mother baked. We used to eat bread with cha ¯ y [tea], bread with watermelon, bread with soup. Thus my little siblings’ bellies were full with the bread that mother baked. Just as I told you, my mother was not always at home; she worked to support us, but we always had bread to put in our mouths, like a kind word from mother.

In Berukha’s story, the bread that fills her siblings’ stomachs acts as a substitute for her mother. Berukha raised her siblings while her mother worked away from home. In addition to bread representing nourishment, it took on the qualities of motherly emotions. Instead of the children being filled with motherly love, they were filled with bread. Mother–child relationships expressed through bread can also be found in Khana’s story: We were children during those trying times. My father always made sure we had something to eat. He used to cook khraimah for us—little pieces of chicken fried with onion

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and spices. We would sop it up with na ¯ n, and he gave us a little cup of arak [liquor] that ¯ t [sugar crystals] . . . and also every time that my had saffron and cardamom and naba mother ate something it meant that her food would be tasty to us as well, and we wanted to eat from her plate, even if she had na ¯ n-e khoshk [dried bread]. Then our mother would tell us this proverb: Kalla ¯ gh bacheh did—na¯n-e sir nadid [Mother Crow saw her chicks— nourishing bread she did not see]. Wherever there are children, they eat their mother’s food, just like the children that Mother Crow saw, but she didn’t see bread. Just like my healthy children, who wanted to eat from my plate, I would remember what my mother used to say to us, and I would repeat the proverb about Mother Crow to them.5

Just as Mother Crow did not see a piece of bread but saw her children (in Afghani culture ‘to see children’ means to give birth), so the mother, who gave birth to her children and raised them, failed to see bread as a matter of immediate concern. While for Berukha bread was a substitute for motherly feelings, in Khana’s story the children themselves were the bread. They ate their mother’s food and so consumed the totality of motherhood. The mother’s bread became an integral part of her children’s bodies. The equation of bread with a mother’s love is expressed negatively, however, in a proverb about a stepmother, as told by Shoshana: Zan-e pedar na¯n nemida¯d; vakht-i mida¯d sukhte mida¯d; mosht-o laghad mida¯d (‘A stepmother refused to give bread; when she gave it, she gave it burnt; fists and kicks she used to give’).6 Here bread is used to express the stepmother’s negative feelings towards her stepdaughter: at first she was reluctant to give her bread; then she refused to provide her with motherly love and to acknowledge her as her daughter; when she was finally willing to provide some sustenance, she gave her daughter bread that was burnt. Starting as a basic food worthy of being eaten by humans, the stepmother’s bread is transformed into bread unfit for human consumption, and is accompanied by violence. Just as bread symbolizes motherly love, burnt bread represents the stepmother’s hatred. Shoshana added credence to this formula by saying: There were stepmothers who were evil. Just as this proverb is insufferable to the ears, that’s how it was. The stepmothers made holes in their stepdaughters’ souls. My father had a story about a stepmother who put her stepdaughter into the oven until the rooster came and discovered her.

Shoshana alludes here to the story of Ma¯hi-Pisha¯ni or ‘Moon-Brow’, an Afghani version of the tale of Cinderella. The stepmother hides her husband’s daughter in the oven long enough for her to turn into na¯n-e sukhte (burnt bread). Women also used this phrase to refer to an ugly, dirty girl: Surat-e dokhtar mesl-e na¯n-e sukhte (‘The girl’s face is like burnt bread’). A folk custom of preparing ‘doll bread’ was common among barren women, both Jewish and Muslim, in Afghanistan. The women created bread in the shape

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of dolls called na¯n-e arus (‘bread doll’). The Dari term arus refers both to a bride and to a doll. In Persian, arus or ‘bride’ also refers to a doll. The face of the Afghan bride looked like a doll’s face, adorned with white powder and patches of rouge. The bride affixed a golden disc on her forehead that gave her a doll-like look (cf. Ali 1969: 42–3; Bar’am Ben Yosef 1997: 61–5; Tapper 1991: 157–80). Barren women dressed their bread dolls in clothing they had sewn and embroidered, placed them in a na¯ni (baby’s cradle), and brought them to the wishing tree, usually an ancient, sacred tree called derakht-e na¯n/nene (‘the bread tree/mother’), in the hope that they might become nene or ‘mothers’. The similar sounds of na¯n, na¯ni, and nene (bread, cradle, mother) reinforced the barren woman’s desire to conceive by presenting this offering to the celestial spirits in order to persuade them to open her locked womb. In the same way as the spirits breathe a soul into the doll, so they can open the womb of a barren woman. An additional offering, presented to demonic entities, used the na¯n-e az ma¯ behtara¯n (‘bread for our betters’, the nickname for demons). Its usage among Afghani women was similar to that of the khesht, a magical brick presented by mature women as an offering to az ma¯ behtara¯n (‘those better than us’). The brick was made of clay and dried in the sun. In one ritual, women used black charcoal to sketch squares on the brick, and inside each square they placed dried pomegranate peel, a soft-boiled egg, a turquoise stone, splinters of a mirror, a piece of cotton fabric, garlic, and silver coins. A different type of khesht was a fired brick: refreshments were placed on one side of this and water sprinkled on the other. The water was ‘stabbed’ with a knife and the women chanted Chashm-e bad betarke (‘May the evil eye burst’) (Avrahamov 1935; Cowen 1971: 244; Kashani 2001: 147; Yehoshua–Raz 1992: 368–71). In a similar ritual with the na¯n-e az ma¯ behtara¯n they dropped espanj or ‘seeds of incense’, composed of garlic, onion, a raw egg, and an eye-shaped turquoise stone, on the bread. They made the offering to restore their fertility and remove the evil eye placed upon a barren woman, or conversely, in order that a member of the community would see the offering and pray for the barren woman to become fertile. In addition to offering bread to the demons, Jewish women who experienced infertility in Afghanistan reported that they drank sacred water out of the pomegranate-shaped finials that decorated the Torah scroll and hid breadcrumbs from na¯n-e zou ( ‘birthing mothers’ bread’) in their lapels. This bread, dipped in fortifying herbs, was baked especially for women who had given birth. The Jews of Afghanistan used bread to send messages. A mother would bake bread and send it to her husband, mother-in-law, and children. These types of bread included: (a) Bread used as a sort of ‘postcard’ from a wife to her husband, which passed on messages of importance and had undertones of sexuality. If a wife wanted to have sexual relations following her immersion in the ritual bath (signalling

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the end of her period of menstrual impurity), she would bake bread for her husband and place a piece of fresh or preserved fruit alongside it, such as a peach, apricot, or pomegranate, symbolizing the female genitals. (b) Bread used as a ‘postcard’ from a woman to her mother-in-law, which passed on important messages of appeasement. As Afghani society is patrilocal, a young married woman moved directly into her husband’s home, initially serving her mother-in-law and elderly aunts. The woman baked soft bread for them from white flour, called na¯n-e lava¯sh, and added spices—such as ground cinnamon, cloves, and ginger—to give the bread flavour and to warm the stomach (garmi). This soft, spicy bread, wrapped in a cloth (boghche), would be taken by the young woman’s children to the relative she was seeking to appease. (c) Bread that served as a ‘postcard’ from a mother to her children, which served to proclaim her love and encouragement. When a mother wanted to express her joy at her son’s success in Torah studies, she would prepare na¯n-e shakeri, a small, sweet loaf fashioned into various shapes. For a daughter getting married and thus leaving her mother’s home, the mother would bake na¯n-e bada¯mi, a sweet bread with sugared almonds, to express her blessings and hopes for the daughter’s prosperity and fertility. Mothers and children could thus exchange messages by means of bread. Interviewees revealed that the children anticipated receiving these messages from their mother because it represented her acceptance of, and praise and love for, them. Similarly, a child was expected to share the bread with his or her siblings or other relatives, to show generosity and respect towards them. The Dari word na¯n, as in Persian, refers to bread baked by either of two ancient methods (Desmet-Grégoire 1989): in a clay oven (tanur or tandur in Dari) and on a curved metal plate (sa¯j). Village groups used the former while nomadic groups favoured the latter. In cities such as Herat, where most Jews lived, the ovens were cone-shaped and made of fired clay bricks. Symbolically speaking, the coneshaped oven was analogous to the mother who watched over the fire, considered a symbol of life, in the same way that she watched over the lives of her family members. The curved metal plate on which the bread was baked symbolized the wandering mother who lacked roots. In several Afghani Jewish folk tales, the oven represented a liminal space: all that entered it underwent a transformation. In many tales men put wild women in the oven in order to domesticate them. The oven also had a symbolic role in the moral education of girls. For example, a saying addressed to a young mother who did not meet community standards of manners and behaviour was Beshin betanur (‘Sit in the oven’). It admonishes the listener to reflect on her inappropriate behaviour and promise to behave according to the group’s rules. This symbolic

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act of sitting in the oven enabled the transformation of inappropriate (wild) into appropriate (domesticated) behaviour. As the oven for bread-baking was an integral part of the world of mothers, this structure served on a symbolic level as the site of a woman’s or mother’s transformation. Afghani Jews did not have a comparable symbol for men or fathers. The oven’s symbolic link to mothers is well known among Afghani Jews from a familiar folk tale about the ‘snake woman’. The tale features a snake in the form of a woman who entices a man to marry her (Kort 1974: 129–30; Sadeh 1989: 79–80).7 A few months pass after the wedding and the man’s powers begin to fade; he becomes pale and ill. When he finds out that his wife turns into a snake at night, he follows a dervish’s advice, and asks her to bake bread for him. When she bends over the oven to put the dough in, he pushes her inside and shuts the entrance tightly. Three days later he opens the oven and finds a golden skin sloughed off by the snake woman. In order to understand this story, we should recall that in Afghani Jewish culture mothers were required to work in the domestic sphere and provide nourishment, which included baking bread. The manner in which men related to their wives reflected their perception of them as potential mothers. This treatment began as soon as they were married and did not necessarily wait until they gave birth. This is evident in a variant of the snake-woman story known as ‘Nur in the Oven’ (Nur be tanur) told to me by Berukha: There was once a woman who turned out to be a good woman to her husband—modest, cooking, speaking tastefully. Nur was her name, meaning, if you will, ‘one who brings light to him’. But, at night, how do you say it, she used to go and sell her body. She was a prostitute. Her husband smelled bad odours coming from her body, smells that were making him ill. His old grandmother was next to him all the time, saying over and over again: ‘Nur in the oven’. She was brainwashing him with ‘Nur in the oven’. It was like this for several days, and his grandmother was making him crazy. He said to his wife: ‘I’d like some bread from your hands. Bake me bread!’ This woman kneaded the dough and the moment that she put it into the oven so it would become bread, hop! He pushed her inside. When he opened the oven his wife came out, but not as she used to be . . . the smell from her body was like the smell of freshly baked bread. Good. Not like she used to be before.8

In these two folk tales the women undergo a transformation by virtue of being pushed into an oven. This liminal space and the symbolic fire burning within it metaphorically destroy the ‘wild’ aspect of the two women: the ‘animal’ in the first story and the promiscuity of the woman in the second. The oven in the folk tales symbolizes a ‘cosmic womb’ through which women undergo a transition. Table 1 compares the similarities in the two narratives. Storytellers see the two women, the seductress and the prostitute, as ‘wild’ women who do not possess the attributes of a traditional wife. Both are devious with their husbands: one because she turns into a snake and the other because she is a prostitute. In both

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Table 1 Comparison of plot in the folk tales ‘Snake Woman’ and ‘Nur in the Oven’ Snake Woman

Nur in the Oven

Sexual characteristic of the female in the narrative

Seductress

Prostitute

The Conflict

Depletes her husband’s powers; makes her husband ill

Emits bad odours from her body; makes her husband ill

The Adviser

The dervish advises the husband A grandmother advises the husband to put his wife into the oven to put his wife into the oven

The Transformation

The woman is replaced by a golden skin sloughed off by the snake

The woman is replaced by a woman whose body odour is equated with freshly baked bread

stories, wise figures notice that the husband is ill and advise him to ‘cleanse’ his wife. The grandmother, wise in the ways of women and their husbands, urges him to put the woman into the oven to ensure that she returns to the existing social order, based upon faithfulness as religious and social norms dictate. Following a period of ‘incubation’, the husband in the first story finds in the oven a golden snakeskin, a sign that his wife was indeed a snake woman. His reward is the gold. In contrast, the husband in the second story gains a purified wife, worthy of the status of a ‘married woman’, who possesses a pleasing smell associated with the smell of freshly baked bread. Magical transformations occur inside the oven: the cover of the sinful body, concealing unacceptable promiscuity, is removed, and replaced with a newfound acceptance of the metaphysical and social norms which characterize women as mothers. The smell of the bread in the oven marks the pure flesh of the fertile woman. On this note, Beruria comments: In our town of Herat many eyes were on a bride, judging whether she is a good woman. I remember my grandmother saying that a good woman was one who attended to the oven all day; she was industrious. She baked bread for her children, for her husband. In her own words she would say: Koja ¯ zan-e nur ba¯la¯-ye tanur (‘Where is the woman of light? At the oven’).9

A woman who can bake bread knows how to transform raw ingredients into cooked food. Metaphorically, she knows how to transform herself at the same time into a culturally acceptable individual—a good wife, mother, and grandmother—who meets the community’s social and moral standards. The link in Afghani Jewish culture between bread and a woman’s fertility is reinforced by the popular proverb traditionally said to a young man about choosing a wife: Begir in dokhtar ke dass-ash ya¯d da¯re khemir bokone (‘Take the young

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woman whose hands know how to knead dough’).10 If she knows how to knead dough, the proverb implies, she will be fertile, and the groom can be sure she will bring physical and spiritual sustenance to her family. It is her ability to make bread, considered a difficult skill to master, that makes her virtuous and suitable for the roles she is expected to fulfil. We might extrapolate by saying that a mother who bakes bread can provide solutions to society’s ills, and maintain order in her family and in the community. The kneading and baking of dough also required the skills involved in lighting a clay oven and keeping it burning. This knowledge was often necessary for a young bride, who had to demonstrate her skills to her mother-in-law. Rakhel reflected, for example: I got married at age fourteen. I remember well . . . already from the first month before I menstruated, my mother-in-law put flour and sugar in my hand and told me to make bread from them. I knew I was under her watchful gaze. My hands shook like this . . . I remember the first time I baked bread. I don’t even remember the taste of the bread. Just my fear, and the voice of my mother-in-law confirming to my husband that I would be a good wife. That I would be a good mother.11

A mother-in-law would evaluate the worthiness of a prospective daughter-in-law by assessing her bread-baking skills. The 'light in the oven’ (nur be tanur), meaning the light and the heat of the burning fuel that enables the bread to bake, was likened to the feminine light reflected in the young bride’s attributes and skills, which also indicated the kind of mother she would become in the future. Thus, the woman who bends over the oven metonymically represents the woman working to provide the needs of her husband and her children (see Badinter 1981). Afghani Jews used the expression sar dar tanur (‘the head in the oven’) to refer to a woman who hides her thoughts, implying that her mood was inscrutable. She ‘cooked’ her thoughts, and it was impossible to know how she would behave. When a Jewish girl first began to menstruate, one of her mother’s duties was to teach her how to bake bread and, in the course of the baking, to teach her the Jewish laws about menstrual impurity and purity. Although the laws relating to menstrual impurity did not apply to a young woman before she got married, she was forbidden, during her period, to bake bread, or to touch a cooking utensil or a piece of bread that was not hers. She was allowed, however, to rake the ashes from the oven into the dustpan, because it was believed that fire and its by-products (ashes and smoke) had the ability to cleanse impurity by contact. Thus the social and religious fear of impurity was also resolved through the bread and the oven. Similarly, the first thing a Jewish woman would make after immersing herself in the ritual bath at the end of her menstrual period was bread. In doing so, she would effectively ‘proclaim’ her purity and be entitled to return to the public arena.

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Other proverbs, such as az tanur ta¯ takhte (‘from the oven and to the bed’), denote the expected path for the fertile woman, from the baking of bread in the oven to the ‘baking’ of a baby in her womb. The act of cooking was juxtaposed with sexual intercourse, and the making of bread with conception. Among many Jewish groups in Israel there exists a bond between the rising of bread and the development of life in a woman’s womb. Wedding planners suggest a parallel between a woman and bread with a sexual connotation, such as ‘the bride’s bagel’, a custom practised among Sephardi communities in Turkey. As the bride emerges from the ritual bath taken before the wedding, the roskah, a yeast cake in the shape of a bagel, is held above her head. Similarly in Jewish communities from Georgia, women used to bake bread called kabluli—a wedding bread made with eggs, milk, and sugar and decorated with candles and silver coins. Following the marriage ceremony the bride’s mother performed a wedding dance with the bride and the kabluli bread. Bread is also widely considered a symbol of fertility in Muslim culture. The oven represents the incubation vessel in which women undergo a transformation from a wild woman to a cultivated woman, from a newly married woman lacking life skills to a mother who knows how to nourish her family in both a material and a spiritual sense. The oven has transformative powers, belonging to the feminine space and serving the concept of a proper social order.

Conclusion The Jews of Afghanistan elaborated a discourse based on bread-related imagery to refer to motherhood. Each stage of the preparation of bread—from the sifting of flour to its baking in the oven—expressed some idea about their conception of motherhood. Members of the community associated bread with mothers, whether through the analogy of smell or that of hunger: hungering for a child was likened to longing for bread. The Afghani Jewish mother cared for her children, educated them, and gave them warmth and love. Just as bread was available daily, so was the mother available in her children’s lives. In contrast, Afghani Jewish fathers went on journeys for weeks or even months at a time to engage in trade and came home infrequently. This social context explains the proverb: ‘Mother is like bread and father is like meat.’ The mother was the ‘gatherer’, grinding wheat and baking bread, and the father was the ‘hunter’, bringing meat for roasting and cooking in the kitchen. Bread was the stable element in family meals and meat was served mainly on the sabbath and festivals, when both parents were at home. These binary associations of mother–bread, father–meat, and the meanings linked to them, defined the figure of the mother and her role in the family. Afghani Jews regarded the mother as a beloved woman who had the power to educate, teach, care for, and worry about the needs of her household, as well as to cure her children when they were ill. The woman was initiated into motherhood

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through the baking of bread, equated with the foetus’s gestation in the womb. This symbolism is not unique to Afghan Jewry; a common English phrase for a pregnant woman is ‘she has a bun in the oven’ (Bryan and Mieder 2005: 115; Kövecses 2015: 143). Thus the womb is equated with the oven, in which processes of change occur. The oven also has the ability to ‘cleanse’, as seen in folk tales and related proverbs. In Afghani Jewish lore, a woman with a wild nature was transformed, when ‘baked’ in an oven, into a culturally acceptable woman. A woman’s place in the social hierarchy of Afghani Jewish culture changed according to her reproductive abilities. A woman was called zan as long as she experienced menstruation, regardless of whether she had already conceived; the man (husband, father, or father-in-law) controlled her fertility for the purpose of giving birth and furthering the family line. The status of a post-menopausal woman was comparable to that of a man, though her specific position in the social hierarchy was determined by her marital status and her previous fertility rather than, as in the case of men, her role in the wider world. Just as different names were given to different types of bread, so different nicknames, identical to the names for these breads, were assigned to different types of women. The Afghani Jewish community charged mothers with the responsibility of providing sustenance. The bread they baked represented the protection of the family and the social and religious values of the community. Three generations of women—grandmother, mother, and daughter—held the key to maintaining life and the community’s survival in Afghanistan. Experienced in life and in raising a family, the grandmother (sar gozasht, ‘wise woman’) passed on the significance of the role of motherhood to her granddaughters by means of the ceremonial baking of bread. The daughter, regarded as a young woman who needed to be protected from immorality, received a moral education through training in baking bread. It proved that she was ‘pure’ and worthy of the role of mother. The name ‘mother’ was used not only in the biological sense, to describe a woman who had given birth to children, but also to designate a woman capable of supplying the needs of the community and protecting it from illness, hunger, and social chaos. Mothers carried the strength and power to maintain order in the community, and they accomplished this through bread. The migration to Israel altered the core of Afghani Jewish culture, at least in part because of the changed role of bread and bread-making mothers. No longer baking in a courtyard oven, and increasingly working outside the home, Afghani Jews in Israel joined a national consumer culture by buying standardized bread in grocery stores.

Notes 1

This custom is also known in Zoroastrian culture as ‘dream bread’. When a Zoroastrian child has a bad dream, his mother tears the bread into three triangles. The child tells the bread his bad dream, the mother crumbles the bread, and together they feed the birds. See Simmons 2002: 516.

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2

Dari belongs to the Indo-Iranian family of languages, and is phonetically similar to Persian. It is currently the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan. See Dupree 1980: 66–7.

3

I interviewed men too, but they did not articulate the meaning behind the proverb ‘Mother is like bread’ as the women did, so I have not quoted them directly.

4

Shushan was born in Kabul in 1932 and emigrated to Israel in 1958. The interview was recorded on 13 June 2005.

5

Khana Z. was born in 1939 in Israel, to parents from Afghanistan. The interview was recorded on 15 May 2005.

6

Shoshana was born in Herat in 1943 and emigrated to Israel in 1951. The interview was recorded on 21 September 2011.

7

In the sources I cite, this tale type is described as unique to Afghani Jews. The standard reference for folk literature of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type index (Uther 2004) lists Tale Type 1121: ‘The Ogre’s Wife Burned in Her Own Oven’, in which she is tricked into climbing into her own oven, but in the ‘snake woman’ story the husband is not depicted as an ogre. The symbolism of the woman as a snake is unusual in folk literature; the snake, with its phallic associations, is usually a man. But the index lists Tale Type 409A ‘The Girl as a Snake’ from eastern Europe, in which a snake pulled out of a fire turns into a woman and marries her rescuer. The husband promises never to call his wife ‘snake’ but breaks his promise, and the woman changes back into a snake.

8

Berukha was born in Herat in 1936 and emigrated to Israel in 1951. The interview was recorded on 19 July 1998. Berukha told the story ‘Nur be tanur’ as part of a discussion on the characteristics of a ‘good woman’ and a ‘bad woman’ in Afghani society. She heard the story in her youth from her grandmother in Herat.

9

Beruria was born in Herat in 1937 and emigrated to Israel in 1951. The interview was recorded on 12 November 2006.

10

In Arab cultures the proverb is: ‘Take the one whose hands are covered with dough and she is a woman of valour.’ See Shukri 2006: 183.

11

Rakhel was born in Herat in 1933 and emigrated to Israel in 1951. The interview was recorded on 22 December 2008.

References ali, mohammed. 1969. The Afghans. Kabul. avrahamov, naftali. 1935. ‘Two Years in Afghanistan’ (Heb.). Hayarden, 234: 1–3. badinter, elisabeth. 1981. Mother Love: Myth and Reality: Motherhood in Modern History. New York. bar’am-ben yossef, no’am, ed. 1997. Come Bride: Engagement and Wedding Rituals of Afghan Jews [Bo’i kalah: minhagei erusin veh.atunah shel yehudei afganistan]. Jerusalem. bryan, george b., and wolfgang mieder. 2005. A Dictionary of Anglo-American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. New York. chodorow, nancy j . 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley, Calif. cowen, ida . 1971. Jews in Remote Corners of the World. London.

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desmet-grégoire, hélène. 1989. ‘Bread, Persian Na ¯ n’. In Ehsan Yarshater, ed., Encyclopaedia Iranica. New York. dupree, louis . 1980. Afghanistan. Oxford. irigaray, luce. 2004. Je, Tu, Nous: Towards a Culture of Difference [Ani, at, anah.nu: likrat tarbut hahevdel]. Tel Aviv. kashani, reuven. 2001. The Jews of Persia, Bukhara, and Afghanistan [Yehudei paras, bukharah ve’afganistan]. Jerusalem. kort, zevulun. 1974. The Princess Who Turned into a Wreath of Flowers: A Selection of Jewish Folktales from Herat, Afghanistan [Hanesikhah shehafkhah lezer perah.im]. Tel Aviv. kö vecses, zoltán. 2015. Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Oxford. rich, adrienne. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York. sadeh, pinhas, ed. 1989. Jewish Folktales. New York. salamon, hagar. 1993. ‘Blood in the Beta-Israel and their Christian Neighbours in Ethiopia: Key Symbols in the Context of Group’ (Heb.). Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore, 15: 117–34. shukri, abed. 2006. ‘From Sowing to Baking in Arab Culture’ (Heb.). In Noam BenYossef, ed., Bread among the Religions and Communities of Israel [Leh.em bekerev datot ve’edot beyisra’el], 171–93. Jerusalem. simmons, sturin. 2002. ‘Entertaining the Zoroastrian Way’. In Pheroza J. Godrej and Firoz Punthakey Mistree, eds., A Zoroastrian Tapestry: Art, Religion and Culture, 509–19. Usnanpura, India. tapper, nancy. 1991. Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in Afghan Tribal Society. Cambridge. tapper, richard, and nancy tapper. 1986. ‘“Eat This, It’ll Do You a Power of Good”: Food and Commensality among Durrani Pashtuns’. American Ethnologist, 13: 62–79. uther, hans-jörg. 2004. The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki. yehoshua-raz, benzion . 1992. From the Lost Tribes in Afghanistan to the Mashhad Jewish Converts of Iran [Minidh.ei yisra’el be’afganistan le’anusei mash’had be’iran]. Jerusalem. zan-bar tsur, tsila. 2012. ‘Femininity and its Folk Expressions in the Lives of Afghan-Born Jewish Women in Israel’ [Tefisat hanashiyut vebituyeiha hafolkloriyim etsel nashim yehudiyot yotsot afganistan beyisra’el]. Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

f o u r

Mothers and Children in Ottoman Jewish Society as Reflected in Hebrew Sources of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries ruth lamdan

While eulogizing his mother, the preacher R. Joseph Alzayag, one of the sages of Safed in the sixteenth century, underscored the proper qualities of the ideal woman: First, they should be clever, unlike most women, who are foolish. Second, they should be generous, unlike most women, who are mean . . . Third, they should be thrifty, unlike most women, who want their husbands to give endlessly [cf. Prov. 30: 15], without a thought for the consequences . . . Fourth, they should be of a gentle disposition, unlike most women, who are argumentative and quarrelsome. . . . (MS Amsterdam, fos. 361b–362a, quoted in Lamdan 2000: 13)

This memorial tribute, spoken over his mother’s grave, not only expresses Alzayag’s high esteem for his mother, but also reflects the degree to which rabbis differentiated their mothers from other women. Ottoman sages referred to women as ‘lightheaded by nature’ and as ‘needing to serve their husbands and sons’ (Hazan 1821: Sermon 18, 36a–b). Mothers—in the minds of those who eulogized them—deserved exceptional praise and recognition. This essay explores an array of Ottoman Hebrew sources written following the Expulsion from Spain (1492), and focuses on the interplay between rabbinic sages and mothers in the arena of family law and relationships. Overlooked in contemporary research, these sources offer a more nuanced view of family life in Ottoman Jewish culture. As we might expect, they associate mothers with childbirth and childrearing, but also portray them as women who took the initiative in their role as mothers with respect to marriage, divorce, levirate marriage, and the financial stability of their family and children. Indeed, Hebrew sources from this period honour mothers. They also acknowledge the active role mothers assumed in maintaining family stability at times of crisis. In the period following the

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Expulsion, families were torn apart, and many were forced to abandon their homes and join Jewish communities outside Spain, in locations such as Turkey and the Balkans, Greece, Syria, North Africa, and the Land of Israel (Sambari 1994: 253). This displacement provoked immense cultural shifts throughout the Ottoman empire. In a process that lasted several decades, rabbis from the JudaeoSpanish communities reshaped the culture and lifestyle of most Jews of the Ottoman empire, including those of the former Byzantine empire (Romaniote Jews) and from Arabic-speaking lands (musta’arbim).1 Ottoman mothers, in asserting their will in matters connected to their families, left an indelible mark on Ottoman Jewish culture of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, reflecting one aspect of these cultural shifts.

The Sources I located the main sources on mothers and motherhood within halakhic (legal) literature, predominantly in the vast rabbinic responsa literature. Using case reports and recorded testimonies, I was able to learn much about the personal lives of Jews as they interacted with one another around issues of marriage and divorce, and in monetary matters. Additionally, eulogies and sermons delivered by sages, sons, and close relatives for deceased mothers contained idealizations of mothers which had a didactic purpose. They hoped that the reverence with which they spoke of their own mothers would evoke greater respect for mothers in their community. For example, Rabbi Moses Amarillo (1695–1748), who eulogized his mother thirty days after her death in 1716, used a talmudic source equating mothers with God to insist upon the duty to honour one’s mother alongside one’s father: It is common knowledge that man is commanded to honour his father and mother; to honour them is like honouring the Almighty, as is written in the first chapter of [tractate] Kidushin [30b]. And the reason that it is told there is that Rabbi Joseph, when he heard the sound of his mother’s footsteps, said: ‘I will rise before the Divine Presence’ [31b] . . . implying that he who honours his mother, it is as if he is honouring the Divine Presence. (Amarillo 1752: Sermon 1, on ‘Lekh Lekha’, 4b–7b)

Sermons and ethical (musar) literature, intended to guide and instruct the public about proper religious, social, and familial behaviour, also contained material regarding mothers, primarily to offer instructions to them (Lehmann 2005: esp. 4–5). For example, Elijah Hakohen’s Shevet musar, one of the most popular Judaeo-Spanish musar books, advises mothers as follows:2 How [should a mother] act with her child when he is in his cradle: not to sing him serenades . . . but to sing him songs that tell of moral events, of Heaven and Hell, and reward and punishment. When the child begins to speak she will train him in verses such as ‘[Moses] commanded us the Torah’ etc., as the Rambam (may he rest in peace) writes

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[MT, ‘Laws of Torah Study’, 1: 6; see Deut. 33: 4; BT Suk. 42a], and his mother will tell him that there is a God in the world and He created and formed it . . . and He is the Lord of all and the Creator of all creations . . . and He grants life and death and in the future will raise the dead. She will teach him to recite the thirteen precepts of the Torah and will tell him about Heaven and Hell, and that he who learns Torah is saved from Hell and will attain Heaven. She will describe Heaven and Hell in a way that an infant will comprehend . . . and morning, noon, and night she will train him to say ‘Amen’ before eating and drinking in order to accustom him to giving thanks to the Creator . . . and when he grows, she will train him to wash his hands, etc. . . . and will always make sure that he does not eat without washing his hands. She should also be firm about not uttering unseemly words, and will strike him for all these, and his weeping will not soften her. And she should not say, ‘He is still small!’ . . . And if, God forbid, while he is small, he becomes accustomed to the opposite of what is written here—he will acquire a second natural habit, ‘and even when they are old they will not turn from it’ [Prov. 22: 6], and he will blacken the face of his father and mother in this world and the World to Come . . . And the mother is obligated to do all these things while the child is still young, for she is at home with him, while the father goes out to provide [for the family]. (ch. 24: 194)

Sources such as this one are educational. Their authors never challenge the traditional roles of women in society and, instead, advise mothers regarding childrearing, encouraging them to ensure that their sons study Torah. Additionally, sources in this category provide a model for girls in various women’s labours so that they can fulfil their future domestic responsibilities. Women learned these texts through their husbands, who were expected to teach and advise them in the ways of religious observance and moral behaviour. Unlike many Ashkenazi women in Europe, Turkish women were rarely literate, especially in Hebrew. Until the eighteenth century, when a group of so-called ‘vernacular rabbis’ began to publish a number of musar books in Ladino (the language of the Ottoman Sephardim, written in Hebrew letters, also known as Judaeo-Spanish), women were not even considered potential readers. In this regard, men set the standard in the household and the nature of motherhood was a matter of instruction that was channelled through husbands to their wives.

Mothers as Bearers of Children In the aftermath of the exile from Spain, due to the displacement of families and the loss of children, a woman’s main role was to bear a new generation. Fearing for the survival of Jewish communal life, Ottoman rabbis, even two or three generations after the exile, devoted considerable discussion to the importance of bringing children into the world (Hacker 1989; Lamdan 2011: 70–1; Rozen 2002: 101–10). They expected women to prove their fertility by bearing male children as soon after marriage as possible. Rabbis like Jacob Khuli, the author of Me’am lo’ez, a popular biblical anthology written in Ladino so that women could understand it, even argued that childbearing was the reason women were brought into the world

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(1967: 95–6).3 Aaron Hakohen Perahia of Salonica (c.1627–97) declared in one of his sermons that a ‘woman’s only virtue is to bring forth worthy offspring and righteous and pious sons’ (1758: Sermon 26, 76a).4 No doubt there was a broad sense of respect for mothers in Ottoman society (Amarillo 1752: Sermon 1, on ‘Lekh Lekha’, 4b–7b; Hakohen 1759: Sermon 11, 51a; Perahia 1758: Sermon 22, 64a; Sermon 24, 69b). As mothers, women wielded a degree of power within their families, as highlighted by Aaron Hakohen Perahia: ‘[Mothers] raise our sons and save us from sin . . . these are two very necessary things . . . without them, no one will lift an arm or a leg to achieve perfection’ (1758: Sermon 26). In fact, mothering was the means by which women could redeem their souls, that is, gain entrance to the World to Come. The exemption of women from certain commandments, including Torah study, prevented them from attaining the level of perfection necessary for a desirable afterlife. The only way for them to deserve such a reward was to become mothers and serve their husbands and sons, thus enabling their menfolk to gain a place in the World to Come by studying Torah in this world (E. Hakohen 1759: Sermon 11, 48a). In the words of one preacher, ‘How fitting it is for righteous women to make enormous efforts to raise upright sons . . . so that the stature and merits of the sons [will be] a great joy reserved for their mother in the World to Come’ (Perahia 1758: Sermon 26; see also Sermon 24; De Vidas 1579: 294b; Hazan 1821: Sermon 18). In other words, mothers gained a share of their sons’ reward through proper mothering. As enablers of an age-old cultural model of Torah study, Jewish mothers believed they would be redeemed. And yet, as Ottoman Hebrew sources reflect, mothers were also thought of as weak by nature, ‘especially at certain times, such as pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing’ (Hazan 1821: Sermon 18, 38b). Expounding the biblical verse, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing, in pain you shall bring forth children, and your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you’ (Gen. 3: 16), Jacob Khuli called attention to mothers’ frailties by invoking the curses that fell upon women as a result of Eve’s sin. Seven of them relate to their femininity and their maternal role: (1) the pain (tsa’ar) of menstruation; (2) the blood of virginity; (3) the ordeal of pregnancy, which lasts nine months; (4) the anguish of giving birth prematurely, ‘that her suffering was in vain’; (5) the torment of childbirth, ‘like no pain in the world’; (6) the hardships of parenthood, which include providing infants with milk, dressing them, rocking them, cradling them in their arms, and nursing them; and (7) the need to seclude herself, ‘and when she puts her child to sleep, she must take care that it is not audible, so that the neighbours do not hear her voice’ (Khuli 1967: 176).5 So difficult was the task of mothering, even after enduring the travail of childbirth, that rabbis wrote prayers for new mothers like the one below, quoted in Elijah Hakohen’s Shevet musar:

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May the Lord provide [sustenance] for your servant, this infant, and abundant milk for his needs . . . and place in my heart the time to nurse him, and ease my sleep so that when he cries, my ears will be open to hear him immediately, and prevent my hand from falling upon him during sleep that it may not, God forbid, kill him. (ch. 24 [28–9], 196)

The passage clearly demonstrates that men recognized the heavy demands of mothering, and indeed feared that these might endanger the child. They therefore placed these words in the mouths of mothers, in the hope of protecting their children. Well aware of the duties imposed on mothers and the importance of caring for the welfare of the infant in cases of custody disputes, Ottoman sages argued that the mother always took precedence over any other relative, ‘for the mother will always be merciful towards her child more than anyone else’ (Edrabi 1587: no. 372). In early modern Ottoman Jewish life, maternal breastfeeding, for example, was valued over hiring wet nurses, thereby placing great pressure on mothers to breastfeed, because it was ‘much better for the infant’ (Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 193; cf. Ben Hayim c. 1606: no. 95). Born out of the belief that there was no substitute for a mother’s love, even a divorced or widowed mother was required to breastfeed her child in return for payment, invoking talmudic legislation (BT Ket. 59b, 65b). To be sure, there was great concern that women might not become pregnant quickly, prompting some to take various sorts of medication in the hope of giving birth (Almosnino 1588: Sermon 12, 113b–114a; Lamdan 2000: 78–81). Infertility was so disastrous that barren women would ‘become bitter and seclude themselves in their homes’ (Khuli 1967: 578). Infertile women were cultural misfits who upset communal expectations. Indeed, the enormous cultural weight that was placed on motherhood gave women a status that was retained even after their death.

Idealizing Motherhood: Rabbis Eulogize Their Mothers The most common text used by sons about their mothers, usually while eulogizing them, is the hymn ‘Woman of Valour’ (Eshet h.ayil, Prov. 31: 11–31), which enumerates the qualities—and the duties—of the ideal wife and mother (Levine 2007). When his mother died in 1575, Moses Almosnino of Salonica lauded her, stressing that she was not only the scion of two distinguished Sephardi families, whose sons had died as martyrs, but that she had cared for and nurtured him devotedly: All that I learned and accomplished in Torah studies was due to her, her intercession and her agility . . . [B]ecause while I was small, so many temptations to the many pleasures of the flesh presented themselves . . . and she, in her splendid supervision and remarkable grace, directed me to engage in the study of Torah, and I owe her a great debt

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for this. And since I cannot properly reward her, let me thank her . . . And I come today to praise her virtues and superiority . . . by illustrating some verses from ‘Woman of Valour’, in which I will shed light on her qualities, because she was indeed an ideal Woman of Valour, and all that is written there about the Woman of Valour applies to her in all honesty. (Almosnino 1586: Sermon 11, 97a–100a)

Elijah Hakohen dedicated a sermon to his mother upon her death and similarly invoked interpretations of the verses of ‘Woman of Valour’ (1759: Sermon 10, 44b–47a). In a second sermon dedicated to his mother, delivered a year after her death, he described the qualities of the righteous woman. Commenting on the verse, ‘Her sons rise and praise her, her husband lauds her’ (Prov. 31: 28), he encourages sons to praise their mother while standing, in the way a subject reads the written order of a king (ketav), and insists that if children honour and praise their mother, her husband must also praise his wife in their presence. Thus, they must (and do) honour her all the more (1759: Sermon 11, 51a; cf. Ben Siid 2014: 295–8; Khalatz 1973: ch. 5, 150–4; Perahia 1758: Sermon 22, 65a–66a, Sermon 24, 68b–71; Shabetai 1713: iii, no. 39; M. Trani 1861: ii, no. 33). Sons also extolled their mothers’ contribution to their education. One example comes from Moses Benveniste (Istanbul, 1608–77), whose father died when he was young, and who was raised by his mother. He noted the temptations of his wayward youth in the foreword to his book of legal responsa, ‘for it is the way of an infant to run away from school’, and he gave his mother credit and praise for expending great effort and money so that he should study properly (1669: introduction). Similarly, Joseph David (d. 1737), in eulogizing the mother of his friend Hayim Assael, gave her credit for her son’s successful studies and good deeds. According to David, she had been the reason for Rabbi Assael’s success. All her life she took upon herself the burden of the household so that her husband and her beloved son would be free to devote themselves to study and prayer. Hence she had undoubtedly earned her place in the World to Come (David 1774: Sermon 35, 78a; Ben Siid 2014: 279, 584). Other sages expressed deep personal feelings and profound sorrow on the death of their mothers. Joseph Alzayag made several especially moving statements at his mother’s grave (Lamdan 2000: 65). Raphael Joseph Hazan, in the second half of the eighteenth century, mourned his mother when news of her death in Safed reached him: God made me bitter . . . so many sorrows afflicted me6 . . . is this Naomi?7 Pleasing in her deeds, a God-fearing woman who deserves praise . . . and her deeds are those of a Woman of Valour . . . my esteemed and modest mother . . . would that I had died in her place. It is as if the crown has fallen from my head. Woe to me, a terrible blow has befallen me . . . may I be comforted by the fact that she was privileged to be buried in the Land of Israel. (Sermon 18, 36b)

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He went on to describe the qualities of the prophetess Deborah—bravery, humility, wisdom, and wealth—qualities not usually found in ordinary women (38b; see Rashi on Judg. 4: 5). He held up his mother as different from the rest. In a moving eulogy for the widow of Joseph Trani (Maharit, Safed 1568–Istanbul 1639), who passed away in 1650, her son notes her advanced age, ‘and even mothers who reached old age, like our mother, should be mourned and praised’. He refers to her as ‘my mother, the gracious lady’ and lovingly praises her deeds, though within a reference to his renowned father: She is deserving of a great eulogy . . . for two reasons: because all the studies of my honourable father the rabbi, may his memory live on in the World to Come, and his students, were due to her efforts . . . not to mention the good preparations she made for him, for she was a housewife . . . and she performed tasks that not every woman performs for her husband [BT Ket. 59b], there was never a lack of radish or horseradish for him and all those who sat under his shadow . . . for those are the ways of the prudent wife [Prov. 19: 14]. (Toledano 1969: 57; cf. Ben Siid 2014: 269–70, 279)

Likewise, Israel Najara, the renowned poet who lived in Safed and Damascus (1550–1625), expressed pain and sorrow upon his beloved mother’s death, describing her passing as ‘the blow and the great loss that has befallen me with her departure’ (Najara 2004: Sermon 23, 411–22).8 These texts not only bring to the fore expressions of pain caused by the loss of a mother, but also serve a didactic purpose. The sages, in reflecting on their own mothers and their relationship with them in their sermons and eulogies, strove to construct a culture of respect for mothers, marking motherhood as a cornerstone of Ottoman Jewish life (Regev 2012: 278).

Mothers and Sons: Relations in Daily Life Turning from more idealized visions of mothers written upon their deaths to more day-to-day familial concerns, legal documents and the discussions within them depict mothers as key players in the social fabric of Ottoman culture. Sons left money and property to their mother, despite the fact that Jewish inheritance law did not allow for this.9 They protected their mother’s monetary interests and guarded her rights and her reputation in the community. For example, Moses ben Shoshan hastened to Safed from Jerusalem at his mother’s urgent request in order to ensure her rights were not violated after the death of her second husband, Abraham Bilbis. He then travelled from Safed to Damascus in order to clarify his mother’s rights under the marriage contract (ketubah) and returned to Safed for a vigorous confrontation with the husband’s beneficiary (M. Trani 1861: i, nos. 32, 33). Another son was filled with rage at family members who insulted his mother’s honour by accusing her of stealing a piece of jewellery, and vowed never to enter their home again (Ben Zimra 1882: vi, no. 2244; see also Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 155; Bornstein-Makovetzki 2012: 235–6).

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Jewish women in the Ottoman empire also played a part in economic life, and some enjoyed economic independence. They could own money or property through wills, gifts, or from their own financial or commercial activities (BenNaeh 2008: 368; Lamdan 2000: 114–26; 2007; Ray 2013: 95). Just as sons looked after their mothers’ future, mothers supported their sons with sums of money, through wills, gifts from their property, or even from their ketubot. At times, they privileged one child over another in these affairs. And despite the post-exilic circumstances, mothers did not deprive sons who had converted to Christianity and failed to return to Judaism. They considered the mother–son bond unbreakable, and expressed the hope that sooner or later their children would return to the family and to Judaism (Pinto 1869: ‘H . oshen mishpat’, no. 105; M. Trani 1861: i, no. 142; on the debate surrounding the status of the conversos, see Lehman 2012: ch. 1, esp. 28–37). Women’s involvement in financial and commercial life also enabled mothers to come to the aid of their sons in times of need. A mother whose son was forced to flee from his home town was placed in charge of all his property, and even ran his business. Ten years later she longed to see him once more before she died and expressed her wish to join him. Nothing more is told about her. Another son, Reuben, was captured by the authorities and forced, on pain of death, to reveal where his property was hidden. His mother saved him by persuading his business partner to turn over items that had been hidden (Shabetai 1713: i, nos. 51, 68). Some mothers loaned money to their sons, and some became guarantors for their sons’ debts. Some looked after their sons during illnesses, or granted them refuge if they were forced to leave their home.10 Here we find evidence of mutual trust between mothers and sons in the creation of business partnerships, and in giving monetary and emotional support.11 Mothers were also involved in their sons’ domestic lives. In Jerusalem (1650), a mother intervened in a physical fight between her son and his wife: she took her daughter-in-law by the shoulders and prevented her from striking her husband in return (Cohen and Pikali 2010: ii, no. 501 (pp. 577–8)). On another occasion, when a son who drank a great deal of wine at a party betrothed his minor daughter to his drinking partner, his mother reprimanded him and ordered him to toss the glass away immediately in order to avoid a questionable betrothal of dubious halakhic validity (kidushei safek) (Pinto 1869: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 32).12 A few letters preserved from this period attest to close relations between mothers and sons who lived far apart; they include expressions of concern for grandchildren and other relatives, and sometimes requests for help (Lamdan 2000: 63–5). Especially moving is a letter describing the profound sorrow of a Jerusalemite mother over her son, who had been taken captive. According to the letter, there had been no trace of her son for years, until she learned that he was enslaved as a result of a debt he owed to another Jewish man; he was being held captive by the lender until the debt was repaid. The mother’s letter appeals to an anonymous

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sage, with a request that he come to the aid of the young man and free him from imprisonment: Save him, and do not be silent until funds are sent to free him from captivity . . . so that his aged mother be consoled. For her soul is bowed to the ground, and all her days are anguished because of the separation from him, for her soul is bound to his soul. And this will be considered tsedakah [righteousness] for them, and revive the spirit of this woman of Jerusalem. (MS Jerusalem 8vo 61, no. 72, 114b)13

Mothers were trusted with intimate issues and wielded a great deal of influence in matters of betrothal and marriage, even when their sons were adults. They went to check on the prospective bride (E. Mizrachi 1938: nos. 18–19), and even purchased and received gifts for her on behalf of the groom (Ben Zimra 1882: iv, no. 123; Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 32). Rabbi Elijah Mizrachi, a Romaniote rabbi in Istanbul (1450–1525), testified: We see with our own eyes that most betrothal gifts are sent for a groom-to-be to his fiancée in modesty and discretion and not in a prideful manner. The custom is always for the mother to bring the betrothal gifts [sivlonot]14 to her son’s fiancée instead of having other people, strangers, bring them with great fanfare and pride . . . Sons are more likely to confide in their mothers . . . and whatever they wish to send secretly . . . they send with their mothers.15

At times, mothers tried to prevent matches that were not to their liking. In one instance, a mother succeeded in causing her son to change his wedding plans. The young man, Jacob ben Ya’ish of Salonica, was secretly betrothed to a girl to whom he was attracted and he vowed never to be promised to another. When the secret somehow became known to his widowed mother, she wept and cried out that ‘her son, whom she had raised and nurtured, had betrayed her when he concealed his betrothal from her, something which is not done’. She threatened to squander all her considerable property and leave nothing to her son if he did not call off the betrothal. And when the mother’s cries touched the hearts of God-fearing people, they went to talk to the son and ask him why he was doing this to the mother who had given him life . . . until he felt remorse at the sight of his mother’s anguish; for when he made the vow, he truly intended to wed the girl, but afterwards, when he saw his mother crying and screaming, and others [had] won him over, he said that if he had known . . . that his esteemed mother was capable of such acts, and would not make peace with him, and that she would lose everything she had, he would surely not have made the vow. (Medina 1862: ‘Yoreh de’ah’, no. 104)

When he heard this account, Samuel de Medina (Rashdam, 1506–89) ruled that the son’s vow had been a mistake and could be nullified. Daniel Estrosa (d. 1654), quoting that responsum, argued that Rashdam had nullified the boy’s vow not only to preserve his mother’s honour, but also because of the loss of money and property involved (Estrosa 1754: no. 8; see also David 1700: ‘Yoreh de’ah’, no. 105).

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Another youth, who wished to leave Constantinople to marry a woman in Anatolia, agreed to his mother’s request. He vowed to become celibate if he ever moved to another district, ‘because he was filled with remorse when she pleaded with him not to leave her and move to a distant land’ (Ben Lev 1959/60: iv, no. 24). He, too, later requested the nullification of his vow, which depended on his mother’s approval. Mothers even intervened in cases involving levirate marriage (yibum). Some recommended marrying the widow, while others advised releasing her from the obligation to marry him (h.alitsah). In one legal case, a man who was called upon to marry his brother’s widow or to release her asked to delay his decision for as long as it took to convince his mother (who objected to the levirate marriage) that he approved of the union. In this instance, he was not required to obey his mother since he was observing a commandment (Ben Hayim c.1605: no. 78). In another case, the mother and grandmother of a young boy (whose exact age was not known) testified that according to the amount of hair on his body, there was no doubt he had reached the age of 13 and was therefore old enough to release his widowed sister-in-law from levirate marriage. Abraham Halevi rejected the women’s testimony, whereas Joseph Halevi accepted it (A. Halevi 1716: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 1 (18–19). See also no. 2 (12), quoting Medina 1862: ‘Yoreh de’ah’, no. 91; Caro 1598: ‘Yibum and h.alitsah’, no. 2). Yet not all sources depict the mother–son relationship positively, calling our attention to the fact that not all mothers took pride in their sons, and not all sons treated their mothers with respect. Ottoman sources reveal cases of familial angst and discord, thereby challenging the idealized portrayal of mother–son relationships. Some cases were adjudicated in Jewish or even Muslim courts, indicating that Ottoman culture gave mothers individual agency. A great many family disputes erupted as a result of financial problems or when a member of the family wanted to show his love or appreciation to another by avoiding the laws of inheritance (see n. 9 below). Money or property could be transferred through a will or as a gift, and this would be formalized by a legal deed, though these arrangements were often challenged in Jewish courts by potential heirs. One such case occurred when a mother on her deathbed bequeathed her beloved daughter and son-in-law money and property, leaving her son with nothing. The dispossessed son forcibly seized all his mother’s possessions and took them to his house. Despite her cries and pleas that he honour her last wishes, ‘[he] did not heed her words and broke the commandment to honour one’s father and mother’. Samuel de Medina harshly denounced the son, siding with the mother, while Isaac Edrabi attempted to limit her power in family inheritance issues by ruling that a woman could not give away anything as long as her husband (who happened to be far away at the time) was still alive. (Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 189 (= ‘H . oshen mishpat’, no. 338); cf. Edrabi 1587:

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no. 287. For sample formulas of gift endowments (shetar matanah), see Lamdan 2009: 166–9.) Joseph Trani arbitrated a different case, in which a son quarrelled incessantly with his mother because she had bequeathed most of the property left by her husband to her daughter, upon the latter’s marriage (1861: ii, ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 43). Another son sued his mother in the shari’a court in Jerusalem, claiming that she had promised to give him 200 groshos (silver coins) if he divorced his wife, but had subsequently refused to pay him. The qadi decided that the mother’s promise was illegal and warned both sides not to enter each other’s room (Cohen and Pikali 2010: ii, no. 502, ref. 4 (p. 579)). Inheritance and fiscal issues may have been a primary cause of intergenerational disputes, but they were not the only ones. In the course of a trial concerning a case of kidushei safek in a court in Izmir in 1617, Judah ben Refaela was accused of humiliating his mother. The court records state: ‘and because of an exchange of words with his mother, he pushed her and threw her to the ground and spat in her face and said to her, “You are stubborn and insane!”’ For this behaviour, the judges adjudicated in favour of the mother and the community at large by declaring the son unqualified to give testimony before a court (Zahalon 1980/1: no. 25(2); J. Trani 1861: ii, ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 43). A longer story is recorded in an interrogation from 1559 regarding the release of a deserted wife (agunah) from Salonica. We are told of a mother named Dinah, whose two sons had converted to Islam and had been drafted into the Ottoman army. One of them, Joseph Samiga, returned from the war and claimed to have witnessed the death of his brother Abraham. The mother found it difficult to believe him. A court (beit din) was asked to determine Abraham’s wife’s halakhic status: was she a widow, in which case she could remarry, or was she considered a deserted wife? One of the witnesses called to testify to free Abraham’s wife from aginut declared that earlier he had overheard a harsh exchange of words between the mother, Dinah, and Joseph, in which he exclaimed, ‘May you live as your son did, whom I saw in a sack [i.e. if only you could die]!’ After the death of her third son, Jacob, in Salonica, Dinah decided to go to Safed to join her two daughters who lived there. Her son Joseph also happened to be there. A witness described her arrival in Safed: When she neared the city, her son Joseph went to welcome her, and she was beating herself with two stones, to indicate that she was bereaved and alone. And her son Joseph comforted her, telling her not to cry, because he would return to Judaism. She told him that she would rather he died, like her son Jacob, than live as an apostate. When she reached the home of her daughters and wept with them over the death of Jacob, who had died in Salonica, Joseph responded by recalling that, ‘Since you are grieving for Jacob, weep also for Abraham, who was killed at war.’ (Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 55)

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This love-hate relationship between mother and son is revealed through Samuel de Medina’s legal discussion about freeing Abraham’s agunah. De Medina made no reference, however, to the family’s misfortunes or to the incidents between mother and son. He released Abraham’s wife, enabling her to remarry. In another case, a man named Reuben forbade his mother to set foot in his sister’s house, following a quarrel. He swore that if she did, he would no longer allow her into his own house. He later learned that his mother had disregarded his warning and visited her daughter. He therefore barred her from entering his home, in accordance with his vow. ‘And his mother was angered with him: how could she not dwell in his house and eat at his table, and what of honouring one’s father and mother?’ The son regretted his decision and asked a Safed authority, Yom Tov Zahalon (Safed, 1559–1619), to annul the oath against his mother (Zahalon 1980/1: no. 167). In a similar case, a son who lived with his mother but argued with her so vehemently that ‘smoke rose from his nostrils’ vowed never to sit with her at the same table. He, too, regretted his words, for ‘it grieved him greatly to see his mother in distress, fainting from hunger, impoverished, and he could not help her’, and later asked to be released from his vow (M. Mizrachi 1742: i, ‘Yoreh de’ah’, no. 15; cf. J. Trani 1861: i, no. 110). Within this cultural milieu it is not surprising to find husbands who took great care to ensure that, after they died, their wives would have honour and financial independence. A father of three minor sons, for example, stipulated in his will that his married daughter and his son-in-law, Jacob, live with his wife and sons, ensuring that ‘their sister’s husband would instruct them and would advise them to be good to each other and show their mother proper respect’ (M. Trani 1861: iii, no. 166). Another father, who apparently knew his son Simon well, left a will bequeathing his property to his wife. In so doing, he ensured that his son would not reject her, stipulating that this son would have to live in their home with his mother and obey her. It is clear that husbands could easily empower their wives to watch over any renegade sons about whom they worried. Interestingly, this father went so far as to state that if Simon left home, his mother would receive a substantial sum in addition to the will. Supporting the mother, Joseph Trani ruled that the father’s will was valid and his decision justified: The father acted wisely . . . the son should be subject to his mother’s moral standards and will defer to her counsel and not deviate from it. [A]nd on the day that he rebels and does not heed her counsel and obey her, she can send him away and take all the property for herself and do with it whatever she wishes . . . [This is] because he disregarded all her restraints and defied the wishes of his father, who intended that he would always be subject to and obedient to his mother. (1978: no. 11)

There are not many documented cases where thoughtless sons confront their mothers or make vows that were liable to dishonour or cause harm to them. Ottoman rabbis, however, were very compassionate towards mothers who were

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not treated well by their children. The commandment to respect one’s father and mother held great sway in Ottoman Jewish culture. Many rulings related to family matters present us with rabbis who favour domestic peace and even enable reckless sons to annul their vows in order to make peace with their mothers.

Mothers in Ottoman Family Life: New Cultural Considerations Locating mothers as women with agency in Ottoman society calls for an analysis of sources that testify to challenges to traditional family life. Indeed, mothers became widows, they divorced, and they worried about the future marital arrangements of their sons and daughters. We find that widows and divorcees did everything in their power to obtain custody of their young children and were often forced to cope with demands and monetary claims by other family members. Custody was often awarded to the father or members of his family, in the belief that he would take better care of his sons’ education than their mother. Upon the demand of their father, boys over 6 years old had to leave their mother, and those who remained were not entitled to support from their father (BT Ket. 102b; MT, ‘Laws of Marriage’, 12: 14; Grossman 2001: 225–7). Responsa literature attests to a large number of suits involving guardianship, both on the part of mothers and on the part of family members, who desired custody or who wished to prevent the mother from moving to another city or country to live with her family of origin or to remarry. In the case of daughters, the courts almost always awarded the mother custody (BT Ket. 102b–103a; MT, ‘Laws of Marriage’, 21 [17–18]). However, when the future of boys was at stake, they were often forced to relinquish it. Some mothers agreed for the sake of their sons, knowing that they would receive a proper education if they remained with male relatives. On occasion, the mother was awarded custody if this was stipulated in her husband’s will, or she was recognized as the de facto guardian by an order of the court (BT Git. 37a, 52a–b; BK 37a; MT, ‘Laws of Inheritance’, 10; Shulh.an arukh, ‘H . oshen mishpat’, 290 (24)). In many cases, decisions were made by a local court where judges knew the family well and ruled according to what they considered to be in the best interests of the child.16 When awarded custody and to aid in ensuring a child’s welfare, Jewish mothers often challenged family members on issues regarding inheritance and property. Again, they appealed to Jewish courts (batei din), and when necessary, they did not hesitate to resort to Muslim qadis in matters of guardianship and the assignment of child support (cf. Tucker: 237, 247–50; Zarinebaf-Shahr: 260).17 As documented in Jerusalem shari’a records, local qadis sometimes appointed Jewish mothers as guardians. In 1627, for instance, Sultana, daughter of Joseph, was appointed guardian of her minor son and daughter, but only with regard to

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their material needs, not their education. This was done with the father’s consent (Cohen and Pikali 2010: ii, no. 544 (p. 619, and ref. 2)). In another case, however, a married woman who took her son and moved to her mother’s house in order to receive material support was ordered by the qadi to return to her husband with the child (Cohen and Pikali 2010: ii, no. 490 (p. 570); see also Cohen and Pikali 1993: nos. 20 (p. 21), 411–14 (pp. 361–2); Cohen and Pikali 1996: nos. 454 (p. 472), 457 (p. 475); Cohen and Pikali 2010: ii, nos. 545, 547 (pp. 619–21)). Since betrothals and marriages at a young age were commonplace in Mediterranean Sephardi society (Bornstein-Makovetsky 2012: 230–2; Lamdan 1996, 2000: 46–51; Rozen 2002: 114–20), parents arranged matches and prenuptial contracts for their children. Mothers became well-established partners in this process and played a key role in choosing their children’s spouses-to-be. In the absence of the father or in cases of orphaned girls, who were entitled to refuse kidushin before they reached adulthood (miun),18 mothers were even more involved. They taught their daughters how to refuse properly, intervened in cases of dubious marriage, and when necessary, testified about the age of the bride or her physical condition, preventing inappropriate marriages. Sephardi sages, like their Ashkenazi counterparts, thought that a woman who remained a widow and did not remarry honoured her former husband. Such was the interpretation of renowned rabbis of Proverbs 31: 12: ‘She does him good and not evil all the days of her life’ (Almosnino 1588: Sermon 11; E. Hakohen 1759: Sermon 11, 49a; cf. Chovav 2009: 211, 322–3; Grossman 2001: 61, 485–6; Weinstein 2003: 394–8). In reality, the majority of women married more than once. When widowed or divorced mothers remarried, they were careful to protect the financial rights and education of their young children and made appropriate stipulations in their marriage contracts (Ben-Naeh 2008: 362–3; BornsteinMakovetsky 2003: 145–50; 2012: 230; Lamdan 2011: 86–7, and ref. 77–8; Rozen 2002: 140–2, 189–90; Salmon-Mack 2010: 418–25). Deserted wives, and women whose husbands spent a long time away from home, tried to provide for themselves and their children by selling handmade goods and doing a variety of jobs, though many were dependent on the community’s tsedakah (charitable) institutions. In Palestine, where most immigrants had arrived following the Ottoman conquest of 1517, things changed for the worse at the end of the sixteenth century. As a result of continuous economic depression and a disastrous decline in Safed’s wool industry, a large number of women in Safed and Jerusalem were left in poverty and were barely able to survive and feed their children (MS Jerusalem 8vo 61, docs. 171 and 185; Alshekh 1994: 102–3, 112; Lamdan 2007: 55; Rozen 1984: 243). Hebrew sources reveal a lot about the lives of Ottoman Jewish mothers. They looked after the physical well-being of their children, but also asserted themselves in the context of Jewish law so as to maintain custody of their children, agreeing to give it up only when they thought their sons would receive a better Torah educa-

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tion with male relatives. They intervened to make sure their children married well, and whenever possible earned money to support them when needed.

Mothers and Daughters A poem on a Salonica gravestone expresses the deep sorrow of a widowed mother who lost her daughter at a young age: Cedars of Lebanon shout out Before tseviah in bitter lament She left her mother grieving and embittered Every day mourning her daughter Dona, may she rest in peace The daughter of the wise man, the exalted R. Don Jacob Abarbanel of blessed memory She died after a short life on Wednesday 27 Adar 1640.19

The inscription suggests that what was true in life remained so in death: mother and daughter had maintained a close and loyal relationship throughout their lives. Very few of the sources which probe the bonds between mothers and their daughters, however, were written by women. We therefore rely mainly on information drawn from legal material authored by men. Yet there is no doubt that mothers remained involved in their daughters’ lives through their marriage and beyond, and looked after their deserted daughters’ interests (Ben Lev 1959/60: iii, no. 4; Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, nos. 29, 75; M. Trani 1861: iii, no. 1). Mothers went so far in their caretaking responsibilities as to look after the financial interests of their daughters, ensuring their right to inherit (sometimes at the expense of another child)20 and interfering in personal matters and marriage arrangements (for instance, Galante 1960: no. 23). Bringing daughters to the wedding canopy was a major task that required much thought and money—this was especially true when the mother was widowed or divorced, and the responsibility was hers alone. Mothers invested money from their ketubah or from property they had acquired in order to give their daughters generous dowries. They wanted them to have a certain amount of financial independence in the future (Rozen 2002: 190). Local ordinances and conditions that were stipulated in the ketubot were meant to ensure that their daughters’ share and that of their beneficiaries would be protected. But in spite of these efforts, there were many cases in which various other relatives went to court to appeal the gifts that had been given to daughters (on inheritance disputes brought to the qadi, see Lamdan 2014: 110–2). In one case, a mother from Salonica disregarded her late husband’s will and refused to send her daughter away to marry her cousin, because the daughter was epileptic, unable to stand, and apparently mentally challenged. Her mother argued that she was responsible for the care of her disabled daughter, and that the

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boy who wished to marry her was only interested in her money. The mother did not hesitate to appear before Samuel de Medina and brought witnesses who testified about her daughter’s condition. The renowned rabbi found it difficult to believe her and their descriptions, so she persuaded him to come to her home and see the girl for himself. The rabbi was shocked at the sight of the girl and ruled that ‘it is inconceivable for a person to mate with such a creature’. He ruled out any possibility of her marrying under such circumstances (Medina 1862: ‘H . oshen mishpat’, no. 319). Mothers were involved not only in wedding arrangements but also in their daughters’ divorce suits and in safeguarding their interests after they were divorced. In one case, a mother forcefully drove her ex-son-in-law out of her house (Ben Haviv 1975: no. 43); another one agreed to repay within a year her daughter’s debt so that her husband would not divorce her (M. Trani 1861: ii, no. 184). Some mothers encouraged their daughters to divorce after realizing that their marriage was failing, though they were not always successful (E. Mizrachi 1938: no. 87; M. Trani 1861: i, no. 331; Zahalon 1968: no. 40 (cf. Ashkenazi 1904: no. 15)). In one instance, a mother betrothed her 10-year-old daughter to a young man who was known to be impotent, in spite of the Jerusalem rabbinic court’s opposition to the union. She later regretted her decision and tried to persuade her daughter to divorce, but the daughter refused. Ten years later, when the daughter came of age and matured, she sued her husband for divorce (M. Mizrachi 1742: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 23). Another divorce dispute involved a mother who, one year after the wedding, wished to save her young daughter from a failing marriage and family feuds. Upon her advice, the girl left her husband’s house, claiming that ‘he is repulsive to me’ (ma’is alai), but he refused to grant her a divorce. Through an appeal to the Muslim court the husband was put in jail until he paid her the ketubah money. Samuel de Medina was asked to adjudicate between the families and decide if, under such circumstances, the husband could be compelled to grant her the get. De Medina stressed that the claim that ‘he is repulsive to me’ was unacceptable as grounds for divorce in Sephardi society, and that the Law of the Academy (takanat hage’onim) on this matter had not extended to the entire Jewish world, ‘and if there are those who rule according to the Law, they are sages from Ashkenaz and France. But to us, the Sephardim, and both the petitioner and the respondent are Sephardim, it is clear that we should follow the Sephardi sages.’21 Within court records and discussions we find evidence of daughters who asserted their own sense of agency and refused to leave their mother and move with their husband to another place. A complex story appears in a query to Jacob Berab (1474–1541). A wool merchant from Adrianople came to Safed on business and stayed in his mother-in-law’s home. There he learned that his wife in Adrianople had died in an epidemic. During the days of mourning, he yielded to his mother-in-law’s pleas and married the sister of the deceased wife, but after

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the wedding his new wife refused to move with him to another city, informing him that she would not desert her mother under any circumstances. He also could not force her to leave the Land of Israel (BT Ket. 110b). From then on, the merchant left on business, travelling from city to city; from time to time he returned to Safed and demanded that his wife come with him, but to no avail. Meanwhile, the community leaders demanded that he pay his taxes as a resident of Safed, though he claimed that he was not a resident of the city. He explained that only his wife lived there with her mother and that he was already paying taxes in Adrianople, which was his permanent residence (Berab 1663: no. 22. See also Ben Zimra 1882: iii, no. 410). As in so many other legal responsa, we find the entire story in an introduction to the central halakhic question: should a merchant pay communal taxes in Safed (if his main residence is elsewhere) or not? While no further reference was made to the wool merchant’s personal problems, it is interesting that legal sources expose the issues faced by mothers and daughters. Daughters often had to leave their mother’s home to join their husband in distant places. And yet it appears that they were also able to assert themselves over their husband in order to remain with their mother. Daughters also looked out for their mothers’ interests, bequeathed property to them, and accommodated them in their homes. In one case, Reuben became angry with his mother-in-law, who lived in his house, and vowed that he would no longer consent to dwell under the same roof as her. Shortly afterwards, he regretted his vow, for his wife became ill and would only let her mother care for her and run the house in her place. The rabbis were asked to annul his vow (A. Halevi 1716: ‘Yoreh de’ah’, ii (1), nos. 2–3 discusses the same case). As a rule, mothers preferred to live in their daughters’ homes, ‘for it is the way of women to be more attached to their daughters than their sons, especially since a daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law cannot live under one roof.’22 Interestingly, while we might expect that Jewish law disempowered mothers in favour of their husbands, placing men at the centre of family life, it appears from Ottoman Jewish sources that mothers wielded a great deal of power with regard to family matters. To some degree, this power emerged from their ability to maintain a level of economic independence.

Conclusion References to mothers abound in the halakhic and moral writings of Ottoman rabbis in the period following the Expulsion from Spain. These praise mothers not only as caring and protecting figures, but also as active, financially responsible, and legally astute agents. In matters of family life, they publicly negotiated their cases in Jewish as well as Muslim courts. They got involved in finding spouses for their children, prevented marriages to which they were opposed, and, at times, meddled in the marriages of their sons and daughters. They also won

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custody battles because rabbis and qadis often sympathized with them. In turn, the strength of their actions, coupled with the possibility of financial stability, sometimes left sons negotiating from a position of weakness. In one case, we find a son hitting his mother in anger. In contrast, daughters emerge as more closely linked to their mothers, and thus more able to resist husbands who wished to move them from their mothers’ homes. No doubt Ottoman sages lauded mothers for their role in childbearing and childrearing, that is, for their private role in taking care of their sons and daughters. When we look more closely, however, gathering the surprisingly wide range of available sources that mention mothers, we find that they are not wholly constrained by patriarchal constructs. Indeed, we find evidence of mothers’ voices emerging from those sources, and a certain commitment on the part of their authors to participating actively in recording the events that affected mothers’ personhood, including the relationship with their sons and daughters. That said, prominent rabbinic figures drew a line between women in general, whom they did not necessarily hold in such high esteem (at least in their public declarations) and mothers, who emerge as a distinct legal and social category. The contrast between the prevalent patriarchal stereotypes of women and the preachers’ own mothers—namely, the righteous women of valour—produced contradictory expressions in many rabbinic sources that reflected their ambivalence towards women more generally (Lamdan 2000: 13–23; Regev 2012). The depiction of mothers in the sources discussed here supports the notion that they were prominent in the Sephardi culture of the Ottoman empire, possibly more so than wives who had no children. Mothers played a major role in family life: they exerted considerable influence over their children and also contributed significantly to the education and social advancement of their sons. The respectful attitude of men towards their mothers did not change their attitude towards women more generally, but it shows that in practice mothers played an important role in the life of their nuclear families, one that Ottoman sages chose to remember and record for posterity.

Notes 1

For a comprehensive survey of the literature on the subject, see Abitbol, Assis, and HasanRokem 1997; Beinart 1992; Benbassa and Rodrigue 1995, 2000; Bornstein-Makovetsky 1995; Levy 1992; Ray 2013; Rodrigue 1992; Rozen 2002; Shmuelevitz 1984.

2

On Shevet musar, which includes fifty-two chapters of ethics and sermons, see Lehmann 2005: 6–7 and references therein. Elijah Hakohen (Izmir, c.1645–1729) also quotes a long prayer that women should say before their newborn son’s berit milah (ch. 24 (22), 193). On the other hand, in a 16th-century prayer book for Spanish women there is only a short, eight-word blessing, referring to women who gave birth to a son during their husband’s lifetime (Schwarzwald (Rodrigue) 2012: 235 (Hebrew part)).

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3

Jacob Khuli (Jerusalem c.1689–Istanbul 1732) composed an encyclopedic commentary on the book of Genesis and part of Exodus (other rabbis continued his work after his untimely death) entitled Me’am lo’ez. First published in 1730, it became a classic of Judaeo-Spanish literature. In Matthias B. Lehmann’s words, ‘Extensive excursions tell stories adapted from traditional rabbinic literature and Sephardi oral traditions, provide detailed information about correct religious practice . . . teach moral lessons, and then always return to the framing narrative of the biblical text itself’ (2005: 33). For further details about Me’am lo’ez and its role as a popular musar book, see Lehmann 2005: 31–3 (on its translations, see n. 10); Ginio 2013: 158–61.

4

Several sages cited the talmudic saying (BT San. 22b), ‘A woman is a shapeless lump and concludes a covenant only with him [the husband] who transforms her into a [useful] vessel’ (Ben Zimra 1882: iii, no. 408 (1251)). See also Perahia 1758: Sermon 24, 70a; Rozen 2002: 104, 189.

5

The last three are: a woman’s enslavement to her husband; her disqualification from giving testimony; and death. As for the second curse, ‘the blood of virginity’, note that Khuli devoted a long explanation to the laws of menstruation, purity, and ritual immersion when discussing the commandment of ‘be fruitful and multiply’. Blood of virginity is also briefly mentioned while dealing with the subject of ketubah (Khuli 1967: 95–108). On pregnancy and birth see Lamdan 2011: 71–5.

6

The word ‘sorrows’ ( ) is marked in the original text and implies two meanings in Hebrew: ‘sorrow’ ( ) and ‘statues of idols’.

7

Ruth 1: 19 (this probably hints at his mother’s name and also at her pleasantness, no’am in Hebrew).

8

The kabbalists of Safed, mostly newcomers of Spanish origin, followed the example of Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (the Ari, 1534–82), who was very strict about honouring his mother. Their regulations and customs were copied and spread among Jewish communities in the diaspora (Idel 1984: 128; Pachter 1987: 79–81), thus promoting, among other ideas, the value of respecting one’s mother (Benayahu 1967: 311, 329, 335; on the ethical literature of Safed’s kabbalists see Pachter 2004).

9

According to Jewish law, mothers, wives, and daughters do not inherit in the first instance. Sons, as well as husbands and fathers who wanted to care for their wives and daughters after their own death, used various methods to circumvent halakhic inheritance laws and bequeath property to them. In addition to leaving a valid will and granting gifts formalized by legal deeds, it is interesting to note that Jewish men used the Muslim institution of waqf, whereby a property was endowed to a final charitable or religious institution, but family members, including women, were allowed to use it in perpetuity (Lamdan 2014: 111). On the order of inheritance in Jewish law, see Num. 27: 8–11; Mishnah BB 8: 1–2; MT, ‘Laws of Inheritance’, 1. See also H. Benveniste 1788–92: ‘H . oshen mishpat’, i, no. 185; Ben Zimra 1882: iii, no. 457 (898); Edrabi 1587: no. 260; Estrosa 1754: no. 62; Medina 1862: ‘H . oshen mishpat’, no. 326 (on the same case: Edrabi 1587: no. 229; S. Hakohen 1990: i, no. 5); J. Trani 1861: ii, ‘H . oshen mishpat’, no. 96; M. Trani 1861: iii, no. 83; Zahalon 1968: no. 186.

10

Cohen and Pikali 1993: no. 399 (p. 353); Cohen and Pikali 2010: i, no. 187 (p. 257); ii, nos. 561 (p. 633); 564 (p. 635). See also Benveniste 1788–92: ‘H . oshen mishpat’, i, nos. 79–80; S. Hakohen 1990: i, no. 5 (on the same case, see Edrabi 1587: no. 260; Medina 1862:

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12

13 14

15

16

17

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‘H . oshen . oshen mishpat’, no. 197 (= no. 455)); J. Trani 1861: ii, ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 15; ‘H mishpat’, no. 3; M. Trani 1861: i, no. 267; iii, no. 26. Alshekh 1975: nos. 19, 51; Ben Zimra 1882: vi, no. 2183; A. Halevi 1716: ‘H . oshen mishpat’, nos. iii (7), v (2); J. Trani 1861: ii, ‘H . oshen mishpat’, no. 35; Shabetai 1713: ii, no. 7; Zahalon 1968: no. 84. A number of sages discussed the case of Isaac Perah of Rhodes, who persuaded his mother to cancel a deal so that he could get a better price (Ben Lev 1959/60: i, no. 65; Ben Zimra 1882: i, no. 97; Caro 1859: nos. 77–9; Medina 1862: ‘H . oshen mishpat’, no. 265). See also Kraemer 1991: 253. According to Jewish law there are three ways in which a woman can be betrothed (‘consecrated’): by accepting money or an object of value, by a written contract (ketubah), or by cohabitation (biah) (Mishnah Kid. 1: 1). A father can arrange betrothal for his minor daughter (under the age of 12) without her consent. For further references see Lamdan 2000: 215–16. Parts of this letter are translated in Lamdan 2000: 63; the manuscript is described in Rozen 1984: 299–315. The practice of sivlonot (gifts from the groom to his wife-to-be) and whether it establishes proof of a consecrated bond (kidushin) is not straightforward. A talmudic discussion of the practice (BT Kid. 50a–51b) concludes that the matter depends on local custom. In the Ottoman empire, the local Romaniote ritual practice of sivlonot differed entirely from the Sephardi custom. Romaniotes considered sivlonot as an act of kidushin, legally binding, though the couple were not allowed to live together until the wedding ceremony (h.upah). Sephardi Jews, on the other hand, did not consider sivlonot as proof that a woman was legally bound. Cultural and halakhic disputes arose when a member of one community had been engaged to a member of another community, and one of the sides wished to cancel the betrothal. In such cases, scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries questioned the marital status of the bride, and a mother’s testimony was often essential in deciding the woman’s status (for details and references, see Davidson 2011; Lehman 2012: 47–8; Rozen 2002: 132–3, 137–9). E. Mizrachi 1938: no. 19 (quotation taken from the English translation in Rozen 2002: 362–5. For the response of Abraham ben Ya’ish on the same matter, see no. 18). See also Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 32; ‘Yoreh de’ah’, no. 77(2); Shabetai 1713: iii, no. 39. For further discussion, see Ben-Naeh 2008: 362–3; Lamdan 2000: 90–6; 2011: 81–7 (note the heartbreaking case concerning the grandchildren of Moses Metrani, 84–5); Rozen 2002: 183–5. See Edrabi 1587: no. 400; Gavizon 1985: no. 16; Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 186; ‘Yoreh de’ah’, no. 75; Pinto 1869: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 76; Zahalon 1980/1: no. 231. Also Cohen and Pikali 1993: no. 413 (p. 362); Cohen and Pikali 2010: i, no. 483 (p. 559, ref. 1); ii, nos. 529–30 (pp. 604–5), 548 (pp. 621–2). Unlike minor girls who were betrothed by their fathers, minor orphaned girls (under the age of 12) who had marriages arranged by their relatives had the prerogative of refusal under certain circumstances; this involved retroactively annulling the kidushin (BT Yev. 89b, 107a–b, 112b; MT, ‘Laws of Divorce’, 11 (1–11)). For a formula of get me’un, see Lamdan 2009: 134–5. A few examples include: Benvenisti 1674: i, no. 17; Ben Zimra 1882: iv, no. 175; Caro 1859: nos. 85–9; Castro 1783: no. 62; A. Halevi 1716: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. iv (17); Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 101; J. Trani 1861: i, nos. 40–1; M. Trani 1861: iii, no. 54. See also Lamdan 1996: 50–2; 2000: 51–3.

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19

Emmanuel 1963: i, no. 656, p. 287. In Hebrew, the word tseviah—a gazelle—also means a lovely girl. It can also be a proper name. See a mother’s inscription on the tombstone of Reina bat Isaac Roman in the cemetery of Hasköy, Istanbul (Rozen 2014: 305–6, 346).

20

Ben Zimra 1882: i, no. 523; vi, no. 2255; David 1700: ii, ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 78; De Buton 1885: no. 46; Edrabi 1587: no. 315 (quoted by M. Halevi 1970: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 18); A. Halevi 1716: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. iv (24); Shabetai 1713: i, no. 24; M. Trani 1861: i, no. 277; ii, no. 122 (a will in favour of a daughter who converted to Islam!); no. 143; Zahalon 1980/1: nos. 13, 94.

21

Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 135. See also De Buton 1885: no. 53. On the geonic regulation regarding ‘He is repulsive’, see Bornstein-Makovetzky 1997: 161–2; Lamdan 2000: 172–7. On applying to the qadi in cases of marital problems, see Lamdan 2014: 113–4.

22

Medina 1862: ‘Even ha’ezer’, no. 234. On the relationships between mothers and daughters-in-law, see, for instance, Ben Hayim 1647: ii, no. 60; Caro 1859: no. 101 (on the same case, M. Trani 1861: i, no. 73); Castro 1783: no. 50; Edrabi 1587: no. 140. A Bosnian version of a Judaeo-Sephardi ballad about the hostility of the mother-in-law towards her son’s wife is discussed in Vidakovic-Petrov 2014: 318 (for an English abstract of the ballad, see Armistead and Silverman 1971: 94–5). See also Refael 2003.

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castro, jacob. 1783. Ohalei ya’akov: teshuvot. Livorno. david, joseph. 1700. Teshuvot beit david, 2 vols. Salonica. —— 1774. Yikra deshikhvi. Salonica. de buton, abraham. 1885. Leh.em rav. [Responsa.] Kraków. de vidas, elijah. 1579. Reshit h.okhmah. Venice. edrabi, isaac. 1587. Divrei rivot: teshuvot. Venice. estrosa, daniel. 1754. Magen giborim. Salonica. galante, moses. 1960. Teshuvot. Jerusalem. 1st edn. Venice, 1608. gavizon, meir. 1985. Teshuvot, 2 vols., ed. Eliav Shochetman. Jerusalem. hakohen, elijah. 1759. Midrash eliyahu. Izmir. —— 1978. Shevet musar. Jerusalem (1st edn. Constantinople, 1712). hakohen, solomon. 1990. Teshuvot. Jerusalem (1st edn. Salonica, 1586). halevi, abraham. 1716. Ginat veradim: teshuvot. Istanbul. halevi, mordecai. 1970. Darkhei no’am: teshuvot. Jerusalem. hazan, rafael joseph. 1821. Ma’arkhei lev. [Sermons.] Salonica. khuli, jacob . 1967. Me’am lo’ez, Genesis. Jerusalem (1st edn. Istanbul, 1730). medina, samuel de. 1862. Teshuvot. Salonica. mizrachi, elijah. 1938. Teshuvot. Jerusalem (1st edn. Constantinople, 1560). —— 1647. Mayim amukim, i: Teshuvot. Venice. mizrachi, moses. 1742. Admat kodesh: teshuvot. Constantinople. najara, israel. 2004. Mikveh yisra’el, ed. Shaul Regev. [Sermons.] Ramat Gan. perahia, aaron. 1758. Bigdei kehunah. [Sermons.] Salonica. pinto, isaiah. 1869. Nivh.ar mikesef: teshuvot. Aleppo. sambari, yosef. 1994. Sefer divrei yosef, ed. S. Shtober. Jerusalem. shabetai, hayim. 1713. Torat h.ayim, 3 vols. [Responsa.] Salonica. trani, joseph. 1861. Teshuvot, 2 vols. Lemberg. —— 1978. Maharit’s New Responsa [Teshuvot ufiskei maharit hah.adashim]. Jerusalem. trani, moses. 1861. Teshuvot, 3 vols. Lvov. zahalon, yom-tov. 1968. Teshuvot. Jerusalem. —— 1980/1. New Responsa [She’elot uteshuvot maharit zahalon hah.adashot], 2 vols. Jerusalem.

Other Sources abitbol, michel, yom-tov assis, and galit hasan-rokem, eds. 1997. HispanoJewish civilization after 1492. Jerusalem. armistead, samuel g., and joseph h. silverman. 1971. Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Bosnia. Philadelphia. beinart, haim, ed. 1992. Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy. Jerusalem. benayahu, meir. 1967. The Life of the Ari [Sefer toledot ha’ari]. Jerusalem. benbassa, esther, and aron rodrigue. 1995. The Jews of the Balkans: The JudeoSpanish Community, 15th to 20th Centuries. Oxford.

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—— 2000. Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, Fourteenth to Twentieth Centuries. Berkeley, Calif. ben-naeh, yaron. 2008. Jews in the Realm of the Sultans: Ottoman Jewish Society in the Seventeenth Century. Tübingen. bentov, haim. 1974. ‘Autobiographical and Historical Register of Rabbi Joseph Trani’ (Heb.). Shalem, 1: 195–228. bornstein-makovetsky, leah. 1995. ‘Patterns of the Jewish Family: Characteristics of the Jewish Family in the Communities of Morea and Epirus in the Sixteenth Century’. In Daniel Panzac, ed., Histoire économique et sociale de l’empire ottoman et de la Turquie (1326–1960), 323–9. Paris. —— 1997. ‘Marriage and Divorce in the Jewish Society of Istanbul in the 18th and 19th Centuries’ (Heb.). Michael, 14: 139–69. —— 2003. ‘Divorce and Remarriage in Jewish Society in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th Centuries’ (Heb.). In Moshe Orfali, Ariel Toaff, and Shaul Regev, eds., From East and West [Mimizrah. umima’arav], vii. 117–59. Ramat Gan. —— 2012. A City of Sages and Merchants: The Community of Aleppo during the Years 1492–1800 [Ir shel h.akhamim vesoh.arim]. Ariel, Israel. chovav, yemima. 2009. Maidens Love Thee: The Religious and Spiritual Life of Jewish Ashkenazic Women in the Early Modern Period [Alamot ahevukha: h.ayei hadat veruah. shel nashim bah.evrah ha’ashkenazit bereshit ha’et hah.adashah]. Jerusalem. cohen, amnon, and elisheva simon-pikali. 1993. Jews in the Muslim Religious Court: Society, Economy and Communal Organization in the 16th Century, Documents from Ottoman Jerusalem [Yehudim beveit hamishpat hamuslemi: hame’ah hasheshesreh]. Jerusalem. —— and elisheva shimon-pikali. 2010. Jews in the Muslim Religious Court: Society, Economy and Communal Organization in the 17th Century [Yehudim beveit hamishpat hamuslemi: hame’ah hasheva-esreh], 2 vols. Jerusalem. —— and ovadia salama. 1996. Jews in the Muslim Religious Court: Society, Economy and Communal Organization in the 18th Century [Yehudim beveit hamishpat hamuslemi: hame’ah hashemonah-esreh]. Jerusalem. davidson, hannah. 2010. ‘Communal Pride and Feminine Virtue: “Suspecting Sivlonot” in the Jewish Communities of the Ottoman Empire in the Early Sixteenth Century’. In Julia R. Lieberman, ed., Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora, 23–69. Waltham, Mass. emmanuel, isaac. 1963. Precious Stones of the Jews of Salonica [Matsevot saloniki], 2 vols. Jerusalem. grossman, avraham. 2001. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages [H . asidot umoredot]. Jerusalem. hacker, joseph. 1989. ‘Pride and Depression: Polarity of the Spiritual and Social Experience of the Iberian Exiles in the Ottoman Empire’ (Heb.). In Menachem Ben Sasson, Reuven Bonfil, and Joseph Hacker, eds., Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry: Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Haim H. Ben Sasson [Tarbut veh.evrah betoledot yisra’el biyemei habeinayim], 541–86. Jerusalem. idel, moshe . 1984. ‘Rabbi Judah Halewa and his Tsafenat pane’ah.’ (Heb.). Shalem, 4: 119–48.

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kraemer, joel. 1991. ‘Spanish Ladies from the Cairo Geniza’. Mediterranean Historical Review, 6: 237–67. lamdan, ruth. 1996. ‘Child Marriage in Jewish Society in the Eastern Mediterranean during the 16th Century’. Mediterranean Historical Review, 11: 37–59. —— 2000. A Separate People: Jewish Women in Palestine, Syria and Egypt in the Sixteenth Century. Leiden. —— 2007. ‘Jewish Women as Providers in the Generations Following the Expulsion from Spain’. Nashim, 13: 49–67. —— 2009. Sefer tikun soferim of Rabbi Isaac Tsabah Copied in Jerusalem in the Year 1635 by Judah Morali [Sefer tikun soferim lerabi yitsh.ak tsabah hu’atak biyerushalayim bishenat 1635]. Tel Aviv. —— 2011. ‘Mothers and Children as Seen by Sixteenth-Century Rabbis in the Ottoman Empire’. In Julia R. Lieberman, ed., Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora, 70–98. Waltham, Mass. —— 2014. ‘Jewish Encounters in Muslim Courts: The Ottoman Empire, 16th–17th Centuries’. In Christine Hayes and Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer, eds., Jewish Law and its Interaction with Other Legal Systems, Jewish Law Association Studies 25, 105–19. Liverpool. lehman, marjorie. 2012. The En Yaaqov: Jacob Ibn Habib’s Search for Faith in the Talmudic Corpus. Detroit. lehmann, matthias b. 2005. Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture. Bloomington, Ind. levi, avigdor. 1992. The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton. levine, yael. 2007. ‘Eshet Hayil’. Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edn., vi. 505. Detroit. meyuhas ginio, alisa. 2013. ‘The Perception of Jewish Women in Rabbi Ya’akov Khulí’s Me’am Lo’ez on the Book of Genesis (A. 1730)’. Journal of Sefardic Studies, 1; at , accessed 28 July 2013. pachter, mordechai. 1987. ‘The Beginnings of Kabbalistic Ethical Literature in 16th-Century Safed’ (Heb.). In Joseph Dan, ed., Culture and History [Tarbut vehistoryah], 77–94. Jerusalem. —— 2004. Roots of Faith and Devekut: Studies in the History of Kabbalistic Ideas. Los Angeles. ray, jonathan. 2013. After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry. New York. refael, shmuel. 2003. ‘The Mother-in-Law in Judaeo-Spanish Folk Poetry’ (Heb.). In Moshe Orfali, Ariel Toaff, and Shaul Regev, eds., From East and West [Mimizrah. umima’arav], vii: 161–76. regev, shaul. 2012. ‘“Woman of Valour”: Women’s Image and Status in the Jewish Philosophy of the 16th Century’ (Heb.). In Ephraim Hazan and Shmuel Refael, eds., Mah.barot liyehudit: Studies Presented to Professor Judith Dishon [Mah.barot liyehudit: kovets meh.karim mugash leprofesor yehudit dishon], 265–88. Ramat Gan. rodrigue, aron. 1992. ‘The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire’. In Elie Kedourie, ed., Spain and the Jews, 162–88. London. rozen, minna. 1984. The Jewish Community of Jerusalem in the Seventeenth Century [Hakehilah hayehudit biyerushalayim bame’ah hasheva-esreh]. Tel Aviv.

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—— 2002. A History of the Jewish Community in Istanbul: The Formative Years, 1453–1566. Leiden. —— 2014. ‘Romans in Istanbul’. In Stefan C. Reif, Andreas Lehnardt, and Avriel BarLevav, eds., Death in Jewish Life: Burial and Mourning Customs among Jews of Europe and Nearby Communities, Studia Judaica 78, 289–358. Berlin. salmon-mack, tamar. 2010. ‘Dilemmas of Widows in Early Modern Jewish Society: Tension of Devotion to the Maternal Role versus Individualistic Fulfilment’ (Heb.). In Joseph Hacker, Joseph Kaplan, and Benjamin Z. Kedar, eds., From Sages to Savants: Studies Presented to Avraham Grossman [Rishonim ve’ah.aronim: meh.karim betoledot yisra’el mugashim le’avraham grosman], 391–425. Jerusalem. schwarzwald [rodrigue], ora . 2012. Sidur para Mujeresen Ladino, Salonica, Siglo XVI. Annotated edition and translation. Jerusalem. shmuelevitz, aryeh. 1984. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Leiden. toledano, jacob . 1969. Treasured Archives [Otsar genazim]. Jerusalem. tucker, judith e. 1997. ‘The Fullness of Affection: Mothering in the Islamic Law of Ottoman Syria and Palestine’. In Madeline C. Zilfi, ed., Women in the Ottoman Empire, 232–52. Leiden. vidakovic-petrov, krinka. 2014. ‘The Gender Perspective in Sephardic Ballads from the Balkans’. In Hilary Pomeroy, Shmuel Refael, and Elena Romero, eds., Ladinar, Estudios sobre la literatura, la musica y la historia de los Sefardies, vii–viii: 317–28. weinstein, roni . 2003. Marriage Rituals Italian Style. Leiden. zarinebaf-shahr, fariba. 1997. ‘Ottoman Women and the Tradition of Seeking Justice in the Eighteenth Century’. In Madeline C. Zilfi, ed., Women in the Ottoman Empire. 253–63. Leiden.

PA RT

I I

Constructions and Contestations of Mothers

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Like Mother Like Daughter: Mother–Daughter Relations in Babylonian Talmudic Stories moshe lavee

Two extensive collections of narratives in the Babylonian Talmud shed light on the rabbinic depiction of motherhood and parent–child relations. These narrative collections from tractates Ketubot and Bava metsia include marginal but important scenes seemingly describing mother–daughter relationships as exemplars of harmony and co-operation. Largely ignored in the scholarship on these narrative collections, this material offers a stark contrast to the dysfunctional father–son relationships that appear in other stories. The latter relationships, whether father to son or father-in-law to son-in-law, are rife with tensions and anxiety. These tensions are also related to the talmudic text’s preoccupation with the attraction to monastic and ascetic challenges and the Sages’ maintenance of a patriarchal social structure (Bar Asher Siegal 2013). These two cycles of stories share the same pattern. Both tell us about rabbis who turned towards models of extreme religiosity, be it the monastic practice of leaving home for the sake of Torah study or the ascetic model of self-mortification. They also describe failing father–son relationships. This failure is inherent in the practice of monastic or ascetic religiosity, since both are social models that challenge the stability of families, just as the master–disciple relationship threatens to replace the father–son relationship. Indeed, the Babylonian Talmud presents the mother–daughter relationship as the ‘healthy’ element that appears when the father–son relationship collapses. It reflects a stable social bond, stronger than the threat of monastic and ascetic practice. In both cycles, however, the appearance of the mother–daughter relationship also enables male protagonists to move from marginal monastic or ascetic preoccupations to leading social roles. The mother–daughter relationships thus serve to maintain a social model in which rabbis can both enjoy the attractions of monastic and ascetic practice and assume leadership roles in society. The stories in tractate Ketubot involve women and their families waiting for husbands and fathers who have left home for prolonged periods to study Torah.

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Those in tractate Bava metsia sketch out the biography of Rabbi Eleazar the son of Rabbi Shimon. Critical in the collections is the co-operation between mothers and daughters, which highlights not only their power to act as a stabilizing force, but also the mother’s ability to pass values on to her daughter, in contrast to fathers who were not able to impart similar values to their sons. This failure offers us a cultural critique of what has been traditionally viewed as the centre of the rabbinic family: the role of the husband and father in caring for both the domestic welfare and religious education of his family. The exemplars of mother– daughter relationships appear at crucial points in the aggadic collections and play a significant role in the impression they convey upon the reader, promoting the domestication of the Sages’ attraction to an ascetic lifestyle in the homosocial environment of the beit midrash (house of study). The mother–daughter relationship makes it possible to balance the tensions introduced by the men’s monastic tendencies, which draw husbands and fathers away from their families (for many years in some cases), with the stability of the home and family life despite the father’s absence. In this way, mothers also enable both the father–son relationship and the rabbi–disciple relationship, seemingly at odds with one another, to coexist. By following the example presented by their mothers, daughters help to foster an effective family model that enables men to succeed in taking responsibility for the cultural and religious transmission of Torah to the next generation. While the mothers and daughters successfully cast doubt on the tendency to substitute the father–son relationship with the rabbi–disciple one, they nonetheless facilitate the progression of the protagonist rabbis towards influential leadership roles in society. The positive portrayals of the mother–daughter relationship in these talmudic stories are part of the construction of a family bond that facilitates the dominance of scholars over their families, while easing the father–son relationship, which will be overshadowed by the master–disciple one. Indeed, the father–son relationship becomes subordinate to the ‘ideal’ relationship between the master-rabbi and his student, which the Sages wished to see play a larger role in establishing their vision of an ideal patriarchy. Scholars tend to overlook the depictions of mothers and their daughters, and are drawn instead to the difficult and, at times, tragic separation of the husband from his wife and the son from his father, both of which are necessary for supporting the Sages’ central project. For the rabbis, fostering the transmission of Torah from a master to his male students is crucial for their own sense of authority and self-definition.1 The literary marginality of the mother–daughter scenes in these collections is emblematic and symbolic. First, it highlights the scant presence of mother– daughter relationships in rabbinic literature (and by extension in scholarship written about these aggadic narratives). Second, it epitomizes the social role of the mother–daughter relationship in rabbinic society and in the rabbinic family. As a minor literary element, this relationship reflects the secondary role assigned to mothers and daughters within the wider patriarchal social structure.

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Methodological Considerations My reading involves a literary analysis of collections of aggadic narratives as coherent literary units. I do not consider this an enquiry into the mind of a single redactor, but rather an exploration of the tensions and perspectives of the many contributors to the talmudic corpus. These collections were formed over centuries of creative transmission, with the intervention of many agents who participated in shaping and transmitting the text. They are made up of various traditions from different times and places. The multilayered nature of the text enables it to hold diverging perspectives.2 The intervention of the late governing voice of the Babylonian Talmud is especially noticeable in the cycle of Rabbi Eleazar (BT BM 83b–84b), where artificial clauses are used to connect material of different kinds into one biographical sequence. However, in the first collection (BT Ket. 62b–63a), common literary patterns and recurrent motifs that cut through the entire collection make it possible to read it as a coherent unit.3 These types of literary features are valid anchors for a scholarly analysis aimed at revealing social structure, conceptual agendas, ideologies, and tensions typical of the culture of the last centuries of the formation of the Babylonian Talmud.4 Indeed, both cycles of narratives (BT Ket. 62b–63a and BM 83b–84b) exhibit unique Babylonian features and reflect specific local concerns, especially when compared to parallel texts preserved in rabbinic compilations from the Land of Israel.5 The similar function of the mother–daughter motif in both cycles of stories reflects a common conceptual and social setting. This is also supported by stylistic resemblances that suggest a common milieu of formation.6 Together with other Babylonian texts, these collections shape clusters of stories that present shared elements of coherence, consistency, recurrence of themes, and motifs that warrant reading them as one harmonized myth, even when they are not presented together in one unit.7

Like Mother Like Daughter: The Wife and Daughter of Rabbi Akiva In BT Ketubot 62b–63a, there is an anthology of seven stories that construct a model described by Daniel Boyarin as ‘the married monk’ (Boyarin 1991); that is, husbands who leave their wives for prolonged periods of time to study Torah, and for most, whose marriages were badly compromised. The first story in this collection involves Rav Rahumi, who returns home from his studies once a year, on the eve of the Day of Atonement. Unfortunately, one year he is so engrossed in his studies that he does not arrive home. As a result, his wife, who was waiting for him, ‘sheds a tear’. At exactly that moment, the roof he is sitting on collapses and he dies (BT Ket. 62b).

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The second story describes a rabbi who neglects his conjugal duty to his wife. The story is set within a brief discussion about the appropriate frequency of marital sexual relations. Judah is the son of Rabbi Hiya and the son-in-law of Rabbi Yanai. Every week he returns home from his studies on the eve of the sabbath and a pillar of fire is seen in front of him. One week, like Rahumi in the previous story, Judah is so intensely immersed in his studies that he forgets to return to his wife on the appointed day. In this instance, the father-in-law announces that the only possible reason for Judah’s failure to arrive must be that he is dead. This statement is compared to an ‘error that arises from a ruler’ (Eccles. 10: 5) which cannot be overturned, and the story informs us that, indeed, Judah has passed away (BT Ket. 62b). The third story focuses on procreation and tells us about the son of Rabbi, who spends twelve years away from home in order to study Torah; as a result, his wife becomes barren (BT Ket. 62b). The fourth and fifth stories examine the parental duties of absent fathers. They tell us about Rabbi Hananiah ben Hakhinai, who fails to take part in the upbringing of his daughter, and Rabbi Hama bar Bisa, who, due to his absence, misses the opportunity to teach his son and witness him develop into a great scholar (BT Ket. 62b). The seventh and last story is about Rav Yosef, the son of Rava, who is sent away to study for six years but returns home after only three years. Yosef’s early return provokes his father’s rage. Rava blames his son for returning home short of completing his studies because he was longing for his dove ( ), or according to another version, his whore ( ). The father and son have such a vitriolic emotional fight that neither eat the last meal before the fast of Yom Kippur (BT Ket. 63a). This motif of Yom Kippur frames the entire collection and therefore consolidates it as a cohesive literary unit.8 All of these stories seem to present negative examples of family life; they describe the mistakes of the husband, son, or father protagonists, and are critical of the promotion of Torah study over family life. However, the sixth story in the collection, which I have placed below, stands in contrast and provides an idyllic example of a marriage that succeeds in spite of the prolonged absence of the husband, suggesting that the monastic model can function, and can even protect matrimonial harmony, although it may not be the norm:9

Story 6 Rabbi Akiva was a shepherd of Ben Kalba Savua. His [ben Kalba Savua’s] daughter saw how modest and noble [Rabbi Akiva] was. She said to him, ‘If I were betrothed to you, would you go away to the beit midrash?’ He said ‘Yes.’ She was secretly betrothed to him and sent him away. When her father heard [what she had done], he drove her from his house and forbade her by a vow to benefit from his estate. [Rabbi Akiva] departed and spent twelve years in the beit midrash. When he came [back], twelve thousand disciples came with him. He heard an old man saying to her [his wife], ‘How long will you lead the

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life of living widowhood?’ She said to him, ‘If he would listen to me, he would spend another twelve years [in study].’ [Hearing this Rabbi Akiva] said: ‘It is thus with her consent that I am doing so.’ He went and spent another twelve years in the beit midrash. When he came [back], twenty-four thousand disciples came with him. His wife heard [of his arrival] and went out to meet him. Her [women] neighbours said to her, ‘Borrow some [respectable] clothes and put them on’. She said to them, ‘A righteous man knows the life of his beast’ [Prov. 12: 10]. On approaching him, she fell upon her face and kissed his feet. His attendants pushed her aside. [Rabbi Akiva] said to them, ‘Leave her alone; mine and yours are hers.’ Her father heard that a great man had come to the town. He said, ‘I shall go to him; perhaps he will invalidate my vow.’ He came to him. [Rabbi Akiva] asked, ‘Would you have made your vow if you had known that he [might become] a great man?’ He said to him, ‘[Had he known] even one chapter or even one single halakhah, [I would not have made the vow]’. He said to him, ‘I am the man.’ He fell upon his face and kissed his feet and gave him half of his wealth. (BT Ket. 62b–63a)

At the end of the story, the Talmud adds a comment about the daughter of Rabbi Akiva: The daughter of Rabbi Akiva acted in a similar way towards Ben Azzai [her husband]. This is indeed similar to what people say, ‘Ewe follows ewe; a daughter’s acts are like those of her mother.’ (BT Ket. 63b)

The daughter of Rabbi Akiva behaves similarly to her mother in her relationship with her husband, Ben Azzai. Like her mother, she too enabled him to leave home for an extended period in order to study Torah, out of her own choice and initiative. As Boyarin argues, this story offers an account of Ben Azzai’s life which contrasts with the biographical elements found in other sources, in which he is described as preferring celibacy to marriage. Here, in the Babylonian tradition, he is depicted as married to the daughter of Rabbi Akiva to restore more normative rabbinic standards.10 This ‘biographical rehabilitation’ of Ben Azzai participates in the construction of an implied message directed at the female audience of the story. They, as noted by Boyarin, are expected to adhere to a model of Rabbi Akiva’s wife and support their husbands when they depart for long periods of Torah study. They are expected to follow Rachel, like her daughter did. Boyarin also reads the motif of the ewe as part of the construction of a hierarchical relationship and power structure, where the husband is the shepherd and his wife, his ewe (Boyarin 1999: 154). This comment was probably also the source for the later tradition that named Rabbi Akiva’s wife Rachel (Ilan 1997b: 8–11). Although Boyarin identifies the role of the mother–daughter relationship as securing the patriarchal social structure, different features emerge when we think about the intergenerational relationships interwoven into this collection in its entirety. These intergenerational constructions constitute a thread that weaves its way throughout the entire collection, raising and intensifying the significance of a ‘marginal’ comment about a mother and her daughter. We first see the centrality of intergenerational relations when considering

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their internal development from one story to another. The stories supply an overview of marital life, moving from emotional expressions of love in the first story, to intimate relations in the second, coping with barrenness in the third, issues of children and education in the fourth and fifth, and finally, a reference to the marriage of the following generation in the sixth story. Intergenerational relations play a key role from the second story onwards. The second story introduces a form of interplay between a scholar and his father-in-law which leads to the demise of the marriage—the husband forgets to return home and the father-inlaw predicts his son-in-law’s death:

Story 2 Judah, the son of Rabbi Hiya and son-in-law of Rabbi Yanai, spent his days in the beit midrash, but every [sabbath] eve towards twilight he came home. Whenever he arrived, the people saw a pillar of light moving before him. One day he was so attracted by his subject [that he forgot to return home]. When they did not see the sign [of the pillar], Rabbi Yanai said to them [his servants], ‘Take his bed down, for if Judah were alive he would not have neglected the performance of his marital duties’. This [remark] was ‘like an error that proceeds from the ruler’ [Eccles. 10: 5], and his [Judah’s] soul rested [he died]. (BT Ket. 62b)

The central position (and therefore importance) of the intergenerational relationship is clear from the outset. Rabbi Yanai and his Torah scholar son-in-law, Judah, are the protagonists in this story, and though it is set in the context of a discussion on marital intercourse, his wife is not present as a character. The story portrays an intergenerational patriarchal social structure, in that the couple lives with and is dependent upon the wife’s father.11 The fact that the story depicts Rabbi Yanai’s proclamation as an ‘error that proceeds from the ruler’ might imply acknowledgement of his role as the patriarch of a wider family unit, and even a hint of criticism of the patriarchal family structure. It should be read as a glimpse into the inner psychological stance of Rabbi Yanai. As the patriarchal authority over the family he cannot cope with Judah’s failure. He will only accept his son-in-law as a pillar of truth, a positive example, one who cannot fail. The death of the young scholar is thus a legendary depiction of the mindset of the father-in-law. If Judah cannot live up to his standard, he would rather have him die. This is the reason that the father-in-law’s comment is viewed as an error that cannot be rectified. The third story, which I introduced above as centred on procreation, is also about intergenerational tension, and continues to develop the role of the family patriarch. Initially, the father makes arrangements for his son to marry, but the son refuses to leave his intended wife for the suggested period of twelve years. Indeed, when he does relent and leaves, his time away from his wife while studying Torah causes her to become barren. In the end, his wife recovers and becomes fertile again:

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Story 3 [Part 1] Rabbi was engaged in [the arrangements for the marriage of ] his son into the family of Rabbi Hiya. When they were about to write the ketubah [marriage contract], the soul of the young girl rested [died]. Rabbi said, ‘Is there, God forbid, any taint [in the proposed union]?’ They sat and enquired about the [genealogy of the two] families. [They found out that] Rabbi came [descended] from Shephatiah the son of Avital [the wife of King David], while R. Hiya came from Shimei, a brother of David. [Part 2] He [Rabbi] went and engaged in [the arrangements for the marriage of ] his son to the family of Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra. It was agreed that he [the son] should spend twelve years in the beit midrash. They led the girl before him. He said to them, ‘Let it be six years.’ They led the girl before him [a second time]. He said, ‘I would rather marry [her first] and then proceed [to the beit midrash].’ He felt ashamed before his father. He [Rabbi, his father] said to him, ‘My son, you have the mind of your creator; for in Scripture it is written first, “You will bring them in and plant them” [Exod. 15: 17] and later it is written, “And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” [Exod. 25: 8] [After the marriage] he went and spent twelve years in the beit midrash. By the time he returned, his wife had become barren. Rabbi said, ‘What shall we do? If we divorce her, people will say: “He kept this poor soul in vain!” If we take another wife, people will say: “That one is his wife and the other his whore.”’ He begged for mercy for her, and she recovered. (BT Ket. 62b)

This story is more developed and complex than the previous stories, which is a common feature in rabbinic collections of narratives.12 It is divided into two parts. In the first, Rabbi tries to wed his son to the daughter of Rabbi Hiya; however, she dies before the wedding (Lavee 2009: 69). In the second part, Rabbi weds his son successfully to the daughter of Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra. The fathers arrange for him to spend a prolonged time away to study, against the son’s own desires. As a result of the son’s absence, his new wife becomes barren. And yet, somehow, in the end, the couple is rewarded—the wife’s fertility is restored. This story highlights the significance of intergenerational relationships against the backdrop of sons who are sent off to study with master scholars, bringing the father even more to the foreground. In this story, the father is the subject of the opening sentence, and the text deals primarily with his efforts to wed his nameless son. The patriarchal role and authority of Rabbi in his family continues into the second part, as we witness the son experiencing feelings of shame and guilt over preferring to remain with his future wife rather than study for twelve years away from her. In another display of intergenerational patriarchy, it is the father who is directly involved in resolving the problem of the barrenness of his daughter-in-law. His use of the first person plural (‘If we divorce her . . . If we take another wife. . .’) with regard to whether there should be a divorce and remarriage shows that marriage and divorce were not an issue between the couple, but rather an act of the ‘we’ of the wider patriarchal family. The son is not ‘choosing’,

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he is not the head of his household—the father is, and he controls whether his daughter-in-law will stay married and possibly become a mother.13 Both parts of the story describe tragic circumstances: the death of the daughter of Rabbi Hiya in the first part and the barrenness of the daughter of Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra in the second. The suggested parallelism between parts 1 and 2 is that barrenness is a form of social death. Indeed, in not becoming mothers both women experience death in different forms. In the first tragic event, the death of the daughter of Rabbi Hiya goes unexplained, and is left as a mere fact. In contrast, the second tragedy concludes with a happy ending. However, when considering the differences between the two parts from an intergenerational perspective, they are more striking. This offers a key to understanding the relation between the two parts of the story. The first part looks at previous generations as depicted in the patriarchal lineage of the young couple to try and explain a tragedy, her sudden death; the second seeks to find a way out of a tragedy, to find a cure for barrenness, to enable procreation for the sake of future generations. Sequentially, the story suggests that the search for the cause of the tragedy in the first part was problematic. The fathers turned to examine the genealogy of their families, wrongly thinking that it would provide a solution to the mystery of the woman’s death. This assumes that a successful marriage depends upon one’s ancestry. The barren condition in the second part directs the reader away from the presumably unwarranted and incorrect examination of the past for answers to the promise of the future of a family. These events highlight the notion that a failed marriage can be defined as one with (1) improper lineage (it is the ‘cause’ of death; she becomes unavailable) or (2) childlessness (barrenness is unacceptable). The barrenness of the second woman is an echo of the death of the first, implying that their fate is similar, and even that the death of the first girl may have ‘saved’ her from impending social death in the form of barrenness due to an absent husband. The second and the third stories therefore focus on the role of fathers in the ‘married monk’ model, and both seem to target the patriarchal structure, granting fathers a large degree of control in the future lives of their sons while criticizing the phenomenon of absent fathers. The intergenerational element is also present in the fourth and fifth stories, which shift from the parents of the couple to their offspring, the son and the daughter. Both stories portray the ‘married monk’ as an absent father who neglects his children and his paternal duties because he leaves home to study. They seem to use the literary device of irony to depict fathers as individuals who have lost their familial bearings and connection to the past, and are unaware of their children and their developmental needs during their long periods of absence. Rabbi Hananiah (Story 4) and Rabbi Hama (Story 5) therefore fail to identify their daughter and son, respectively. In these two stories, mothers also appear for the first time. The absence of the father is contrasted with the continuous presence of the mother:14

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Story 4 Rabbi Hananiah ben Hakhinai was getting ready to leave for the beit midrash before the end of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai’s wedding celebrations. He [Rabbi Shimon] said to him, ‘Wait for me until I am able to join you.’ [Rabbi Hananiah] did not wait for him. He went and spent twelve years in the beit midrash. By the time he returned, the streets of the town had changed, and he was unable to find his way home. He went and sat by the river bank. He heard a girl being addressed, ‘Daughter of Hakhinai. O, daughter of Hakhinai; fill up your basket and let us go!’ He [Rabbi Hananiah] said, ‘It is obvious that this girl is ours.’ He followed her [so that he could find his home]. His wife was sitting sifting flour. She lifted up her eyes. She saw him. Her heart missed a beat. Her spirit left her. He cried out, ‘O, Lord of the universe, this poor soul; is this her reward?’ He begged for mercy and she revived. (BT Ket. 62b)

This scene features a wife’s continued commitment to and fulfilment of her domestic roles while her husband is gone for a lengthy period of time. It uses a subtle intertextual irony, referring to Avot 3: 17 (‘If there is no flour, there is no Torah: either one alone is insufficient’). The wider patriarchal family model is also implied by naming the young girl as the daughter of (the household of) her grandfather. The fifth story builds upon the previous one and portrays Rabbi Hama’s efforts not to repeat Rabbi Hananiah’s mistake and surprise his wife:

Story 5 Rabbi Hama bar [the son of ] Bisa spent twelve years in the beit midrash. When he returned he said, ‘I will not act as did the son of Hakhinai.’ He sat in the [local] beit midrash. He sent word to his home [announcing that he had arrived in town]. His son Rabbi Hoshaia came and sat down facing him. He asked him a question on [one of the] subjects of study. [Rabbi Hama] saw how well versed he was in his studies. He became very depressed. He said, ‘If I had been here, I also could have had such a child.’ He [then went home] and entered his house. His son [also] entered [the house]. He [the father] stood up for him. [He did not realize that the boy was his son;] he thought [the boy] had come to ask him questions about the topics they were studying. His wife said, ‘What father stands up for his son!?’ Rami ben Hama said to him, ‘And a threefold cord is not quickly broken’ [Eccles. 10: 4], which is a reference to Rabbi Hoshaia, son of Rabbi Hama, son of Bisa. (BT Ket. 62b)

This text emphasizes the mother’s presence and availability to her son. Once again, irony is used to portray the failure of the protagonist. During Rabbi Hama bar Bisa’s lengthy stay away from home, his son becomes a scholar in his own town, as opposed to leaving to accomplish the same feat. Rabbi Hama assumes that his presence was required to educate his son; like Rabbi and Rabbi Yanai, the strong patriarchal father figures in the second and third stories, he considers himself responsible for the instruction of his son. The assumption is that fathers expect to be the ones to bequeath their values to their sons. However, as the story reveals, the son became a great scholar in the absence of his father. The absent

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father fails to transmit Torah to his son. Rabbi Hama’s failure to recognize Rabbi Hoshaia as his son can also be interpreted as implying that he is not in fact his real ‘son’. Although he is his biological father, Rabbi Hoshaia’s real fathers are those who taught him Torah. The combined endeavours of the mother, who maintains her domestic role, and of the teachers, who replaced the father as educators and promote social stability by educating the boy, thereby undermine the role of the biological father. The staging of social relations in the earlier stories is a planned narrative structure working to foreshadow the paradigmatic mother/ wife introduced in the sixth story, Rachel. Indeed, the intergenerational relationships prepare us for the comment about Rabbi Akiva’s wife and daughter, juxtaposed in the sixth story with an alternative paternity: rabbis as ‘fathers’ to their disciples and mothers taking on the responsibility to make sure their daughters allow husbands to leave in order to generate this paternal bond with their rabbi/ teachers. The four stories—from the second to the fifth—are arranged in couplets: the second and the third deal with strong, domineering patriarchal father figures, and the fourth and fifth depict absent fathers. The switch provides a transition to the sixth story about Rachel and Akiva. It is the sixth story that brings together each of these two father models into one person: Kalba Savua. He is Rabbi Akiva’s father-in-law and is both an overbearing and absent father. Like the fathers portrayed in the second and third stories, Kalba Savua considers it his role, his responsibility, to decide on the marriage of his offspring, a daughter. At the end of the story we learn that, like the social elite of his world, he had expected his sonin-law to be knowledgeable in the Torah, even just by knowing one law. Yet Kalba Savua also resembles the absent fathers of the fourth and the fifth stories, Rabbi Hananiah ben Hakhinai and Rabbi Hama bar Bisa. Like them, he was not present for his daughter (and son-in-law), having banished her for a very long time. Moreover, there is a common thread that links these absent father figures. Hananiah failed to recognize his daughter (Story 4), Hama bar Bisa failed to recognize his son (Story 5), and Kalba Savua failed to recognize his son-in-law, Rabbi Akiva (Story 6). The merging of types of paternal failure—the absent father and the domineering father—into one figure constitutes the climax of the treatment of intergenerational relationships in this collection, and is clearly visible in the overall structuring of the collection. This sheds light on yet another aspect of the depiction of Rabbi Akiva and his wife as a positive model. In addition to being an example of mutual agreement between a married couple, which counterbalances the neglect of crucial elements of marital life under the ‘married monk’ model in the other stories, they are also a model for intergenerational independence, which stands in marked contrast to the patriarchal (overbearing father) model depicted in the other stories. Their mutual agreement revisits the major features of the husband–father model and reduces, if not eliminates, the dominance of

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the father in shaping the marital and family life of the younger generation. This makes room for the daughter to follow directly in her mother’s footsteps, underscoring its value and significance. Even more central is the fact that the story of Rabbi Akiva and his wife paves the way not only for this final comment about the daughter of Rabbi Akiva, but also for the concluding seventh story. The last story appears as follows:

Story 7 Rav Yosef, the son of Rava [was] sent [by] his father to the academy under Rav Yosef [bar Hiya, Rava’s teacher]. They arranged for him [to stay there for] six years. After having been there for three years, as the eve of the Day of Atonement approached, he said, ‘I would like to go and see my family.’ His father heard [of his premature arrival]. He took up a weapon and went out to meet him. He said to him, ‘You have remembered your whore!?’ [Another version was:] He said to him, ‘You have remembered your dove!’ They got involved in a quarrel, and neither the one nor the other ate the last meal before the fast. (BT Ket. 63a)

Jarringly, this story ends the talmudic collection of stories with yet another crisis and an unresolved situation, concluding with anger and conflict.15 Rav Yosef is identified by the narrator as the son of Rava.16 Like Rabbi and Rabbi Yanai (in Stories 2 and 3), Rava is a strong father with high expectations of his son, forcing him to study for a longer period against his will. As in the third story, the son rebels against his father’s decision by cutting the period of his absence in half (from twelve to six years in the third story; from six to three years here). The halving of the years plays a significant role in the literary connections which tie together the entire collection—because the reductions contrast with the doubling of the period of absence of Rabbi Akiva (from twelve years to twenty-four; Story 6). This implies that when fathers try to enforce the ‘married monk’ model on their sons and impose a period of study, the younger generation will seek to shorten it, whereas when the younger generation initiates the practice of the ‘married monk’ model, the period of study eventually doubles. Table 1 Intergenerational relationships [1]

Rav Rahumi was used to . . .

No intergenerational relationship

[2]

Judah, the son of Rabbi Hiya and the son-in-law of Rabbi Yanai

The son is defined in relation to previous generation

[3]

Rabbi was busy with [wedding] his son

The subject is the father; the son is a passive figure

[7]

Rav Yosef, the son of Rava, his father sent him . . .

The wording emphasizes the passive role of the son

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This leads us back to the situation of mothers and daughters in this collection of seven stories. Although most of the stories ignore the mother–daughter relationship, two do not: indeed, the third and seventh stories go so far as to refer to the wife-mother figure as a whore. Rabbi expresses fear that if his son does not divorce his barren wife people will consider her his son’s whore, implying that non-procreative sexual relations between husband and wife are improper (Story 3). Rava then blames his son for returning too early from the beit midrash, because the father believed the son ‘remembered his whore’, and missed her (Story 7). This brings us to the seemingly marginal comment about the daughter of Rabbi Akiva, who followed in her mother’s footsteps. This is another facet of the positive example in this story that acts as a counterweight to the problematic models depicted in the other stories. It generates a comparison between the patriarchal failure described throughout the collection and the potential for matriarchal achievement, here realized. The mother–daughter relationship was successful in that the mother transmitted the model of accepting a husband’s entitlement to receive talmudic instruction to her daughter, to the next generation. This accomplishment is set against the fathers’ inability to ensure their sons’ instruction through their absences or through confrontations. The matriarchal successes peep through these glaring disappointments. Fathers and sons clash over the imposition of the ‘married monk’ model from one generation to the next, leading to the tragic collapse of the social structure. For some, the result is death; for others, a comparatively more merciful fate of deep emotional pain and distress. When mothers, however, support Torah by permitting, enabling, and even initiating their husbands’ departure to study, they successfully pass down these values to their daughters. This matriarchal success contrasts with the patriarchal failures that dominate the remainder of the stories in the collection. Somehow, fathers lack the power that mothers possess to ensure that their children follow in their footsteps. When the mother offers a good example to her daughter, she succeeds in passing down the values central to the objective of creating a rabbinic society that revolves around the study of Torah. Therefore, what sustains rabbinic culture is not a father ensuring the continuity of Torah study by teaching his son, sending him or his son-in-law to study, and supporting his daughter or daughter-in-law, but mothers and the lessons they teach their daughters about enabling the continuity of the ‘married monk’ model. The simple adage used to describe the wife and daughter of Rabbi Akiva, ‘ewe follows ewe’, which one might translate today as ‘like mother like daughter’, is an additional intratextual construct that connects the stories. It plays an important role in contrasting the proactive wife and mother model ascribed to Rabbi Akiva’s wife with that of the less co-operative or ‘weeping wives’ presented in previous stories in the collection. As noted by Valler (1999: 51–72), Rabbi Akiva’s wife provides an example of a proactive female figure. This parallels the role of the

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proactive mother characters in the fourth and fifth stories, and contrasts with the absent or silent woman model in the other stories (2, 3, and 7). It is also worth noting that in other rabbinic sources the saying ‘like mother like daughter’ has a negative connotation, depicting a daughter following her mother’s mischievous behaviour. This connotation corresponds to the depiction of wives as whores in the third and seventh stories in this collection. In the midrashic tradition that deals with the rape of Dinah it is used to blame Dinah, the victim, for going out and thus ‘bringing upon herself’ the rape, and Leah, her mother, for being her role model. The midrash plays with the meaning of the biblical verb ‘to go out’ ( ), which refers to both women. The same root is used for a whore ( ). Leah went out to seduce her husband, Jacob, so that he should sleep with her and not with Rachel (Gen. 30: 15). Similarly, Dinah went out and brought upon herself the rape (Gen. 34: 1). As difficult as this midrashic portrayal of Dinah and Leah may be, it enables us to understand the innovation in the use of the phrase ‘ewe follows ewe’ in the collection of stories discussed here. I assume that the audience of the text usually understood the adage ‘like mother like daughter’ negatively, as in the depiction of Leah and Dinah. Here, the narrators subvert the meaning associated with the phrase in the midrash and turn it into a positive marker for the wife and daughter of Rabbi Akiva, pointing favourably to daughters who follow in their mothers’ footsteps. Rabbi Akiva’s wife and daughter are seen as passive but nonetheless productive figures ( , a ewe follows a ewe), highlighting the successful transmission of a positive value from mother to daughter.17 The use of this adage here is another response to the two stories in which women were called ‘whores’ (Stories 3, 7). The use of such negative language belongs to a strand in rabbinic thought that considers marriage as ‘instrumental’. Earlier academic discussions have noted the instrumental model of marriage in fulfilling men’s obligation to procreate as well as satisfying their physical and emotional needs.18 Depictions of wives as whores usually appear in passages which condemn marital intimacy beyond these two factors. According to this view, sexual intercourse which does not lead to procreation is akin to prostitution for the woman. It is exactly this perception that the story of Rabbi Akiva’s wife and daughter overturns. This collection of stories puts forward a new kind of instrumental model for marriage which sets the perpetuation of the community of male Torah scholars above procreation (or carnal desire) as the ultimate goal. The wife is expected to enable her husband to study Torah and to transmit this model to her daughter, thus supporting precisely this objective. This is the goal of perpetuating an instrumental perception of marriage, as developed in the Babylonian Talmud. It reflects an expansion of the duties of a ‘good wife’ and ‘good mother’. In order not to be considered a whore, she should act in her role as mother to her daughter, educating her to follow in her footsteps, not demanding or desiring the husband’s return. Wives are therefore expected to produce sons

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who will study Torah and daughters who will support their husband’s study. And so, the production of female offspring—so important for encouraging husbands and sons to go off to study—is also generative in that women are needed to ensure cultural continuity rooted in Torah study. There is a co-dependence and co-mirroring of both acts, in that cultural reproduction occurs when mothers and daughters allow their husbands to leave the house to study Torah; in essence, so that husbands can give birth to future students. In this way, motherhood ensures the success of the master–disciple relationship, because mothers pass this value on to daughters. Ironically, the difficulties that the married monk model presents are brought to the fore by male figures. Conflict emerges among men, whether as fathers, fathers-in-law, sons, or husbands, and not from mothers. Thus, motherhood becomes a critical element in sustaining social stability. The successful mother–daughter relationship enables the realization of the ‘married monk’ ideal and offers a structural solution to the essential tensions caused by this model. The failure of fathers to transmit Torah to their sons is inherent in the ‘married monk’ model. The monastic-like experience, in its strongest expressions, assumes the utter rejection of family relationships and the establishment of alternative modes of kinship or paternity between teacher and disciple. A father may send his son away, but it is the rabbi who will succeed in turning him into a Torah scholar, forcing fathers into the background. A father’s rightful role to rear and shape his son authoritatively and educationally is diminished in comparison to a father-like rabbi, who in these stories is actively using his intellectuality in the service of striving for authority and power in the community and over the family.19 Thus, it is no accident that these stories present fathers who fail to promote or achieve the cultural choice of creating Torahlearned sons—they are up against a formidable cultural institution. Mothers experience no competition with their daughters. They will remain at home, where, according to the Sages, the mother’s power resides (see Shanks Alexander 2013: 188–92). More than producing sons who become Torah scholars, mothers need to transmit the cultural model of the married monk to their daughters. In this way, mothers enable the ‘spiritual’ procreation of rabbinic masters. They and their daughters together supply a functioning, stable element to society, creating a home where there is minimal or no tension between cultural (Torah) and physical (child) reproduction.20

See How Your Father Is Doing: The Wife and Daughter of Rabbi Eleazar In the Babylonian Talmud’s life-cycle texts of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon (BM 83b–84b), the mother–daughter relationship is again peripheral, but as in Ketubot, it has a positive role and the mother’s subordinate status is, on some level, reversed. These texts comprise a broad and complex biographical literary

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unit in which we find, once again, problematic cases of father–son relationships surfacing in the backdrop of conflicts between the Sages’ attraction to models of extreme religiosity and their efforts to maintain a leading role as communal heads and central members of their families. In Bava metsia a single reference to a mother and her daughter intervenes, paralleling the social roles and functions of Rabbi Akiva’s wife and daughter in Ketubot. The wife and daughter of Rabbi Eleazar act together to balance a proposed rabbinic model of charismatic intuition and asceticism with a more stable rabbinic model, centred on Torah study and juridical procedures. As in the narrative cycle discussed above, the mother and her daughter enable the departure (or in this case the return) of their husband and father to the beit midrash and facilitate his ability to take on a leading rabbinic role in society. Elements of ‘virtual’ paternity imply that the physical connection between mothers and daughters enables men to develop a spiritual paternity, sparing them the need to cope with the complex issues involved in actual father–son relations. This unusually lengthy narrative collection describing one rabbinic figure is also rare in its extreme use of graphic bodily expressions. The text offers a diverse sequence of biographical anecdotes concerning the life influences, attitudes, and beliefs of Rabbi Eleazar. These are woven together into one continuous narrative. It begins with the failure that plunged Rabbi Eleazar into turmoil because of his guilt feelings, ascetic practices, and self-affliction. In consequence, he is gradually distanced from his father, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, from other rabbis, and even from his wife. At the peak of his ascetic remoteness, his wife initiates an act of caring by sending their daughter to look after him. This gesture is the turning point in the collection, because it leads to a sequence of rehabilitation scenes that gradually allow him to return to rabbinic society, ultimately to play a more influential role than he had before. In the first scene of this dramatic tale, Rabbi Eleazar asks a Roman government official to describe the difficulties he faces in deciding who is guilty when trying to catch thieves and gives him some rather illogical but boldly delivered advice on how to identify thieves. This leads to Rabbi Eleazar’s appointment to a similar position, that of deciding who is guilty and arresting thieves. This opening scene introduces key issues that run through the entire unit, underscoring the difficulty of differentiating the righteous from the wicked.21 Rabbi Eleazar is depicted as a confident individual who considers himself to have amazing intuitive powers of observation. However, his arrogant and ill-considered advice eventually causes him trouble, and he is denigrated by Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korha who compares him to his father, Rabbi Shimon, describing Rabbi Eleazar as ‘vinegar, the son of wine’. In this way, the aggadic narrative reveals another example of a failed intergenerational transmission in that Rabbi Shimon has failed to transmit his model of righteousness to his son, Rabbi Eleazar. As the story develops further we find Rabbi Eleazar falsely accusing a laundry-

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man. He realizes his error too late, fails to redeem the innocent laundryman in time, and witnesses the man’s execution in tears. And so begins a period of turmoil, in which Rabbi Eleazar must face up to his wrongdoings.22 Eventually, he inflicts extreme pain and suffering upon himself: Now despite this, Rabbi Eleazar the son of Shimon did not wish to rely on his own reasoning [to absolve himself of any guilt]. [Thus] he accepted upon himself physical suffering. At night they would fold beneath him sixty [layers of ] felt. In the morning, they would draw from under him sixty basins of blood and pus. The next day, his wife prepared him sixty kinds of food, which he ate, and then recovered. Yet his wife did not permit him to go to the beit midrash, for fear that the Rabbis would challenge him.23 (BT BM 84b)

The text presents Rabbi Eleazar’s suffering alongside the active involvement of his wife, who takes care of him. After some time, his wife discovers that he had brought the afflictions upon himself and squandered their money. She leaves him in anger to return to her father’s house. Yet, once again, a miraculous event seems to validate his beliefs and self-inflicted torture. In his wife’s absence, Rabbi Eleazar is assisted by a group of sailors who make a sudden appearance. They supply him with the enormous amounts of food he needs for his endless cycle of bloodletting and seemingly bulimic food consumption.24 In this role, the sailors replace at least some of his wife’s roles in caring for him in his illness. It is at this moment that the mother–daughter relationship surfaces in the narrative. Rabbi Eleazar’s wife sends their daughter to see how her father is doing. Without objecting, she listens to her mother and goes in search of her father to convey her mother’s concerns to him, despite the fact that he has disrupted their family life: One day she [his wife] said to her daughter, ‘Go and see how your father is doing today.’ She went. He said to her, ‘Go, tell your mother that ours is greater than theirs.’ He then applied the verse to himself, ‘She is like the merchant’s ships; she brings her food from afar’ [Prov. 31: 14]. (BT BM 84b)

Once again, we find here that daughters abide by the values and behaviours set by their mothers, as opposed to Rabbi Eleazar, who fails to follow the righteousness of his father and has replaced his family with sailors and slaves. His response to his daughter conveys a message concerning his monetary success, and, implicitly, his psychological recovery. He quotes Proverbs 31: 14, claiming that what has occurred to him represents a great reward for his self-induced suffering. It appears that he does not need his wife. Yet his statement that ‘ours is greater than theirs’ not only conveys a sense of intimacy, since he refers to himself and his wife as ‘us’, but also carries sexual undertones, recalling another statement in which Rabbi Eleazar mentions that he and his wife were able to have intimate relations.25 This comment covertly acknowledges that, despite his separation from his wife and his ascetic lifestyle, he still misses her and desires her sexually

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(Boyarin 1999: 15; Fonrobert 2000: 9–10). That this is conveyed through his daughter symbolizes a desire to reunite with his family and return to his past life. The appearance of the mother and the daughter at this point is pivotal to the story. They re-enter the tale at a time when Rabbi Eleazar has completely detached himself from society. He has isolated himself from his family, he continues to make himself suffer, he is cut off from the beit midrash, and subsists only thanks to the sailors’ intervention. From this moment on, from the intervention of his daughter on behalf of his wife, the text may be read as a gradual process of healing and rehabilitation. Rabbi Eleazar returns to the life from which he had previously departed, thereby regaining his social and cultural status. The final scene, which occurs in the beit midrash, suggests that a mother and her daughter together have the power to bring a husband-father back to where he culturally belongs. This time, ironically, he uses his intuitive powers to rule in cases concerning menstrual impurity in a way that ensures the birth of sons, contributing to what is crucial to the continuity of the rabbinic project: Sixty specimens of blood were brought before him. He declared them all clean. The Sages criticized him, saying, ‘Do you [really] think [that] among [these sixty samples] there is not [even] one doubtful case?’ He said to them, ‘If it be as I [say], let them all be males; if not, let there be one female among them.’ They were all males, and were named ‘Eleazar’ after him. (BT BM 84b)

This passage captures the essential cultural perspective common to the two collections. In tractate Ketubot, the mother and daughter (in the end) send their husbands to study Torah. Here, the mother and daughter act together to help Rabbi Eleazar return to Torah study. Once again, the mother–daughter relationship serves as a type of domestication of male attraction to monastic and ascetic lifestyles and enables the incorporation of the monastic drive into society, into family life, by ensuring that the sage remains in or returns to the beit midrash. Upon returning to the beit midrash, Rabbi Eleazar finds himself in a scholarly role that involves making halakhic decisions of a very specific nature that enhance his spiritual paternity and also enable the birth of more male children. Women who were previously considered impure and could not have sexual relations with their husbands are rendered pure by Rabbi Eleazar, increasing their chances of becoming pregnant. And because, as a rabbi, he makes the birth of sons possible, he emerges symbolically as their surrogate father. As a result, they are all named after him. The choice of the specific halakhic issue of menstrual impurity is a brilliant symbol epitomizing the text’s concern with ascetic and monastic practices as menstruation prevents husband and wife from having sexual relations. When Rabbi Eleazar abandoned his ascetic behaviour and returned to the beit midrash,

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he was able to solve a halakhic conundrum that prevented pregnancies, threatening the generativity necessary for survival. This is emblematic of the power of the religious legal system to undermine the social order and the continuing cycle of life and birth. In order to restore societal order and the family-based social structure, the rabbi needs to depart from his ascetic isolation. Indeed, his halakhic decision will be indispensable for maintaining a stable and productive social system rooted in mothers giving birth to sons. It is compelling to consider the reversal of Rabbi Eleazar’s painful afflictions, that is, a reversal of a full belly that ‘gives birth’ to fat and blood which occurred earlier in this aggadic tale. Indeed, we may see in this passage a folkloric reflection of the feminist psychoanalytic observation that men envy women’s childbearing role. Like women, men would like to be able to conceive (Bettelheim 1962; Dundes 1962: 332; Horney 1967). Even when Rabbi Eleazar manages to change his mental state and return to the beit midrash, he cannot rid himself of his feelings of womb envy. Now the envy appears in the idea that birth depends on halakhic resolutions. As a rabbinic authority he would enable women to become pregnant, despite the blood that could have rendered them impure, constructing a rabbinic male fantasy about the role of the rabbi in birth-giving. Thanks to the intervention of a mother and her daughter, Rabbi Eleazar is healed. His former unstable emotional state is quickly set aside by the narrator. The daughter’s visit may constitute an intrusion into his secluded lifestyle, but nonetheless yields exactly what is desired and needed—the birth of future male students. The mother and daughter facilitate Rabbi Eleazar’s rabbinic role and the success of a type of spiritual paternity among men. The story therefore conveys the idea that when daughters follow closely in the footsteps of their mothers, they are ‘enablers’. They ensure the continuation of a society in which fathers achieve a scholarly status through study and are able to transmit their cultural heritage to their sons. In this regard, the Babylonian Talmud perceives mothers and daughters in terms which extend far beyond their reproductive abilities. They ensure that the entire system functions. Rabbi Eleazar’s wife and daughter are involved in restoring their family union, and, through their husband and father, the families of others. A failed father–son relationship can thus be disastrous for the social order, but a successful mother– daughter relationship can re-establish it. To be sure, the role of the mother–daughter relationship in this case is very similar to the one in the Ketubot narratives. Both sets of mothers and daughters facilitate the return of sons who go astray from their fathers and both enable the father-husband to espouse an ascetic way of life. Rachel’s daughter married Ben Azzai, who, like Rabbi Eleazar, is a rabbi who embraces asceticism. When fathers fail in the patriarchal transmission of their heritage to their son, the ensuing crisis is solved by mother–daughter co-operation. While mothers and daughters are marginal in these aggadic narratives, failing to pay enough attention to their

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role means that we miss the crucial role they play in preserving the desired patriarchal social structure. The appearance of the mother–daughter relationship in these contexts is also closely related to the paradox inherent in intergenerational relationships in the context of the ‘married monk’ model, as noted by Boyarin. On the one hand, the texts deal with spiritual paternity and aim to construct a model in which a rabbi can bequeath his model of living to a disciple. On the other hand, they hope that this spiritual paternity will be fulfilled between actual fathers and sons. The Sages ultimately seek to have their cake and eat it: to fulfil monastic and ascetic fantasies of extreme religious self-realization, detached from social and familial life, and at the same time to maintain a strong family structure. Thus, the mother–daughter relationship is a metaphor for the social construct presented in the Babylonian Talmud, which tries to contain monastic and ascetic tendencies within society by sublimating them and redirecting them into more normative rabbinic religious modes. In other words, the mother and daughter bridge the ascetic sphere which could separate the Sages from home, and, in the case of Rabbi Eleazar even from the beit midrash, with these more normative social realms of religious experience.26 At the same time, the effective and mutual functioning of the mother–daughter relationship also offers a critique of the rabbinic societal model. Juxtaposed with the fathers and their sons’ failures, mothers willingly send their husbands away to study and succeed in transmitting this value to their daughters. Daughters listen to their mothers; they contribute to building a rabbinic structure better than fathers. Feminist readers have made various efforts to read talmudic tales against the grain. Some feminist scholars do so by highlighting exceptional women who had certain social, political, financial, or intellectual power;27 others point to female characters who challenge patriarchal norms.28 In this chapter I have chosen to explore mother–daughter relationships in order to examine a woman-to-woman family bond, revealing social contacts that critique patriarchal power relations. The mother–daughter relationship, however, also plays a key role in perpetuating the masculine community of Torah study, by supporting the husband’s prolonged absences from the home—though, it must be said, even this perspective on motherhood is seen through a patriarchal lens.29 These and other talmudic stories certainly speak to us with enormously profound ideas, often addressed as myth or myth-like stories. These are not collections of stories fixed to a particular time and place in history, but are representative of ongoing social conflicts and practices among rabbinic Jews that have lasted for centuries.

Notes 1

My exploration and interpretations are based on classes I have taught over the years, and are the product of a collective effort, drawing on previous works, communication with

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scholars, and the contributions of students. I have also found many resources in the scholarly literature dealing with these famous texts, particularly in Boyarin’s treatment of these passages. Nonetheless, the conclusions I reach in this essay are my own. The stories of the ‘waiting wives’ appear in BT Ket. 62b–63a; for previous analyses see: Boyarin 1991; 1999: 107–33; Frankel 1981: 99–116; Friedman 2005; Ilan 1997a: 207–15; 1997b; Rubenstein 2003: 102–22; Valler 1999; Zimmerman 1981. The cycle of Rabbi Eleazar appears in BT BM 83b–84b. For earlier analyses see: Boyarin 1999: 197–226; 2009: 167–92; Friedman 1987; Kosman 2007; Liebes 2008: 163–75; Secunda 2009; Shoshany 2005 and the Hebrew bibliography listed there in notes 1–3. 2

I therefore apply a literary analysis to wider units of rabbinic texts, as done by some scholars of the last generation, but prefer to avoid their tendency to refer to the redactor and his intentions. See, for example, Rovner 2005; Valler 1995; Walfish 2005–6; Yassif 2009, ch. 4; Zohar 2007. For recent methodological considerations on the subject, see Wimpf-heimer 2011: 147–63.

3

See Blidstein 2007: 107 n. 11, who summarized this methodology when dealing with other texts: ‘Technically it is clear that the author interpolated here a midrashic paragraph that was used in other contexts. However, the reader may, and is even obliged, to read such a paragraph in its new context.’

4

For a nice reconstruction of the literary process leading to the introduction of a Babylonian element into the final text as we have it today, see Secunda 2009.

5

See my argument below regarding the presentation of Rabbi Eleazar as a bipolar figure. That presentation can be viewed as the product of contradictory perspectives of different tradents who contributed to the shaping of the collection. The text as we have it today thus alternates between two different models. It shifts from a hagiographic tendency of praising Rabbi Eleazar to a sarcastic tone of criticism and irony, which I suggest may reflect essential tensions projected onto the personage of Rabbi Eleazar. See the discussion of the two contrasting voices in Boyarin 2009.

6

See JT Bik. 3: 3 65c; Gen. Rab. 95: 4: 1232; Lev. Rab. 21: 8: 484–6; See also Friedman 1987.

7

As noted by Friedman, the comment about the mother and the daughter in BT Ket. resembles the style of a comment found in Rabbi Eleazar’s cycle in BT BM. See Friedman 2005: 80 n. 35.

8

For the methodology of clustering rabbinic narratives, see Lavee 2009. Accordingly, the cycle of stories about Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon (BT BM 83b–84b) is seen here as a wellcrafted Babylonian literary unit that also includes the Babylonian version of the story about him and his father, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, in the cave (BT Shab. 33b–34a). As noted by Friedman 1987, the two cycles of stories are presented together in the midrash from the Land of Israel. For comparison of the Palestinian and Babylonian versions of the cave story, see Fonrobert 2007; Shoshany 2007.

9

See Valler 1999. There are some differences in the sub-grouping of stories within the collection.

10

Since I am interested in the overall construction of the collection, my focus is on this version, and I do not deal with the other version in BT Ned. 50a.

11

See Tosefta Yev. 8: 5; BT Yev. 63b. This point was also noted by Boyarin 1999. On Babylonian literary creation of family relationships, see Safrai 1971. See also Friedman 2005: 80–1.

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12

The parallel story in JT Bik. 3: 3 65c only deals with the father–son-in-law relationship. The text was apparently reworked to make it fit into the framework of this collection. See my observations on this phenomenon in Lavee 2009: 83–4, n. 117.

13

See Lavee 2014, for my reading of the collection of stories in BT Pes. 3b–4a, and Friedman 2006.

14

See Kister 1998: 113 on the use of the verb in relation to a father who takes a wife for his son. The fact that this was a common practice does not diminish its metonymic weight as a marker of the patriarchal family structure.

15

According to another equivalent version in midrashic compilations, Rabbi Hananiah avoided sending letters home. A similar motif of avoiding letters from the family is found in Christian monastic literature concerning Cassian. See Cassian 2000: 5: 32; Guy 2001: 240–1. I am grateful to Inbar Graiver, who introduced me to this text.

16

Note the structural resemblance to the stories on supplying wine to women in BT Ket. 64b–65a. In both cases, the text ends with an unresolved crisis.

17

This is another implication of the biblical allusion to the figures of Jacob and Rachel identified in Boyarin 1991.

18

On the question of instrumental versus mutual marriage models, see Boyarin 1999; Rosen-Zvi 2011; Satlow 2001; and Schremer 2003. They noted other male-centred concerns, such as coping with the evil inclination, an element emphasized, if not invented, in the Babylonian Talmud.

19

The affinity between the monastic turn to Torah study, family negation, and the establishment of alternative discipleship, away from family bonds and commitments, is also seen in the foundational story about Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus in Gen. Rab. 41: 2: 397 and parallels. However, the Babylonian model of the ‘married monk’ is not part of this story from the Land of Israel. See also Aus 1985; Frankel 1981: 91–4; Stein 2004: 130–83.

20

This text sheds light on some other details in the collection of stories. The blood ties between father and son are not needed to produce a successful Torah scholar. In the fourth story of this collection, for example, Rabbi Hoshaia became a great scholar, even though his father was absent.

21

For the use of verses as literary devices, see Frankel 1971.

22

Shoshany 2005 considers the motif of atonement as the core of this story.

23

The colour motif is a very good example of the literary cohesiveness achieved by the merging and reworking of material from various sources. Let us recall all the references to the colour red in the Babylonian sequence. It is first hinted at in the motif of the wine, which appears in the first scene. It then reappears when red veins are found in the white fat; when Rabbi Eleazar is bleeding and suffering; when he rules in cases of menstrual blood; and finally when a red drop of blood is seen as his hair. When considering the parallel collection of stories in the Palestinian tradition (Pesikta derabi kahana, ‘Vayeh.iBeshalah.’, 18–24) we see that the colour red is hardly found there, except for the motifs of wine drinking and the phrase ‘wine, son of vinegar’. Though this motif is implied in the Palestinian parallels, it is only in the Babylonian Talmud that it becomes a dominant literary thread that connects various parts of different origins and styles. Evidence for the Babylonian cultural context of the motif is found both in legal and magic materials. (For magic material see the magic bowl inscriptions published by Morgenstern 2007, which

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contain similar expressions to those found in Rabbi Eleazar’s bleeding scene. For similar legal material to that found in the menstrual blood scene see Secunda 2009: 50.) 24

This echoes a scene from the story about his father, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, in a cave. At first he and his father fled to the beit midrash (after his father’s disparaging comment about the government), where his mother supplied them with food. Later on, when they took refuge in the cave, she was no longer needed, as food was supplied to them miraculously (BT Shab. 33b–34a). The reading of the two texts together implies that both the mother of Rabbi Eleazar and his wife were involved in the same practice of supplying food to the husband when he turned towards monastic or ascetic practices, protecting him, and by implication, his asceticism.

25

As noted and shown by Boyarin 1999: 200–6. The expression ‘ours is greater than theirs’ in BT BM resembles a key phrase in the Ket. collection (‘mine and yours are hers’).

26

In that sense, this story shares the same narrative as the one about Rav Hiya bar Ashi and his wife, who disguised herself as ‘Haruta, the whore’ to undermine her husband’s ascetic tendencies. For an analysis of this story, see Naeh 1997.

27

Such as Queen Salome Alexandra and Helleni, Babatha, Beruriah, and Yalta. See, for example, Ilan 1997b; Valler 2000.

28

For a woman’s perspective in a male-dominated corpus such as rabbinic literature see e.g. Hasan-Rokem 2003.

29

A similar trend may be identified in the well-developed halakhic discussion on procreation in BT Yev. 62–4. I hope to devote another essay to this in the future.

References aus, david. 1985. ‘Luke 15: 11–32 and R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus’s Rise to Fame’. Journal of Biblical Literature, 104: 443–69. bar asher siegal, michal. 2013. Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud. New York. bettelheim, bruno. 1962. Symbolic Wounds: Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York. blidstein, gerald j. 2007. The Death of Moses: Readings in Midrash. Alon Shevut. boyarin, daniel. 1991. ‘Internal Opposition in Talmudic Literature: The Case of the Married Monk’. Representation, 36: 87–113. —— 1999. Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture. Berkeley, Calif. —— 2009. Socrates and the Fat Rabbis. London. cassian, john. 2000. The Institutes, trans. Boniface Ramsey. New York. dundes, alan. 1962. ‘Earth-Diver: Creation of the Mythopoetic Male’. American Anthropologist, 64: 1032–51. f o nr o b e r t , cha rlot t e eli shev a. 2000. Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender. Stanford, Calif. —— 2007. ‘Plato in Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai’s Cave (B. Shabbat 33b–34a): The Talmudic Inversion of Plato’s Politics of Philosophy’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 31: 277–96.

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frankel, jonah . 1971. ‘Bible Verses Quoted in Tales of the Sages’. Scripta Hierosolymitana, 22: 80–99. —— 1981. Studies in the Spiritual World of Aggadic Stories [Iyunim be’olamo haruh.ani shel sipur ha’agadah]. Tel Aviv. friedman, shamma. 1987. ‘Literary Development and Historicity in the Aggadic Narrative of the Babylonian Talmud: A Study Based upon B.M. 83b–86a’. In Nahum M. Waldman, ed., Community and Culture: Essays in Jewish Studies in Honor of the Ninetieth Anniversary of the Founding of Gratz College, 67–80. Philadelphia. —— 2005. ‘A Good Story Deserves Retelling’. In Jeffrey Rubenstein, ed., Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada, 71–100. Tübingen. —— 2006. ‘“History and Aggadah”: The Enigma of Dama Ben Netina’. In Joshua Levinson, Jacob Elbaum, and Galit Hasan-Rokem, eds., Higayon L’Yona: New Aspects in the Study of Midrash, Aggadah, and Piyut in Honor of Professor Yona Fraenkel [Higayon leyonah: hebetim h.adashim beh.eker sifrut hamidrash, ha’agadah vehapiyut: kovets meh.karim likhvodo shel profesor yonah frankel bemilat lo shivim veh.amesh shanim], 83–130. Jerusalem. guy, jean-claude. 2001. Institutions cénobitiques, ed. Jean Cassien. Paris. hasan-rokem, galit. 2003. Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity. Berkeley, Calif. horney, karen. 1967. Feminine Psychology. New York. ilan, tal. 1997a. Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature. Leiden. —— 1997b. ‘The Quest for the Historical Beruriah, Rachel and Ima Shalom’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 22: 1–17. k i s t e r , m e n a h e m. 1998. Studies in Avot derabi natan: Text, Redaction, and Interpretation [Iyunim be’avot derabi natan: nusah., arikhah, uparshanut]. Jerusalem. kosman, admiel. 2007. ‘R. Shimeon ben Eleazar and the Offended Man: The Ugliness of the Haughty Scholar’. European Judaism, 40: 106–15. lavee, moshe. 2009. ‘Welfare and Education vs. Leadership and Redemption: The Stories about Rabbi and Rabbi Hiya as an Example of the Image of the Tannaitic Past in the Babylonian Talmud’ (Heb.). Jewish Studies: An Internet Journal, 8: 51—98; at . —— 2014. ‘From Nisibis to London: On Literary Mechanisms for Construction of Jewish Identity’ (Heb.). In Asher Maoz and Aviad Hacohen, eds., Jewish Identity [Zehut yehudit]. Tel Aviv. liebes, yehudah . 2008. God’s Story: Collected Essays on Jewish Myth. Jerusalem. Midrash Genesis Rabbah, J. Theodor and Hanokh Albeck. 1965. Jerusalem. Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, ed. Mordechai Margulies. 1993. New York. morgenstern, matthew. 2007. ‘The Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Magic Bowl BM 91767 Reconsidered’. Le Muséon, 120: 5–27. naeh, shlomo. 1997. ‘Freedom and Celibacy: A Talmudic Variation on Tales of Temptation and Fall in Genesis and Its Syrian Background’. In Judith Frishman and Lucas van Rompay, eds., The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation: A Collection of Essays, 73–89. Louvain. Pesikta derabi kahana, ed. Jacob Mandelbaum. 1987. New York.

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rosen-zvi, ishay. 2011. Demonic Desires: ‘Yetzer Hara’ and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia. rovner, jay. 2005. ‘“Rav Assi Had This Old Mother”: The Structure, Meaning, and Formation of a Talmudic Story’. In Jeffrey Rubenstein, ed., Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada, 101–24. Tübingen. rubenstein, jeffrey l. 2003. The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud. Baltimore, Md. safrai, shmuel. 1971. ‘Tales of the Sages in the Palestinian Tradition and the Babylonian Talmud’. Scripta Hierosolymitana, 22: 209–32. satlow, michael. 2001. Jewish Marriage in Antiquity. Princeton. schremer, adiel. 2003. Marriage at the End of the Second Temple Period and in the Rabbinic Period [Zakhar unekevah bera’am: hanisu’im beshalhei yemei habayit hasheni uvitekufat hamishnah vehatalmud]. Jerusalem. secunda, shai. 2009. ‘Talmudic Text and Iranian Context: On the Development of Two Talmudic Narratives’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 33: 45–69. shanks alexander, elizabeth. 2013. Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism. New York. shoshany, ronit. 2005. ‘Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimeon and the Thieves—A Story of Sin and Atonement’. Jewish Studies: An Internet Journal, 4: 1–21; at . —— 2007. ‘Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai in the Cave and Elijah in the Wilderness: A Comparison between Talmudic and Biblical Narratives’. Jewish Studies: An Internet Journal, 6: 13–36; at . stein, dinah. 2004. Maxim, Magic, Myth: Folk Literary Perspectives on Pirkei derabi eli’ezer [Memrah, magyah, mitos: pirkei derabi eli’ezer le’or meh.kar hasifrut haamami]. Jerusalem. valler, shulamit. 1995. ‘The Number Fourteen as a Literary Device in the Babylonian Talmud’. Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period, 26: 169–84. —— 1999. Women and Womanhood in the Talmud. Atlanta, Ga. —— 2000. Women in Jewish Society in the Talmudic Period [Nashim bah.evrah hayehudit bitekufat hamishnah vehatalmud]. Tel Aviv. walfish, avraham. 2005/6. ‘Approaching the Text and Approaching God: The Redaction of Mishnah and Tosefta Berakhot’. Jewish Studies, 43: 21–79. wimpfheimer, barry scott. 2011. Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories. Philadelphia. yassif, eli. 2009. The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning. Bloomington, Ind. zimmerman, david. 1981. Eight Love Stories from the Talmud and the Midrash [Shemonah sipurei ahavah min hatalmud vehamidrash]. Tel Aviv. zohar, noam , 2007. Secrets of the Rabbinic Workshop: Redaction as a Key to Meaning [Besod hayetsirah shel sifrut h.azal: ha’arikhah kemafte’ah. lemashma’ut]. Jerusalem.

s i x

The (Re)production of a Maskilah: The Mother–Daughter Bond between Menuhah and Hava Shapiro carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler

The publication in 1909 of Kovets tsiyurim (‘A Collection of Sketches’)— the first volume of Hebrew short stories written by a woman—provided the author Hava Shapiro (1878–1943) with an ideal opportunity to express publicly her gratitude to her mother Menuhah (d. 1921). With elegant simplicity, two Hebrew words adorn a single page: [Dedicated to my mother]

On all counts, the dedication is warranted. Shapiro was a pioneering and prolific Hebrew writer largely due to the influence of her mother. In fact, authoring a volume of stories is only one in a list of trailblazing activities we can attribute to this unusual woman with an equally unusual mother. Hava Shapiro was the first woman to keep a diary in Hebrew (1900–41), the first woman to publish a collection of short stories in Hebrew (1909), the first to craft a feminist literary manifesto in Hebrew (1909), and the first to compose feminist criticism on Hebrew literature (1918 and 1930). Her relationship with her mother represents another kind of first. Menuhah Shapiro functioned as a model for her daughter in an era when literary or intellectual Jewish women were educated and groomed, if at all, by male relatives or acquaintances. Maskilot (enlightened women) often sought guidance from, or were voluntarily assisted by, fathers or brothers already immersed in the secular culture of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). Men’s example and encouragement proved crucial in the development of such female Hebraists as Devorah Baron, Hemda Ben-Yehuda, and Miriam Markel-Mosessohn, to name a few.1 In stark contrast, maskilim famously depicted themselves as mavericks rebelling

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Figure 2 Hava Shapiro, c.1900 Courtesy Jewish Public Library Archives of Montreal

against their fathers, who placed stumbling blocks along the paths to secular knowledge and ideals their sons pursued. In a similar vein, the standard mother– daughter relationship portrayed in many national literatures is an adversarial one: that of a liberated daughter at odds with a mother who possesses neither the education nor the intellectual drive to act as an exemplar to her daughter, but instead functions as a mere custodian of the status quo. According to Adrienne Rich, feminist daughters often harbour a ‘desire to become purged once and for all of [their] mother’s bondage, to become individuated and free’. She elucidates further: The mother stands for the victim in ourselves, the unfree woman, the martyr. Our personalities seem to dangerously blur and overlap with our mothers; and in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins we perform radical surgery. (Rich 1986: 36)

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Shapiro did not suffer from what Rich called ‘matrophobia’ (or, arguably, ‘patrophobia’). Rather, this daughter lauded her mother for fulfilling the traditional maternal ideal and inspiring an iconoclastic life dedicated to Hebrew books. In return, Menuhah nurtured her daughter’s body and mind. She functioned for her daughter as the proverbial eshet h.ayil (‘woman of valour’, from Prov. 31) as well as a counter-traditional devotee to the cause of modern Hebrew literature. She appears regularly in Shapiro’s writings as the one figure who understood her daughter’s aspirations; allowed her to depart from convention for the sake of selfactualization in spite of the risks involved; and served all the while as a kind of psychological refuge and beacon during her daughter’s professional maturation into a writer of repute. This mother would remain above reproach in all her daughter’s writing, both published and personal.

Maskilic Mother as Muse In several places, Menuhah Shapiro is presented as a kind of ideal maternal type for a maskilic daughter:

Beloved Mother in Israel, modest woman scholar, who compares to you? (H. Shapiro 2008: 152; 2014: 135)

First and foremost, Menuhah Shapiro (née Schoenberg) of Kishinev acted as her daughter’s Hebraist muse. Extant postcards and letters in Menuhah’s handsome Hebrew penmanship attest to her facility for the language. As her son boasted, ‘Our mother of blessed memory, a profusely skilled woman, bestowed upon us a love of the Hebrew language’ (Mo. Shapiro 1964: 36). As seen in the epigraph above, Hava Shapiro portrayed her mother as a tsenu’ah maskilah (modest woman scholar of the Enlightenment) who had ‘the brains of a man’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 151; 2014: 134). We can imagine Shapiro’s hankering to enter the rarefied world of Hebrew letters, born of sabbath evenings observing her mother deriving ‘her chief pleasure and comfort from reading her Hebrew books and newspapers’, which the adults in her family considered utterly pesulim (unfit) (H. Shapiro 2008: 133; 2014: 122).2 In textured strokes, Shapiro paints the following portrait of a mother resting after a week of work and sabbath preparation by reading Hebrew books, first on her own and then with her children: She permits herself this pleasure only on Sabbath evenings. All other nights of the week she is busy . . . She oversees the activities of her household, she counsels her children. She aids the sick, the poor. Quietly. Modestly. She encourages, strengthening faltering hands, weakened spirits. Away, laziness! Away, boredom and despair! There is so much to do in this world! To do for others. Others are the main thing . . . On Sabbath evenings, when the men are at shul, she gives herself over to them, to the books. The rooms in the house have been cleaned. The white tablecloths are on the

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler table. The Sabbath candles are burning, and a modest light, the light of rest, pours forth over the dishes and the furniture, on the challahs covered with embroidered cloths, on the bottles of wine for kiddush, on the gleaming goblets—even on the secular book opened on the table. The children—there is a kind of contract between her and them. On Sabbath evenings they do not disturb her. They play in the corner. They cast glances at Mother. They bathe in her modest glow, in the image of her noble profile. They sense something of her special hidden world. And the next Sabbath afternoon, she gathers them around her. They sit close, right next to her, and listen. In silence. Concentrating like adults. She reads them the proverbs of Ben Sira. And explains. Mother explains. Their eyes are lifted toward her splendidly radiant face and their ears absorb her caressing voice. (H. Shapiro 2008: 151–2; English translation, Shapiro 2014: 134–5)

The description above of the mother engaged in a myriad of weekday domestic and charitable tasks and then tending to every last detail of sabbath preparations clearly evokes the eshet h.ayil. Shapiro portrays the same selfless, hard-working devotion to others and to the home that one sees in this biblical poem, traditionally sung to Jewish wives and mothers on Friday nights. As in the passage from Proverbs (31: 26), Shapiro also praises her mother for her wisdom. But whereas the biblical poem lauds a certain kind of generalized, oral wisdom and a ‘Torah of lovingkindness’, Shapiro specifically depicts her mother as a scholar and a Hebraist with an intellectual and spiritual life that in turn inspires and edifies her children. To be sure, it is curious that of all texts the mother here chooses to teach her children from the Wisdom of Ben Sira. This apocryphal work, known in its Greek form as Ecclesiasticus, contains extended diatribes against women, including such lines, evocative of chapter 3 of Genesis, as ‘There is no poison worse than that of a serpent, no venom greater than that of a woman’, and ‘With a woman sin had a beginning, and because of her we all die’ (25: 15, 24). Perhaps by placing Ben Sira’s proverbs in her mother’s mouth, Shapiro attempts to counter the antifemale bias of the book as well as the larger tradition of discrimination against women based on Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden (see below). The reference to Ben Sira also evokes Solomon Schechter’s 1896 Genizah discovery of a Hebrew version of Ben Sira, thereby underscoring the contemporary, maskilic nature of the mother’s intellectual interests. It is worth noting that Hava Shapiro’s mother was not the only source of Hava’s attraction and devotion to the study of Hebrew culture and language. Her father, Jacob Shapiro, was a scion of the famous Hebrew printing press and paper-manufacturing dynasty in Slavuta, Volhynia (Ukraine) and a descendant of Pinhas of Korets (1726/8–90), a hasidic leader and member of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s circle. Besides reading the Torah portion and commentaries aloud to his children every week, Jacob Shapiro was drawn to everything related to the land of

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Israel. Moreover, he expected both his sons and daughters to become sufficiently proficient in Hebrew to compose letters to their parents exclusively in its modern idiom. In such an environment, Shapiro naturally gravitated towards Hebrew studies and began to attend the meetings of a local group of Agudat Hovevei Sefat Ever (Society of the Lovers of the Hebrew Language) as an adolescent (Mo. Shapiro 1964: 36). Lessons with the rabbi, however, remained the domain of her brothers alone. In Kidush levanah (Sanctification of the Moon), one of her semi-autobiographical short stories, Shapiro’s girl narrator describes her growing dismay at the limitations on participation in religious ritual imposed on her by her gender. ‘I always played a major part in [my brothers’] games’, she explains. ‘I would jump, run, and climb like a boy, and no-one in the house really distinguished between me and them in matters of mitsvot [commandments].’ At Sukkot, ‘when they were busy preparing the sukkah, I’d climb and go to the attic together with my brothers and help with everything. Like them, I would collect the sekhakh [thatching] and spread it on top’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 90; 2014: 86–7). Yet before long the door to male religious privilege slams shut: ‘Because I was born a girl, my rebbe, whom I adored, was compelled to exclude me from the community when it came to such holy matters as the study of the Torah!’ Echoing precisely the talmudic words of Ben Azzai, she exclaims, ‘And my heart yearned so for the Torah’ (BT Yev. 63a). In this way, she links her own transgressive intellectual aspirations to Ben Azzai’s unconventional refusal to marry so that he could devote himself completely to Torah studies. While she rails against her own exclusion from the realms of sacred study and ritual practice, the girl narrator takes chief umbrage at the exclusion of her beloved mother: ‘If they had exempted only me alone, my pain would not have been so great. But I could not tolerate the insult to the honour of my mother, whose worth was certainly as great, if not greater in my eyes, than many of those who danced before the moon’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 90; 2014: 86–7). The discussion here of the relative ‘worth’ [erkah] of Shapiro’s mother in relation to that of the male participants in the ritual of sanctification of the moon evokes the hierarchical classification of ‘vows of persons’ (Lev. 27), whereby the value of a man is set at 50 shekels and that of a woman at 30 shekels. Throughout her writings, Shapiro adduces the model of her learned mother not only as the source of her own intellectual inspiration but also in defiance of Jewish misogyny. At the same time, the education of both Shapiro and her mother points to certain advantages enjoyed by aspiring female Hebraists. Paradoxically, the gendered differentiation of Jewish education, which barred Shapiro from studying Torah in the same manner as her brothers, also fostered an attitude of indifference if not permissiveness toward girls’ study in general. Shapiro was free to pursue a course of study that provided her with far better training in Hebrew than she would have received had she been a boy with the attendant expectations. (The

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler same might be said of Menuhah, though there is no evidence to confirm or deny this.) That ‘benefit of marginality’, a phrase coined by the scholar Iris Parush, gave Shapiro latitude to read and write in Hebrew (Parush 2004). In contrast, her male counterparts’ exposure to Hebrew came only as a byproduct of their immersion in sacred Jewish texts. Traditional Torah study for boys, as is well known, consisted of a standard, if unsystematic, curriculum (Adler 2011: 17–18). The learning was mostly by rote, and it neglected the essential keys to mastering a language: grammar and syntax. Consequently, would-be male authors and poets of secular Hebrew began their writing careers at a disadvantage, to which their typically awkward early attempts testify. At the same time, reaching beyond the prescribed curriculum was considered an unnecessary diversion, and so male adolescents began surreptitiously sampling illicit works, usually under the influence of an indoctrinated older sibling or acquaintance, sometimes even a female relative. They turned first to Hebrew works of philosophy and moral guidance, firmly ensconced within the parameters of traditional Jewish culture, before poring over the staples of the Haskalah, and finally, literature written in non-Jewish languages. Presaging the observations of Parush, Shapiro herself noted that as readers of secular literature, the intellectual abilities of Jewish women often surpassed those of men in their community: And yet we know that the woman was not left behind [in traditional Jewish society], neither in the early days of the Haskalah nor in the period of ‘changing values’, that she too left her bounded world to ‘seek the light’, and that she committed herself to the same aspirations and ideals to which the male intellectual committed himself. On the contrary, she had learned about them even before him. She had been educated in the literature of the Gentiles—exempted as she was from the burden of Torah study—while her youthful male counterparts were still entrenched in the ‘four cubits of the law’. That was also the reason for the chasm between her and her husband, which subsists to this day within a significant portion of our people. On the one hand, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, or ˇ Przybyszewski and Zeromski; and on the other, ‘Yoreh de’ah’ [part of the Shulh.an arukh legal code] and Jewish texts. And beyond that—for her, everything was permitted, while for him, everything was forbidden. (H. Shapiro 2008: 212; 2014: 390)

Like other parents of the emerging bourgeoisie—membership of which meant financial security as well as a desire to replicate the behaviour and thought patterns imported from the West—Menuhah and Jacob Shapiro provided their daughter with the essentials of a modern lady-in-the-making. Among the hallmarks of middle-class femininity was fluency in European languages (Kelly 1994: 28). Thus, a steady stream of foreign languages flowed across Shapiro’s tongue, and literary treasures from across the continent rested on her bookshelves. Indeed, Shapiro’s education made her into a watchful feminist observer whose linguistic fluency and dexterity in western languages enabled her to enrich her Hebrew composition with knowledge of Russian, French, German, and Czech literature.

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Since the rise of the Haskalah, maskilim had been striving to expand Hebrew’s range as a medium of expression by incorporating into it various European genres and ideas. Given their gender-determined exclusion from the Jewish textual tradition, women were strategically positioned to assist in releasing Hebrew from the tradition’s millennia-long stranglehold. Who would be better suited for the task than a capable Hebrew writer whose formative influences included Russian and western literature? Shapiro did not disappoint. All told, her bibliography comes to nearly one hundred entries in Hebrew (along with a dozen or so articles in Yiddish and German), composed over the course of her life, which ended abruptly in 1943, only days before the Jews of her community in Prague were rounded up and deported to Theresienstadt. Beginning with a foray into fiction, she shifted to literary criticism and reportage, though at times sprinkled newsworthy items with personal anecdotes of a telling nature. She was one of the only women—and in many cases the only woman—to appear in the major outlets of the Hebrew press of the diaspora of her day. She would also produce reminiscences of the literary luminaries she knew well, such as Y. L. Peretz (1852–1915), who quipped about her to Nahum Sokolow (1859–1936), ‘She knows Hebrew better than I do’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 393; 2014: 183). In her diary, she chronicles her engagement with cataclysmic events such as the Russian Revolution and both world wars as well as critical episodes in the Jews’ past, including pogroms, mass migration, and the development of Zionism. In addition, 200 letters she addressed to the editor and writer Reuven Brainin (1862–1939), her on-again, off-again lover and mentor, have been preserved, despite her repeated requests that they be destroyed.

Hebrew Was Her Mameloshen Shapiro’s proficiency in Hebrew and her passion for its secular literature upend conventional notions of Jewish women’s literacy in eastern Europe. The standard version of Hebrew–Yiddish sexual politics regarded the former as the Holy Tongue (leshon hakodesh) limited to men for the purposes of prayer and study. Women were largely exempt if not forbidden (Mishnah Sot. 3: 4) from these areas, which are also, not incidentally, the loci in which female (and male) gender identities are constructed and preserved in the first place (Seidman 1997). In contrast, Yiddish was considered the ‘jargon’ of east European Jews, the mameloshen (mother tongue) of the folk, especially uneducated men and women. This gendered language divide was seen as the ‘natural’ order of things and largely endorsed even by the rank and file of maskilim, who ultimately regarded the invention of a modern, secular Hebrew literature as their domain. While some may have praised women who tried their hand at modern Hebrew and perhaps welcomed their Hebrew translations of European classics, the maskilim’s general attitude could be summed up by David Frischmann’s famously ambivalent

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler invitation to women to study Hebrew. In the first letter of his Mikhtavim al devar hasifrut (‘Letters on Literature’), a work of Hebrew literary criticism written as a series of letters addressed to an imagined female recipient, Frischmann confesses his longstanding opposition to ‘our sisters learning Hebrew’. In his opinion, women tend to learn Hebrew not for its own sake (lishmah), but as a form of self-decoration or coquetry (Frischmann 1914: 7). Only at the end of the letter does he reveal his true intent in teaching women Hebrew: namely, to arm them with the means to rear a new generation of hebraically literate sons: If only our sisters would arise and learn the Hebrew language, then there would be hope for us as well! . . . Let our sisters come and learn, let them learn what their souls desire, let them learn if only at first for beauty and decoration alone, not lishmah, for its own sake, and our land will be filled with knowledge, and they shall teach our sons and daughters after them. For what are we lacking now in our literature if not gentle, lovely women who can educate our sons? What do we seek if not gentle women to plant with their soft hands the love of our language and the Torah of our nation within the hearts of our sons?

Frischmann paternalistically relegates mothers and daughters (i.e. future mothers) to mere minions in the process of raising men articulate in Hebrew and passionate about its transmission. For mothers like Menuhah, however, the hallowed study of Hebrew belonged as much to daughters as to sons; and her outlook would enable her own daughter to play a unique role in the development of the Hebrew tongue. Indeed, Hava Shapiro not only mothered a son, but also gave birth to works of modern Hebrew literature.

The Birth of a Female Literary Lineage Maternal or matriarchal tropes constitute a leitmotif throughout Shapiro’s literary oeuvre, nowhere more palpably than in her preface to Kovets tsiyurim, the same volume that she dedicated to her mother. In it, she calls on other women to follow in her footsteps and contribute to the engendering of modern Hebrew literature.3 It reads in its entirety: Our literature lacks the participation of the second half of humanity: that of the weaker sex. In my entering now into this unfamiliar sphere, my strongest hope is that many others of my sex will be inspired to journey in my footsteps. So long as they do not take part, our literature will be impoverished and lacking a certain nuance. Time and again, when we are amazed and awed [both verbs in feminine form] by the great talent of a ‘wonder worker’, one who ‘penetrates the woman’s heart’ [masculine form], we feel at the same time as though a strange hand has touched us. We have our own world, our own pains and longings, and we should, at the very least, take part in describing them.

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I know that I have not yet fulfilled the requirements that I myself have set before the male or female artist. This collection of sketches is only an experiment, only the beginning of the revelation of the female spirit, which has been forced to abandon the treatment of ‘its sorrows, joys, hopes, and wishes’ to others. I also know and recognize the impediments and obstacles that have been placed [before women], both intentionally and unintentionally, on the path of literature in general; and I am aware of the weakness and relative insignificance of our literature in particular. Nevertheless, all the guiles of the niggardly will not deplete my strength nor distance me from my position. Artistic perfection is my aspiration and my ultimate goal. Now, in publishing this Collection of Sketches I am filled with confidence that it will be received as a bold attempt to tread on new ground. (H. Shapiro 2008: 19; 2014: 36)

In all ways, the preface is a feminist manifesto urging women to depict their own experiences rather than surrendering their hearts to the imaginative incursions of men.4 Shapiro’s reference to the male Hebrew writer as a ‘wonder worker’ (mafli la’asot) alludes to the liturgical representation of the divine creator from the Asher yatsar prayer: ‘Blessed are You [masculine singular] . . . who created humankind with wisdom . . . working wondrously.’ Together with her description of the male author as one who ‘penetrates the woman’s heart’ (h.oder lev ishah), Shapiro anticipates later feminist theoretical objections to the idea of authorship based on a masculine conception of God, on the one hand, and of the pen as phallus, on the other. Shapiro’s reference to the treatment by men of women’s ‘sorrows, joys, hopes, and wishes’ is an explicit allusion to the landmark proto-feminist poem of 1878, Kotso shel yod by the maskil Y. L. Gordon. In this celebrated poem, Gordon focuses on the predicament of the agunah (chained wife) and points out other aspects of women’s second-class status under Jewish law. Shapiro regards such male-authored depictions of Jewish women’s experience as insufficient, and thus summons ‘many others of my sex’ to join her in fashioning ‘our own world, our own pains and longings’. That creative process, she suggests, belongs as much to women as to men. To sharpen the point, she signs the manifesto: Cand[idate] of Phil[osophy] Hava Shapiro Mother of All Living

In choosing the pen-name Eim Kol Hai, Shapiro asserts an unequivocal connection to her biblical namesake, the primordial mother Eve (in Hebrew, Hava).5 According to the second biblical account of creation, God decides, ‘It is not good for man to be alone’, and so resolves to ‘make a fitting helper for Adam’ (Gen. 2: 18). Initially the helper is referred to simply as ishah (woman). (Recall the expression h.oder lev ishah above.) Only after woman’s transgressive eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge does man rename his woman/wife Hava, providing the etymology em kol h.ai (mother of all living) (Gen. 3: 20). Soon thereafter, Adam ‘knows’ his wife, and she becomes pregnant and gives birth (Gen. 4: 1).

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler By assuming Eim Kol Hai as a pen-name, Hava—who was then a doctoral student in philosophy6—assumes the role of primeval, knowledge-seeking woman/ mother and casts herself as a literary progenitor alongside her male partners. Her literary offspring, too, she implies, deserve a generative, primary place in the Hebrew canon. Shapiro’s dedication of Kovets tsiyurim to her own mother, Menuhah, adds yet another dimension to her effort to create a new female literary line. While the Menuhah–Hava link is biological in nature, it also takes on a metaphorical significance, forged as it were by intellectual and literary affinity. In the biblical story, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge endows woman with the know-how to procreate, and provides the rationale for her new name (‘mother of all living’). Metaphorically speaking, Hava Shapiro, after being fed the fruit of the tree of her knowledge by her Hebraist mother, accords herself the name ‘Mother of All Living’ to signify her newly acquired capacity to engender the rebirth of Hebrew at the turn of the twentieth century. All this brings to mind Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s classic feminist adaptation of Harold Bloom’s exclusively masculine theory of the ‘anxiety of influence’. According to Bloom, (male) poets necessarily engage in revisionary oedipal struggle with their poetic precursors, figuratively wrestling them to the death in order to clear space for their own creative activity. Gilbert and Gubar note, however, that many early women poets and writers lacked a sense of female literary tradition and therefore struggled not with an anxiety of influence but with a countervailing ‘anxiety of authorship’. To strengthen and legitimate their literary ambitions, these women often specifically sought out ‘a female precursor, who far from representing a threatening force to be denied or killed, prove[d] by example that a revolt against patriarchal literary authority [was] possible’ (Gilbert and Gubar 1979: 49). Shapiro’s repeated invocation of her own mother as a source of inspiration, coupled with her adoption of the biblical name Eim Kol Hai, demonstrates two ways in which this pioneering female Hebraist imaginatively conjured up a female Hebrew precursor tradition, one that explicitly revolted against traditional conceptions of women.

Female Counter-Examples: Baron, Wengeroff, and Rakovsky It must be said that most literary historians regard Devorah Baron (1887–1956) as the first woman to produce short fiction in modern Hebrew, though Shapiro’s debut Hashoshanah appeared in Hador in 1901, a year before Baron published her first story in Hamelits. Moreover, Shapiro’s Kovets tsiyurim appeared some sixteen years before Baron’s first collection of stories, Sipurim (1927). The story of Baron’s emergence into a life of Hebrew and Yiddish letters is often quoted. Her rabbi father allowed her to sit behind the partition in the synagogue and listen

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while the boys in the community, including her brother Benjamin, studied the Pentateuch and the Talmud (Jelen 2007; Seidman 1997: 67–8). In many of Baron’s stories, it is the rabbi father who inspires his narrator/writer daughter, modelling a kind of compassionate approach to halakhic ruling that alleviates the suffering of women.7 In general, Baron crafted her intellectual self by drawing on the examples set by her father and brother, the latter of whom she followed to Minsk and Kovno to pursue a secular education. Until 1910, Baron’s path resembled that of the typical maskil: she moved from the shtetl to the city, supplemented traditional studies with general education, and eked out a livelihood by teaching Hebrew. By the time she emigrated to Palestine in 1910, forty-four of her stories had appeared in either Hebrew or Yiddish. In her stories that feature mothers, Baron portrays them as givers (or takers) of physical nourishment (Baron 1988: 36, 187, 204, 213). In Bar-avaz (‘Gosling’), for instance, as a daughter prepares to leave home to pursue her education in an urban setting, her mother plans to arm her with sustenance so that she will be well fed while in the city. When the gosling she buys winds up flying the coop, she is forced to slaughter a tasteless chicken in its place. As the story unfolds, the narrator-daughter alludes to the gosling experience as the first of many disappointments that accrue to her in the city, while the mother regards the escaped gosling as a metaphor for her daughter, who has similarly flown the coop. As in most of her stories where mothers make an appearance, Baron here endows the maternal figure with the capacity to provide physical nourishment for the child, whereas the father acts as an intellectual inspiration. In marked contrast, fathers rarely appear in Shapiro’s writing. Instead, Shapiro peppers her stories with mothers who nourish their children’s bodies as well as their minds, who understand their children’s psychology, and who nurture their spirit. Based on heartening experiences with her own mother, ‘Passover Nights’ (1925) showcases the subtle development of a daughter’s sense of self. The story is one of a suite of four Shapiro composed in the 1920s by blending vignettes from her childhood with first-person accounts of contemporary experiences in interwar Europe. Readers are induced into a fugue-like state where reality and fiction blur. Jewish holy days became occasions for Shapiro’s fond but also painful reminiscing, especially compared to the blighted present. The images of religious observances Shapiro offers up in these sketches are ‘veiled in glory and suffused with light’, in contrast to the ‘shadows and impressions’ of contemporary observance, which seems contrived at best but is mostly neglected by Jews daunted by the exigencies of the day (H. Shapiro 2008: 131; 2014: 120). The opening scenes of ‘Passover Nights’ provide rich details about daily religious life in the Pale of Settlement, with a cast of characters picked from Shapiro’s family tree. Female relatives play leading roles here as they undertake the arduous tasks performed in anticipation, ironically, of the feast celebrating liberation.

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler We note as well the ubiquity and authority of servants, enlisted not only in the care of the household but also in the carrying out of Jewish religious duties. Take Gittl the cook, for instance, the ‘simple, wretched creature’ wrapped from head to toe in ‘a long cloth outfit, part dress, part nightgown, a new kerchief on her head’, whose intermittent chastising does not upset the children because even they ‘recognize her current importance and elevated status’ in the annual Passover preparations (H. Shapiro 2008: 138; 2014: 125). Shapiro’s mother appears from time to time to supervise the work; ultimate authority rests with her in this domestic domain. Readers sense otherwise with regard to her daughter, who finds herself suspended between feminist literary aspirations and traditional expectations. While matzah-baking, the servant girl Susil asks Shapiro to jot a note for her. When she demurs, Susil implores, ‘You write such lovely notes’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 140; 2014: 126). At the Seder, however, her skills go unnoticed. Although Shapiro knows the Four Questions (of the Haggadah) as well as her brothers, she is relegated to the women’s table. No one but her mother seems to understand the offence she feels. As she explains: ‘I also know “the Questions” by heart, but noone pays any attention to me; the main attraction is my brother. Inside I am seething, I would have asked them even better than he did. But they send me to sit with the women. Only my mother sees my pain and consoles me with the wonderful caress of her eyes’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 140–1; 2014: 127). Indeed, here as elsewhere, Shapiro’s mother empathizes with the emotions of her budding female Hebraist daughter. In the second half of ‘Passover Nights’, Shapiro shifts to a depiction of herself in perilous post-revolutionary Kiev. As chair of the local Zionist organization, she finds out her life is at risk and goes into hiding with a Gentile family. She emerges only on Passover eve, in disguise, to join her mother where she is staying: ‘Dressed in men’s clothing, wearing a round mitre on my head like a papka [Russian: priest]’, Shapiro is led ‘through the streets that were devoid of even the shadow of a living creature’. As she approaches the designated home, ‘footsteps were heard’ and ‘the door opened, and confused and terrified stares fastened upon [her]’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 144; 2014: 129–30). She has forgotten that her clothes are likely to frighten her relatives. No matter. For here, too, like the Passover eve so many years ago at her childhood home, her ‘mother recognized [her] immediately’ and ‘charged’ over to greet her. If the sketch begins with Shapiro’s desire to ‘cross’ over into the realm of Jewish masculine ritual practice, it culminates in tangible signs of identity ‘crossings’, as she assumes a most unconventional leadership role and wraps her Jewish femininity in masculine Christian garb, a disguise that Menuhah nevertheless manages to uncover and decode. Indeed, it is Menuhah who has the last word in ‘Passover Nights’. Adapting the magid (storytelling) section of the Haggadah, ‘her face aglow’, she utters these

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words of hope: ‘In the same way that a second ago our terror was turned into joy, so shall all the troubles in which we find ourselves be turned into gladness, and we shall all go out from darkness into light’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 144; 2014: 130). Unlike the earlier Seder scene, where only male voices are heard, here a mother speaks out and provides comfort. Notably, the spectre of death hovers over the entire story of ‘Passover Nights’. It opens with a description of the town’s two cemeteries, which are adjacent to the market where Passover shopping occurs; during Passover preparations, Susil, dressed in a white uniform, is compared to a dead woman in a shroud; and informing all of this is the fact of the death of Shapiro’s mother, to whose memory the sketch is dedicated. Nevertheless, the female shalshelet hakabalah—the rarefied ‘chain of [Jewish] tradition’ which has been conventionally understood as outside a woman’s purview—is alive and well in ‘Passover Nights’. As the mother gains entry to the all-male tradition by mastering its language, so her daughter, who grows from a girl engaged in private, unsung study and letter-writing into a woman fully participating in the world of Hebrew letters. ‘Passover Nights’ calls to mind a staple of east European Jewish history, namely, the memoirs of Pauline Wengeroff (1833–1916), who began formally recording scenes from her past in German in 1898 at the age of 63 and did not stop until she had filled two volumes.8 In stark contrast to Shapiro, Wengeroff characterized the traditional way of Jewish life as ‘perfectly calm’ and rued the day when modernity came to subvert it (Magnus 2005: 102). The favourable illustrations of female competence, assertion, and power she provides in her memoirs are central to her primary grievance against modernity: women’s loss of power in the family and society (Magnus 2004: 42). In spite of the dizzying changes she witnessed during her lifetime, Wengeroff clung to the identity shaped during her childhood. According to her biographer Shulamit Magnus, Wengeroff did not internalize ‘a different gendered sense of self as a modernized Jew’, and the depictions of her mother seem rather banal, though illuminating for their vivid details of nineteenth-century Jewish practice (Wengeroff 2010: 42). As we might expect, Wengeroff’s mother is a commanding presence in her daughter’s memoirs in the field of domestic observance. In a language remarkably similar to Shapiro’s, Wengeroff describes the frenzied preparations for Passover that overtake the household from the day after Purim. Here too, domestics toil alongside family members, including ‘the indispensable chief servant of the household’, the cleaning woman nicknamed Meshya Kheziche (Wengeroff 2010: 118). Like Shapiro’s ghostly Susil, Meshya Kheziche is wrapped in white from head to toe, and the children watch ‘this apparition at work’ from a ‘precise distance’ as she sifts the flour for the matzot. ‘Meshya Kheziche’, adds Wengeroff, ‘was strictly forbidden to speak, so that no drop would fall from her mouth into the flour’ (119). Meanwhile, her mother ‘walked around, indefatigable’ (121), functioning as both chief inspector and supervisor.9

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler Although less well known, it is the Yiddish memoirs of Puah Rakovsky (1865–1955), Zikhroynes fun a yidisher revolutsionerin [Memoirs of a Radical Jewish Woman], that show Shapiro was not alone in feeling straitjacketed by the social and religious expectations born by Jewish women of her generation.10 In fact, the details of Rakovsky’s life bear an uncanny resemblance to those of Shapiro: she was tutored as a girl in Hebrew and in European languages and literature (but went to h.eder and private Jewish school, and studied the Pentateuch with a rabbi at home); she later broke from the religious culture of her youth and began to publish in the Hebrew and Yiddish press; she fell in love with another man while in an unhappy marriage, and not only carried on a clandestine correspondence with him but eventually left her husband and secured a divorce; she had a son as a newlywed (and a daughter three years later), whom she intermittently left with relatives; she moved away from home to receive training for and pursue a career (as a teacher; she ultimately established a school for girls); she associated with some of the same literary men as Shapiro (e.g. Nahum Sokolow and Uri Nisan Gnessin); and, finally, she shared Shapiro’s hope that her writings would inspire a younger generation of women (see the foreword to her memoirs). For all their similarities, however, Rakovsky’s relationship with her mother was very different from Shapiro’s. By the age of 13, Rakovsky had already begun to question the existence of God, and, concluding that there was none, broke with her family’s ancestral customs (Rakovsky 2002: 28). Her mother had no empathy for her daughter’s ‘stormy spirit’ (36). ‘Mama’, she asked, ‘How come I understand that you can’t be like me, but you won’t understand that I can’t be like you?’ (28). In response, she was married off shortly after her sixteenth birthday and gave birth nine months later. ‘That’, Rakovsky concludes, ‘was the saddest time of my life. . . . Whether it was because of my youth—I was almost a child—or because the atavism of generations of enslaved Jewish women had an effect on me. I was harnessed and yoked’ (36). Within six years, however, she would be a free woman, divorced from her husband, but hardly able to return to her parents’ home. The gulf between them was unbridgeable. Rakovsky would remain an ‘avowed heretic’ (67), adrift from her mother and father with no familial support in reserve. The opposite was true for Shapiro, who was able to rely on her mother, even as she jettisoned convention and resolved to end her eight-year marriage to Limel Rosenbaum of Warsaw. Menuhah embraced her rebellious daughter when she escaped to her childhood home and even offered to sell off family jewels to support her in her uncertain future. At wit’s end, Menuhah sought advice from her daughter’s mentor/lover Brainin, who had paid a visit to Slavuta and left in his wake a most distressed young woman (Me. Shapiro 1900). In a subsequent correspondence, Menuhah confessed to Brainin the grave concern she harboured for her daughter over fulfilling her request to study abroad (H. Shapiro 2014: 279). In the end, though Brainin advised that she return to her husband, Shapiro

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did no such thing. She divorced Rosenbaum, retrieved her dowry, and pursued a formal education in Zurich and then Bern, thanks to the assistance of her mother and brothers.

Male Counter-Examples: Fathers and Sons The intimacy between women in Shapiro’s works is at odds with the regnant familial trope of the era: father vs. son. The acerbic battle between a conservative elder and a rebellious youth was being waged in both Russian and Jewish arenas of the day. As depicted in Ivan Turgenev’s landmark novel Fathers and Sons (1862), generational conflict occupied the Russian intelligentsia, which by then had split between philosophical idealists, who limited their activity to education, and materialists and devotees of empirical science, whose pragmatism goaded them into direct action with the masses. The latter culminated in narodnichestvo (populism), a movement whose efforts to ‘go to the people’ to propagandize and agitate collapsed in failure by the 1870s. A third and final phase emerged in the wake of Alexander II’s assassination, when the ‘grandsons’ began to identify as members of political movements and resumed the task of enlightening the masses (Malia 1960: 441–58). For Jews, too, a generation of defiant young men had emerged in Russia by the 1840s, based on new, secular culture imported from the West. Pedagogic in character and optimistic in tone, the Haskalah was characterized by an acceptance of the authority of non-Jewish ideas and mores as at least equal to traditional Jewish teachings and behaviour. With the lifting of censorship bans under Alexander II in the early 1860s, a Jewish press took hold in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian, and social messages began to appear in Jewish literature as authors with a panoply of perspectives reached the reading public. What is more, with the meteoric rise of pan-European autobiographical discourse during the second half of the nineteenth century, confessional works gained traction in the Jewish world too. Hebrew autobiographical writing by Micha Josef Berdyczewski, Mordecai Aaron Guenzburg (Avi’ezer, 1864) and especially Moses Leib Lilienblum (H . atot ne’urim and Derekh teshuvah, 1876 and 1899) inscribed the archetype of the maskil into the Jewish landscape. Building on Alan Mintz’s literary analysis of maskilic autobiography, Marcus Moseley discerns an aggregate of themes that obtains in the genre: a childhood denied; denunciation of both traditional Jewish educational institutions and premature arranged marriage; and cognitive dissonance resulting from exposure to the European Enlightenment and the Russian Haskalah (Mintz 1989; Moseley 2006: 368–76). Although Shapiro, too, was a rebel who turned her back on the religious practices of her youth and lived her adulthood as a maskilah, her exposure to the Enlightenment occasioned neither a loss of respect for her mother and father nor a sense of exile from her childhood home. Yet her use of (secular) Hebrew for

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler autobiographical purposes—in contrast to, say, German or Yiddish—necessarily links her to a modern and, in many instances, counter-traditional orientation. Because she was granted free access to enlightened texts from an early age, she assimilated them with ease; however, her access to rabbinic and liturgical texts was narrowed, leading to alienation from traditional Jewish practice. Typically, when maskilim’s faith in the verities of revealed religion became eroded, they left their family home and became lost, uprooted (telushim), wandering Jews in Europe’s urban centres. The same can be said of Shapiro, with the caveat that she returned again and again to her childhood home, perpetually connected to her past through her mother until her death in 1921, an occasion which for Shapiro meant the end of a beloved era: ‘She is no more, my good Mother, the wonderful Mother who was always so full of life and aspired so much to live is gone. And with the death of Mother, the most beautiful chapter of my life has come to a close. The connection to the past has been broken’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 406; 2014: 195). At the same time, though alienated from Jewish tradition (which led ‘others of her sex’ to drown themselves in the ocean of European language and literature, lost to the Jewish people), Shapiro kept a firm stronghold in the Hebrew spiritual soil, albeit in foreign lands. She did not follow other female Hebraists, such as Baron and Nehama Pukhachewsky, to Palestine. Rather, she remained in Europe and became a prolific writer in a language she neither heard nor regularly spoke. Nevertheless, Hebrew became ‘intertwined with the strings of [her] heart’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 381; 2014: 172).

Self vs. Child: A Mother’s Excruciating Conflict In the end, it must be said that the ‘Mother of All Living’ made a choice inconsistent with the essentialist underpinnings of her pen-name. When confronted with the reality of leaving her husband to pursue an ‘individualistic’ new path for herself, the dilemma of her son’s care arose. Were she to pursue a formal education abroad, taking along a 5-year-old boy seemed unfeasible if not impossible. We do know that Limel Rosenbaum put pressure on his wife to remain in the marriage. If she did, he would allow her to study abroad so long as she kept his surname (H. Shapiro 2008: 454–5; 2014: 251–2). Shapiro refused all compromises. As it happened, once the couple separated, their son, Pinhas, remained with his father in Warsaw until his adolescence. Whether this was due to a custody arrangement or by choice is unknown. We do know, however, that provisions were made for Shapiro to visit Pinhas in Warsaw, and later to take him with her to Slavuta for extended periods of time. Mother and son spent weeks together, especially in the summers, and sweet anecdotes about the visits are sprinkled throughout her diary.

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But it is the pain of separation that sears most of the diary’s pages. After departing from him for the first time in 1903, Shapiro laments: My son! I have left you, abandoned you, gone far away from you! Do you remember me, or have you forgotten me? Do you curse me or bless me? My son! Isn’t that one word enough to make the bitter tears flow and pool, seething from my torn and wounded heart? My son! I think of you and my soul sighs! I see your picture and your tiny, tender body, your lovely small hands stretched toward me, your big searching eyes, wondering and seeking. I see, I see my son! (H. Shapiro 2008: 366–7; 2014: 158)

Within a month she returned to Warsaw for a visit and could hardly describe the ‘endless bliss and deep sorrow’ that overcame her. When he called her mamusie˛ (Polish, ‘mummy’) her heart filled with ‘joy and gladness’. But it broke into pieces when he innocently asked, ‘Why does Mummy cry so much?’ (2008: 367–9; 2014: 158–60). While Shapiro claimed to care little about what others thought of her, she feared her son’s judgement when he grew to maturity. ‘My God, what would I give’, she implored, ‘only to know, only to be confident that when he is a man, my son will understand me’ (2014: 161–2). But in truth, she worried about the present as well. Over and over again she claimed to be ‘uprooting’ her maternal feelings as she separated from her son. The ‘voices of her heart’ persistently whispered, ‘Your place is there, with him!’ (2014: 183). For several years, it seemed as if Shapiro lived in a perpetual state of agony at her separation from her son until ‘Everything came to a standstill’. All that had changed began to take on a ‘permanent form’. A routine set in that kept her somewhat inured to the anguish of her daily reality: One grows accustomed slowly even to awareness of this most excruciating of pains, as it comes on and persists and remains constant, and perhaps this guards against utter stagnation. For after all these changes and battles occurred, along with the critical change [i.e. divorce], after the storm abated and everything took its final form, I feel as though my life is stable once again. I am not complaining. Every hour, every minute, I feel unequalled joy, the joy of freedom—for which I paid such a steep price. (H. Shapiro 2008: 374–5; 2014: 165)

Constrained by the gendered expectations of her day, Shapiro struck a Faustian bargain of sorts. In exchange for the freedom to pursue her intellectual aspirations, she gave up daily contact with her only child. Only when he reached the age of maturity did mother and son reunite on a more permanent basis. In 1919—after living through the agony of the First World War, the pogroms that racked their homeland, and the Russian Revolution (with the accompanying dread that Pinhas might be drafted into the Red Army)—the two escaped to Czechoslovakia with the help of a Gentile forester formerly employed by her father. Twenty years later, Pinhas emigrated to America, and the

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler two never saw each other again. Although her work continued to be published until 1938, it is her diary that contains Shapiro’s last known words in Hebrew. In the final entry—written sixteen months before her death—she describes relinquishing the diary that had ‘become part of [her] soul’. ‘I have not written in Hebrew for over two years’, she wrote, ‘and I am about to be parted as well from this diary.’ She continued: ‘My son is on the other side of the ocean, and I am going, who knows where?’ (H. Shapiro 2008: 412; 2014: 204). Having surrendered her flesh-and-blood child for the second time, she was now surrendering an additional offspring—this one of a less literal, though indeed literary, nature. Especially noteworthy in this regard is how she anthropomorphized her diary in the final entry as ‘dead paper that nevertheless breathes the spirit of life from that which is written within!’ Shapiro, who called herself ‘Mother of All Living’, regarded her perspective—a woman’s perspective—as critical to the birthing process of modern Hebrew literature. The maternal sacrifice she made by relinquishing her son to his father’s care for over a decade, heartrending as it was, enabled her to become a mother of a different sort: a creator of secular, modern Hebrew stories and essays that also engaged the cultural and intellectual climate of contemporary Europe at a time when so few women were capable of doing so. The example that her own mother modelled for her as both a proficient Hebraist and a persistent, loving maternal presence both complicated and enabled the choice Shapiro felt compelled to make. Would that she had not had to choose.

Notes 1

Baron’s father and brother influenced her (see below); Hemda Ben-Yehuda’s husband mentored her; and Markel-Mosessohn sought guidance from her husband, Anshel, as well as the famed maskilic poet Yehudah Leib Gordon. See Balin 2000: 196–7.

2

In this earlier memoiristic sketch, Shapiro refers directly to imi hah.avivah (‘my beloved mother’), a formulation she repeats in her other memoiristic sketch Leilei pesah., dedicated to the memory of her mother. The later sketch, ‘Types’, uses almost identical language to refer to a ‘beloved mother in Israel’, indicating that Shapiro was drawing her ideal motherscholar type from her own mother Menuhah.

3

For works by female Hebraists that pre-date Shapiro’s preface, see Cohen and Feiner 2006.

4

Not incidentally, John Stuart Mill, whose works Shapiro read, similarly argues in his famous essay ‘The Subjection of Women’ (1869) that ‘we may safely assert that the knowledge which men can acquire of women . . . is wretchedly imperfect and superficial, and always will be, until women themselves have told all that they have to tell.’ For a copy of the essay, see Schneir 1971: 162–78.

5

Cf. Devorah Baron (1887–1956), whose early works appear under the name Ishah neviah (‘Prophetess Woman’) as an allusion to the biblical prophetess and poet Deborah, as in Zug mitkotetet (‘Quarrelling Couple’, 1905) (Baron 1988: 375–6).

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6

Shapiro received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Bern in 1910. See Diary (4 Aug. 1910), in Shapiro 2008: 381; 2014: 173.

7

See such stories as Mishpah.ah and Hayom harishon in Baron 1951.

8

English translations of Pauline Wengeroff’s Memoiren einer Grossmutter: Bilderaus der Kulturgeschichte der Juden Russlands im 19 Jahrhundert include a version edited and translated by Magnus (2010 and 2014) and a version edited by Cooperman and translated by Wenkert (2000). Excerpts from Wengeroff’s memoirs that appear here are from Magnus.

9

For all her traditional bearing, Wengeroff unexpectedly mentions that her mother was ‘very well read in Hebrew literature’ (Wengeroff 2010: 183); these were presumably pious tracts.

10

The Yiddish version has been partially translated into Hebrew (Lo nikhnati, 1951) and fully into English by Barbara Harshav and edited by Paula Hyman as My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland (2002).

References adler, eliyana r. 2011. In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia. Detroit. balin, carole b. 2000. To Reveal Our Hearts: Jewish Women Writers in Tsarist Russia. Cincinnati, Ohio. baron, devorah. 1927. Stories [Sipurim]. Tel Aviv. —— 1951. Chapters [Parshiyot]. Jerusalem. —— 1988. Early Tales [Parshiyot mukdamot]. Jerusalem. cohen, tova, and shmuel feiner, eds. 2006. The Voice of the Hebrew Maiden: Writings of Enlightened Women of the Nineteenth Century [Kol almah ivriyah: kitvei nashim maskilot bame’ah hatesha-esreh]. Tel Aviv. frischmann, david. 1914. Complete Works of David Frischmann, vol. vii: Letters on Literature [Kol kitvei david frishman: mikhtavim al devar hasifrut]. Warsaw. gilbert, sandra m., and susan m. gubar. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven. jelen, sheila. 2007. Intimations of Difference. Syracuse, NY. kelly, catriona. 1994. A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 1820–1992. New York. magnus, shulamit s. 2004. ‘Kol Ishah: Women and Pauline Wengeroff’s Writing of an Age’. Nashim, 7: 42. —— 2005. ‘Sins of Youth, Guilt of a Grandmother: Moshe Leib Lilienblum and Pauline Wengeroff’. In ChaeRan Freeze, Paula Hyman, and Antony Polonsky, eds., Jewish Women in Eastern Europe, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 18. Oxford. malia, martin. 1960. ‘What Is the Intelligentsia?’ Daedalus, 89(3): 441–58. mintz, alan. 1989. ‘Banished from Their Father’s Table’: Loss of Faith and Hebrew Autobiography. Bloomington, Ind. moseley, marcus. 2006. Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography. Stanford, Calif. parush, iris. 2004. Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society. Waltham, Mass.

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carole b. balin and wendy i. zierler rakovsky, puah. 2002. My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland, ed. Paula E. Hyman, trans. Barbara Harshav. Bloomington, Ind. rich, adrienne. 1986. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York. schneir, miriam, ed. 1971. Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. New York. seidman, naomi. 1997. A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish. Berkeley, Calif. shapiro, hava (eim kol hai). 1909. Kovets tsiyurim [A Collection of Sketches]. Warsaw. —— 2008. Behikansi atah [In My Entering Now: Selected Works of Hava Shapiro], ed. Carole B. Balin and Wendy I. Zierler. Tel Aviv. —— 2014. ‘To Tread on New Ground’: Selected Hebrew Writings of Hava Shapiro, ed. Carole B. Balin and Wendy I. Zierler. Detroit. shapiro, menuhah. 1900. ‘Letter to Reuven Brainin’ (Rus.). Reuven Brainin Collection, Correspondence iii, Box T, Jewish Public Library Archive, Montreal. 25 July. shapiro, m[oses]. 1964. ‘Letter’. In Baruch Caro, ed., Kovets letoledot hasifrut ha’ivrit bedorot ha’aharonim, 36–7. Tel Aviv. wengeroff, pauline. 2000. Rememberings: The World of a Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman, trans. Henny Wenkart. Bethesda, Md. —— 2010 and 2014. Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century, ed. and trans. Shulamit Magnus. Stanford, Calif.

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Maurice Sendak’s Jewish Mother(s) jodi eichler-levine

Winner of the National Medal of Arts (USA), Caldecott Medal, Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and National Book Award (USA), Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) ranks among the most prolific and lauded children’s book authors of the twentieth century. Born to Jewish Polish parents, his thoughts on mothers played out in his wildly popular books and his interviews over the span of his long life. They also come to readers through vivid images: milk, the moon, mourning mothers, children kidnapped by goblins. Educators, literature scholars, and art historians have studied Sendak, but, with a few exceptions, he has been overlooked in the world of Jewish studies (Lambert 2013: 92; May 2001: 141–9). His relationship with his mother Sadie (Sarah), coupled with the presence and absence of mothers throughout his texts, provides us with a window onto some of the best-known portrayals of Jewish women in American culture, namely, Jewish mothers and pseudo-mothers on the pages of popular children’s literature. Sendak portrays explicit and implicit Jewish mothers in both comic and tragic modes. Ultimately, he recreates families in a culturally Jewish idiom that is both stereotypical and subversively queered (Sedgwick 1990). His broad notions of Jewish mothers and the painful pull of families expand our understanding of Jewish homes. Sendak does not just experience and portray Jewish mothers; on a metaphorical level, he becomes a Jewish mother himself. Methodologically, this essay combines close readings of Sendak’s stories with historical contextualization and critical theory. Attending to what we know about Sendak’s relationship with his mother and other relatives broadens our sense of his work as a whole. His identity as a gay man who came out to the public very late in life, and as a man who wrote for children but had no biological children of his own, is also crucial for considering his portrayals of motherhood. Using lenses from the field of gender studies, we can see how constructions of Jewish masculinity complement ideas about motherhood in these works. I revisit several of Sendak’s books that either feature or significantly elide mothers, including Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, Dear Mili, and Brundibar. I also examine the 2009 film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, because of its extraordinary attention to maternal images and the fact that Sendak served as a consultant on this movie.

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Sendak’s work constructs Jewish mothers who dwell outside halakhic (Jewish legal) constructions of motherhood and the gendered institutional debates of American Jews as they separated into denominations. He negotiates more broadly with both American and European Jewish culture, painting women in complex strokes that sometimes echo the ‘overbearing’ Jewish mother while also reflecting the limited power and emotional absence of his own mother. These mothers and mother figures are not ideals; rather, they build upon a mix of transgressive tropes. They are layered, messy, difficult women, haunted by the ghost of Sadie Sendak. Sendak’s literal and metaphorical ‘Jewish mothers’ provide new models for Jewish motherhood in mid-twentieth- to early twenty-first-century America. As more than a writer, but a generator of books, Sendak harnesses both life and loss; through the alchemy of his pain, joy, and creativity, he both portrays and embodies maternity. Reversals, masquerade, and topsy-turvy worlds complicate idealized (or vilified) Jewish mothers in his works. Sendak’s own melancholy and his lifelong grappling with his mother’s depression became, through his writing and speaking, ‘a public feeling’, one through which he expressed fantasies on many levels (Cvetkovitch 2012). The queerness of fantasy—the Greek root of ‘fantasy’ means ‘to show’—helps Sendak to paint queer Jewish and pseudoJewish mothers who are recognized through pains that go beyond stereotypical images of domestic martyrs, willing to do anything for their children. As Judith Butler argues, through psychoanalysis, ‘we can come to understand how fantasy is essential to an experience of one’s own body, or that of another, as gendered’ (Butler 2004: 14–15). Sendak’s fantasies provide images of gender that ask us all to re-encounter our bodies and our relationship to the bodies of our relatives.

‘Your Mommy’s Supposed To Be Perfect’ Sendak’s parents, Sadie Schindler and Philip Sendak, were immigrants from eastern Europe during the early twentieth century; they met after arriving separately in New York City. Born in 1928, Maurice was their third child, with an older brother, Jack, and sister, Natalie. His childhood and teen years were spent in Brooklyn. The family moved from one apartment to another every few years, in part because of his mother’s aversion to the smells and chaos created when landlords repainted apartments (Lanes 1980: 9–20). His relationship with his mother was strained by her serious depression and anxiety, her experiences of European pogroms, and her worry for Sendak, who was a sickly child. He suffered from a variety of ailments and spent a great deal of time at home, watching the other children play from his window and sketching in his mother’s kitchen. The Sendak abode was a complicated place. Most of the relatives Sadie and Philip had left behind in Poland perished in the Holocaust. In a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers, Sendak discussed how these losses shadowed

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his family dynamic, with an emphasis on Holocaust guilt. Sendak had survived while so many of his cousins were dead: ‘It was so cruel of my parents. It constantly made me feel that I was shamelessly enjoying myself when they [the dead children, ‘kids’] were being cooked in an oven’ (Moyers 2004). Thus, although his parents were safe in America during the Second World War, Sendak exhibits many traits of second-generation Holocaust survivors: children who grew up with either silence around the Holocaust or, as in Sendak’s case, an abundance of reminders and discourse, haunting their childhood and adding a secondary trauma and ‘postmemory’ of violence to their experience (Hirsch 1997: 17–40). Sendak discussed his fraught relationship with his depressed mother frequently and in detail. He recalled: It was a really unkempt, unruly small apartment, three children, father who worked so hard, mother who had problems emotionally and mentally. And we didn’t know that. Your mommy’s supposed to be perfect. She should be there for you, love you, kiss you. Every movie we ever saw . . . We knew what it should be like. And it wasn’t. And we had no sympathy at all. (Moyers 2004)

Elsewhere he said that ‘she was always worried. She also had a gruff, abrupt manner, because I think that any display of feeling embarrassed her’ (Lanes 1980: 18). In terms of the history of Jewish mothers in America, Sendak’s relationship with Sadie is difficult to classify. There is, of course, no single type of Jewish mother, or even one Jewish mother stereotype. At times he voices a nostalgic longing for an idealized, self-sacrificing immigrant yiddishe mama (Jewish mother). Yet on other occasions he does not describe her as the monstrous, overbearing mother who became a stock stereotype of mid- to late twentieth-century Jewish humour (Antler 2007: 123–48). His mother’s ‘gruff’ manner does reflect the popular notion that Jewish mothers exert power over supposedly feminized, weak Jewish fathers, to the point of performing masculine assertiveness; note, too, how he describes his mother as unloving and emotionally distant. Rather than presenting the sort of overbearing mother who became a stock stereotype of Jewish literature and film, Sendak’s works are, in many ways, a form of second-generation Holocaust survivor literature, in which mothers are represented as ‘distant’ and ‘deeply flawed’ (Lieber 2005). In both his musings and his litera-ture, Jewish mothers—and other relatives—have moments of monstrosity and warmth, often all mixed up together.

A Missing Mother Rendered Visible: Monstrous Maternity and Where the Wild Things Are I begin with a misplaced mother. In Sendak’s work, some mothers are absent, distant, or exist only in the gaps beyond the printed page. In Where the Wild Things Are, Max’s mother never appears in an illustration, but she drives the story, send-

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ing him off to bed without any supper and then relenting at the book’s close, when he returns and finds that his supper ‘was still hot’ (Sendak 1963). Mickey of In the Night Kitchen wanders in an urban dreamscape on his own, but sings of milk, food, emotions, and the moon; his mother is not present in the book, but her gigantic kitchen implements are. As in classic European fairy tales, mothers are omitted in some of Sendak’s greatest works, including Wild Things, which is inarguably the book for which he is best known. This lacuna enhances a sense of vulnerability and the ways that these young protagonists must forge their own way in the universe. In this and most of his later books, Sendak’s children, not their parents, are the agents of their own stories. Where the Wild Things Are begins with, ‘The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind / and another / his mother called him “wild thing!” and Max said “i’ll eat you up!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything’ (Sendak 1963). Sendak reported that his own mother would call him vilde chaya, or ‘wild animal’ in Yiddish, and he also recalled being sent to bed without any supper (Moyers 2004). Yet Max’s mother is never visually present in Wild Things, and speaks only one line of dialogue. She bookends the text, catalysing Max’s journey by sending him off hungry, and drawing him back home with the tantalizing smell of the meal she ultimately sets out in his room. Thus, the prime mover of the plot’s mechanics is an unseen creator. She is the one who birthed Max, but she is not explicitly included in his story. At the start, she seems to be the missing ‘mommy’ who is ‘supposed to be there for you’, a doppelgänger of Sadie Sendak. At the end, however, her decision to serve dinner represents a wish fulfilled: it is there, placed so carefully and lovingly on a table. Even then, we still do not see her: only her handiwork. Here, food is quite literally love, but the lover herself is disembodied. Other Jews are explicitly depicted in the book, however, and they are fearsome, caring, smothering, and so much more: the wild things themselves. On this island, Max meets substitute parents: a surrogate family that is frightening but whom he can ultimately control. Sendak stated that the wild things were based upon his Jewish relatives who would pinch his cheeks and declare that they could ‘eat him up’. In fact, he encountered some of these relatives in the context of a Jewish mourning ritual, as described in this excerpt from an interview with Bill Moyers: And then, we were at . . . someone had died. My brother, sister and I were sitting shiva, the Jewish ceremony. And all we did was laugh hysterically. I remember our relatives used to come from the old country, those few who got in before the gate closed, all on my mother’s side. And how we detested them. The cruelty that children . . . you know, kids are hard. And these people didn’t speak English. And they were unkempt. Their teeth were horrifying . . . hair, unravelling out of their noses. And they’d pick you up and hug you and kiss you, ‘Aggghh. Oh, we could eat you up’.

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And we know they would eat anything, anything. And so, they’re the wild things. And when I remember them, the discussion with my brother and sister, how we laughed about these people who we of course grew up to love very much, I decided to render them as the wild things, my aunts and my uncles and my cousins. And that’s who they are. (Sendak 1963)

Thus, the final images of the wild things were extended Jewish relatives— cousins, uncles, aunts: they were not Sadie. However, in some early drafts of the book, one monstrous figure is quite explicitly a mother. Selma Lanes in The Art of Maurice Sendak (1980) analyses an intriguing sequence in the book when it was still titled Where the Wild Horses Are. In this version, the boy protagonist stands in a magic garden. Then, ‘Someone appeared and said “stay with me, I am your mother.” “That cannot be”, said the boy, “you do not look like my mother, and besides my mother is home waiting for me.”’ Then this pseudo-mother transforms herself, like a werewolf, into a vicious creature: ‘With a growl the makebelieve mother turned into a terrible wolf and chased the boy out of the magic garden.’ He, in turn, metamorphoses into an old man, who frightens the wolf away (Lanes 1980: 89–92). Thus, at one point, Sendak’s Jewish mother was quite literally a monster on the page, just as she was a frightening figure off it. Here is the power of Sendak’s interest in masquerade, in things not turning out quite the way they ought to. As in Little Red Riding Hood, a dangerous wolf passes as a comforting relative. The child masters it by literally transforming into an adult, rather than performing Max’s trick of staring into the wild thing’s yellow eyes and play-acting at being a king. The false mother initially appears ordinary, with no illness or anger. Then her teeth and claws emerge. In real life, Sadie Sendak passed her own traumas down to her children through fierce, frightening tales of persecution, ‘stories of Cossacks descending on the Jewish town of her childhood, and of being hidden with her brothers and sisters in the dark cellar of her father’s store’ (Lanes 1980: 26). Sendak could not conquer those historical demons, but Max could prevail in the midst of Dionysian chaos. As in this mother/wolf draft, Jewish mothers have historically been figured as literal or figurative monsters (Antler 2007). Other critics have traced the connections between eastern European vampire lore and antisemitism (Halberstam 1995), or the monsterizing of Jews that accompanied centuries of European persecution (Cohen 1996: 8, 16). In Spike Jonze’s 2009 film version of the book, on which Sendak was a close consultant, the Jewishness and monstrosity of the wild things is even more pronounced through their accents and their first names, which include ‘Ira’ and ‘Judith’. In the film, Max’s mother is present on screen, as is a pseudo-mother, a female wild thing named KW. So is monstrosity, that hallmark of American stereotypes of the ‘overbearing’ Jewish mother. Read through this lens, the wild things’ cry, ‘We’ll eat you up! We love you so!’, evokes dysfunctional family monstrosity: a mix of consumption and adoration.

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Max’s film mother, played by Catherine Keener, portrays a much more recent stereotype: the overworked, exhausted, single working mother. Her distance stems from the demands of the second shift, rather than from mental illness, as was the case with Sadie Sendak. Max witnesses her sadness during a stressful work call and tries to entertain her. In one lovely, sad shot, we see her from his view below the table: he stares up at a tired woman hanging up the phone, sighing in resignation. She is an explicitly loving if sometimes exasperated figure, emotionally close to Max. She asks him for a cheering story and types his tale on her computer. Over forty years after the original book, Max’s mother has been updated to a twenty-first-century model. Her work may provide another explanation for Max’s loneliness, one that goes beyond the existential loneliness of childhood. Keener’s portrayal is also a fine corrective of the mythical stay-at-home mother who bakes perfect cakes and stands ready to greet her family in a starched apron—that woman only existed in certain cases and moments (lower-class immigrants more typically had working mothers), yet that imagined domestic goddess remains part of our contemporary cultural imagination (Coontz 1993). In the film, when Max quarrels with his mother, a mix of fidelity to the text and some entirely new players is apparent. Before he puts on his wolf suit, he peers at his mother flirting with a handsome male dinner guest, laughing over wine in the living room; he feels sad and excluded. Only then does he put on his wolf suit and stamp angrily down the stairs. In the kitchen, he complains about dinner— frozen corn, not ‘real corn’, further evidence of his mother’s stretched, harried daily life. Ultimately, in an extraordinary standoff, Max climbs up high upon the kitchen’s island counter. His mother begs him to come down. Instead, he folds his arms and shouts, ‘Woman, feed me!!’ As their fight continues, Max screams ‘i’ll eat you up!’ just as he does in the book (Jonze 2009). His mother declares him ‘out of control’ and sends him to his room with no dinner—but in this adaptation Max flees the house and runs off into a forest rather than seeing his bedroom transform into one.1 Ultimately, Max finds a different sort of maternal figure on the island of the wild things. The 105-minute film examines these creatures and their familial dynamics in nuanced, creative ways that the book cannot. Max’s relationship with a male wild thing named Carol and with a female wild thing named KW reveals a search for alternative families and the achingly painful nature of love. Carol and KW seem to be an estranged, perhaps romantic (or sibling) couple. They experience great tension throughout the film, particularly due to KW’s affinity for her new friends, a pair of scraggly owls named Bob and Terry. Throughout Max’s adventures with the wild things, anxiety about the state of the world and interpersonal dynamics runs high for all of the characters. When Max finally meets the mysterious Bob and Terry, who are portrayed as oracles of a sort, he asks them the poignant question: ‘How do I make everyone OK?’ Their answer is unintelligible. Max wants to keep the wild things and his real-world family happy, but does not

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know how to do so. As he appears to lose his ‘powers’, the wild things, in turn, are frightened. When they first made him king, they asked: ‘Will you keep out all the sadness?’ When Max is unmasked as just a boy, this promise goes unfulfilled. In a powerful sequence, perhaps the climax of the film, Max flees from an angry Carol, who has discovered that Max is not really a king. Carol shouts, ‘You were supposed to take care of us, you promised. i’ll eat you up!’ Like Max in his mother’s kitchen, Carol is accused of being ‘out of control’, and, again like Max, he stumbles through the forest, lost and furious. What happens next is a rich combination of maternal protection and literal eating. With Carol close at his heels, Max encounters KW, who urges him into her giant, furry body: ‘Crawl inside my mouth, I’ll hide you!’ Max slips down through a narrow tunnel into a gooey, womblike space, with just a small circle of light visible above him. Here, Max is truly eaten—but never digested. He hears KW calm Carol, who says, sadly, ‘I just wanted us all to be together.’ Max hears their voices in muffled tones, just as babies in utero hear their parents’ voices beyond the walls of their mother’s body. After Carol departs, Max remains, cosy and wet, in KW’s stomach. As with his biological mother, he attempts to protect her emotionally: ‘He doesn’t mean to be that way . . . he’s just scared.’ KW, her eyes resigned and exhausted, says: ‘Well, he makes it harder and it’s hard enough already.’ Then KW starts to close her mouth, and Max begins to choke, unable to breathe. He asks her to take him out. Reluctantly, she reaches her hand down into her throat, gently grabs hold of his wolf costume, and pulls him out through her lips, in an image that startlingly evokes a birth scene: he is covered in goo and wet, just fitting through a slit mouth that looks like a vagina. Is this a reverse birth, moving up instead of down? A rebirth? A realization that separation is part of growth? A reminder of his own mother, the one who birthed him the first time? A reminder that KW is not his mother, spurring him to return, as in the book, to ‘a place where someone loved him best of all’ (Sendak 1963)? The scene operates on all of these levels: it is clearly a turning point in the narrative. As he sits and recovers on a log, he tells KW: ‘I wish you guys had a mom’, and decides, ‘I’m gonna go home’ (Jonze 2009). Thus, in the film, it is not the smell of his mother’s cooking but, instead, the care of a surrogate mother that recalls Max to his origins. Ultimately, just as in the book, he walks to the beach where his boat awaits. The scene is far more sombre than the one in the text. In the book, the wild things roar on the shore as they cry out, ‘Oh please don’t go! We’ll eat you up—we love you so!’ (Sendak 1963). In the film, Max says a quiet goodbye to most of them in turn, except for Carol, who is off sulking. Judith, a grumpy maternal figure who serves as a foil to KW, tells him, ‘You’re the first king we haven’t eaten.’ KW lifts him gently into the boat. Placing her face close to his, she whispers: ‘Don’t go . . . I’ll eat you up, I love you so.’ The comment is unbearably tender; it is hushed like a lullaby, not yelled in distress.

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Collective mourning and roaring do follow once Carol runs to the beach to bid Max farewell. He howls a sad, ‘Arooooo!’ Max answers in turn, and aroos in a call and response with all of the wild things. Again, the tone, though louder, is one of grief, not attack. Finally, after a reverse voyage, Max re-enters his home. Here, unlike in the book, his mother is a visible presence on screen—though there is no dialogue for the rest of the film. During these final moments, she shows her tremendous relief at his return. Like KW, she stares at him closely in the face, pulling back his wolf hood, removing his wildness and revealing the scared little boy below, with a look of wonder on her face. They embrace, and then we see him sitting at their kitchen table, eating a massive slice of chocolate cake and drinking a tall glass of milk: the same meal we see in the book, minus the soup. Here, Max’s mother redeems and strengthens their bond through food. Unlike in the book, she is embodied and present, sitting close to him and watching as he eagerly consumes his dessert. The lack of soup, which is featured not just in Where the Wild Things Are but also in Chicken Soup with Rice and other Sendak classics, alters the meal into one of sheer decadence. Perhaps soup is simply not as lavish on film as pastry, but, unlike chocolate cake, it needs to be warm. In the book, the fact that the soup ‘was still hot’ becomes the iconic symbol of Max’s mother’s love. Food remains a crucial ingredient to the story’s ending, on many levels. As in religious rituals and other customs, breaking bread together solidifies relationships; as in many stereotypical American portrayals of the Jewish mother, food is love, though here it is not served with a side dish of guilt or forced upon the child. Most significantly, Sendak saw food and eating as central to life, literacy, and thinking about families. He stated, ‘The business of eating is such an immensely important part of life for a child. The Grimms’ tales are full of things being eaten and then disgorged.’ He also connected the metaphorical consumption of love— Max or the monsters threatening, ‘I’ll eat you up!’—with physical sustenance and psychological complications: On the face of it, what could be more destructive? But, in fact, the child may not view it in that light. It’s the most natural thing. There’s that great, luminous breast hanging over your head; if you have that much of the mother, why not more? Obviously she’s there for you. There’s something both monstrous and poignant about it. (Lanes 1980: 239)

By transforming the physical breast and milk into the broader symbol of food, Sendak begins to queer Jewish parenting and Jewish families. Mothers may lactate (setting aside wet nurses, formula, and the possibility of male lactation for the moment), but anyone can prepare solid food, and Sendak could draw and describe food very, very well. This opens up a newly gendered space for placing food at the

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centre of existence; one does not literally have to be a Jewish mother to provide imagery of love-infused, yet monstrous, consumption. Sendak takes on that essentialized role of provider—which is so embodied in the case of a literal breast —and queers Jewish motherhood by becoming the one who sets out virtual food. He finds literal mothers simultaneously wonderful and monstrous. Like his mother, Sendak the author performs acts of love, sustenance, and terror. The wild things had the potential to be much more queer, a possibility that is explored more in the film than in the book. KW, Carol, and their friends are an alternative form of family, a non-biological tribe (another term with Jewish overtones) that can welcome but also destroy or evict its members. The fact that Max is ultimately pulled back to his biological mother, that he cannot find his perfect comfort even in KW’s warm belly, suggests Sendak’s deep ambivalence over mother figures.

Helpless and Bereaved Mothers Where the Wild Things Are explores developmental conflicts between parents and children, as well as the monstrosity that lurks within the family itself. Other books from Sendak’s oeuvre portray how the outside world violates and threatens the family, another theme that is common in Jewish history. In these books, we see children and their mothers in a stark world of terror that combines fairy-tale settings and historical traumas. If we read Outside Over There, Dear Mili, and Brundibar intertextually we can see this pattern quite starkly (Sendak 1981, 1988; Kushner and Sendak 2003). Outside Over There features Ida, a young girl who loses her baby sister to goblins, then rescues her. Sendak intended Dear Mili, his adaptation of a Wilhelm Grimm tale, to be a sequel of sorts to Outside Over There. He makes Dear Mili take place in the same cottage as Outside Over There. He explains that at the start of that book, ‘Ida’s died, all the mother’s other children have died, she has only one living child left, and that’s the baby from Outside’, who is now a young girl (Cech 1995: 10). In both texts, the mother exhibits a nearly catatonic despondency. The first full-page spread of Outside shows a farewell: ‘When Papa was away at sea . . .’. Only the mother’s back is visible, her red dress flowing. The next set of text reads, ‘and Mama in the arbor’. On the right-hand page, Mama sits beneath a trellis, staring blankly away from her daughters. She is slightly hunched over; her face is pale and her bonnet hangs limply from her hands. Despair and depression possess her. Far to her left, the goblins prepare the ladder they will use to steal the baby, but she seems not to see them. On the right-hand side of the page, Ida holds her baby sister, who squirms and screams and struggles in her arms. The awkwardness of their pose is painful to behold; the baby sister is more than half Ida’s size, signifying the overwhelming burden Ida holds in her arms.

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Similarly, the mother in Dear Mili evinces a sense of melancholy and decay. In Sendak’s own interpretation of the sequence, she is the same woman, now aged. In the book’s first illustration, she gazes down into a basket of flowers. Her dress appears torn. Yet she gently, absent-mindedly touches Mili’s hair as Mili looks down too, petting a dog. Their cottage is surrounded by autumn branches and wilted flowers. The mother’s sadness is understandable: ‘all she had in the world was a little house and the garden that went with it. Her children had died, all but one daughter, whom she loved dearly.’ When war comes to their village, the mother sends Mili away into the woods, where she is protected by St Joseph, and dwells happily for thirty years that to her seem like just three days. When Mili, still youthful, returns to her aged mother sitting outside the cottage, Grimm’s text says that the mother cried out ‘in joyful amazement’. Yet the illustration is more macabre than celebratory. Her limbs are skeletal and her eyes appear blank, unseeing, incapable of helping her to catch a last glimpse of her ‘dear child, wearing the same little dress’. After the reunion the pair fall asleep side by side and are found in the morning, both dead (Sendak 1988). The third text in this triptych, Brundibar, claims no sequential or narratological connection with Outside Over There or Dear Mili, but its thematic overlaps are obvious. This 2003 picture book, a collaboration between Sendak and playwright Tony Kushner, follows a Hansel and Gretel-like tale of two children, Aninku and Pepicek, who seek milk for their sick mother. In order to earn money to buy the milk, they sing for coins from passers-by. A dastardly, moustachioed villain named Brundibar (clearly reminiscent of Hitler) steals the coins and chases the children away. Ultimately, they receive assistance from a large gathering of children, chase Brundibar out of town, and return to their mother with a red pail full of milk, restoring her to health. The text was based on an opera by the same name written by Czech composer Hans Krása. It was performed at the Czech ‘model’ camp Terezín (Theresienstadt); Krása and most of the children in the production were later killed in Auschwitz. For Sendak the project, which he called the closest thing he had ever had to a ‘perfect child’, seems to have been the text that most explicitly engaged with and revealed the Holocaust demons of his past (Eichler-Levine 2013: 130). Relying on images from this opera, Sendak and Kushner restore it from obscurity and eerily resurrect its composer, librettist, and performers through both the presence of the story itself and through images that depict actual children from the production, as well as the original invitation to the Terezín performance. Parenthood is unmasked as an inherently frightening, fragile notion. At the literal and physical heart of Brundibar we find a haunting lullaby and heart-wrenching images of maternal grief. First, we read the full text of the song that Aninku, Pepicek, and their friends sing in order to raise money for milk. I quote here at length because of its intertwined images of infancy, parenting, and death:

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MOMMY SINGS ‘ROCKABYE, baby, when you are grown, you’ ll sing a lullaby and i’ll be left alone . . .’ maybe you’ll feel a blush when, mommy, you recall how you bathed us naked in the sink, warm and wet, gave us milk, whispered soft, ‘little pet, you’ll soon forget.’ now you are very old. your hair is soft and gray. mommy, the cradle’s cold. blackbird has flown away.

Readers turn the page, and see one of Sendak’s most terrifying images, on a twopage spread with no text: a flock of enormous blackbirds, carrying small children away from their mothers. They rise into the night above Prague. The mothers gathered on the ground are weeping, leaning against tree trunks, or reaching up in vain, trying to pull their children down from the sky. Most of the women’s faces are hidden, covered by handkerchiefs, hands, forearms, or bonnets. One woman dashes off the left side of the page with a toddler in her arms, escaping; her stoic face is the only one that is visible. These are peasant mothers, clad in aprons and kerchiefs; the children, boys and girls, are drawn in the squat, fat, European (aka Jewish) style that earned Sendak criticism early in his career (Kushner 2003: 190). The horror of Holocaust-era parent–child relationships, of abrupt separation, is pictured here in a nightmarish moonscape. The image of a child on a blackbird is so central to Brundibar that it appears, stamped over and over again, as if infinite, on the inside front and back covers of the book. Mili’s mother and the mothers in Brundibar all engage in frantic attempts to protect their children, with a complicated mixture of holding on tightly and having their children ripped away. The Holocaust resonances throughout such works are pronounced, as both Sendak and numerous scholars have acknowledged (Kümmerling-Meibauer 2009; Kushner 2003; Lanes 1980). As Jean Perrot writes in his analysis of Dear Mili, ‘in the vision of a family destroyed by war, Maurice Sendak has touched the vulnerable psychological quick in the immigrants’ son of his childhood’ (Perrot 1991: 259). Mili’s mother is a victim, but one who exercises agency in sending her child away from these horrors, evoking European parents who got their children to safety via the Kindertransport. In contrast, the Brundibar mothers lose their children abruptly, as so many parents did during the Holocaust and other horrors. In these cases, there is no time for a last-gasp try; no rush through the forest to safety; no way to jump off a train bound for Poland. The visual tropes are similar, as is the sense of grave injustice; the circumstances differ.

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The Blessings and Burdens of Milk Images of food—particularly milk—are oversized tropes throughout the Sendak corpus. With its maternal associations and the multivalent meanings of consumption, this is not a surprise. Sendak portrays the relationship between food and family as enormously complex, and even more tensions underlie what we see on the printed page. His relationship with his mother and her food has been described in various contradictory ways. Lanes claimed that Sendak enjoyed the smells of his mother’s warm kitchen. On the other hand, he once said that ‘I often went to bed without supper because I hated my mother’s cooking . . . If she was gonna hurt me, she’d make me eat.’ Sendak loved to eat, so this is a striking condemnation and reversal of the ‘food is love’ formulation; it connects more with the notion that Jewish mothers force unwanted food on their children (Antler 2007; Lanes 1980: 1–9; Moyers 2004; Sendak 1971). Food connotes many things in Sendak’s work. In In the Night Kitchen, fantastic dreamscapes evoke America’s bounty, but also its dangers. In Brundibar, we witness hyperbolic, gooey abundance that is not available to those who are impoverished and bullied. In Where the Wild Things Are and Chicken Soup with Rice, food is a comforting treat when returning from adventures or from the cold winter wind. Milk is an even more charged symbol. In In the Night Kitchen, Mickey becomes the milk. He is one with it, with the nurturing substance, and it occurs far from his mother, in his dreamy night wanderings. When the bakers try to put him in an oven, he yells, ‘I’m not the milk and the milk’s not me! I’m Mickey!’ as he pops out of a giant pie. Later, however, he seeks out and embraces milk, diving into an enormous glass bottle and singing, naked, ‘I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me! God bless milk, and God bless me!’ Here, Sendak, who despised organized religion yet held fast to his ethnic identity, uses the language of blessing, a Jewish rhetorical move if ever there was one. By observing this, I do not mean to suggest that Sendak intended Mickey to engage in a Jewish ritual act. Far from it. If anything, Mickey’s enthusiasm, set in a mid-twentieth-century fantasy world of Americana, evokes ‘God bless America!’ more than it evokes ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe’. Yet the moment still conjures up Jewish idioms of attention, including enthusiastic gratitude and a sense of oneness with the world. Mickey’s mother, normally a provider of milk, is absent. Mickey is the milk; he is in and of it and blessed along with it. Aninku and Pepicek must find ‘milk for mommy’; like Sendak’s mother, she cannot care for them. Instead, they strive to care for her. The mother–child relationship is reversed as they hunt down and deliver the magical, nurturing milk in a brilliant red pail. Unlike Sendak’s mother, she recovers from her disease and the family is joyfully reunited. Here, milk is a saving substance. Sendak alters our readings of family by demonstrating how children nurture parents and can, at times, heal them—a role he attempted to play in his own family, but could not

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fully achieve. This also provides an interesting intertext with Julia Kristeva’s reading of milk as repulsive, as causing ‘nausea’ as the child desires separation from the parent (Kristeva 1982: 2). Instead, for these children, milk is an object of longing; but perhaps this is because the children have asserted their independence and become providers rather than recipients of care; they are separated, matured guardians. Although he resented his mother’s illness, Sendak, like Aninku and Pepicek, also took on the role of protecting her until the end of her life. He never told her about his sexual orientation, shielding her from a truth he thought would hurt her (Cohen 2008). When he had a massive heart attack at the age of 39, he never told Sadie, who was dying of cancer, what had happened. ‘What good would it have done to have told my mother about my heart attack before she died?’ (Lanes 1980: 152). Here, the stereotypical charge of ‘You never call, you never write!’ takes on a poignant and sombre hue. Sendak called and wrote, but he did not call or write and reveal these pieces of critical information out of a sense of care, or, perhaps, resignation. His queerness lies not in his gayness, but in his parental attitude towards his mother and his undoing of the guilt behind a famous Jewish mother joke.

Jewish Mothers and Their Fantastic Offspring Maurice Sendak did not set out to make or remake notions of American Jewish mothers. His focus was on fantasy: Fantasy is so all-pervasive—I don’t think there’s any part of our lives, as adults or children, when we’re not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate that activity to children . . . Children do live in both fantasy and reality; they move back and forth with ease, in a way we no longer remember how to do . . . Fantasy is the core of all writing for children, as I think it is for the writing of any book—perhaps even for the act of living. Certainly it is crucial to my work. There are many kinds of fantasy . . . there is probably no such thing as creativity without fantasy. (Lanes 1980: 65)

Yet as a child of Jewish immigrants who came of age in mid-twentieth-century New York, he was steeped in the cultural bricolage of his age: Mickey Mouse, his father’s love for Isaac Bashevis Singer, post-Holocaust theological struggles, and the golden age of comics, to name just a few. Tony Kushner writes that, quintessentially, Maurice is a child of the Great Depression and of Jewish Depression, if I may generalize. Jewish Depression is that inherited awareness of the arduousness of knowing anything, an acute awareness of the struggle to know, the struggle against not knowing; and it is that enduring sense of displacement, yearning for and not securely possessing a home. It is the conviction, passed through hundreds of generations, that true home is elsewhere, promised but not attained, perhaps not even attainable. (Kushner 2003: 190)

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Other critics have also noticed a sense of foreignness and displacement in Sendak’s oeuvre. In their analysis of In the Night Kitchen, Rebecca Adams and Eric Rabkin observe, ‘Mickey is an outsider in the night kitchen, falling into a new world with little more than his Americanized name and his native talent’ (Adams and Rabkin 2007: 235). Sendak was, beyond a doubt, a secular Jew, but one steeped in yiddishkeit (Jewish culture) and its symbols. The mother figures in his books are invariably tied up with Jewish ideas about mothers, popular mainstream images of mothers, and his relationship with his own mother, which did not conform to the moulds of either idealized Anglo-mothers or caring but smothering Jewish mothers. As a result, Sendak queered the Jewish mother, resisting these tropes in his portrayals, though he never entirely escaped their haunting. Psychologists, philosophers, and literary critics from Freud onwards have argued that our interior lives and exterior utterances are rooted in fantasies, fantasies that are often closely linked with our families and with how we perceive our interlocutors in the world around us (Bakhtin 1986). Interpreting the overlaps of fantasy and family in Sendak’s multivocal body of work brings us full circle, drawing a light pencil sketch—not a neat roadmap—of his overall influence on how we think about maternity. Through the liberating, subversive genre of fantasy, he brings the pull and push of desire out into the open. As Rosemary Jackson argues, ‘in expressing desire, fantasy can operate in two ways . . . it can tell of, manifest or show desire . . . or it can expel desire, when this desire is a disturbing element which threatens cultural order and continuity’ (Jackson 1981: 3). Much developmental psychology and the notion of intersubjectivity rest upon a dizzying movement of recognition, near-negation, and separation: ‘to experience recognition in the fullest, most joyful way, entails the paradox that the “you” who are “mine” are also different, new, outside of me. It thus includes the sense of loss that you are no longer inside of me, no longer simply my fantasy of you’ (Benjamin 1988: 15). This notion of loss within the mother–child relationship was central to Sendak’s psychological make-up and his own reflections, even extending to images of being in utero. In a diary entry that he shared with Kushner, he reveals how he connected his own identity with both the Lindbergh baby (a lifelong obsession) and with the frozen ice baby of Outside Over There: ‘I was never born, I was dead in my mother’s womb, I was the ice baby—and my mother didn’t notice that I’d been replaced. She could have done the magic trick to get her real baby back but she was too distracted and I stayed an ice baby.’ In other words, the move of recognition never happens—the longing for the child that was once within did not, in Sendak’s perception, occur; a kind of psychological death or rupture resulted instead (Kushner 2003: 24). The process of producing Outside, which Sendak described as ‘vomiting up’ those emotions, was one of the most difficult episodes of his career (Kushner

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2003: 24). His own sickliness and his mother’s distance—itself another stereotype about Jewish women as frigid, withholding, distant, like the Jewish American princess—are transformed into the picture of a baby made of ice, one that could not be rescued by its mother. Instead, the tot is rescued by her older sister, Ida. Sendak, too, had a close relationship with his elder sister and admired her greatly (Cech 1995; Kushner 2003; Lanes 1980). Still, he is lost to his mother, even more than Ida’s frozen baby sister—who dies at the end of Dear Mili, but first briefly reunites with her loving mother. The image of ‘vomiting up’ a work also evokes Julia Kristeva’s reading of the child’s reaction to milk: ‘nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. “I” want none of that element, sign of their desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I” do not want to assimilate it, “I” expel it’ (Kristeva 1982: 2–3). I read this intertextually with In the Night Kitchen. Mickey initially insists upon his separation from the milk, just as Sendak ‘vomits up’ stories of his own family’s loss and pain, resisting his connection to his mother. Yet Mickey makes another move later in the book: he is in and of the milk. When he cries ‘I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me!’ he has moved beyond Sendak, beyond disgust at the parent–child tension implicit in milk: his identity is fluid and free. Where Sendak remains in loss and pain, Mickey finds a way out. Loss and grief are indeed at the centre of both Sendak’s writing and our contemporary conceptions of the Jewish mother. It is there in the dark humour of ‘You never call, you never write’: where are you now? It is there in the nostalgic ‘Sunrise, Sunset’ stereotypes of Fiddler on the Roof and parental blessings: where is the infant who is now lost in my adult child? It is there in the ‘Eat, eat, my child’: if you do not eat, will you waste away—will you be gone? Most frighteningly, it is there in our dominant, collective memories of the Holocaust and our resulting struggle with Jewish identity: Where have you gone? Have I lost you to the ovens? Where are the future generations of Jews, the potentiality we have lost? (Levitt 2007). This maze of vanished children and missing parents must be thought about in connection with Sendak’s identity as a non-parent. Like many authors, Sendak sometimes referred to his books as his ‘children’. Brundibar, in particular, was the book he called his ‘perfect child’ (Moyers 2004). What does it mean to take that metaphor seriously, particularly when considering a man who did not literally have children? Sendak did not usually express regret over his lack of children, though in one NPR interview he mentioned an imagined ‘dream daughter’ (Fresh Air 2012). Here, gender assignment is crucial. The notion of postHolocaust ‘compulsory motherhood’ did not apply to a man, though Sendak metaphorically fulfils that imperative with his literary children (Rittner and Roth 1993: 168). Aside from and beyond Sendak’s identity as a gay man, his work and his life queer our notions of Jewish families and Jewish mothers on a theoretical level.

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In his irascible, intense, emotional attitude towards his literary progeny, Sendak himself fulfils stereotypes of the mid-twentieth-century Jewish mother: a bit of a perfectionist, a bit of a martyr, a bit of a curmudgeon, and more than a bit obsessed with food. However, he preserves the post-Holocaust Jewish continuity concern through symbolic generativity rather than through biological offspring. He certainly was endlessly concerned with his relatives who had perished in the Holocaust—with the past (Lanes 1980: 140). Yet, whether or not he set out to do this, Dear Mili and Brundibar both bring us into the oft-asked forward-looking questions: What of future children after the Holocaust? What of potential mothers and fathers who choose not to have offspring? As Laura Levitt, a scholar of Jewish and gender studies, writes, As a woman without children, a woman who has chosen to teach and to write and not to bear or adopt children, I struggle with the meaning of my family stories and their audiences. To whom am I addressing my writing? Without the fact of children, is it possible to still tell these kinds of stories? . . . Put another way, what does it mean for me to choose not to ‘mother’ and instead to teach and write about my family for others? (Levitt 2007: 162)

Many Jews who did not bear children in the shadow of the Holocaust struggle with this conundrum (Levitt 2007: 178–9). For Sendak, the ‘choice’ of whether or not to have children was not necessarily a freely taken one, as he came of age during a period of closeting and great violence and discrimination against gay men, particularly as far as children were concerned. Furthermore, as a male, he was not essentialized as a potential vessel for children. Yet, like Levitt, Sendak was haunted by his position as a post-Holocaust living, breathing boy when so many of his cousins and other young European Jews had perished. After visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, he wrote: I had the uneasy, chilly feeling that I could get on a plane and go home, but for her there had been no escape. And that kept reminding me of my father and my mother, and the whimsicality of their coming here. I had cousins who died in the Holocaust the year of my bar mitzvah; they had no bar mitzvah, and I knew all that time that it was luck. (May 2001: 149)

Sendak is ever haunted by his alternate-universe self, the one who might have died in the ovens. However, he meets this challenge in a very different way from the traditional Jewish community’s emphasis on regeneration (Kahn 2000). Returning to Sendak’s reflections on his creations, we can see again how he imagines himself as a birthing mother, and the overlaps between religion, gender, and death in his work, particularly in Brundibar. First, the birth pangs. They emerge over and over again in his interviews. Speaking about the production of In the Night Kitchen, he said, ‘It comes from the direct middle of me, and it hurt like hell extracting it. Yes, indeed, very birthdelivery type pains, and it’s about as regressed as I imagine I can go. Simply, it’s

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divine’ (Lanes 1980: 174). He also said that creating a work is like ‘getting pregnant when you’ve just gone crazy and you’ve found out your house has burned down’ (Kidd 2011). It is, of course, a bit of a stretch to move from this common writing metaphor to Sendak as Jewish mother. Yet a queered, more fluid reading of Sendak brings new light to both his work as an artist and to the queered lives of his own creations. In European and American contexts, Jewish femininity and masculinity have been historically constructed by non-Jews (and some Jews) as transgressive; in other words, Jewish gender and sexuality are always already queered (Boyarin, Itzkovitz, and Pellegrini 2003). If Jewish men have long been understood as effeminate, passive, and weak, and the ‘Jewess’ has long been considered sexually voracious, an aggressive woman of excess in terms of both food and sexual desire, then queering Sendak’s work is a logical step in our consideration of how Jewish mothers are represented, and how symbols of mothers are interwoven throughout his biography and work (Boyarin et al. 2003: 5). Can Sendak pass as a Jewish mother? Interrogating a different aspect of identity, we might also ask: can Christian mothers pass as Jewish, and vice versa? Here, the ending of Brundibar is crucial. Sendak refused to let the Holocaust be understood as a uniquely Jewish event. In the opening scene, a doctor, his coat emblazoned with a gold star, arrives at the family’s house to examine Mommy. In the closing scene, the same cast of characters celebrates her restored health, and we see a crucial new detail in the family’s home: there is a cross hanging high on the mantel. While the doctor treating Mommy is Jewish, the family is Christian, and they have been all along. What can we make of this initially ‘Jewish mother’ who is ultimately unmasked as a gentile? What of Ida and Mili’s mother, who bears no signs of Jewishness and, in the case of Mili, exists in a world where St Joseph is an active presence? Aninku, Pepicek, and their mother pass as Jewish, a reversal of the typical Jewish assimilatory move to pass as Christian. Crossing boundaries of gender, Sendak, too, passes as a Jewish mother, specifically a mid-twentieth-century one, with all of the mixed-up love and monstrosity that stereotype could entail. Sendak keeps the inevitable Sturm und Drang between children and parents—the paradoxical pain that is inherent in the reproduction of children—at the centre of his work. He gives children vast amounts of credit for their ability to understand this: ‘Children know there are mothers who abandon their children, emotionally if not literally. Sometimes they have to live with this fact. They don’t lie to themselves. They wouldn’t survive if they did. And my object is never to lie to them’ (Kushner 2003: 205). Sendak’s characterizations of families have been so successful precisely because they confound our expectations and dive directly into the unheimlich (uncanny) pain of living in relation to other human beings. Just as Sendak claimed that the Brundibar family was Christian because ‘everyone was in the Holocaust’, it seems that all of the mothers in his books are Jewish, whether they

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pass via food, grief, or monstrosity (Moyers 2004). They are also, often, Jewish mothers who grieve, just as Sendak in his ‘Jewish Depression’ had a tendency to work through darkness (though he also loved the pleasurable things of this world—particularly food and music). In Sendak’s world, milk is positive, but it is not embodied. Many psychological theories and many other children’s books connect eating and food directly with the body of the mother (Daniel 2006: 87–114). Despite his interview quote on breasts, Sendak amputates milk from the mother’s body in these volumes. Milk comes in bottles, in glasses set out by disembodied mothers, and in red pails that children purchase. It does not come attached, a reflection, perhaps, of Sendak’s self-perception as an ‘ice baby’ and his distance from his own mother. Ultimately, milk, however magical, sensuous, or monstrous it might be, is not repellent: it saves. In the Night Kitchen, Mickey ‘is not just one more commodity in a book about commodities but their savior’ (Adams and Rabkin 2007: 136). Indeed, Mickey’s rise after becoming one with the milk is not just salvific; it is, in the words of one critic, an ‘apotheosis’ (Perrot 1990: 72). With a power as great as that of any mother, Sendak has birthed a small, dairy-bearing god. Eat, eat, my children, he whispered from his drawing board. There will always be grief, but first, a tall glass of milk.

Notes 1

Sendak stated that this was the only aspect of the film adaptation on which he really clashed with Jonze and the screenwriters; he considered the magical transformation of Max’s bedroom to be a crucial moment of the book.

References adams, rebecca v. l., and eric s. rabkin. 2007. ‘Psyche and Society in Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen’. Children’s Literature in Education, 38: 233–41. antler, joyce. 2007. You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother. New York. bakhtin, mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, Tex. benjamin, jessica. 1988. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York. boyarin, daniel, daniel itzkovitz, and ann pellegrini. 2003. Queer Theory and the Jewish Question. New York. butler, judith . 2004. Undoing Gender. New York. cech, jon. 1995. Angels and Wild Things: The Archetypal Poetics of Maurice Sendak. University Park, Pa. cohen, jeffrey jerome . 1996. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis, Minn. cohen, patricia . 2008. ‘Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are’. New York Times, 9 Sept., p. E1.

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coontz, stephanie. 1993. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York. cvetkovitch, ann. 2012. Depression: A Public Feeling. Durham, NC. daniel, carolyn. 2006. Voracious Children: Who Eats Whom in Children’s Literature. New York. eichler-levine, jodi. 2013. Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature. New York. Fresh Air. 2012. ‘Fresh Air Remembers Author Maurice Sendak’. National Public Radio website; at , accessed 13 Oct. 2014. halberstam, judith. 1995. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham, NC. hirsch, marianne. 1997. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, Mass. jackson, rosemary. 1981. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London. jonze, spike, dir. 2009. Where the Wild Things Are. Warner Bros. kahn, susan martha. 2000. Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel. Durham, NC. kidd, kenneth. 2011. ‘Wild Things and Wolf Dreams: Maurice Sendak, Picture-Book Psychologist’. In Julia Mickenberg and Lynn Vallone, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Literature, 211–30. New York. kristeva, julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York. kümmerling-meibauer, bettina. 2009. ‘Romantic and Jewish Images of Childhood in Maurice Sendak’s Dear Mili’. European Judaism, 42: 5–16. kushner, tony. 2003. The Art of Maurice Sendak, vol. ii. New York. —— and maurice sendak. 2003. Brundibar. New York. lambert, joshua. 2013. Unclean Lips: Jews, Obscenity, and American Culture. New York. lanes, selma. 1980. The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York. levitt, laura. 2007. American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust. New York. lieber, andrea. 2005. ‘Mother of All Memory: The Loss of Mother and the Search for Truth in Writing by American Children of Holocaust Survivors’. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 7: 142–51. may, jill p . 2001. ‘Envisioning the Jewish Community in Children’s Literature: Maurice Sendak and Isaac Singer’. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 33: 137–51. moyers, bill. 2004. ‘NOW with Bill Moyers: Transcript’. OPBS NOW with Bill Moyers website; at , accessed 13 Oct. 2014. perrot, jean. 1990. ‘Maurice Sendak’s Ritual Cooking of the Child in Three Tableaux: The Moon, Mother, and Music’. Children’s Literature, 18: 68–86. —— 1991. ‘Deconstructing Maurice Sendak’s Postmodern Palimpsest’. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 16: 259–63. rittner, carol, and john k. roth. 1993. Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust. New York.

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sedgwick, eve kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, Calif. sendak, maurice. 1963. Where the Wild Things Are. New York. —— 1971. In the Night Kitchen. New York. —— 1981. Outside Over There. New York. —— 1988. Dear Mili. New York.

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The Jewish Mother as Metonym for Community in Postwar America josh lambert

Never has the figure of the Jewish mother been more widely represented and discussed than it was in the United States in the 1960s, where, in the form of a cartoonish, comic stereotype, it propelled massive comedy hits, television debates, and nationally bestselling books. As recently as the 1950s it had been conceivable to publish an anthology of Jewish humour that did not emphasize the Jewish mother as a particular target of satire, or to publish an anthology of texts on the subject of the Jewish mother and not even mention that the figure was often a subject of comedy and criticism (Ausubel 1951; Kobler 1955). But by the mid-1960s the stereotype was virtually ubiquitous in American popular culture, promulgated mostly by Jewish men who had risen to prominence in a number of creative fields. The bibliography of scholarly treatments of this phenomenon has grown remarkably extensive, including works by Paula Hyman (1995), Riv-Ellen Prell (1989), and Joyce Antler (2007), as well as focused treatments of the Jewish mother in specific genres during the period (Friedman 1973; Rothbell 1986). Scholars have tended to agree in their interpretations of the phenomenon, arguing that owing to a combination of demographic, cultural, and sociological factors—which were set in motion before the Second World War (Joselit 1994: 70–3) but intensified significantly after it—the Jewish mother came to function, in the postwar decades in the United States, as a recognizable metonym for the Jewish community, emphasizing its traditionalism and parochialism. This essay will first survey the contours of the stereotype in the mid-1960s, and then turn to a close reading of Adele Wiseman’s Crackpot (1974), a novel that reappropriates and transforms the stereotype so as to offer a radical affirmation of Jewish community. Prell notes that ‘the Jewish mother stereotype . . . on television, in print, in widely circulated long-playing albums, and in novelty books . . . personified, often through her son’s vision of her, an American Jewish culture in transition’ (Prell 1989: 150). But the figure did not stand for the culture as a whole, in all of its complexities. Rather, as Hyman observed, antagonism towards the Jewish mother

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derived from specific concerns about Jewish assimilation and identity. It linked the Jewish mother to two elements of Jewish identity that constrained masculine behavior and especially the Jewish man’s free choice of sexual partner: the psychosocial, ethnic aspects of identity, as manifested in the family, and the religiocultural dimensions of Jewishness, as expressed in the female sphere of the home. (1995: 160)

When male Jewish artists, writers, and comedians wanted to chafe against the limits of their communities and chide them for their ‘constrain[ing]’ insularity, they found they could do so, and have their audiences understand and sympathize with them, through representations of their mothers and of the Jewish mother in general. So as early as 1967, as Zena Smith Blau observed that ‘the well-known ambivalence of the Jew toward his mother . . . is part and parcel of his ambivalence about remaining a Jew’ (1967: 44). That association made sense, as scholarship has since helped to clarify, because of the matrilineality of Jewish descent accepted by all denominations of American Judaism at that time; because of the role of American mothers in their children’s education and socialization; and because of the increasing prominence of women as leaders within American Jewish communal institutions. Even in the least serious, most commercial representations of the Jewish mother from the period, the figure’s role as defender of Jewish continuity, and in that sense as a personification of the parochialism of the community, emerges clearly. Take the famous case of Dan Greenburg’s bestselling satire, How To Be a Jewish Mother (1964), which in one chapter offers suggestions about what questions a Jewish mother should ask about the young women her son is dating: (1) ‘This girl, is she Jewish?’ ‘What’s the family’s name?’ ‘What was it before?’ (1964: 68)

On the How To Be a Jewish Mother LP (1965), featuring Gertrude Berg, this bit evokes a hearty laugh from the studio audience. It’s worth considering why, and what these questions tell us about the Jewish mother stereotype. She wants her son’s girlfriend to be Jewish: why? Because she is committed to a particular vision of Jewish community and continuity, one predicated both on matrilineal descent and on the idea that Jewish continuity requires endogamy; her son needs to date a Jewish girl so that he will have Jewish children. And why is it important that this mother know what the girl’s family’s name was ‘before’—before, that is, it was changed from the European original to an Americanized version? Because the Jewish mother’s goal is to bridge the past and the future: she is the guardian of history as well as identity (note the recognizable Yiddish syntax of the first question, with the verb in the second position after an appositive phrase); she insists on the maintenance of a cultural connection between the legacy of the old country

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and the generation yet to be born. This remains somewhat implicit in Greenburg’s jokes, but did not need to be stated more explicitly because of how deeply it was felt. ‘A Call from Long Island’, the opening sketch on Bob Booker and George Foster’s You Don’t Have To Be Jewish comedy album (1965), offers a related representation of the Jewish mother that demonstrates that the stereotype was not always mean-spirited and did not always target the mother’s excesses as the primary butt of the joke (even if they are nonetheless emphasized). In the sketch, a phone rings, and a young woman asks, ‘Hello, Mama?’ She goes on to explain that she’s having an awful day, everything has gone wrong—the house is snowed in, the children are sick, the freezer is broken—‘and on top of all that, twenty ladies from my Hadassah chapter are coming for lunch at one o’clock’. Mama says she will fix everything, taking the train and the bus and then trudging through the snow, cooking, and cleaning the house, caring for the kids, and so on. ‘Just don’t worry, darling’, she says, ‘everything will be okay: isn’t that what a mother is for?’ But then, the twist: ‘By the way, sweetheart, if it’s snowing and the car wouldn’t start this morning, how did Sam get to work?’ ‘Sam? What Sam?’ ‘Sam! Your husband!’ ‘My husband’s name is Paul. Is this Tremont 71166?’ ‘No, this is Tremont 71177.’

Then, the punchline, to uproarious laughter: ‘Does that mean you’re not coming?’ While the sketch presents the Jewish mother as a creature who exceeds conventional standards, the main thrust of the joke here is about how similar these two families are, to the extent that the women would not realize that they aren’t actually related until the name of the daughter’s husband comes up. The mother’s excesses are excesses of competence, reflecting her capacity to ensure the comfort of her daughter’s family and, crucially, her daughter’s participation in a dominant Jewish social institution of the era, Hadassah. These comedy routines are two of many available examples from American popular culture that support Prell’s incisive observation, based on other cases, that the Jewish mother in the postwar culture of the US was a figure that personified ‘a parochial, suffocating identity of excess’ (Prell 1989: 172). It is worth noting that, as with similar pop culture phenomena, the number and variety of venues in which this stereotype appeared is so large that scholarship attending to it cannot possibly cite anything close to all its appearances. Even as canonical a work of American fiction, written by a non-Jew and mostly not concerned with Jewishness, as Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) features a Jewish character, Metzger, whose ‘mother . . . was really out to kasher me, boy, like a piece of beef on the sink, she wanted me drained and

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white. . . . You know what mothers like that turn their male children into’ (18). The offensive implication here—that the pressure placed by the Jewish mother on her son would cause him to become homosexual, another common element of the stereotype—is also raised, even more directly, in the text in which the stereotyped figure of the Jewish mother reached a kind of apotheosis: Philip Roth’s bestselling, widely discussed novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). Roth explained in a 1974 essay about the origins of this extremely popular novel that the family types represented by the Portnoys were not ‘the product of [his] own imagination’, but figures he had ‘come upon . . . in various disguises and incarnations, in [his] reading’. Specifically, Roth remarks, he had noted in a 1961 symposium—that is, long before Portnoy was published—that three of his students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop had in the same semester submitted short stories featuring dominant mothers of nice Jewish boys (Roth 1985: 38–9), and of course, by the time he sat down to write Portnoy, Roth must have been aware of Greenburg’s How to Be a Jewish Mother and a great many other examples of the stereotype too. Portnoy’s Complaint is properly understood as a series of riffs on these already circulating stereotypes, rather than as an original articulation of them. The book’s first chapter, also the first excerpted in the run-up to publication, begins by engaging and reproducing the by-then extremely recognizable stereotype of the Jewish mother, offering up a mother ‘who could accomplish anything’ (1969: 11), and who the narrator, as a young child, believes is also, ‘in disguise’, all his teachers at school (1969: 3). To the child, this single woman represents all female authority, discipline, and affection. And, like Pynchon’s Metzger, Portnoy explicitly understands the behaviour of the stereotypical Jewish mother as potentially producing homosexuality in her son; as Portnoy says, a ‘little fruitcake’ is ‘exactly what the training program [of his overbearing Jewish mother, and others like her] was designed to produce. . . . how I made it into the world of pussy at all, that’s the mystery’ (1969: 125; on the threat of homosexuality that hovers over Portnoy, see Hoffman 2009). While gathering and deploying elements of the stereotype anthropologically, Roth also makes explicit the function of the stereotype discussed above, in which the Jewish mother stands for a Jewish community that is endogamic and parochial. Portnoy’s sexual fascination with non-Jewish women throughout the novel can be read as an allegory for an American Jew’s ardour to be accepted as American and into white American communities, a striking literary instance of what one of Freud’s disciples, Karl Abraham, called ‘neurotic exogamy’, in a 1913 essay about the type of Jewish neurotic who, like Portnoy, ‘takes flight from women who typify his mother’ (Abraham and Elison 1955: 49). Half a century ahead of time, Abraham’s essay neatly diagnoses not only Portnoy’s signature ambivalence, but also the angry, conflicted representations of the Jewish mother in postwar American culture more broadly, observing that ‘in all the cases I investigated closely a pronounced hatred against the patient’s nearest relatives existed side by side with

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an exaggerated love for these same relatives. This hatred may be directed mainly against the mother, in which case the explanation for it is to be found in disappointed incestuous love’ (Abraham and Elison 1955: 50). Indeed, when Portnoy, in a fit of Jewish pride, abandons his most serious nonJewish girlfriend and hopes to find a Jewish wife in the State of Israel, Roth makes plain the incestuous threat of such endogamic desire: Portnoy reports of the Israeli he hopes to sleep with, Naomi, that ‘in physical type she is, of course, my mother’ (1969: 259), later calling her a ‘mother-substitute’ and an ‘offspring of the same pale Polish strain of Jews’ as ‘the lady of [his] past’ (that is, his mother) (1969: 266). That Naomi the Zionist resembles (or even ‘is’) Portnoy’s mother accords well with the analyses of the symbolic meaning of mothers in postwar American Jewish culture discussed above: since the Jewish mother had come to be seen as the figure uniquely responsible for the preservation of Jewish community, an unambiguous embrace of one’s Jewish identity in the form of Zionism could be figured by an embrace of the women who, in Abraham’s words, ‘typify [one’s] mother’. This incestuous threat always hovers at the margins of the Jewish Mother stereotype (or, occasionally, it is made explicit, as in the original ending of Carl Reiner’s 1970 film Where’s Poppa?, in which the protagonist climbs into bed with his senile mother). Explicit or implicit, the Jewish mother functions as a rival to the ubiquitous so-called shikse (young non-Jewish woman) in these narratives; as Roth reflected, of the stories that inspired Portnoy, ‘The Jewish women are mothers and sisters’ and ‘the sexual yearning is for the Other’ (Roth 1985: 38). The Jewish mother and the shikse competing for a young Jewish man’s emotional and erotic attention represent, as Werner Sollors pointed out in his landmark study Beyond Ethnicity (1986), the twinned poles of descent and consent inherent to ethnic Americans’ conflicts of identity. Concerns about Jewish community and continuity were thus virtually always at stake in invocations of the Jewish mother stereotype by men in postwar American literature, popular culture, and cultural commentary. But not all writers of the period were, in Blau’s terms, ‘[ambivalent] about remaining a Jew’, and the Jewish mother as metonym for community could be applied affirmatively too. The Canadian novelist Adele Wiseman’s painful, striking novel Crackpot (1974), published in the wake of this national discussion of the figure of the Jewish mother, reappropriates the figure from a feminist perspective so as to figure a more troubled but unflinching commitment to the Jewish community and continuity. The male protagonists of novels, plays, and films about Jews had implicitly faced choices between their mothers and shikses long before Alexander Portnoy —Jackie Robin, in The Jazz Singer (1927), is one of the best-known earlier examples—but before the late 1960s, a character’s having even implied sexual intercourse with his mother was simply not a viable narrative possibility. In addition to being deeply unsettling, it would have been a criminal act under US

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obscenity law to represent mother–son incest explicitly at the time of the Jazz Singer’s release and up to the liberalization of obscenity laws by the Supreme Court, particularly in the decision Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966). The very term that most succinctly and directly alludes to such a potential relationship, motherfucker, which originated as African American slang, was among the most proscribed words in the English language and one of the last to become available for literary and popular cultural use (Sheidlower 1995: 196–214). By the late 1960s, though, thanks to the liberalization of American obscenity law, it had become legal, if still not exactly uncontroversial, to describe in detail even such a troubling sexual practice as mother-fucking. Wiseman’s novel goes there. Before discussing the scene itself, it is worth mentioning that the extraordinary difficulties Wiseman had in placing the book with a publisher reflect the ‘unsettling’ quality of a novel that inverts the Oedipal myth by narrating it from the perspective of the mother, portraying the sexual intimacy between a woman and her son as a profoundly ethical and necessary, even if heartbreaking, act (Kertzer 1996: 28). Wiseman conceived the idea for Crackpot in 1961, in New York, and drafted the book repeatedly throughout the ensuing decade (Panofsky 2006: 55–94). She had every reason to be confident about her prospects for publishing a second novel. Her first one, The Sacrifice (1956), a reworking of biblical themes about a devout Jewish immigrant to Canada who loses his son and then commits a murder, had been published to critical acclaim in Canada, the United States, and England, generating more prepublication sales than any Canadian novel in history (Panofsky 2006: 50). Wiseman won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, Canada’s most prestigious literary prize; was granted residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, the two most prominent American artists’ colonies; and received a Guggenheim fellowship on the basis of recommendations from a group of Jewish cultural and literary authorities: Saul Bellow, David Daiches, Irving Howe, and Meyer Levin (Panofsky 2006: 19). In the late 1960s, Wiseman’s second novel, as she finished it, promised to have just as much success as her first, as it had been praised and excerpted by her fellow authors and by important critics, and was represented by the most prominent literary agent in the United States. All that notwithstanding, Viking Press rejected Crackpot summarily in 1968, and then, over several years, no fewer than twenty-five major publishing houses in the United States, Canada, and England also declined to publish the manuscript (Panofsky 2006: 168 n. 90). These rejections of a celebrated novelist’s sophomore project are not, in this case, difficult to explain. As literary critics Ruth Panofsky (1993) and Marcia Mack (1999) have pointed out, and as Wiseman herself seems to have realized, Crackpot constitutes a radical feminist departure from, and rewriting of, the fairly conventional, patriarchal themes of The Sacrifice. Finally released in 1974 by McClelland and Stewart—then, as now, among the most prestigious Canadian publishing houses—Wiseman’s book received mixed reviews but was celebrated

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by a few of its early critics as a creative triumph. It was called ‘one of the more important novels in recent literature’ (quoted in Panofsky 2006: 89–90), and an early academic respondent characterized it as ‘the most alive, daring, and tempestuously human literary creation in Canadian storytelling’ (Rosenthal 1975: 115). The novel traces the life of Hoda, a Jewish woman in Winnipeg, from her childhood to her middle age, attending particularly to her path into sex work. The voraciously verbal daughter of a pious blind immigrant, Hoda encounters antisemitic prejudice at school and finds solace in sexual activity. As she grows into an obese adult, she finds prostitution as her vocation, through which she can support herself and her father financially and bring a little happiness into the lives of many sad men. The climactic chapters of the novel treat Hoda’s relationship with her son. The boy, David, has been raised in an orphanage, and his nickname, Pipick (Yiddish for ‘bellybutton’), derives from his severed connection with his mother: having delivered the baby herself, alone in her home, Hoda ‘gnawed’ through the umbilical cord, leaving the baby with a bellybutton of unusual size and shape (Wiseman 1974: 211, 234). As he grows up, Pipick does not know that Hoda, the neighbourhood prostitute, is his mother, nor does Hoda realize who Pipick is when he first visits her. They have sex. Pipick, an overexcited virgin, ejaculates prematurely in this first encounter, but he lingers on in Hoda’s house after her other customers have left, hoping that she will offer him a second opportunity. As he talks to her, she suddenly realizes that he is the son she left at the orphanage many years earlier. Suddenly understanding their relationship, Hoda reacts violently when Pipick tries to initiate sex a second time, begging him not to sleep with her, without revealing what she has realized. Saying ‘I’m old enough to be your mother’ is the closest she comes to admitting their actual kinship, for fear of traumatizing the boy (Wiseman 1974: 347–9). Unfortunately, Pipick desperately wants to have sex with her again—he yearns to prove his virility and compensate for his earlier embarrassment—and he takes Hoda’s rejection as cruelty: ‘Why don’t you tell me, “You’re a freak; I don’t want to fuck you!”’ he asks her, self-pityingly. ‘No one wants to fuck a freak, even if he pays you!’ (1974: 351). Hoda hates to see the boy suffer, and so the novel’s crisis finally boils down to this awful dilemma: should she have sex with her son again or not? This dilemma can be read as a rewriting of the allegories of assimilation, described by such scholars as Leslie Fiedler (1958), Frederic Cople Jaher (1983), and Adam Sol (2001), that figure the selection of a sexual partner as a symbol of the success or failure of Jewish cultural reproduction and assimilation to America. As Fiedler phrased it, the American Jewish novel’s ‘essential problems must be identity and assimilation’, and these problems are ‘posed in terms of sexual symbols’: ‘it is in the role of passionate lover that the American-Jewish novelist sees himself . . . and the community with which he seeks to unite himself he sees as the shikse’ (1958: 27–8). The radical twist that Wiseman applies to that tradi-

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tional allegory—with a history as old as the Torah, and a rich presence in modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature as well as throughout American Jewish fiction—is to displace the young man, who typically serves as a representative ethnic subject in much modern fiction, from the central role as her narrative’s protagonist. She replaces him with his mother, and precisely an iteration of the Jewish mother stereotype that stands for ‘a parochial, suffocating identity of excess’. But if Hoda is a vision of the Jewish community and its commitment to continuity, she is not as parochial, in the sense of small-minded, as the stereotypes that preceded and inspired her often were. Her sexuality constitutes utopian, species-level cosmopolitanism that welcomes any man who wants to have sex with her in a peaceful and respectful way, whether rich or poor, Jew or gentile, healthy or ill.1 Yet these sexual practices never undermine Hoda’s own Jewishness; in contrast to the Jew who, in Blau’s analysis, is ambivalent about remaining one, Hoda’s Jewishness is simply never figured as vulnerable. In an unpublished essay entitled ‘Jewishness’, Wiseman offers an insight into what such an unwavering but considered Jewishness can sound like: The tone of my felt Jewishness is so positive that no alternate model with which life has presented me has ever looked even tempting, in spite of the possible perks attached, and notwithstanding my real affection, and even, in some cases, love, for some alternate model practitioners. Conversely, my sense of myself as a Jew and of the value of that identification has never wavered in spite of the fact that I have occasionally found myself in absolute disagreement with and even enraged by some of the stances, whether considered official or otherwise, taken by other Jews.

More than simply a reflection of Wiseman’s own feelings, Hoda’s unwavering Jewishness can be understood as the author’s radical recuperation of the matrilineal principle as the guarantor of the perpetual and unshakeable Jewishness of a Jewish woman and all of her offspring, no matter her choices or behaviour, sexual and otherwise. Not only is there never a suggestion in the novel that Hoda could ever be anything other than Jewish; also, even though she does not know who Pipick’s father is (it could be any one of her clients, and in her naivety she believes that all of them, Jewish and non-Jewish, collectively fathered him), there is no doubt that Pipick, like her, is a Jew. By positioning a Jewish prostitute, with her hundreds of diverse and sometimes anonymous sexual partners, at the centre of a sexually allegorical narrative, Wiseman eschews the pernicious either/or logic that propels most such male-centred narratives of exogamy, and which suggests that either you are a Jew and sleep with a Jew, or you sleep with a non-Jew and are therefore not Jewish. Instead, sex as a metaphor for affiliation in this daring feminist frame allows for the representative Jew to have multiple, shifting, overlapping, joyful affiliations. What happens in the novel is that Hoda chooses to have sex with her own son, not just once but as often as he likes (Wiseman 1974: 352, 366). And the novel

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endorses, rather than rejects, this decision: in the chapters that follow, Hoda is rewarded with a measure of satisfaction and happiness in her life. In Crackpot, then, Wiseman writes back to the wave of Jewish mother jokes and tales of smothering Jewish mothers that crested in the mid-1960s, and to the ambivalence at the centre of Portnoy’s Complaint, answering them by following their logic to its difficult conclusion. Crackpot embraces the Jewish mother and the commitment to Jewish community that she represents. Hoda, as a Jewish mother, does embody Jewishness; she aspires to ‘achieve a proper, loving friendship with [Pipick] in which she could work for him as she did for Daddy, and teach him their stories, and protect him and help him avoid all those traps that she knew were waiting for him in life’ (Wiseman 1974: 363). She wants to mother him, to aid his progress, and, crucially, to expose him to the Jewish culture she knows in the form of her father’s ‘stories’. The chain of Jewish knowledge dramatized in Crackpot, with Jewish culture passing from Hoda’s father to Hoda to her son, accords perfectly with the socio-cultural pattern in which mothers displaced fathers as the conveyors of Jewish identity in North America after the Second World War. Simply put, Hoda’s being a mother is not at all incidental; if she had been a father, a story about the sexual relationship between her and her child would reflect an entirely different perspective on the possibilities of Jewish continuity. Astonishingly, it is Hoda’s sexual connection to her son that allows her to pass on to Pipick her father’s stories, which constitute her personal connection to the Jewish past (Pipick ‘must learn what was important in the stories still’, Hoda feels (362)): as one of Wiseman’s readers has remarked, ‘Hoda reclaims her son through incest’ (Panofsky 1993: 46). In presenting this dynamic, in which mother–son sex is part and parcel of, or at least a resonant symbol for, the potential for cultural reproduction, Wiseman concretizes the challenge of endogamy—that is, the taint of incestuous insularity that marrying in and embracing the culture of one’s own group always carries. Crackpot declares it an unavoidable necessity for Pipick, or any modern Jew, to follow Freud’s advice that in order ‘to be really free and happy in love’ a man must ‘come to terms with the idea of incest with mother or sister’ (1974: 65), slightly modified: in order to be really free and happy as a Jew, a man must come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother, as Alex Portnoy cannot. It is not the ‘universal siblinghood’ symbolized by images of brother–sister incest that Wiseman offers up as a model for a progressive but committed Jewish community—that is, hers is not the universalist dream that all humans can be siblings to one another (see Shell 1988)—but mother–child incest that allegorizes a particularistic desire for community and continuity, even if it requires some exclusivity and inwardness. In the novel’s dreamlike concluding passage, David reappears to pronounce an obscure but positive judgement on his mother’s connection with tradition (‘She occupies her past; she inhabits her life’, he says (427)) and then to be

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included in Crackpot’s final image of community. Unlike Roth’s novel, which ends with an emphatic textual marker of Portnoy’s alienation and grief, Crackpot ultimately focuses on Hoda and on her reconstitution of a new Jewish community on her own terms. She creates a community that is predicated neither on descent nor on consent but instantiated through a fluid mixture of affiliations. In Hoda’s vague but affirmative vision, she, her father, her son, and her new lover ‘would all be stirring the muddy waters of the brimming pot together’ (427). Hoda’s community is not based exclusively on genealogy—indeed, it counters the notion of a racial Judaism, in which identity is determined exclusively by a biological relationship to one’s ancestors—but neither does it entirely eschew genealogical relationships. Wiseman’s vision of Hoda-as-community, frankly utopian, is of a community generous, confident, and resilient enough not to be troubled by temporary disaffection or wholly dependent on genealogical reproduction, but open to all those who wish to join it. That vision of Jewish cultural reproduction parallels others that were being worked out by progressive and countercultural Jews who founded h.avurot (prayer fellowships) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the same years that Wiseman’s agent was shopping the novel around to publishers. The rabbi and activist Arthur Waskow echoed the central tropes of Wiseman’s novel in 1971—that is, well before Crackpot’s publication—arguing that in the 1960s ‘the melting pot . . . shattered’ and calling for ‘the building of a new society and the dismantling of the old, with loving care’, with ‘the other peoples of the Earth . . . rising alongside us’ (Waskow 1973: 15, 18). The h.avurah movement was a return to Jewish affiliation by young Jews who had been allied with the New Left but were disheartened by its antipathy towards Jewish causes and concerns, especially Zionism (Prell 1989: 86–7). Note that Waskow refers to Jews as ‘us’ and to ‘other peoples’ as separate constituencies; like Wiseman, he does not present a vision of universal siblinghood. As Prell observes in her study of the h.avurot, ‘members wove together tradition and innovation as essential components of an authentic Judaism’ and shunned simple accounts of Jewishness passing on genealogically. Such countercultural Jews ‘sought their mythological past, one that would inform, though not control, their present and future . . . [and] yearned for continuity even as they separated themselves from their parents’ and grandparents’ lives’ (Prell 1989: 71). Wiseman’s novel offers a literary model for how communities such as this might envision and reproduce themselves through its studious attention to Jewish history and theology and its unflagging commitment to the project of rewriting and reshaping Jewish traditions according to its own progressive politics. The following passage describes Hoda’s exemplary response to her father’s stories, which have stood throughout the novel as her primary connection to the Jewish past and which she begins to listen to again after her sexual encounter with Pipick:

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If she had hoped to hear those stories once again as a child hears, she was disappointed. But she was not aware of such a hope, nor of the disappointment of being barred from a return to innocence. She simply felt the old stories, felt her emptiness filled with resonance, transformed to resonance. She saw the old stories, saw through the old stories, saw beyond the old stories to what the man her father was and what the woman her mother must have been; she heard the stories and knew them all, and gathered them back into herself and knew herself as well, not as she had once known herself, in a sudden, comprehensive flash of revelation, a simultaneity of multiple Hodas, but as she flowed in the sequence of her days. (Wiseman 1974: 362)

Eschewing a conservative desire to ‘hear those stories once again as a child hears’, to recreate precisely some simplified past experience or to understand her culture reductively, Hoda seeks a more creative and intense engagement with tradition. The careful biblical mimicry of this passage—the repetition and parataxis and the faux-archaic phrasing of ‘flowed in the sequence of her days’, for example—and the emphasis on repurposing (seeing ‘through’ and ‘beyond’) ‘old stories’ anticipate many of the formal gestures of the second-wave feminist literature and theology produced in the later 1970s, especially that undertaken by feminist Jewish women. Tellingly, Wiseman selects the same verb to capture Hoda’s newfound comfort in her multiplicity that Robert Greenblatt did, in a polemic on his place in the Jewish counterculture: ‘I am a Jew, an American, a Revolutionary’, he wrote, ‘I am all three at once because each flows out of and merges into one life history’ (1971: 47). Considering when Crackpot was begun—years before the women’s movement garnered national attention in 1969 and 1970 and even before the first countercultural h.avurah was established in 1968—Wiseman’s perspicacity is stunning. As a response to crises of Jewishness in modernity, that is, to the conflicts between Jews’ desire to reproduce Jewishly and to participate fully in non-Jewish social and political communities, Hoda’s openness to incest with her son allegorically represents the path pursued by feminists and the countercultural h.avurah movement, but with a more nuanced understanding than some others had of the challenges facing progressive Jews. Can Jews stay Jewish and reproduce—create Jewish offspring—without affirming retrograde, racialist standards of what it means to be Jewish, and without isolating the Jewish community from the wider American population and its causes and values? Yes, Crackpot insists, through the figure of a radically recuperated Jewish mother, while remaining adamant through its representation of her incestuous choice that this communal reproduction will perforce necessitate the uncomfortable demand on individuals to embrace some degree of endogamy, to love their own first and best. Of course, Wiseman’s was hardly the only recuperation of the Jewish mother stereotype in the decades that followed the figure’s apotheosis in American popular culture. Antler surveys several parallel responses by second-wave feminists, including Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1974), which, in Antler’s phrase, offers ‘a

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refreshing alternative to prevailing images of the Jewish mother’ (2007: 164). This is certainly one way to defang a stereotype: offer up a representation of the stereotyped figure that does not fit the cartoonish expectations at all, in Jong’s case, ‘“a bohemian, a rebel against convention,” a woman who instils in her offspring “artistic confidence and psychological self-sufficiency” rather than guilt’ (2007: 166). What distinguishes Wiseman’s engagement with the stereotype from such approaches—and from many of the nostalgic or progressive recuperations of the Jewish mother, surveyed by Antler, that followed in the ensuing decades—is that while Hoda is in many ways nothing like the stereotyped Jewish mothers of mid-1960s popular culture, she is less an inversion or refutation of the stereotype than an intensification of it. Crackpot extends the idea of the Jewish mother as personifying ‘parochialism and excess’ (Prell 1989: 163) to its logical but most shocking extreme, while simultaneously renegotiating the affective valences of that stereotypical figure, rendering it positive.

Notes 1

Wiseman could have allowed Hoda to welcome women as well as men as sexual partners—but she did not. She privileges heterosexuality in her text in the same way as other feminist novels of the early 1970s.

References abraham, karl. 1955. ‘On Neurotic Exogamy’. In Hilda Abraham, ed., Clinical Papers and Essays on Psycho-analysis: The Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, trans. Hilda Abraham and D. R. Elison, 48–50. New York. antler, joyce. 2007. You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother. Oxford. ausubel, nathan. 1951. A Treasury of Jewish Humor. New York. berg, gertrud. 1965. How To Be a Jewish Mother (LP). New York. blau, zena smith. 1967. ‘In Defense of the Jewish Mother’. Midstream, 13: 42–9. booker, bob, and george foster. 1965. You Don’t Have To Be Jewish. New York. crosland, alan, dir. 1927. The Jazz Singer. Warner Bros. fiedler, leslie. 1958. ‘Genesis: The American-Jewish Novel through the Twenties’. Midstream, 4: 570–86. freud, sigmund. 1963. Sexuality and the Psychology of Love. New York. friedman, melvin j. 1973. ‘Jewish Mothers and Sons: The Expense of Chutzpah’. In Irving Malin, ed., Contemporary American Jewish Literature: Critical Essays, 156–74. Bloomington, Ind. greenblatt, robert. 1971. ‘Out of the Melting Pot, into the Fire’. In James A. Sleeper and Alan L. Mintz, eds., The New Jews, 37–47. New York. greenburg, dan. 1964. How To Be a Jewish Mother: A Very Lovely Training Manual. Los Angeles.

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hoffman, warren. 2009. The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture. New York. hyman, paula e. 1995. Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women. Seattle, Wash. jaher, frederic cople . 1983. ‘The Quest for the Ultimate Shiksa’. American Quarterly, 35: 518–42. joselit, jenna weissman . 1994. The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880–1950. New York. k e r t z e r , j . m. 1996. ‘Beginnings and Endings: Adele Wiseman’s Crackpot’. Essays on Canadian Writing, 58: 15–35. kobler, franz , ed. 1955. Her Children Call Her Blessed: A Portrait of the Jewish Mother. New York. mack, marcia. 1999. ‘The Sacrifice and Crackpot: What a Woman Can Learn by Rewriting a Fairy Tale and Clarifying Its Meaning’. Essays on Canadian Writing, 68: 134–58. panofsky, ruth. 1993. ‘From Complicity to Subversion: The Female Subject in Adele Wiseman’s Novels’. Canadian Literature, 137: 41–8. —— 2006. The Force of Vocation: The Literary Career of Adele Wiseman. Winnipeg. prell, riv-ellen. 1989. Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism. Detroit. pynchon, thomas . 1966. The Crying of Lot 49. Philadelphia. reiner, carl, dir. 1970. Where’s Poppa? United Artists Corporation. rosenthal, helene. 1975. ‘Comedy of Survival’. Canadian Literature, 64: 115–18. roth, philip . 1969. Portnoy’s Complaint. New York. —— 1985. Reading Myself and Others, 2nd edn. New York. rothbell, gladys. 1986. ‘The Jewish Mother: Social Construction of a Popular Image’. In Steven M. Cohen and Paula E. Hyman, eds., The Jewish Family: Myths and Reality, 118–28. New York. sheidlower, jesse. 1995. The F Word. New York. shell, marc. 1988. The End of Kinship: ‘Measure for Measure’, Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood. Stanford, Calif. sol, adam. 2001. ‘Longings and Renunciations: Attitudes toward Intermarriage in Early Twentieth Century Jewish American Novels’. American Jewish History, 89: 215–30. sollors, werner. 1986. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York. waskow, arthur. 1973. ‘Judaism and Revolution Today’. In Jack Nusan Porter and Peter Dreier, eds., Jewish Radicalism: A Selected Anthology, 11–28. New York. wiseman, adele. 1956. The Sacrifice. New York. —— 1974. Crackpot. Toronto. —— n.d. ‘Jewishness’. Unpublished essay. Adele Wiseman Fonds, York University, Toronto.

PA RT

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The ‘Mothers’ Who Were Not: Motherhood Imagery and Childless Women Warriors in Early Jewish Literature c a ryn ta m b e r- ro s e n au

Motherhood is a major focus of women’s identities in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish literature. If female characters are not defined by their status as biological mothers, their stories focus on their barrenness and pining for children.1 However, the woman warrior characters of early Jewish literature— Deborah, Jael, and Judith—are not portrayed as mothers, nor do their tales deal with their childlessness as a plot point.2 These characters serve their people not by bearing and raising children, but by their bravery in combat: Deborah leads Israelite troops against Canaan, Jael offers the fleeing general Sisera hospitality and then drives a tent peg through his head, and Judith beguiles the general Holofernes into letting his guard down, and then beheads him. All three stories nevertheless invoke maternal language and imagery, casting these characters as figurative rather than literal mothers. Late antique or rabbinic accounts of these stories often develop this theme of motherhood further. In this essay, I employ queer theory in order to investigate these uses of maternal language and imagery. Specifically, I engage with the work of Judith Butler on gender performance and Lee Edelman on reproductive futurism. Using Butler’s theory, which proposes that gender is an artificial construct, I show how Deborah, Jael, and Judith ‘perform’ womanhood by invoking maternal language and imagery. Using Edelman’s framework of reproductive futurism, I claim that Deborah, Jael, and Judith’s apparent childlessness is transgressive in its original context. The biblical texts focus on reproduction and the linear development of the Israelite nation, but there are episodes in the Bible that disrupt this focus. Edelman’s theories provide a framework for exploring what it means for a biblical woman not to be a mother. At the same time, by circling back to Butler’s work on gender performance I explore the reasons for the use of maternal language and imagery in connection with childless characters in these texts. I address the question of how the patriar-

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chal character of the societies in which these texts were written contributed to their construction of motherhood and childlessness, and why maternal language appears even in the stories of women who are not portrayed as mothers. What is the nature and power of motherhood in the Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha, and early Jewish literature? What were the authors of the books of Judges and Judith, and later writings about Deborah, Jael, and Judith aiming to convey by using maternal imagery? Finally, I conclude by addressing the ethical and political questions raised by the use of maternal language to describe the character or achievements of childless women. Is it helpful to the cause of feminism that these texts extend their highest honour, the status of mother, to childless heroines? Or is it harmful to frame all female accomplishments, even decidedly non-maternal ones, in the language of reproductive futurism? The works of Butler and Edelman are rarely (if ever) discussed together in the context of ancient literature. I contend that putting these two theorists in conversation with one another, and with the Bible and early Jewish literature, permits constructive and enlightening new readings of these texts. I begin with a discussion of methodology, including a brief explanation of queer theory and its use in biblical studies. I focus particularly on Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (1990) and on Edelman’s influential No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004). I then examine each of the three female warrior characters, focusing on the ways in which they relate to maternity. I begin with an analysis of Deborah and Jael, first examining their portrayal in Judges 4–5, and subsequently considering the connections to maternity brought out by early interpreters of the text, in particular, the early rabbis and Pseudo-Philo (the firstcentury ce author of Biblical Antiquities). Finally, I turn to the book of Judith. Since it was never included in the Jewish canon, it inspired very few post-biblical commentaries. I therefore deal primarily with the text itself.3

Methodology: Queer Theory and Reproductive Futurism In this essay I apply methods and tools that originate in the interdisciplinary field of queer theory. Queer theory aims to deconstruct and expose the social constructs that shape our conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality. Queer biblical criticism, which builds to some extent on feminist criticism of the Bible, emerged in the mid-1990s, following the rise of queer theory more generally. While feminist scholars aim to recover female voices and experiences from biblical texts and explore how these texts produce and reinforce female subordination, those using the techniques of queer theory start by questioning how these texts produce categories such as ‘male’ and ‘female’ in the first place. Queer biblical criticism also asks how these categories may be undermined by the same texts that produce

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them. Ken Stone, one of the pioneers of queer biblical criticism, has produced a succinct list of questions through which Bible critics can approach the text: What norms or conventions of gender seem to be presupposed by this text? How might attention to the interdisciplinary study of gender allow readers of the Bible to tease out such presuppositions? How are assumptions about gender used in the structure of a particular plot, or manipulated for purposes of characterization? . . . Might a character’s success or failure at embodying gender norms result from a strategy to cast that character in a particular light, whether positive or negative? Is the text itself always successful at manipulating gender assumptions? Do biblical texts, like persons, sometimes fail to ‘cite’ gender conventions in expected ways or according to dominant norms? How does our attention to these and other questions contribute to our understanding of both gender and the Bible? (Stone 2007: 192)

I shall use some of Stone’s questions to assess how the biblical and post-biblical texts which feature women warriors both construct and subvert gendered expectations regarding the characters’ relationships to motherhood. To paraphrase Stone: Do the texts presuppose that female characters must be mothers? Are these presuppositions undermined by the same texts that produce them? How are presuppositions about maternity used in the plots of these texts? Do the texts sometimes fail to have their characters perform the relationships to motherhood that we might expect? How do these questions and their answers contribute to our understanding of gender and motherhood in the Bible and early Jewish literature? Beatrice Lawrence characterizes queer theory as ‘not a method but a lens’, meaning that Bible critics who employ queer theory may use historical-critical, literary, or any other method of analysis to arrive at any interpretation of the text (Lawrence 2009: 333). While this is technically true because of the postmodern roots and allegiances of the majority of scholars using a queer-theoretical lens, in practice, most queer criticism of the Bible is not historical-critical. Rather, queer analysis tends to focus on the texts as texts; it tends to reject the prospect of determining a single meaning for a text. This essay, like most queer biblical readings, is not historical-critical. I do not seek to uncover the historical ‘truth’ behind the texts I examine here, but rather to read them as pieces of literature. I read Deborah, Jael, and Judith as literary characters. I analyse them not in the context of their purported historical settings in the Late Bronze Age or the early postexilic period, but in the context of the imagined worlds they inhabit. A frequently cited scholar in queer biblical criticism is Judith Butler, who argues that gender is a performance, a series of repeated acts which together present a picture to the world. Butler’s paradigmatic example of gender performance is drag; she argues that the parody involved when an individual ‘puts on’ a gender through drag lays bare the artificiality of all gender. Gender, in her view, has no inherent substance; rather, it is produced through the ‘stylized repetition of acts’. Even when the gender being performed ‘matches’ the individual’s genital

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configuration, chromosomal sex, or both, it still remains a performance (Butler 1990; 1993). Though Butler’s work has found adherents in biblical studies, surprisingly few biblical scholars engage with the work of another major queer theorist, Lee Edelman. In No Future (2004), which has become influential outside biblical studies, Edelman critiques what he calls ‘reproductive futurism’. He argues that society is relentlessly focused on ‘the child’, a symbolic figure who ‘remains the perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics, the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention’ (Edelman 2004: 3). Edelman here responds to those who advocate against gay rights because ‘the child’ must be protected at all costs from the ‘otherness’ of queer lives and desires (Edelman 2004: 19–22). He also refutes the association of homosexuality, and its purported disregard for reproduction, with the Freudian concept of a ‘death drive’. Against reproductive futurism, Edelman asks—what would it look like not to take the side of the child? His answer is queerness, which, to Edelman, is a resistance not just to an exaggerated focus on the child, but also to the widespread conception of history as a linear narrative (Edelman 2004: 3–4). Edelman also argues that the cult of the child, with its narcissistic focus on the replication of the self, is the real death drive, and that queerness represents a creative release from that drive. I use Edelman’s and Butler’s theories on reproductive futurism and gender performance to explore Deborah’s, Jael’s, and Judith’s lack of engagement with maternity, and consider why and how the texts use the language and imagery of motherhood to describe these characters. I do not mean to suggest that the authors of these early Jewish texts had any notion of queer theory; nor do I imply that they consciously created characters that would be read as childless in order to challenge the prevailing reproductive futurism of the day. Obviously, these are postmodern ideas, and it would be anachronistic to presume that ancient authors could be aware of such considerations. However, the purpose of theory is to help us gain a sharper understanding of the world, human nature, and even the production of literature. It is therefore legitimate to use postmodern theories to explain not just our own world and its literature, but also those of days long past. In the case of Deborah, Jael, and Judith, I find that queer theory helps to uncover new meanings for these very old texts.

Deborah and Her Textual Afterlives Deborah is one of fifteen ‘judges’ named in the book of Judges, and the only woman among them. She is also described as a neviah, ‘[female] prophet’ or ‘prophetess’. According to biblical chronology, the judges led Israel between the conquest of the land and the creation of the monarchy. Most of them are portrayed as military leaders rather than judicial authorities (see Judg. 2: 18, 3: 10, 3: 15–22, and 11: 1–12: 7), but Deborah stands out as an exception to that rule: she ‘sat

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under a palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the mountainous region of Ephraim, and the Israelites would ask her for judgment’ (Judg. 4: 5). She also acts as a military commander, like the other judges, ordering an attack on the Canaanites (Judg. 4: 6–7) and accompanying the troops to Kadesh (Judg. 4: 9–10, 5: 15). Though Deborah is not portrayed as actually wielding weapons, Susan Ackerman points out that her colleague Barak is not shown handling weapons either, but that tradition uniformly assumes that he does so (Ackerman 1998: 31–2). Deborah is described in Judges 4: 4 as eshet lapidot. Since ishah can mean either ‘woman’ or ‘wife’, it is unclear how best to translate this phrase. Is Deborah the ‘wife of Lapidoth’, a man’s name otherwise unattested in the Hebrew Bible and, oddly, marked with the feminine -ot ending? Or is she a ‘woman of torches’ or ‘woman of flames’, the feminine plural form of the otherwise masculine noun lapid? Some have circumvented the idea that Deborah had an otherwise unknown husband by arguing that ‘Lapidoth’ is nothing more than a nickname for Barak— whose name means ‘lightning’. Deborah and Barak are not as much co-generals, therefore, but also spouses (Boling 1975: 95). This suggestion strikes me as misplaced, given that the text betrays no hint of a marital relationship between Deborah and Barak. Although most Bible translations marry Deborah off, there are a number of scholars who suggest that the text is in fact stressing her fiery disposition (Bal 1988a: 30, 209; 1988b: 58; Fewell and Gunn 1990: 391; Guest 2005: 152–3; van Wolde 1995: 244). Jack M. Sasson is more literal, connecting Deborah with pyromancy, a form of prophecy involving fire (Sasson 2014: 256). As Mieke Bal writes, ‘being “of torches” is the essence of Deborah: an inflamed and inflaming woman whose prophecy is crucial for the story. Her status as wife of an unknown and obscure husband is clearly irrelevant, and hence, would not be mentioned’ (Bal 1988a: 209). Although the text is ambiguous, I side with the scholars who depict Deborah as a ‘woman of torches’, rather than as the ‘wife of Lapidoth’. Deborah’s reproductive status is also ambiguous. The reader is never told whether or not she has children. If the biblical writers did intend to portray her as a mother, one wonders whether Deborah would bring her children with her when she sat under her palm tree, meting out justice. What about when she led the troops into battle? In a world in which women were responsible for the care of their children, I would argue that it is best to picture Deborah as a childless woman (Meyers 1991: 149). From a literary point of view, she certainly is a childless character because the biblical texts—the only sources we have about her —contain no hint of any offspring. The Bible is not a historical document, particularly when dealing with the pre-monarchic era, and its characters are not fleshand-blood individuals for whom we can imagine full lives outside the text. They are literary creations, and if the text does not tell us that Deborah has children, then she is for all intents and purposes childless. In spite of this, Deborah is described as ‘a mother in Israel’ in Judges 5: 7.

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Scholars generally do not see her as a literal mother. Deborah F. Sawyer notes that, while motherhood in the Bible is generally conceived of in biological terms, that of Deborah is intended metaphorically: ‘[T]his description, for once, is not related to actual motherhood, but to her charge of God’s people’ (Sawyer 2002: 93). The entire verse in which the phrase appears gives us better context. It reads, ‘Peasants ceased | In Israel they ceased, | Until I, Deborah, arose, | I, a mother in Israel, arose.’4 Here, ‘mother’ is clearly not used to describe a woman who births and rears children, but one who plays a leadership role for her people. J. Cheryl Exum argues, ‘Her accomplishments described in Judges 4–5 include counsel, inspiration, and leadership. A mother in Israel is one who brings liberation from oppression, provides protection, and ensures the well-being and security of her people’ (Exum 1985: 85). As Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn note, this is a ‘harder’ side of motherhood than what we usually see in the Bible (Fewell and Gunn 1990: 402). Deborah is not a ‘mother’ in terms of biological reproduction or tender nurturance, but by virtue of acting as a divinely inspired leader. The description of Deborah as a ‘mother’ can be compared to the use of ‘father’ to describe a leader among the prophets (Hackett 1985: 28). In post-biblical tradition, the motherhood theme is amplified.5 This occurs in a text called Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB), or Biblical Antiquities, which has survived only in its Latin version. Biblical Antiquities was transmitted alongside the work of Philo of Alexandria, and was therefore incorrectly attributed to him; the author is now known as ‘Pseudo-Philo’. The text is a retelling of the Bible from Adam to Saul, focusing heavily on the book of Judges. It is notable for the author’s treatment of biblical women. Pseudo-Philo expands the roles of many female characters, including Deborah, whom he almost turns into a ‘second Moses’ (Brown 1992: 39–71). Deborah’s identity as a metaphorical mother is played up in Biblical Antiquities: ‘And when the day of her death approached, she sent and assembled all the people and said to them, “Now listen, my people. See, I instruct you as a woman of God and enlighten you as one of the female sex. Obey me like your mother and turn to my words as ones who will die”’ (LAB 33: 1). She also refers to the people of Israel as ‘my sons’ or ‘my children’ (LAB 33: 3). The people respond in similar terms, ‘See now, mother, you are dying and leaving your sons [or: children]; to whom do you entrust them?’ (LAB 33: 4). Pseudo-Philo writes that, after Deborah dies, the people mourn her by singing, ‘Look, a mother perishes from Israel, and a holy one who carried the leadership in the house of Jacob’ (LAB 33: 6). As in Judges, the motherhood role is not seen by commentators as biological. Cheryl Anne Brown, for example, writes that ‘The phrase does not signify physical motherhood, but a role and quality of character. The mother’s role is to nourish, protect, admonish, teach, and guide; she is compassionate and always mindful of her children’ (Brown 1992: 69).6 It is curious to note, however, that the subject of Deborah’s ‘motherhood’ only

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appears once in rabbinic literature, in a negative context. The rabbis seem to interpret Deborah’s proclamation that she is a ‘mother in Israel’ as braggadocio. In a section on the punishment for haughtiness, they write: We see that if he is a prophet his prophecy deserts him from an incident that occurred with Deborah the prophetess. For in the Song of Deborah, after she names two of Israel’s earlier leaders, it is written, ‘They ceased to dwell in the open cities, those of Israel ceased; until Deborah arose, until a mother arose in Israel’ etc. Deborah thus haughtily praised herself while casting aspersions upon her predecessors. And shortly afterwards it is written: ‘Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake and speak song etc.!’ This teaches that the spirit of prophecy deserted Deborah and she was obliged to plead for its return. Clearly, this was caused by her haughty words. (BT Pes. 66b)7

This passage is rather opaque. As Leila Leah Bronner writes, ‘How could the rabbis have faulted her for referring to herself as “a mother in Israel”? The sages do not say how she should have referred to herself and why that statement would merit the loss of prophecy. Clearly, there was more going on than meets the eye’ (Bronner 1994: 173). A much later rabbinic authority, the Maharsha, Rabbi Samuel Eidels (1555–1631), comments that, in proclaiming that her own rise to power was a turning point for the people of Israel, Deborah ignores the role of Barak (Schottenstein edition, BT Pes. 66b n. 15). Although the rabbis are not kind to Deborah here, I would argue that their hostility underscores my point about the metaphorical value of her motherhood. The rabbis give no indication that they read Judges 5: 7 as a statement of Deborah having children of her own. Rather, they read it as an assertion of her leadership role among the people, a role so powerful that, by speaking of it herself, she is found guilty of haughtiness. Why does the book of Judges go out of its way to portray Deborah as a mother, albeit a metaphorical one? There are multiple possibilities. Perhaps ‘mother’ was an honorific title given to female leaders (Bronner 2004: 82). Perhaps the label is a ‘consolation prize’ for a childless woman who has authority among her people: she does not bear or rear sons, but she can still be a ‘mother’, after a fashion. Maybe Deborah is called ‘mother in Israel’ because of the author(s)’ lack of imagination: in a patriarchal society, what else can one call a woman who has power? Or perhaps the label ‘mother in Israel’ is more insidious, an attempt to reinscribe a very public woman into the domestic sphere. Judges 5: 7 has Deborah herself utter the phrase; is this powerful woman being made to diminish her own importance by describing herself as a mother? Fewell and Gunn express discomfort with Deborah’s designation as ‘mother’, particularly as they argue that it couches Deborah’s military leadership in the cosy language of motherhood, appropriating the image of the mother for violent ends (Fewell and Gunn 1993: 126). Deryn Guest summarizes and expands upon this critique: For Fewell and Gunn this acclamation of Deborah as Mother is problematic. It could

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be seen as an assimilation of her previous unexpected behavior whereby the possibly subversive and disturbing glimpse of her as an independent, forceful military leader is accommodated into the patriarchal system as an oddity that worked for the good of Israel. . . . There may yet be a way of queering this text that overcomes the problems noted by Fewell and Gunn, but this remains to be seen. (Guest 2005: 154)

I would like to propose an understanding of Deborah-as-mother that may not solve all of these problems but does cast a new light on why the text gives Deborah the linguistic markers of motherhood. As Edelman argues, the image of ‘the child’ is powerful, as evidenced by its use in contemporary society to justify all manner of public policy initiatives. Clearly, this holds true not only today but also in the world(s) that produced the biblical texts. There are numerous examples in the Hebrew Bible of references to children as symbols of the future and continuity (e.g. Exod. 13: 8, 14; Deut. 1: 31, 8: 5; Isa. 11: 6, 49: 15, 66: 13; Hos. 11: 1). Likewise, motherhood is frequently used in the Bible as a symbol of nurturance or the mother’s role in shaping her child’s character (e.g. Isa. 66: 13; Ezek. 16: 44–5; Ps. 131: 2). So what does it mean when a prominent female character in the Bible is not portrayed as having children of her own? I would argue that we can read the absence of children, fertility concerns, or any other child-related storyline from the tale as problematizing the reproductive futurism that prevails in most of the Bible. When a woman is hailed not for her fecundity and childrearing skills, but for her military prowess and judicial savvy, the textual focus is shifted, if only temporarily, away from the relentless attention to offspring and the linear march of history. The focus of Deborah’s story becomes instead her leadership and triumph in the here-and-now. Although I do not read Deborah as ‘refusing’ to buy into the cult of the child—unlike in the book of Judith, which I discuss below, nothing in the text of Judges 4–5 implies that Deborah actively rejects childbearing—the effect of her story is to provide the reader with an alternative to the focus on children and continuity. At the same time, Deborah nods to the power of reproduction and motherhood by using the phrase ‘a mother in Israel’. I would suggest that we can read Deborah as invoking motherhood not to diminish her own importance, but rather as a very conscious way of ‘performing’ womanhood. When Deborah calls herself ‘mother in Israel’, we can interpret this as a gesture towards what is expected of her as a woman in antiquity, perhaps even performed with a sense of camp. ‘Look’, the character of Deborah seems to be saying, ‘You know and I know that I’m not a mother. I’m far from traditional, more than a little transgressive, and I scare you a little. But fine, I’ll play the “mother” for you, if that makes you more comfortable.’ Deborah performs motherhood because that makes her powerful, independent nature easier to accept, both for her people in the story and for future generations of readers. By doing so, she mocks and subverts the social expectation that women should be biological mothers. Deborah’s story simulta-

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neously presents an alternative to and a parody of the Bible’s focus on women, their children, and what those children will do for the nation in the future. This could be the ‘queering’ interpretation that Guest seeks. Judges merely refers to Deborah as a mother, while Biblical Antiquities goes even further by repeatedly using the kind of language of a sustained exchange between the people and Deborah, focusing on her specific role as a mother to them. More to the point, when Deborah is on her deathbed, the ‘mother’ and ‘child’ language is carried through an entire exchange between her and the people. It appears that, for Pseudo-Philo, calling Deborah their ‘mother’ is the highest compliment the people can pay her. Again, though, by calling Deborah ‘mother’ in terms of leadership rather than biological relationship, the text (even if unwittingly) parodies the expectation that women should be mothers. When she tells the Israelites that they are to ‘obey me like your mother’, she is putting female power in terms they can understand. However, she also undermines their equation of authoritative women with mothers, because she is not one. What, then, do we make of the negative attitude the rabbis displayed towards Deborah’s ‘motherhood’? Why do they condemn her for touting herself as ‘a mother in Israel’ if women are supposed to be mothers? I would argue that the rabbis see Deborah’s proclamation for what it is: an attempt to invoke the language of reproduction to make her martial nature and independence more palatable. The rabbis are not fooled. They call her on her performance and condemn her for the haughtiness of appropriating a status she has not ‘earned’. I would surmise that the rabbis are disturbed by the possibility that a woman could hold military and judicial power and resent Deborah’s efforts to make her authority more palatable by couching it in the language of motherhood. For a female character to earn the approval of the rabbis, she must be a ‘real’ mother, fully invested in the perpetuation of the nation through reproduction, and not, as Deborah, a tough female leader performing ‘mommy drag’.

Jael and Her Textual Afterlives Closely connected to Deborah is Jael, who murders the Canaanite general Sisera in Judges 4 and 5. It is to Jael and not to herself that Deborah refers in 4: 9 when she tells Barak that she will indeed go with him to attack the Canaanites, but that ‘the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hand of a woman’. Taken together, the prose of Judges 4 and the poem of Judges 5 (the Song of Deborah) recount that Sisera flees the battlefield towards the tent of Jael, ‘wife of Hever the Kenite’, because the Israelites are winning.8 Jael beckons Sisera into her tent, gives him sustenance, puts him to bed, and then kills him by driving a tent peg into his head. Jael, like Deborah, is not explicitly described as childless. Yet such a situation can reasonably be deduced from the text. Just as it is difficult to imagine Deborah judging, prophesying, and leading the military with offspring in tow, so it is hard

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to see the scene described in Judges 4 and 5 playing out with children under foot. Like the vast majority of religious, secular, and artistic interpreters, I see Jael as childless. Just as Deborah is described as a metaphorical mother, so Jael is portrayed as a maternal figure when interacting with Sisera. I argue elsewhere that Jael acts in a way that is both motherly and seductive, and other scholars have noted the erotic undercurrent of this encounter (Tamber-Rosenau 2015; see also Ackerman 1998; Niditch 1989; Reis 2005; van Wolde 1995; Zakovitch 1981). Here, however, I focus on the maternal aspects of their meeting. From the moment they see one another, Jael behaves in a motherly fashion. She goes out of her tent to meet Sisera—like a mother welcoming home her child—and tells him, ‘Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me! Do not be afraid!’ (Judg. 4: 18). The prose in chapter 4 is otherwise terse, but here Jael uses more words than she needs, repeating herself for the sake of emphasis. This reads like a mother soothing a scared child: ‘No monsters under the bed, honey, see? No monsters! Nothing to worry about!’ Of course, Sisera should definitely be afraid.9 When Sisera enters Jael’s tent, she covers him with a piece of fabric (Judg. 4: 18). (The word semikhah is a hapax legomenon, a word that appears only once in the Bible, so its meaning is uncertain. Most scholars translate it as ‘rug’, ‘curtain’, or ‘blanket’.) This is not an act of concealment, but an act of mothering. To assume otherwise would be to imagine that Barak and his men would think of looking for Sisera in Jael’s tent, fail to be dissuaded by Jael standing at the entrance telling them that there is no one there (Judg. 4: 20), notice a Siserashaped lump in the corner under a blanket, shrug, and continue their search elsewhere. Jael intuits that this scared, tired man needs a mother, so she tucks him in. One might even interpret Jael covering Sisera as a symbolic return to the safety of the womb.10 Next, Sisera asks for water to slake his thirst. Jael gives him milk (4: 19) or milk and curds (5: 25). Nourishing the general by providing for his physical needs is another act of mothering, and the choice of beverage is symbolic (Sasson 2014: 267–8). Bal argues that, ‘By giving milk, Yael, on the one hand, reassures Sisera further; on the other hand, she prepares the scene as an ironic one of antimothering’ (Bal 1988a: 213). I would add that even Jael’s choice of vessel in the poetic version of events may be read as a symbol of mothering. She brings him his milk and curds in ‘a bowl fit for nobles’ (5: 25). This would be a logical choice for a woman hosting a general under ordinary circumstances, but in this scene of dishonour for the general, it carries some sardonic undertones: ‘How noble are you now, Sisera?’ The mocking is tinged with infantilization, too; I read the ‘bowl fit for nobles’ as akin to the old practice of feeding a young child using a silver bowl and spoon. According to the prose version, Jael then covers Sisera again. Sasson notes, on this point, that the two descriptions of covering may be read as a single act ‘sandwiching’ Sisera’s request for a drink (Sasson 2014: 268). If there

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is a second covering, we might read it as an extra act of maternal attention: the child has thrown off his covers to demand a drink, but now he really must lie down, get under the covers, and take a nap. When Sisera has been covered again, he tells Jael, ‘Stand at the opening of the tent, and if it happens that any man comes and asks you, “Is there a man here?” say, “None”’ (4: 20). Scholars sometimes read this as an ironic indication of Sisera’s lack of masculinity; he is, indeed, ‘no man’ (Bal 1988a: 213–14). We can also see it, however, as further contributing to the text’s impression of a mother– child relationship between Jael and Sisera. There is no man in Jael’s tent, only a little boy under the protection of his mother. When, in the prose version of events, Jael approaches Sisera with the tentpeg and mallet, she does so balat, ‘softly’ (4: 21). This extends the motherhood imagery; she has tucked in her ‘child’, and now she must tiptoe around so as not to wake him. She approaches to kill him, rather than to adjust his blanket. Instead of watching out for his life, she deals death. The juxtaposition of the ‘good mother’ Deborah with the ‘bad mother’ Jael and with Sisera’s mother, who parrots the patriarchal justification for war, may reflect the author’s ambivalence and unease with the power of motherhood (Exum 2007: 71–2). Also suggestive of maternity is the poetic description of how Sisera falls. While the prose version has him asleep when Jael strikes, the poem has him fall ‘between her feet’ (5: 27), the same phrase used in Deuteronomy 28: 57, which describes ‘the afterbirth that comes out from between her feet’. Jael has metaphorically given birth to Sisera, only to kill him. The connection of Sisera’s death scene to one of birth is reinforced by the description of Jael flagging down Barak and welcoming him into her tent to see what she has wrought. Biblical references to birth-giving reveal that it was a women’s event at which men were not present. Combined with the motherhood imagery in Jael’s treatment of Sisera, her inviting Barak to see Sisera’s body reads like the father finally welcomed in after labour is complete. What he sees, however, is a grotesque parody: Sisera, dead, with a tent-peg nailed through his head. The end of chapter 5, which brings Sisera’s biological mother into the story, reinforces the portrayal of Jael as a mother-figure. Sisera’s mother waits at the window for her son to come home, wondering why he has not arrived yet: ‘The wisest of her princesses answered her | She also repeated her words to herself | “Aren’t they finding and dividing the spoil? | A womb or two for each man’s head | Spoil of dyed cloth for Sisera | Spoil of dyed cloth | An embroidered cloth or two | Spoil for their necks!”’ (Judg. 5: 29–30). By mentioning Sisera’s mother, the biblical author invites the reader to draw the parallel between her and Jael. This, we finally learn, is what Sisera was hoping for when he fled the battlefield: a mother who would await him eagerly and welcome him warmly. Presumably, Sisera’s own mother would have used the same tricks of the maternal trade that Jael employs: soothing words about Sisera’s safety, a place to lay his head, a warm

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covering, and a drink to slake his thirst. Rather than reaching his biological mother, however, Sisera encounters Jael, who behaves in a motherly way and uses maternal comforts only for long enough to kill him. The maternal imagery continues in the post-biblical tradition, particularly in chapter 31 of Biblical Antiquities. This text, like Judges 4 and 5, has Jael offering Sisera shelter, warmth, and something to drink, promising him motherly comfort to soothe his troubled soul. It also mentions Sisera’s mother, here called Themech, and her eagerness to see the spoil her son will bring back from the battle. Again, this reinforces the parallel between Jael and Sisera’s real mother. There are additional indications in chapter 31 that Jael ‘mothers’ Sisera. For example, though he asks Jael for something to drink immediately upon entering the tent, she does not oblige right away, telling him instead to rest first, and then drink (LAB 31: 4). Just as a good mother does not always give her child exactly what he asks for when he asks for it, Jael in effect tells Sisera, ‘Mother knows best, dear; now lie down and take a nap.’ Moreover, this scene places Jael, not Sisera, in charge—because she is a mother-figure to him. The motherhood imagery is again reinforced when Jael goes out to her flock to obtain milk (LAB 31: 5). While in Judges Jael simply gives Sisera milk, here the reader sees her getting it from a ewe, strengthening the milk’s association with maternity because of its direct connection with a mother animal. Additionally, in Biblical Antiquities the milk is mixed with wine, making the beverage even more soporific. Jael wants to ensure that the childlike man whom she is mothering will sleep soundly, not because, like a good parent, she wants him to recover, but because she wants him to be too exhausted to notice that she is about to kill him. This section of the story can also be read as a mother caring for her sick child. Sisera repeatedly describes his thirst as ‘burning’ or ‘blazing’, hence reminiscent of a fever. In this light, Jael is making sure her sick child sleeps, gives him something to quash the ‘burning’, and then allows him to sleep again. Sisera is also repeatedly described as being ‘disjointed’, ‘dissolved’, or ‘out of sorts’ from the battle and the bad omens he senses in the stars; Jael gives him the impression that, like a good mother, she will put him back together. In Biblical Antiquities, Jael prays before she kills Sisera, telling God that if she is able to roll him off the bed without waking him up, she will know that she can safely strike him (LAB 31: 7). This introduces a comic element to the text: it seems unlikely that anyone, no matter how battle-weary and inebriated, could stay asleep after being rolled off the bed to the floor. Sisera’s improbably deep slumber is also divine confirmation of the legitimacy of Jael’s plan: she has asked God to send her a specific sign, and God does, even though the sign she asks for is ridiculous. But Sisera staying asleep is also a sign that Jael has fulfilled her motherly role impeccably: she has tucked him in bed and lulled him to sleep so well that he does not wake up even when shoved onto the floor! This scene brings to mind those who praise a parent for his or her infant’s ability to sleep through anything.

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Like the mother whose child slumbers through shopping trips and aeroplane rides, Jael can be read as hyper-effective in her motherly role because her ‘son’ sleeps soundly in her care. This chapter of Biblical Antiquities does not just mention Sisera’s mother at the end of the story, but also early on. When, in LAB 31: 3, Sisera enters Jael’s tent and sees that she has scattered rose petals on her bed, he pledges, ‘If I will be safe, I will go to my mother, and Jael will be my woman.’ For Sisera, home, safety, and settling down with a good woman are associated with the figure of the mother. This explains why Sisera feels at ease with Jael: she is a stand-in for his own mother. He cannot get to Themech immediately, so he will take his mothering wherever he can find it. The rabbis, too, emphasize Jael’s mothering attitude towards Sisera. For example, they suggest that the milk which Jael gives Sisera to drink comes straight from her breast (BT Nid. 55b). Of course, this complicates the assumption that Jael is childless, since only a woman with a small child would produce milk. It does indicate, however, that the rabbis viewed Jael as a ‘mother’ to Sisera. How should we interpret Jael’s over-the-top mothering of Sisera, both in Judges 4–5 and in Biblical Antiquities? Unlike her compatriot Deborah, Jael does not use the motif of motherhood in order to make her authority more palatable to the Israelites. She is not a ‘public’ woman and has no need to convince the Israelites of anything. Jael adopts a maternal attitude towards Sisera simply to get him to trust her. She knows that she needs to make him pliable enough to kill him; this is not just a matter of politics, but perhaps also a matter of her own personal safety. Rape is a well-recognized weapon of war, as even Sisera’s mother suggests in Judges 5: 30, and Jael probably understood the threat Sisera represented to herself and other women. (Indeed, Pseudo-Philo makes this concern more explicit by claiming that Sisera wished to capture women and intended to take Jael with him back home.) To lure the enemy into her tent, kill him, and thus keep herself safe, Jael resorts to the motif of motherhood; in some ways, this is a weapon even more powerful than seduction. While the trope of the femme fatale is sufficiently well known to make a wise man in a dangerous situation think twice about responding to a mysterious woman’s sexual advances, would a man think to question a woman who wants to care for him with motherly tenderness? Jael expertly ‘performs’ womanhood in the form of outsized maternal concern, and as a result gets Sisera right where she needs him. As is the case with Deborah, I am not arguing that Jael actively resists futurism by not having children; the text gives no indication that Jael actually rejects biological motherhood. It simply does not mention children or fertility. However, when a biblical text portrays a woman whose role is not to give birth to future (ideally male) members of the community, but instead to act with guile and prowess and assassinate a dangerous enemy, this effectively challenges traditional biblical concerns with reproductive futurism. An alternative image of biblical woman-

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hood, one not tied to biology, emerges. At the same time, Jael’s over-the-top performance of motherhood gives a nod and a wink to the more traditional biblical female role. But, like Deborah, Jael’s conscious use of maternal language and imagery divorces the powerful symbol of the mother from actual maternity. Just as the biological man who adopts the dress, speech, and mannerisms of a stereotypical woman for a drag show exposes the artifice of all gender, as I noted above, so does Jael’s performance of a stereotypical mother show that its trappings may not be quite so ‘natural’.

Judith The third ‘woman warrior’ I address is Judith, the heroine of the second half of the eponymous Greek-language book. In the book of Judith, the heroine’s town, Bethulia, is besieged by the Assyrians, and the (male) leaders of the town want to surrender.11 Judith, a pious and ascetic widow, dresses up and sashays into the enemy camp, telling the general, Holofernes, that she has defected. Judith charms Holofernes so skilfully that, eager to have sex with her, he gets drunk and passes out, which allows Judith to cut off his head with his own sword. She brings the head back to Bethulia, the Israelites are saved, and Judith is hailed as a heroine. Many men wish to marry her, but she refuses and goes back to her widow’s life. The book of Judith was written in an unmistakably Jewish context, probably in the second century bce, but for reasons that are still a source of debate among scholars, the book never made it into the Jewish canon. (Judith is considered ‘deuterocanonical’, or of secondary biblical status, by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches today, although it was removed from the Protestant canon around the time of the Reformation.) Judith is mentioned neither by Josephus or Philo, nor in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Mishnah, or the Talmud (Gera 2010: 28–9). The book, nonetheless, was not completely forgotten by Jewish tradition; Jewish authors in the Middle Ages produced a number of retellings of the story, often linking it with the festival of Hanukah (Gera 2010: 30). Like Deborah and Jael, Judith is never explicitly described as childless, yet this is once again the most logical way to read her. Judith is a widow, apparently living alone (with a maidservant) in the house she inherited from her late husband. If she has a grown son, would he not have inherited the house and be obligated to care for his mother? And if she has smaller children, why, in nine chapters that tell us a considerable amount about Judith and her life, do we not hear of their existence? If there are children, why do we not hear about them in 16: 24, when Judith distributes her property before she dies? If she is meant to be read as a mother, we would expect to hear how her children are to be cared for when she— along with her maid—leave home for several days to undertake her mission. We would also expect to learn about any children of Judith’s when the text provides a

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lengthy genealogy for her (Judith 8: 1), but we do not. I would argue, as other scholars have, that it is best to read this literary character as a childless woman (Gera 2014: 102; Moore 1985: 180). As is the case with Deborah and Jael, the language of metaphorical motherhood surrounds Judith in spite of the fact that she is not a biological mother. The other inhabitants of Bethulia and Israel are frequently mentioned in connection with their children, which makes Judith’s childlessness even more noticeable. In the context of the Assyrian siege, for example, the men of Israel, ‘their wives and their children’ all put on sackcloth and ashes and prostrate themselves (Judith 4: 10–11). The people of Bethulia tell the town elders to surrender, ‘For it would be better for us to become spoil for them: we will be slaves, but we will remain alive and we will not see our infants dying in front of us, or our wives’ and our children’s lives stopping before us’ (Judith 7: 27).12 The people of Bethulia and the rest of Israel voice concern at the real physical harm that will be inflicted upon their offspring. They frame their desire to surrender in terms of their children’s welfare, giving meaning to their struggle for survival by their concern for the next generation of Israelites. In Edelman’s language, the Israelites are engaged with reproductive futurism. In this case it does not serve them well, because in their zeal to protect the children, they almost surrender to the Assyrians. Judith, on the other hand, is barely engaged with reproductive futurism. Although she is presumably childless, at no point does she show any interest in remarrying. Her speech distances her from the future-centred concerns of her Israelite brethren. On three of the four occasions in which Judith herself invokes children, she does not refer to them using the first-person possessive. Additionally, the references are clearly metaphorical, as in ‘children of Israel’. In her long prayer to God before she begins her mission, for example, Judith says, ‘You gave their wives for spoil and their daughters into captivity, and all their plunder to be divided among your beloved children, truly zealous for you, who abhorred the pollution of their blood and appealed to you for help’ (Judith 9: 4). In the same prayer, she refers to those who plan evil against God’s covenant, the Temple, Mount Zion, and ‘the house of your children’s possession’ (Judith 9: 13). In her victory song after she has slain Holofernes, she rejoices and exclaims, ‘Sons of maids have pierced them through and gravely wounded them like children of deserters; they perished in the battle of my Lord’ (Judith 16: 12). The children in these verses are God’s children, the Israelite people. They are the present, not the future, of Israelite society. On the fourth occasion in which Judith refers to children, in 16: 5, she does call them ‘hers’: ‘He said he would burn my borders and kill my young men with the sword and cast my sucklings on the ground and give my infants for plunder and my virgins for spoil.’ It seems clear from the rest of the book that these children

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are not Judith’s by way of blood. Though Judith is not a mother, in 16: 5 she metaphorically casts herself as one (Gera 2014: 102). The young men, the virgins, and the babies are ‘hers’ in that she has just saved the entire people, including the youth. In so doing, she has taken responsibility for them, for their survival and well-being. As Toni Craven writes, ‘Faith makes this childless woman a mother to Israel and a model of true freedom’ (Craven 1983: 60). Like Deborah, ‘a mother in Israel’, Judith is cast as leader and protector of the people through the metaphorical use of maternal language. Judith labels herself a ‘mother’ in 16: 5, her victory hymn, just as Deborah had in an implicit manner. I argue elsewhere that Judith spends the entire second half of the book performing different, gender-based roles: she dons and doffs her ascetic widow drag to become, at first, a sexually alluring woman, and later on, a righteous, unimpeachable national heroine (Tamber-Rosenau 2015). Her invocation of maternal imagery in the victory hymn is part of that final performance of a national heroine. In that scene, Judith takes on the role of mother to the masses. As I argued above regarding Deborah, I would contend that Judith ascribes maternal imagery to herself quite intentionally, as a way of performing acceptable womanhood. Judith is a transgressive character; after all, three chapters earlier, she beheaded an enemy general with his own sword. I disagree with scholars who claim that Judith yields to the patriarchy after returning with Holofernes’ head (Gera 2014: 104; Levine 1995: 221–2). Rather, I see her references to ‘my young men’, ‘my sucklings’, ‘my infants’, and ‘my virgins’ as a canny way of establishing her new role in the community. Judith has undoubtedly been listening throughout the book as the male leaders go on about the fate of their children. She knows that what matters to the leaders is the survival of their offspring, so she plays along by stressing her role as saviour of the next generation. Ironically, while those children referred to by the town leaders will survive, Judith’s own line will not. Edelman’s theory of futurism and queerness goes beyond reproduction, and calls into question the obsession with the future in general. He coins a term, sinthomosexuality,13 which involves a sense of jouissance14 and an appreciation of individual existence, along with a refusal to buy into the idea that the present derives its meaning from the future. Those who fail to buy into the cult of the child are viewed as suspect because they force the rest of the world ‘to brood upon the abyss’ (Edelman 2004: 41). It is not the homosexual who is controlled by the death drive, as a handful of public figures have claimed, but those who rely on futurism to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless existence. Judith can be understood through Edelman’s frame of the sinthomosexual. The male leaders of Bethulia are about to surrender to the Assyrians for the sake of the children, unless a miracle comes along. Judith, by contrast, is not willing to sell the present for the sake of the future, nor is she prepared to wait for God to intervene. She encourages the reader to adopt her point of view. She focuses relentlessly on the present, as in her entreaty to the town leaders not to give up.

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She argues that the present generation is righteous enough to win the favour of God, and it is on this basis that she pleads with the leaders to reconsider their plan: ‘Never in our generation nor in this day has any tribe or family or people or city worshipped hand-fashioned gods, as happened in previous days’ (8: 18). In this speech, she does not invoke the potential suffering of the children during the siege, as the town leaders, the Moabites and Edomites, and the narrator all do in the preceding chapter. Instead, she warns against the potential ‘slaughter of our brothers’ which might occur if they capitulate (8: 22). Her speech reads like a rebuke. She seems to be saying, ‘Stop planning only for the future; if you surrender, you will destroy the present.’ Through most of the book, then, Judith resists reproductive futurism. When it is time to settle down in Bethulia again, however, she obliquely embraces the role of national mother. I contend that she does so as a nod to the notion that motherhood represents the apex of acceptable roles for women, and as a way of allowing her fellow Israelites to think of her as a positive, warm, and nurturing figure, rather than a duplicitous, cold-hearted, and murderous character. By recasting herself as a mother, Judith takes control of her own legacy. Despite challenging reproductive futurism throughout the story, she is now ready to put on her ‘mother drag’ to smooth her way back into the hearts and lives of the Israelites.

Conclusion In this essay I have proposed new ways of reading three stories of childless biblical women who nonetheless invoke maternal imagery. For Deborah, I suggest that her self-reference as ‘a mother in Israel’ is a way to make her radical leadership more acceptable. In Jael’s case, I argue that her mother-act is a canny scheme to place Sisera in a vulnerable position. In the case of Judith, her invocation of motherhood reads like a shrewd nod to the concerns of the male leadership, even as she refuses to remarry and thus bear children herself. What, then, should the modern feminist reader make of narrative accounts of these characters’ performances? Following Fewell and Gunn, who are uncomfortable with the maternal language surrounding Deborah, we might try to resist the appropriation of maternal imagery for patriarchal ends. We might find it problematic that the biblical texts are so invested in women being mothers that they use maternal imagery to describe childless female characters, and that even women’s non-childbearing activities are framed in the language of reproductive futurism. Yet some might see the public benefits of motherhood status when it is extended to women who are not described as having children. We might be seeing in these stories great esteem on the part of the biblical authors for women as mothers and a flexibility in extending that esteem to women who are not mothers as well.

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I would argue that there is a feminist message in these three texts, if only we accord Deborah, Jael, and Judith more self-knowledge than commentators have done in the past. I contend that the biblical authors consciously embrace the mantle of the mother. These readings open up the possibility of reading these women as empowered and empowering characters who have been previously derided by some feminist scholars as poor role models and dupes of the patriarchy. Though each character’s situation is different, all three are described using maternal language or imagery in a deliberate strategy of appropriating the power of motherhood. In taking up for their childless selves the ‘mother’ label, they parody the expectation that women should be mothers and, by extension, the reproductive futurism that motivates this expectation. Deborah, Jael, and Judith put on ‘mommy drag’ and, through a combination of their childlessness and the effectiveness of their performance, they subtly call into question the very strictures they act out.

Notes 1

For examples of women whose textual identities are primarily or exclusively those of mothers, see Gen. 3: 20, in which Eve is named for her life-giving capacity; Gen. 29: 31–30: 21, in which Leah engages in a breeding race with her sister; and Exod. 2: 1–8, which mentions Moses’ mother but does not even bother to indicate her name. For examples of miserable barren women, see Gen. 16, in which Sarai is so distressed over her inability to conceive that she tells Abram to impregnate her servant Hagar, and is then so distressed over the pregnant Hagar that she mistreats her; Gen. 30: 1, in which Rachel is envious of her fertile sister and tells their husband Jacob, ‘Give me children or I will die’; 1 Sam. 1–2, in which Hannah prays fervently for a child, conceives, and praises God; and in the extra-canonical work 4 Esdras 9: 41–5, in which a grieving woman (who symbolizes the history of Israel) tells the writer of her infertility and her prayers for a child. There are also instances in which childless women do not reveal any sign of distress, but in which the childlessness ends miraculously, thereby testifying to a world-view which considers the absence of children a problem that needs to be corrected. For examples, see Gen. 25: 21, in which Rebekah is barren but it is Isaac who prays, successfully, for a child; Judg. 13: 2–3, in which an angel appears to Manoah’s barren wife to announce that she will conceive and have a son; and 2 Kgs 4, in which Elisha, wishing to reward the childless Shunammite woman for her hospitality, grants her a son, on the basis of his servant’s advice.

2

Throughout this essay I use the word ‘Jewish’, for lack of a better term, to describe biblical, apocryphal, and extra-canonical literature. Strictly speaking, most of what we call the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) cannot be described as Jewish texts; the majority pre-date any use of the word ‘Jewish’. There is also significant scholarly debate about when ‘Jewish’ becomes the appropriate appellation for the community of YHWH-worshippers who originated in the southern Levant. While I find it too simplistic to call these people ‘Israelites’ before the Babylonian exile and ‘Jews’ afterwards, certainly by the time of the writing of the book of Judith, which probably dates from the Hasmonean era, they deserve the label ‘Jewish’.

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3

Unless otherwise stated, all translations from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin are my own.

4

Some translations render it ‘Until you, Deborah, arose | You, a mother in Israel, arose.’ I prefer the first person. Mieke Bal argues that whether one uses the first or second person hardly matters in understanding who is meant to be speaking in this verse. She writes, ‘If Deborah speaks in the first person, the fact remains that her discourse is embedded in that of the presumed male subject who cites it. . . . Conversely, if the verb can be translated in the second person, this in no way invalidates the hypothesis of a feminine subject. First of all, self-address in the second person is quite common. Deborah could still be the subject of the exhortation.’ The issue does matter, however, if we seek to understand the text’s stance on Deborah’s ‘motherhood’. Bal writes, ‘If Deborah accords herself the title of honor, “a mother in Israel,” this title has a meaning radically different from that which the voice of the people might imply, who would seek in her protection from danger—the maternal function in the narrow modern sense, a little saccharine. More is at stake in the philological discussion than at first appeared: not only does it suggest that the critic wants to eliminate the possibility of a female subject, but also it imposes upon his analysis the ideologeme [a unit of ideology] of the sweet, caring mother as a cover-up for the threatening image of the female leader’ (Bal 1988b: 113–14).

5

Targum Jonathan is an exception; it omits the ‘motherhood’ part of Deborah’s character.

6

As Betsy Halpern-Amaru (1991) points out, Pseudo-Philo is fairly obsessed with mothers in general. The amplification of Deborah’s ‘motherhood’ in Biblical Antiquities must therefore be seen in the context of the author’s increased interest in and attention to how the character of one’s mother may shape one’s actions. If the courageous, pious Deborah is Israel’s ‘mother’, then, in Pseudo-Philo’s world, this speaks well of Israel’s promise.

7

All translations of talmudic material in this essay come from the Schottenstein edition of the Babylonian Talmud (1990–2005).

8

Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn’s work on Judges 4 and 5 shows the value of reading the two chapters together, in their final form. Contra Mieke Bal, who advocates reading chapter 5 first and viewing chapter 4 as a later, somewhat unwelcome addition, they ask, ‘Why not do the obvious thing and try reading five after four, as a single story?’ (Fewell and Gunn 1990: 390). Numerous scholars have taken the opposite tack, arguing that the poetic account in Judges 5 is one of the earliest texts in the Hebrew Bible and that Judges 4 was written much later, by a different hand. They therefore analyse the chapters as separate stories. An example of this tactic can be found in the work of Bal, who in discussing Judges 4 and 5 refers not to ‘Yael’ but to ‘Yael–4’ and ‘Yael–5; that is, she argues that the two chapters present two distinct depictions of her character (Bal 1988a: 211). For a fuller discussion of the relationship between the prose and poetic accounts, see Jack M. Sasson’s commentary, in which he reviews seven lines of argument on how the chapters are related (Sasson 2014: 312–16). I treat the two chapters as one story for two main reasons. First, the respective dates of Judges 4 and 5 are still a matter of debate among scholars. Since we do not possess anything approaching solid dating for these texts, it would seem unreasonable to ascribe them to separate authors writing different stories at different times. Perhaps a better strategy would be that of Pamela Tamarkin Reis, who writes, ‘From my perspective, the prose of chapter 4 and the poetry of chapter 5 are not the record of two different traditions about Jael and Sisera, nor are they two different versions of one tradition. They are the product of one “overarching mind” who tells the same story in two different genres’ (Reis 2005: 39). Second, when one reads these texts as texts, dating, authorship,

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and provenance become of secondary importance. What is key is that, for as long as the textual evidence indicates, Judges 5 has immediately followed Judges 4. This results in the reader encountering the stories together. For all intents and purposes for a literary analysis, these two chapters, then, are a single unit. 9

10 11

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14

Sasson argues that Jael telling Sisera not to be afraid is ‘impressively cheeky! And if we had not already been prepared by encountering women of striking chutzpah and authority (Deborah), we might have become more aware of how incongruous it is for a tribal woman to say such words to a commander-in-chief of a powerful army.’ He notes that this is the only instance in the Bible of a lower-status person addressing this phrase to a higherstatus person (Sasson 2014: 266). Some scholars argue that Jael’s tent itself is symbolic of a womb (Duran 2005: 118). Note that the name of Judith’s town, Bethulia, is, presumably and not coincidentally, similar to the Hebrew word for ‘virgin’, betulah. Judith may be seen as symbolically protecting virginity when she defends the city of Bethulia from the Assyrians who wish to penetrate its defences. As I argue elsewhere, the book of Judith implies that the heroine’s defence of the city also spares its women from literal rape by the marauding enemy army. Other references to actual children and infants in the book of Judith can be found in 4: 12, 7: 14, 7: 22, 7: 23, and 7: 32. The word is a portmanteau of Jacques Lacan’s concept of sinthome and the word ‘homosexuality’. The sinthome, an archaic form of the word ‘symptom’, is a subject which defies attempts to make meaning of it. Similarly, Edelman argues, homosexuality defies humanity’s collective fantasy of future continuity. The sinthomosexual denies responsibility for a better future and lives wilfully in the present (Edelman 2004: 101). Jouissance is a French word for ‘enjoyment’ or ‘pleasure’ and can suggest orgasm. As used by Roland Barthes, it suggests ‘a kind of response to literary works that is different from ordinary plaisir (pleasure). Whereas plaisir is comfortable and reassuring, confirming our values and expectations, jouissance—usually translated as “bliss” to retain its erotic sense—is unsettling and destabilizing’ (Baldick 1990: 116).

References ackerman, susan. 1998. Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel. New York. bal, mieke. 1988a. Death & Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges. Chicago. —— 1988b. Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre, and Scholarship on Sisera’s Death. Bloomington, Ind. baldick, chris. 1990. ‘Jouissance’. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford. boling, robert g. 1975. Judges. New York. bronner, leila leah. 1994. From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women. Louisville, Ky. —— 2004. Stories of Biblical Mothers: Maternal Power in the Hebrew Bible. Dallas. brown, cheryl anne. 1992. No Longer Be Silent: First Century Jewish Portraits of Biblical Women: Studies in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities and Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities. Louisville, Ky.

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butler, judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York. —— 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York. craven, toni. 1983. ‘Tradition and Convention in the Book of Judith’. Semeia, 28: 49–61. duran, nicole. 2005. ‘Having Men for Dinner’. Biblical Theology Bulletin, 35: 117–24. edelman, lee. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death of Drive. Durham, NC. exum, j. cheryl . 1985. ‘“Mother in Israel”: A Familiar Figure Reconsidered’. In Letty M. Russell, ed., Feminist Interpretations of the Bible, 73–85. Philadelphia. —— 2007. ‘Feminist Criticism: Whose Interests Are Being Served?’ In Gale A. Yee, ed., Judges & Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, 2nd edn., 65–89. Minneapolis, Minn. fewell, danna nolan, and david m. gunn. 1990. ‘Controlling Perspectives: Women, Men, and the Authority of Violence in Judges 4–5’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 58: 389–411. —— 1993. Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story. Nashville, Tenn. gera, deborah levine. 2010. ‘The Jewish Textual Traditions’. In Kevin R. Brine, Elena Ciletti, and Henrile Lähnemann, eds., The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies across the Disciplines, 23–39. Bloomington, Ind. —— 2014. Judith. Boston. guest, deryn. 2005. When Deborah Met Jael: Lesbian Biblical Hermeneutics. London. hackett, jo ann. 1985. ‘In the Days of Jael: Reclaiming the History of Women in Ancient Israel’. In Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, and Margaret R. Miles, eds., Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, 15–38. Boston. halpern-amaru, betsy. 1991. ‘Portraits of Women in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities’. In Amy-Jill Levine, ed., Women Like This: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, 83–106. Atlanta, Ga. lawrence, beatrice. 2009. ‘Gender Analysis: Gender and Method in Biblical Studies’. In Joel M. LeMon and Kent Harold Richards, eds., Method Matters: Essays on the Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David L. Petersen, 333–48. Atlanta, Ga. levine, amy-jill. 1995. ‘Sacrifice and Salvation: Otherness and Domestication in the Book of Judith’. In Athalya Brenner, ed., A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith, and Susanna, 208–23. Sheffield. meyers, carol l. 1991. Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York. moore, carey a. 1985. Judith: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York. niditch, susan. 1989. ‘Eroticism and Death in the Tale of Jael’. In Peggy L. Day, ed., Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, 43–57. Minneapolis, Minn. reis, pamela tamarkin. 2005. ‘Uncovering Jael and Sisera: A New Reading’. Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, 19: 24–47. sasson, jack m. 2014. Judges 1–12. New Haven. sawyer, deborah. 2002. God, Gender and the Bible. London.

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stone, ken. 2007. ‘Gender Criticism: The Un-manning of Abimelech’. In Gale A. Yee, ed., Judges & Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, 2nd edn., 183–201. Minneapolis, Minn. tamber-rosenau, caryn. 2015. ‘Striking Women: Gender and Performance in the Bible and Early Jewish Literature’. Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. van wolde, ellen j. 1995. ‘Ya’el in Judges 4’. Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 107: 240–6. zakovitch, yair. 1981. ‘Sisseras Tod’. Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 93: 364–74.

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During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, motherhood served as an important link between American and Jewish gender identities, especially for middle-class women, and helped bridge differences among Jewish women both in the United States and internationally. As many Jewish women discovered, gender solidarity as expressed through common ideas about motherhood could unite women across barriers of class, culture, ethnicity, religion, and nationality (and, to a lesser extent, race), but only when those involved could successfully prioritize gender over all other identity claims. A focus on motherhood also enabled American Jewish women activists to bring awareness of feminist issues to the American Jewish community, particularly through the extensive American Jewish press coverage of women’s political activism. Shifting gender ideology and expanding opportunities for women shaped American women’s activism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout this period, the constant trope of motherhood as a rationale for activism helped women enter the political arena in a less threatening way. Jewish women also deployed this strategy, though immigrant Jewish women, with a legacy of public roles and greater exposure to radicalism than the average native-born American woman, found this expansion of their public activity to be natural. The kosher meat riots of the earliest years of the twentieth century demonstrated the power American Jewish women could exert by emphasizing their gendered roles as mothers, wives, and consumers (Hyman 1980). By the 1920s and 1930s, with American Jewish women now a group encompassing first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants, and women whose families had been in the United States for generations, it had become clear that women’s associational life simultaneously offered Jewish women a chance to acculturate based on shared gender norms and a chance to claim Jewish identity as something of value for American society overall. The consonance of values such as maternalism across class boundaries made gender an effective bridge.

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Scholars of feminism have been slow to engage with ethnicity and religion, but they have noted the importance of maternalism to the first-wave feminism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A large body of literature has defined maternalism as a collective belief in gender difference based on motherhood as the foundation for social reform. Virtually none of this scholarship engages with the intersection of maternalism with either religious or ethnic identity, assuming, as does much of the narrative of American women’s history, native-born, white, Protestant actors (Gordon 1991; Koven and Michel 1993; Ladd-Taylor 1994; Skocpol 1992). For Jewish women seeking to become modern American citizens at that time, ideas about motherhood opened many doors for women’s activism and to some extent allowed for a variety of alliances founded on essential ideas about women and gender. The language of maternalist politics that was so important to women at the turn of the century, while never encompassing all of feminist activism, served ideological and instrumental purposes for the many Jewish women who looked beyond their own communities to the major women’s social movements of the day. Maternalist instincts drove their interests in specific causes, including especially suffrage and peace. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, American Jewish women carved out a new role in the public sphere for women eager to see Judaism and Jewishness as sources of activism. Middle-class Jewish women in particular used American women’s associational life to demonstrate their acculturation. Working-class Jewish women, especially political radicals, were more likely to cast a jaundiced eye on the promise of universal sisterhood or on maternalist ideals stemming from an idealized, middle-class motherhood, but they nonetheless joined national and transnational organizations both inside and outside the Jewish community. All these women worked with men, often very closely, to support their causes, particularly when trying to help persecuted Jews worldwide. But they also flocked to women’s organizations in ways that illustrated the primary importance of their gender identity to their activism. This essay will explore how Jewish women in the suffrage and peace movements challenged the social, political, and cultural constraints on women at every turn while simultaneously emphasizing the traditional importance of motherhood. In so doing, they established organizations that stood among the most active women’s groups in the United States; expanded their causes internationally to include Jews and women in other places; experimented with reconciling their multiple identities as women, Jews, and Americans; and helped shape key social movements of their era in ways that deserve both attention and analysis.

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Good Mothers and Faithful Wives: Arguing for Suffrage within the American Jewish Community Of the major turn-of-the-century women’s movements, suffrage was the most obviously political because women pressed for their right to vote as an expression of power in the public sphere. Activists argued that an expansion of private responsibility beyond the family was necessary in modern times. The responsibilities of motherhood served as the basis for women’s activities not only within the home but also within the neighbourhood, community, municipality, and the state. American Jewish women made similar arguments in claiming an expanded public role in their synagogues and religious communities, imbuing their gendered, supposedly private religious sphere with a political significance related to the roles of both women and religion in American life. Winning the vote and securing public religious roles brought Jewish women into previously male-dominated spaces of political and religious life and helped free them from the confines of the private religious sphere. American Jewish women’s experiences with organizations such as the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW, founded 1893) and the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS, founded 1913), as well as hundreds of local synagogue sisterhoods and other Jewish women’s groups nationwide, motivated many to fight for enfranchisement. These groups may have started with primarily religious and philanthropic goals, but the obstacles they typically encountered while trying to establish educational and social services led them to demand the vote as a means of achieving their goals. The increasingly prominent activism of the American women’s suffrage movement in the wake of its reunification and a few state-level victories during the 1890s paralleled the growing number of American Jewish women in organizational life both inside and outside the Jewish community. As Pauline Steinem of the Toledo section of the NCJW put it, ‘the perfect equality of man and woman is founded on divine wisdom’, since women’s wider experiences would enhance their abilities as mothers and homemakers (Rogow 1993). Maud Nathan, the most prominent American Jewish suffragist of her day, frequently spoke of the modern expansion of motherhood in mounting a defence of activism in favour of the vote. A master tactician, Nathan felt it was important to emphasize that women voters would be more, not less, womanly once enfranchised. She thought that while militancy might be necessary in England, ‘stunts’ did a more effective job in the United States, preserving activists’ femininity and commitment to motherhood. She claimed to have pioneered a variety of tactics, including writing suffrage skits and plays, addressing audiences during theatre intermissions, giving ‘silent speeches’ on placards in store windows, and speaking from automobiles stationed in crowded areas (EG 1911; Nathan 1933; WJ 1908). Nathan put forward both practical and ideological arguments for suffrage.

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In a prize-winning essay written in 1917, she explicitly addressed both the justice and the expediency of enfranchisement for women. Justice, she explained, decried the anti-democratic status quo of disenfranchisement, which required women to pay taxes and abide by legislation they were barred from instituting. Now that modern life had placed some domestic duties in the hands of the government, making the home a more public place and the public arena more homelike, mothers should be considered the most practical choice for many government positions and elected offices. Full citizenship for women would make them even better wives, mothers, teachers, citizens, and patriots. Nathan believed that the expansion of women’s education and the growth of women’s clubs had combined to create a population of American women who were not only ready for but also deserving of enfranchisement (GN 1909; Nathan 1917). The growing popularity of the suffrage movement meant that it was a frequent topic of discussion in both English and Yiddish American Jewish periodicals. The steady press coverage testified to the great interest of American Jews from all walks of life in what was rapidly becoming one of the most momentous political issues of the day. As one American Hebrew article put it in 1914, ‘Whether we are suffragists or antis, or are occupying that most uncomfortable place, a seat on the fence, we find ourselves sooner or later discussing suffrage. It has crept into our favorite magazines, our heart-to-heart talks, and the family table conversation. Suffrage is in the air’ (AH 1914a). This article, and others like it in the Jewish press, took it for granted that mothers would bring up the issue of suffrage in a family setting; the home was a natural site of discussion of the issue. The American Jewish press coverage also often combined a focus on traditional Jewish values, including motherhood, with a justification for women’s rights. In a 1912 American Hebrew article, Maud Nathan expressed her lack of surprise that ‘the Jewish women . . . are taking their place in ever increasing numbers among those who are struggling for full emancipation’. To her, the considerable political experience and interest of many working-class Jewish women, in addition to the reform agenda and social consciousness of middle-class Jewish women, explained their excitement over the prospect of suffrage. As she consistently did in explaining her own motivations, Nathan linked women’s Jewish heritage to their activism. ‘Political equality appeals to the imaginations of the descendants of Miriam, Deborah, and Esther’, she wrote (Nathan 1912). Not only was there no contradiction between Jewishness and American citizenship, there was congruity, making activist American Jewish women’s identities particularly rich and meaningful. Several of the participants in a major suffrage symposium published in American Hebrew in 1915 also made explicit Jewish appeals on behalf of suffrage. Contributor Lillian Wald, widely beloved founder of the Henry Street Settlement in New York, noted that there had been a natural progression from the Old World,

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Orthodox Jewish mother who wielded a great deal of power in the home, to the New World, modern Jewish mother who demanded equal influence outside it. Renowned educator, employment specialist, and clubwoman Rebekah Kohut pointed out that the biblical commandment to ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ equated the respect children should have for both parents and reflected the fact that ‘the position of the Jewish woman has always been as high, if no higher, than that of the female among contemporary nations’. Kohut, a woman with an unusually good religious education, no doubt knew of some of the inequalities towards women that inhered in traditional Jewish law and culture, but she also knew of the high status enjoyed by Jewish women in other arenas and focused on suffrage as a natural extension of their powerful role as mothers (Loeb 1915). Neither Wald nor Kohut was a mother herself (though Kohut had close and loving relationships with numerous stepchildren), but they nonetheless spoke of Jewish motherhood in advocating suffrage. Both maternalist language—exhorting Jewish women to action—and maternalist logic—assuming Jewish women’s interest and agency as mothers—played a role in Jewish women’s activism. Yiddish periodicals with a primarily working-class audience also debated suffrage. Der Fraynd, the socialist Workmen’s Circle monthly publication, ran a regular feature about women, including material on such topics as suffrage and workplace parity. Forced by the Socialist Party’s Second International policy to regard the women’s movement per se as hopelessly bourgeois, Der Fraynd nonetheless supported women’s right to vote along with their right to work and unionize. The periodical also kept readers informed about women’s rights in other countries. In December 1914, Der Fraynd published a lengthy article entitled ‘The Struggle for Women’s Rights in the World’. This piece traced the origins of the women’s rights movement to prehistoric matriarchal societies and then emphasized the modern push towards equal rights for all, rather than the dominance of any one group over another. Listing suffrage victories at home and around the world, Der Fraynd saw the American movement as only one expression of epochal change that would affect men and women everywhere (DF 1914; Luria 1919). Di Froyen Velt, which loosely translated its own title as the Jewish Ladies Home Journal, targeted a more religiously and politically conservative population of Yiddish speakers than Der Fraynd. Throughout its brief run, the monthly magazine supported suffrage but roundly condemned any hint of militancy. The April 1913 issue reported the havoc wrought by militant suffragettes in England, who had recently broken numerous windows and even set some houses on fire. By contrast, the Jewish mothers of the United States, Di Froyen Velt commented approvingly, ‘carried [everything] out in a respectable manner, without wars and acts of violence, only with consideration, propaganda, and peaceful demonstrations’ (DFV 1913a; 1913b). The more middle-class Jewish women reading Di Froyen Velt would probably have found references to a certain kind of motherhood—

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a ‘respectable’ kind—appealing in considering their own attitudes towards suffrage activism. The strategic success of linking enfranchisement to motherhood was evident in the range of activities taken up by American Jewish women during the 1915 suffrage referendum campaign in New York State. Jewish women helped fill Carnegie Hall at the 6 November 1914 meeting to kick off the referendum, with several wealthy Jewish women and men making substantial donations to the campaign fund. Activists in New York’s Woman Suffrage Party reached out to both working-class Jewish union members, who hoped the vote would improve their economic power, and middle-class Jewish social workers, who hoped the vote would lead to social reform legislation. A few weeks before the referendum, suffragists, including Lillian Wald, took over boxes in all the major theatres in New York City. They draped the boxes with bunting and flags and displayed signs reading ‘Vote Yes on Woman Suffrage Nov 2’ (Abrams 1996; NYT 1914, 1915; Payne 1915). Excitement grew as the referendum date neared. Even Jewish high school students like Berta Ratner joined the campaign. With their mother’s encouragement, Berta and her sister Eva spent their evenings canvassing for the Woman Suffrage Party and distributing literature at street meetings. They also monitored the polls on Election Day. As Berta wrote in her diary, ‘Reported at poll at 22Tompkins Ave. . . . Had a wonderful time there until 7 in evening as watcher and picket. My district won . . . Eva’s district also won.’ When the dust settled after the polls closed, however, the suffragists had been defeated. Suffrage leaders gritted their teeth and grimly vowed to schedule a new referendum as swiftly as possible. Embodying this spirit, Berta wrote to a friend, ‘We rather pride ourselves on the good showing that we made, altho [sic] a good many people consider a defeat— a defeat, pure and simple. But to us, it was a glorious victory in that we learned so much of existing conditions that were outside our interests before that time.’ She continued to campaign for suffrage after the 1915 defeat, was certified as a ‘Women’s Watcher’ for the 1917 state referendum, and jubilantly attended a district celebration after the suffrage triumph that year (Ratner 1915b). In the successful 1917 referendum, 78 out of 100 pro-suffrage districts in New York City were heavily Jewish, and within the Jewish districts, 76 to 93 per cent of the total vote was pro-suffrage (Kuzmack 1990). New York became the first eastern state to give women the vote before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. All these numbers reflect the number of Jewish men who supported suffrage, as they were the only ones able to cast votes. Jewish women in these districts probably supported suffrage at even higher rates and likely used their influence as mothers and wives to persuade their male family members to vote for women’s enfranchisement. As this evidence suggests, not only Jewish women saw suffrage as beneficial

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to Jewish mothers both inside and outside the homes. Numerous rabbis weighed in on the question of women’s enfranchisement, and their sermons, letters to the editor, and published statements frequently focused on the benefits the vote would bring to Jewish families and communities through the expansion of women’s roles. Suffrage pamphlets containing clergy endorsements often included pronouncements from rabbis. In one such pamphlet, Samuel S. Cohen, rabbi of Chicago’s Zion Temple, neatly combined both traditional and progressive ideas about women in his statement: ‘Good mothers and faithful wives use the ballot for the purpose of protecting their homes and children and in some instances even their husbands against the spread of the contagion of immorality’ (Cohen, undated). This essentialist conflation of women and mothers might raise hackles among twenty-first-century feminists, but at the time it clearly served a useful purpose for activists who wanted to underline the point that enfranchisement would not strip women of their traditional roles but enhance the ways in which they could carry out those roles. The relationship between motherhood and women’s political action continued to thrive even after the Nineteenth Amendment finally enfranchised women in 1920. After this victory, a number of major American women’s organizations, including the NCJW, joined forces in the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee to try to parlay suffrage success into social welfare legislation. As voters, the women members of the organizations represented by the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee expected they would have more power to effect legislative changes, but their maternalist goals remained much the same after suffrage as they had been before and they continued to see motherhood as the basis of women’s political identity. They favoured protective legislation for working women, especially those balancing paid labour and child care, and they feared the consequences of gender-blind legal status that would ignore motherhood as a social and biological reality (Ladd-Taylor 1994). The NCJW strongly opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, which it felt would undercut their commitment to motherhood, hurt working women, and ignore the patent differences between men and women (MacCune 2005; Rogow 1993). As mothers and as newly enfranchised citizens, American Jewish women also moved swiftly as soon as the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified to stake a new claim to full participation in American Jewish life. The members of the sisterhood of The Temple in Atlanta, for instance, successfully demanded representation on the synagogue board. As they explained, ‘in this age of woman’s suffrage, the Sisterhood should demand the right to have a real working voice’ (Wenger 1987). Synagogues across the country took similar steps. Temple Beth-El of Providence, Rhode Island, enlarged its board in 1921 to allow women to vote and hold office. Local Jewish communal leader Marion Misch won election as a trustee shortly thereafter. Exemplifying maternalist logic, Misch firmly believed that

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‘Jewish women are . . . esteemed not only supreme in their households, but as direct agencies for influence upon the affairs of the time’ (Horvitz 1980). As Jewish suffragists had been doing for decades, she linked women’s roles at home to their political potential. Suffrage had implications for Jewish women’s religious, communal, and social lives as well as their political status. Suffrage activism was not the only focal point for the expansion of women’s public roles at the opening of the twentieth century, but it was an obvious choice for women who refused to accept lives restricted by political barriers, cultural norms, or social conventions. Jewish women in America encountered all of these limitations through the further complication of religious and/or ethnic traditions that imposed structurally similar, though not identical, boundaries on gender roles in both public and private expressions of Judaism and Jewishness. Class identity also played a role, as working-class Jewish women sometimes saw suffrage as a tool for achieving economic equality rather than as an end in itself. Still, suffrage promised greater integration into the civic body, a major concern for Jewish women at a time when ‘genteel’ prejudice against Jews was pervasive and less genteel forms of antisemitism were on the rise. Even though not all Jewish women drew direct links between political rights for women and an expanded role in the synagogue or Jewish community, many did. The American Jewish community confronted these concerns throughout the early twentieth century, conducting a sustained discussion of the issues. American Jewish women’s notable participation in the suffrage movement opened up possibilities for what full citizenship might mean for them as women, as mothers, and as Jews.

Our Responsibilities as Jewish Mothers: American Jewish Women Working for Peace In the wake of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, women did not merely return to their homes, flush with suffrage victory, only to emerge at election time. A wide array of other campaigns had absorbed their feminist attention concurrently with enfranchisement, and most continued to act on maternalist logic by engaging in a variety of public activities on the basis of motherhood. Jewish women had ample opportunity for sustained and expanded activism. As had always been the case, some opted for Jewishly inflected causes such as the labour movement and Zionism, the latter particularly through Hadassah, which was founded in 1912. But others continued their involvement in even larger-scale American women’s movements, including those promoting peace. Many women worldwide agreed that women’s moral priorities were essential to the public sphere, and newly enfranchised women in a number of countries believed gender equality would alter the international power structure and ultimately socialize both men and women against war (Schott 1985). Growing numbers of American

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Jewish women found in peace an increasingly gendered cause that embodied a consonance of American and Jewish values stemming from shared visions of the responsibilities of motherhood. Jewish women from varied religious and class backgrounds generally shared the traditional Jewish value of prizing motherhood and family and enthusiastically embraced these dimensions of women’s peace work. Women peace activists intended to imbue the private sphere of motherhood with public meaning. They relied upon motherhood as a raison d’être for a distinctive women’s peace movement, encouraging women to connect their roles as mothers to international relations and the fate of nations. This politicized motherhood resulted in a feeling of stewardship over a world dangerously sullied by men’s political behaviour, leading to the proliferation of women-only peace groups following the carnage of the First World War. Women’s unique capacity for motherhood gave them a moral advantage in envisioning peace. Activist women were not so naive as to think that individual effort alone would change the world. Instead, they transformed their beliefs into collective political action. Jewish women’s groups, already linked by family, community, and history to Jews overseas, were transformed by peace work. They began thinking in national and global terms, and during the 1920s and 1930s became involved in activism on a large scale, including relations with government on every level. Traditional ideas about motherhood paved the way to innovative thinking about war and peace within the Jewish community. Women of diverse backgrounds saw peace as a women’s issue that would erase—or at least diminish—the ethnic, religious, and national differences that might otherwise divide them. The international women’s movement sounded this bell particularly loudly in the aftermath of the First World War. At the 1920 International Woman Suffrage Alliance meeting in Geneva, the first after the armistice, delegates pointed with pride to the German, French, and British women working together for women’s political rights and for peace (D’Itri 1999). Jewish women worldwide took this responsibility seriously. At the 1923 meeting of the World Council of Jewish Women, the first held after the war, the international body of delegates passed a resolution affirming that ‘the mission of Israel is peace, and its watchword “Shalom”’ and pledging to ‘zealously devote ourselves to struggle to this end until mankind is healed and reconciled’ (WCJW 1923). Articles in the Jewish press underlined this point, using maternalist language and exhorting the ‘new woman’ to teach her children about the evils of bloodshed and the importance of loving all human beings (DF 1917). Jewish mothers would bestow the value of peace to the next generation, making their role in the peace movement even more significant. The widespread interest of Jewish women was not lost on leaders of the women’s peace movement at home or abroad. During a United States lecture tour in 1924, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) international secretary Gertrude

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Baer, herself Jewish, commented, ‘Always whenever approached have the Jewish groups willingly and enthusiastically shown their sympathy’ (WILPF—Massachusetts Branch 1924). Opponents of the peace movement tried to play on antisemitism by making the same point to different ends. Jewish pacifists constantly faced stereotypes of Jews as cowardly, weak, and disloyal to their country. The situation deteriorated further during the 1920s, when charges of radicalism levelled at peace groups often conflated Judaism and Communism and, for good measure, cited the notorious forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion as evidence of a vast Jewish conspiracy behind the peace movement. As one prominent American women’s peace activist explained with disapproval in 1924, ‘Such terrifying tales are being told to women about the Bolsheviki and the Jews and a super-state ruled by them that women are afraid even to pass resolutions in favor of any peace movement’ (Catt 1924). For Hungarian Jewish feminist Rosika Schwimmer, Jewish women’s peace activism was in itself not only so brave as to defuse accusations of Jewish cowardice but also significant in the gendered sense. In 1924 she wrote in B’nai B’rith Magazine: ‘I am always slightly amused when indignant fighters against the contemptuous generalization that Jews are cowards, burst into a recital of “heroic actions” of Jewish soldiers. It isn’t my business to defend “Jewish courage” yet I always feel provoked to ask: “is that all you have to disprove the stupid generalization? And what about the courage of Jewish women?” When moral courage once will clearly be recognized as superior to mere physical bravery the record of Jewish women’s courage will balance if not outweigh the evidential value of Jewish military acts’ (Schwimmer 1924). The necessity for such defence of Jewish women demonstrated their disproportionate prominence in the American women’s peace movement. For many Jewish women in the peace movement, the ideological underpinnings of both maternalism and Jewishness combined to provide a unique peace calling. A NCJW speaker used both maternalist language and maternalist logic to encourage her audience to combine their Jewish and female identities through peace work. She pointed out, ‘Not long ago we were interested in the rights of women—now we talk of the responsibilities of women . . . And if we have greater responsibilities as women and as mothers, what shall we say of our responsibilities as Jewish mothers?’ (Brin, undated speech). When explaining their devotion to peace work, American Jewish women drew liberally on such maternalist ideals. Lillian Wald argued that mothers could make a special contribution by promoting peace as a moral alternative, appealing to women across class, ethnic, and religious boundaries (Abrams 1996). Rosika Schwimmer always insisted to her American Jewish audience that ‘the mission of the women in Israel is peace’ (AH 1914b). Former suffragist Caroline Katzenstein wrote, ‘We women, because we are the mothers of the race, know perhaps better than men the true value of life, and it is up to us to show that war and the causes that lead to

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it can be abolished’ (Katzenstein, undated essay). Framing the issue of peace as an appeal to mothers made it a message to which all women could presumably subscribe. Many American Jewish women considered maternalism an important basis for peace activism. However, their peace work also stemmed from their Jewishness. Especially following the disastrous effects of the First World War on Jewish communities in Europe, Jewish women developed a distinctive internationalism. American Jewish women, living in relative safety, tried to help other Jews being persecuted worldwide by working to prevent future violence. Chicago clubwoman Jennie Franklin Purvin described the importance of American Jewish women’s peace work: There is no flag on earth which does not float over some part of Judaism . . . There is no corner of the globe in which the fortune of the Jew is not the fortune of every other Jew. Thus does it behoove us to make the most of all the ability we may possess, to establish lasting peace on earth . . . It is our mission, as Jews, as citizens of America, to promote the doctrine of peace. (NFTS 1930)

Throughout the period, both maternalism and Jewishness provided strong motivations for the ever-growing number of Jewish women becoming involved in peace work in some way. American Jewish women’s organizations devoted enormous amounts of time and resources to the cause of peace. The NCJW had established a Committee on Peace as early as 1908 and became a major player in the American women’s peace movement, frequently cited by other peace groups as an exemplar of programming and activism. Even before the First World War, a speaker at the 1912 NCJW Triennial meeting called on Jewish women to exert their special powers as both mothers and Jews to ‘supplant the war system of nations by the system of peace, arbitration, and law’ (NCJW 1912). In a 1923 article, Fanny Brin explained that mothers had to take on the responsibility of educating the public, and especially men, not to fight. She believed that every woman should belong to some peace organization and that Jewish mothers especially should concern themselves with peace, since Jews suffered most in times of war (Brin 1923). During her chairmanship of the Committee on Peace and Arbitration and then presidency of the entire organization, Brin kept a strong focus on peace and mothers’ ability to contribute to it throughout the interwar period. The NFTS became similarly renowned for its commitment to the cause. Hattie Wiesenfield, an early president of the group, stated emphatically that peace was a critical cause, especially for mothers, who suffered the most during wartime. By 1925, the NFTS had a standing national committee on peace and made regular contributions to other peace organizations, such as the National Council for Prevention of War and the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War, an umbrella women’s group of which the NCJW was a charter member (NFTS

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Resolutions). Local sisterhoods took up issues such as United States membership in the Permanent Court of International Justice and forwarded resolutions to their political representatives, as did the sisterhood of the Oheb Shalom Congregation of Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 1925 (Eutsler 1925). In 1926 Temple Emanu-El’s sisterhood participated in New York’s Peace Week, hosting the interfaith kickoff meeting at which Lillian Wald delivered the keynote address (NYT 1926). As had been the case with suffrage, women were not the only members of the American Jewish community committed to peace. They received significant support from rabbis, among many other Jewish men. Non-sectarian women’s peace groups acknowledged the vital role clergy could play. In the run-up to the July 1922 ‘No More War’ demonstration in New York, the national Women’s Peace Union called upon all clergymen to devote special sermons to peace, suggesting that ministers discuss the Sermon on the Mount and rabbis discuss the famous passage in Isaiah prophesying a day when the nations ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks’ (WPU 1922). Certain rabbis, often those known for socially progressive views on other issues, laboured long and hard for the cause of peace. Louis Mann of Chicago’s Temple Sinai, Stephen Wise of New York’s Free Synagogue, and Edward Israel of Baltimore’s Temple Har Sinai, among others, were strong rabbinic voices for peace during the 1920s and early 1930s. The participation of male religious leaders in peace work aroused even greater interest in the American Jewish community at large, which in turn brought more Jewish women into the movement. As a member of a Jewish women’s group in Chicago explained in a report on Mann’s 1923 Armistice Day denunciation of war, it behoved them all to ‘rejoice that the peace movement has found such a fearless, inspired leader (CWAB 1923). As the representative of Reform synagogue sisterhoods, the NFTS worked closely with congregations and rabbis to make sure peace remained on the Jewish communal agenda. One of the organization’s most visible projects was a commissioned book by Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn entitled The Jew Looks at War and Peace. This book was designed as a serious study guide for synagogue sisterhoods and religious schools and included a lengthy list of contacts for more information and resources. Congregations and groups outside the Reform movement used it as well. Gittelsohn dealt with a wide array of issues relating to Jews and peace, arguing that organized religion should denounce war and remain pacifist even in the face of violence. He provided detailed information about government military spending and prioritized disarmament as the best means to prevent further warfare. Many of Gittelsohn’s recommendations were aimed explicitly at women. He cited Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata as an example of the power women have to stop war by taking a stand within their family settings, and pointed out that ‘Men have been seeking peace for eternity without finding it. The search must now rest in

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the hands of women.’ As mothers, religious educators, and civic activists, all Jewish women could be moral forces for peace (Gittelsohn 1935). By the time the NFTS sponsored The Jew Looks at War and Peace in 1935, Jewish women’s peace work was becoming more complicated. The 1920s had seemed full of promise to peace activists of all stripes. The Washington Conference of 1922, which limited the naval arms race and established some international security agreements, and the Kellogg–Briand pact of 1928, which outlawed war as an instrument of international relations, promised a brighter future. American peace workers and internationalists remained frustrated by the United States’ refusal to join the League of Nations or the World Court, but campaigns to change United States policy proved to be important rallying points for a variety of peace groups. American Jewish women looked to Jewish international role models such as Aletta Jacobs, Rosa Manus, and Gertrude Baer, leaders of the women’s peace movement in Europe, for inspiration. Both the Jewish community as a whole and a network of socially progressive American women encouraged Jewish women’s peace work in all its variety. A new set of challenges arose during the 1930s, however. As the international scene deteriorated, the Depression spread worldwide, and Hitler rose to power, the maternal and Jewish identities that underlay American Jewish women’s peace activism gradually came into conflict with each other. Strains of antisemitism at various international women’s conferences and in the peace movement had been noted but not emphasized since at least the end of the nineteenth century, but the growth of explicit antisemitism could no longer be overlooked by even those peace activists who considered themselves only nominally Jewish. Jewish pacifists, men as well as women, faced the challenge of a very particularist threat to their universalist ideals of peace. At the beginning of the 1930s, Jewish women seemed poised to become even more involved with peace. When the International Council of Women formed a Peace and Disarmament Committee in 1931, based in Geneva, the World Council of Jewish Women was a charter member (Alonso 1993). At home, an audit of the NCJW in 1930 found that 91 per cent of the more than ninety sections, representing more than 50,000 women, ran regular peace programmes. Eleven sections reported that peace work was their most important activity (NCJW 1930). The growing student anti-war movement provided another arena for Jewish women’s peace activism as the decade progressed. Campuses with significant Jewish populations, such as Brooklyn College and Temple University, staged peace strikes involving many thousands of students (Cohen 1993). At Hunter College, the ‘Jewish Girls’ Radcliffe’, which by some estimates was 75 per cent Jewish during the 1930s, students Beatrice Schapiro, Millie Futterman, Theresa Levin, and Lillian Dropkin, among others, were temporarily suspended for their role in planning and carrying out peace strikes (WILPF 1935). Young Jewish women like these

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four acted, as did their mothers through Jewish women’s organizations, out of the conviction that Jewish women had special reasons to work for peace. Later in the 1930s, as Hitler consolidated his power and Nazism spread rapidly, American Jewish women in the peace movement found themselves forced to reassess their positions. Some, like the members of the NCJW’s Cincinnati branch, actually became even more active in peace work, convening a monthly study group and starting a library (Wolf, Wolf, and Feibel 1961). Others, like the NFTS, continued to ally with peace groups while also supporting campaigns to ensure that large department stores like Macy’s stopped buying, selling, or displaying German merchandise (Manchee 1937; Reeve 1937). Though not all American Jews supported the boycott movements of the 1930s, the limited success of these boycotts depended on the support of mothers who, as consumers, made household decisions about what to buy. As an American Hebrew article put it in 1934, it was ‘quite in keeping with any program for the prevention of war to take action and a decisive stand against the intolerable conditions’ in Germany (AH 1934). Jewish women’s organizations, like other peace groups, walked a fine line between demanding action against Hitler and denouncing the possibility of war. When the existential danger to Jews and Judaism became increasingly evident, Jewish women peace activists were crushed by the larger peace movement’s apparent indifference. The maternalism that had been such an important shared value within the women’s peace movement seemed unable to sustain a condemnation of the serious threats to Jewish motherhood. Of all the major American women’s peace organizations, only the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War worked steadily for Jewish rights and attempted to secure refugee status in the United States for Jews fleeing Europe. The Women’s Peace Union inserted into its membership pledge a statement ‘against every form of racial violence in thought, speech, or deed’ but did little to help Jewish refugees or condemn Nazi antisemitism outright (Alonso 1993). In 1938, when the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom did not amend its national policies to reflect concerns about Nazi persecution of the Jews, disaffection in the heavily Jewish New York branches exploded. The leaders and most members of both the Brooklyn and Bronx branches resigned. The Brooklyn branch survived, albeit in greatly reduced numbers and influence, but 140 of the 150 Bronx members left WILPF and the branch effectively ceased to function (WILPF—New York State Branch 1939). Bronx WILPF member Sadie Cohen spoke for many when she wrote, ‘Must we Jewish women speak for ourselves when our souls are so burdened? Can we not expect those by whose side we have labored in the cause of World Peace to speak for us in our direst need?’ (Alonso 1993). Despite the bonds of motherhood that had previously linked women peace activists together, the answer, it appeared, was no. During the war, American Jewish groups of all kinds emphasized that they could and should rely mostly on their own efforts to save their people. At the 1943

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NCJW Triennial meeting in Chicago, Kay Engel said, ‘Every thinking Jew is confronted with the responsibility of all minority problems. From this chaos and heartbreak, we must all work together for a common unity of purpose’ (Engel 1943). Whereas twenty years earlier an NCJW speaker might well have elaborated at great length on Jewish mothers’ peace-loving ties to other women at home and abroad, during this time of crisis Jewish identity rather than female or maternal identity took precedence. It was not as women but as Jews that NCJW members could reach out to their sister Jews and all those in danger as persecuted minorities throughout the world. Still, though at different times the pendulum swung between Jewishness and maternalism, neither was ever absent from the thinking of most Jewish women concerned with peace. The Rosh Hashanah greetings from NCJW in 1944 captured this blend of identity. Former NCJW president Fanny Brin expressed her hopes for the upcoming year, writing, ‘As women who have had the privilege of training and of the ballot, we are accountable for what is done and what is left undone. One can only devoutly pray that no woman will rest from her responsibility’ (Brin 1944). Nearly twenty-five years after suffrage, she continued to link American women’s privileged position as voters to their ability to create the world they wanted to live in, a world of peace. This message illustrated the ways in which all components of their identity motivated so many Jewish women to strive for peace under even the most difficult circumstances—until peace, or at least the avoidance of war, posed an existential threat to Jewish survival, at which point their identity as women and mothers perforce receded into the background of their identity as Jews. Maternalism formed an ideology common to both American and Jewish identity. American women deployed ideas about motherhood to extend their sphere of activity outwards from the household into reform, and Jewish women in the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, and other organizations used similar tactics to justify the increasingly public nature of their own communal work. Because maternalism reaffirmed gender roles, it offered Jewish women a way to acculturate within a familiar framework. They did not have to abandon traditional ethnic or religious Jewish ideas about the centrality of motherhood in order to move into the arenas now occupied by other American women engaged in reform. Maternalism even exerted a cross-class appeal for Jewish women, as it implied a public role that many working-class Jewish women were already accustomed to and were often unwilling to abandon, especially if they were politically engaged. As a result, Jewish women’s activism allowed for a fruitful combination of their Jewish and gender identities in a women’s movement that at least purported to put aside any differences that would compromise such goals as votes for women or world peace.

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‘Two Voices Heard in Castile’: Rachel and Mary Weep for Their Children in the Age of the Zohar s h a ro n ko r e n

The stories of Rachel and Mary in the sacred texts of the Jewish and Christian faiths have inspired devotees, religious scholars, and historians for thousands of years. Despite appearing in separate works, in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament respectively, biblical exegetes have enhanced the religious power of one by summoning the symbols of the other. The image of Rachel crying for her children in Jeremiah 31: 15 proved particularly inspiring for Jews and Christians, though each religion adapted the story according to its own theological and social aspirations. For Jews, Rachel became a symbol of the community of Israel (keneset yisra’el), a suffering mother, and a mediator between God and her children. For early Christians, she represented the Church, the contemplative life, and the heavenly Ecclesia (Church). In thirteenth-century Castile, however, these older images evolved in response to religious, social, and political needs. Rachel, the weeping mother of sorrow who intercedes on behalf of her children, emerged in the Zohar as a symbol of the Shekhinah, and Mary began to gain cultural power as the Mater Dolorosa (the sorrowful mother). Rachel and Mary raise their voices together, albeit for different reasons. Though the Shekhinah was a vital symbol throughout rabbinic tradition, her femininity appeared most obviously in the early kabbalah, where she was represented as a bride, sister, and daughter. Representations of the Shekhinah as divine mother, however, are first found in the Zohar in the thirteenth century (Yisraeli 2009). These kabbalists drew from existing midrashic traditions and made Rachel the symbol of the Shekhinah, suffering for her children in exile. Similarly, the role of the Virgin Mary in the Church evolved in accordance with the needs of the Christian faithful. The motif of Mary’s suffering at the foot of the cross was first introduced into the Iberian peninsula in the mid-thirteenth century. Alfonso the Wise (reigned 1252–84) used it as a symbol to unite the disparate populations of the newly unified kingdom of Castile. Christians drew on the humanity of Rachel weeping for her children in exile to deepen the resonances of Mary’s suffering with her child at the foot of the cross; Castilian kabbalists, in

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turn, articulated more fully ideas found in Midrash and imagined Rachel as the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, in exile. Several historians have written about notable similarities between the matriarch Rachel and the Virgin Mary. Regarding the rabbinic period, Chana ShachamRosby has argued that early rabbinic midrashim and piyutim tacitly polemicized against Marian theology (Shacham-Rosby 2011). In medieval Ashkenaz, as Jeremy Cohen has argued, the association between ‘Rachel, wife of Jacob, and Holy Mother Church was in the air, most likely well-known even to the rank and file of the Jewish minority’ (Cohen 2006: 121). In her many articles, Susan Starr Sered describes similarities among the cults of Rachel, Mary, and Fatima through the early modern period (Sered 1991, 1995). Moreover, in the field of Jewish mysticism, Peter Schäfer (2002) and Arthur Green (2002) have suggested that the cult of the Virgin Mary informed the development of the image of the Shekhinah in medieval kabbalah.1 I will address a more limited parallel between these two iconic mother figures in this essay. Many Jews and Christians conceive of Rachel and Mary as their companions in suffering (Sered 1995). Most human beings long for companionship during times of sorrow. Just as frightened children, desperate for reassurance, cry out for their mother in the middle of the night, so did medieval Jews and Christians seek solace in difficult times. They lived, however, in a scripturally centred world, in which the Bible was often considered more real and true than the mundane events of everyday life. Exegetes therefore relied on Scripture to imagine first Rachel, and later (for Christians) Mary, as ideal companions in torment. These archetypal mothers would suffer with their children, comfort them during their tribulations, and intercede with God on their behalf. For early Christians, Rachel’s weeping in the Hebrew Bible prefigured the slaughter of the innocents in the book of Matthew, and they viewed the stories of Rachel and Mary as allegories of the Church. By the thirteenth century, these ‘symbols’ merge together into the image of Mary as the Mater Dolorosa. In a similar vein, though the image of Rachel weeping figures prominently in the Jewish tradition, she is not defined as the Shekhinah who is suffering in exile until the thirteenth century. The image of Mary as the Mater Dolorosa develops out of the theological needs of the twelfth-century Church. I suggest that the symbol of Rachel as the Shekhinah in exile similarly derives from the theological needs of the Castilian Jewish community. Jews in thirteenth-century Castile lived within a thoroughly Christian environment and were exposed to that dominant culture. Kabbalists drew from existing biblical and midrashic traditions regarding Rachel in response to an internal psychological need for a comforting maternal figure in the face of shifting political realities in Iberia, as well as the external religious threat of pervasive Marian devotion among their neighbours.

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The Biblical Origins of the Kabbalistic View of Rachel The Rachel of the book of Genesis is a somewhat odd choice for the eponymous mother of Israel. Years after her marriage, embittered, barren, and envious of her sister’s fertility, she orders Jacob ‘Give me children or I shall die’ (Gen. 30: 1). In a desperate attempt to become pregnant, she asks for the mandrake roots (a fertility inducer) discovered by Leah’s firstborn, Reuben, and offers ‘a night with Jacob’ to her sister in exchange (Gen. 30: 14–16). Yet even though Leah accepts the deal, it takes more time for Rachel to conceive. True to her unappreciative nature, she remains unsatisfied after finally giving birth and names her son Joseph (literally ‘may he add’), hoping immediately (without any apparent gratitude for her firstborn) that God will give her more children. She does eventually conceive again, but dies after enduring a difficult labour. Before her death, she names her son Ben Oni, ‘the child of my suffering’ (Gen. 35: 16–18). While there is much evidence to support the fact that she wants to have children, Rachel is unlike other mothers in Genesis in that there is little to suggest that she wants to raise them. Rather than engage in heartfelt prayer, placing her trust in God’s mercy, Rachel complains to her husband and seeks folk remedies. She continually laments over her own suffering and anguish. Indeed, Amy Kalmanofsky suggests that she dies during her second labour as a divine punishment ‘for her selfish desire and the agency she exercises to secure it. Rachel’s solitary burial between her father’s and husband’s homes suggests that she, like Miriam in Numbers 12, is cast aside by her family. She ends her life in disgrace, marked as dangerous’ (Kalmanofsky 2014: 26). In marked contrast, in Jeremiah 31: 15, dated to the early seventh century bce, the prophet transforms Rachel from a self-absorbed character into the selfless mother of Israel: The voice of lament is heard in Ramah2 Bitterest weeping Rachel is weeping over her sons She refuses to be comforted over her sons Because they are not. Thus said Yahweh: Restrain your voice from weeping And your eyes from tears For there is a reward for your labour. —oracle of Yahweh— And they shall return from the land of the enemy (Jer. 31: 15–16)

Until the first exile (586 bce), biblical references to barren women are literal. They describe childless women in anguish who are given a child by God.

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Paralleling Isaiah, Jeremiah also changes the significance of the barren woman motif, rendering it as an abstract promise of the birth of a people: Shout O barren one, you who have borne no child! Shout aloud for joy, you who did not travail! For the children of the wife forlorn shall outnumber those of the espoused—said the Lord. (Isa. 54: 1)

In this verse Isaiah describes the city of Jerusalem as a barren mother, ‘desolate because her children have been sent into exile’ (Blessing 1998: 48; see also Calloway 1986: 61; Wineman 1985). Jeremiah, in turn, superimposes the Rachel story onto the image of the desolate city. The author envisions Rachel weeping over the loss of her ‘sons’—the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim (Joseph’s sons), and Benjamin—who were exiled by the Assyrians in 722 bce. Later, after the destruction of the Temple in 586 bce, her lament is interpreted to include all Jewish exiles (Lundbom 2004: 437). Jeremiah imagines that Rachel’s tears move God, who therefore promises that her children will find redemption. These tears prompt us to re-evaluate Rachel’s character. What appeared as a selfish desire for children in Genesis is now depicted as selfless devotion to her children (Dresner 1994: 153). She no longer cries for herself, but rather weeps for her children’s suffering. In contrast to her angry outburst in Genesis, Rachel’s tears in Jeremiah are effective. Her lament moves God to restore her children to their land. And whereas in Genesis Rachel remains grief-stricken despite the assurance that she has a healthy son (Gen. 35: 17–18), in Jeremiah she is immediately consoled once assured of her children’s safety. Moreover, she now refuses to abandon her children and decides to suffer with them. Jeremiah’s depiction of Rachel is diametrically opposed to that of Genesis. Both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity embraced this image of Jeremiah’s ‘lamenting Rachel’ to meet the needs of their evolving theologies.

Rachel’s Lament in Rabbinic Judaism In their book Holy Tears, Kimberley Patton and John Hawley explain that tears may often play an efficacious or even theurgic role. Weeping can evoke a divine response, especially that of compassion or mercy, where none had previously been forthcoming. Human tears provoke divine tears and transport the weeper . . . Commenting on the electrifying language of modern Greek lament, the anthropologist Loring Danforth writes that ‘tears are both water and poison . . . the ultimate mediator.’ They ‘both facilitate and block communication’ and are able to pass across the boundary between the living and the world of the dead, the very boundary that they may also create. (Patton and Hawley 2005: 2)3

The Bible and rabbinic tradition postulate that weeping can be a more direct route to heaven than sacrifices or statutory prayer. The psalmist beseeches God to ‘Hear

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my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my cry; do not disregard my tears’ (Ps. 39: 13). The Babylonian Talmud explains that ‘From the day on which the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer have been closed . . . But though the gates of prayer are closed, the gates of weeping are not closed’ (BT Ber. 32b; cf. BT BM 59a). Susan Starr Sered has justly referred to Rachel as ‘the weeping mother par excellence’ (Sered 1986). Rabbinic tradition provides an explanation for the particular potency of Rachel’s tears and, in so doing, recasts self-centred Rachel as the embodiment of self-sacrifice and compassion. The book of Genesis does not reveal Leah and Rachel’s impressions when Laban deceitfully marries the elder to Jacob instead of the younger (Gen. 29: 23–9). Rabbinic Midrash fills in these gaps to make Rachel appear selfless and supportive. Jacob, suspicious that Laban might substitute Leah for his beloved Rachel, gives the latter tokens so that he can recognize her. Yet when Rachel sees her sister led into the bridal chamber, she prioritizes protecting her from shame over her own love for Jacob and selflessly gives Leah the tokens (BT BB 123a; Meg. 13b; Doniger 2000: 163; Kalmanofsky 2014: 23). Rachel’s self-sacrifice, like Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22, secures merit for their progeny. Lamentations Rabbah 24 reads this talmudic tradition into Jeremiah 31.4 The patriarchs and Moses appeal to God for mercy after the destruction of the Temple, but God remains unmoved until: The matriarch Rachel broke forth into speech before the Holy One. ‘Sovereign of the Universe, it is revealed that Jacob loved me exceedingly and toiled for my father on my behalf seven years. When those seven years were completed and the time arranged for my marriage with my husband, my father planned to substitute another for me to wed my husband for the sake of my sister. It was very hard for me, because the plot was known to me, and I disclosed it to my husband; and I gave him a sign whereby he could distinguish between me and my sister, so that my father should not be able to make the substitution. After that, I relented, suppressed my desire, and had pity upon my sister that she should not be exposed to shame. In the evening, they substituted my sister for me with my husband, and I delivered over all the signs, which I had arranged with my husband so that he should think that she was Rachel. More than that, I went beneath the bed upon which he lay with my sister; and when he spoke to her she remained silent, and I made all the replies in order that he should not recognize my sister’s voice. I did her a kindness, was not jealous of her, and did not expose her to shame. And if I, a creature of flesh and blood, formed of dust and ashes, was not envious of my rival and did not expose her to shame and contempt, why shouldest thou, a king who liveth eternally and art merciful, be jealous of idolatry in which there is no reality and exile my children and let them be slain by the sword, and their enemies have done with them as they wished?

God was finally moved and said, ‘For your sake Rachel, I return Israel to their place’ (Lam. Rab. 24: 48; Gen. Rab. 73: 6; Rashi’s commentary on Jeremiah 31: 14; Sered 1998: 52; Shacham-Rosby 2011: 38).5 Rachel’s theurgic weeping secures redemption for her children because of her sacrifice on behalf of her sister. Note

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that this midrashic source increases Rachel’s agency. Where in the talmudic accounts above it is Jacob who gives Rachel the tokens, in Lamentations Rabbah, Rachel gives signs to him. Her selflessness gives her the unique ability to intercede on behalf of her children. Several midrashim and early liturgical compositions associate Rachel’s relationship with God with the verse ‘God remembered her; God heard her and opened her womb’ (Gen. 30: 22). These sources note that God takes notice of other barren women in the Bible with one verb, pakad (Gen. 21: 1); but for Rachel there are two verbs: ‘remembered’ and ‘heard’ (zakhar and shama) (Gen. Rab. 73: 2). Using the principle of the omni-significance of Torah, the rabbis understood that the doubling of the number of verbs was a reference to Rachel’s unique ability to petition heaven. Indeed, the fifth-century midrashic collection Genesis Rabbah (70: 10) states that ‘by Rachel’s merit, God will make all our sins as white as snow’. Rachel’s selflessness and intercessory abilities became a central feature of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. Some midrashim imagine that God remembered the barren Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah on Rosh Hashanah (BT RH 10b; Gen. Rab. 73: 1). The annunciation of the birth of Isaac is the biblical portion read on the first day of the festival; that of Samuel is the haftarah. On the second day, Jeremiah’s invocation of Rachel (31: 15) is recited after the Binding of Isaac (Gen. 22; Cohen 2006: 114; Shacham-Rosby 2011: 62). The compilers of the New Year liturgy imbue the service with the hope that God will remember the faithful as God remembered Rachel. Eleazar Kalir, the sixth- to seventh-century liturgical poet, wrote several compositions devoted to the matriarchs in the Bible, including one to Rachel that is still recited in the Ashkenazi rite (Sacks 2006: 409). Kalir explains that God remembered Rachel on Rosh Hashanah for her self-sacrifice, virtue, and merit. According to Kalir, Rachel desperately wanted children because she feared that Jacob would abandon her if she remained barren and that his evil brother Esau would take her instead. Her modesty and her anguished entreaties to be spared from her depraved brother-in-law moved God to give her a child. Kalir invokes Rachel’s merit and hopes that God will remember his people just as he remembered Rachel (Elitsur 1999: 355–7; Sacks 2012: 409; Shacham-Rosby 2011: 62). Rachel’s self-sacrifice and merit help the rabbis understand why Jacob chose to bury her by the side of the road to Efrat, rather than in the family tomb in the cave of Mahpelah (Gen. 35: 19). Genesis Rabbah explains that Jacob foresaw that the exiles would walk past her tomb. He therefore ensured that Rachel’s tomb be placed in public view so that she might pray to God for mercy on their behalf as they went by (Gen. Rab. 82: 10). Early medieval midrashim imagine Rachel actually leaving her tomb to pray for Israel’s redemption. Indeed, in the early medieval midrashic collection Pesikta rabati (eighth–ninth centuries), Rachel haggles with God for her children!

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God commanded Rachel to be buried there, because it was known to Him and foreseen that a time was to come when the Temple would be destroyed, and Jacob’s children would depart into exile, whereupon they would go to the Patriarchs, whom they would beseech to pray for them, but the Patriarchs would not avail the children of Israel. Then, before setting out on their way, they would go and embrace the tomb of Rachel, who would arise and beg the mercy of the Holy One, blessed be He, saying to Him: Master of the Universe, hearken to the voice of my weeping and have mercy upon my children, or else pay the due bill which I present [move my bones to Mahpelah]. Forthwith, the Holy One, Blessed be He, would listen to the voice of her prayer. And the proof? Scripture says [of the time when the Temple was destroyed] [a] voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. (Braude 1968: 1: 76 11b)

In the tenth-century Midrash agadat bereshit, Rachel selflessly chooses to shorten her life and die on the road to Efrat in order to remind God to restore her children to Israel. Seder eliyahu rabah (tenth century) plays on the similarity between the name Rachel (rah.el) and the Hebrew word for ‘spirit’ (ruah.), and explains that Rachel’s spirit weeps for her children. Similarly, in Midrash tanh.uma, Rachel’s spirit weeps as she witnesses the pain and suffering of the exiles who walk past her tomb. God is immediately moved and promises to save them (Midrash tanh.uma, ‘Vayishlah.’, 15). Thus, in the midrashic tradition, Rachel becomes the ideal of the suffering Jewish mother, an everlasting source of solace and strength (Sered 1986, 1989, 1991). Rachel’s transformation from a selfish beauty in Genesis to a selfless sister, wife, and mother in Midrash is a typical illustration of a general rabbinic effort to sanitize the unsavoury behaviour of biblical heroes and heroines. This recharacterization of Rachel sheds light on the Sages’ concerns. For example, Chana Shacham-Rosby suggests that they reframed Rachel and Leah’s conflict as a response to early Christian exegesis. As early as the third century, Christian polemicists focused on the enmity between the sisters and depicted the beautiful, young, beloved Rachel as the Church and the weak-eyed, hated Leah as blind Synagoga (Shacham-Rosby 2011: 32). Moreover, she argues that the Sages focus on the importance of Rachel’s tomb as a response to the ever-increasing number of Christian pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land during late antiquity (ShachamRosby 2011; Yuval 2008: 2, 32). Indeed, both rabbinic Jews and Christians used symbols of Rachel as a means of self-definition in an attempt to distinguish themselves from one another.

Rachel as the Suffering Shekhinah Thirteenth-century Castilian kabbalists drew upon the possibilities inherent in the midrashic tradition to depict Rachel as a weeping mother on a mythical, cosmic scale. Rachel became the symbol of the Shekhinah suffering with her children in exile. This theological development was, like rabbinic Midrash,

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Keter Crown

Binah Understanding

Hokhmah Wisdom

Gevurah/Din Judgement

Hesed Lovingkindness

Figure 1 The kabbalistic categories of sefirot

Tiferet Beauty

Hod Splendour

Netsah Endurance

Yesod Foundation

Shekhinah Presence/ Kingdom

influenced by historical conditions in Castile at the time. Thirteenth-century kabbalists imagined God as having one completely unknowable aspect, referred to as the Ein Sof (Without End), from which flowed ten lower attributes: Crown (Keter), Wisdom (Hokhmah), Understanding (Binah), Lovingkindness (Hesed), Judgement (Din or Gevurah), Beauty (Tiferet), Endurance (Netsah), Splendour (Hod), Foundation (Yesod), and Presence/Kingdom (Shekhinah) (see Figure 1). Arthur Green explains that the sefirot must be understood not as ‘hypostatic entities but as symbolic clusters, linked by association, the mention or textual occurrence of any of which automatically brings to mind all others as well’ (Green

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2004: 36). The Shekhinah, for example, has been associated with a wide array of symbols. She is a queen, bride, mother, and daughter. She is Mother Earth, a field, land, and the Land of Israel. Incorporating imagery from the Song of Songs, she is a beautiful rose, the community of Israel (keneset yisra’el), and a merciful deer who feeds her fawns. As the lowest sefirah, she receives effluxes from the sefirot above her and distributes them to the world below. She therefore functions as a well, or in Hebrew, a be’er. In fact, zoharic hermeneutics highlight the fact that many biblical heroines appear in the biblical narrative at wells, and explain therefore that each of these figures represents the Shekhinah. For example, Abraham’s servant meets Rebekah at the well (Gen. 24); Moses and Zipporah also meet by a well (Exod. 2); and Jacob and Rachel meet there too (Gen. 29). This offered kabbalists a significant interpretative opportunity to equate Rachel, in particular, with the Shekhinah. That, along with the influence of Jeremiah 31: 15, enabled Rachel to take on the role of the Shekhinah suffering in exile (Zohar i. 153b; Alter 1981: 55–78).

Rachel Revealed as Mediator between Heaven and Earth Thirteenth-century kabbalists also believed that every detail in the Bible sheds light on the sefirotic realm. Moses de León, one of the leading contributors to the Zohar, explains in his Book of the Pomegranate (Sefer harimon) that ‘the story of Rachel and Leah in the Bible is a true model of a divine secret’ (Wolfson 1988: 97–8). By reviewing details of their life stories, de León argues, the reader can uncover divine secrets embedded in the Bible. The story of Rachel begins with Jacob, who arrives in Haran to find a wife from his mother’s kin. He sees Rachel, accompanying her father Laban’s sheep on a mountainside, and is instantly struck by her youthful beauty (Gen. 29: 17). The Zohar understands Jacob’s immediate attraction to Rachel in sefirotic terms—she is the physical and the metaphysical conjoined. Her allure and femininity are evident because the Shekhinah is the lowest rung of the sefirotic realm and the highest level of the terrestrial world—in a sense, a portal to the Divine. Rachel thus becomes the introduction to all kabbalistic enquiry. Regrettably for Jacob, her father is the artful ‘con man’ of his day, who convinces the heart-struck Jacob that seven years of labour would be a suitable price to pay for Rachel’s hand. Here, de León points to the mystical significance of the number seven: kabbalists often distinguish between the three upper sefirot (Crown, Wisdom, and Understanding) and the lower seven (see Figure 1). Jacob works for Rachel/Shekhinah for seven years (Gen. 29: 20) because she is the seventh emanation from the sefirah Lovingkindness. Thus Rachel as Shekhinah is the bridge between the divine and terrestrial realms. She is perfectly positioned to intercede on behalf of her people.

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Rachel Remains on the Road The Zohar similarly derives mystical secrets from the description of Rachel in Jeremiah 31. BT Megilah 29a states that God’s love for Israel is so boundless that his presence accompanied them into exile after the destruction of the Temple (cf. H . ag. 15b). Thirteenth-century kabbalists build upon this image when they describe the maternal Shekhinah as accompanying her children into exile. Many zoharic teachings identify this suffering Shekhinah with the matriarch Rachel who weeps for her children in Ramah. One zoharic tradition offers a heightened reading of Jeremiah. Whereas Jeremiah understands Ramah as a place, the Zohar understands ramah as the Hebrew term for ‘height’, the celestial province of the sefirot. In the text below, the exiled Shekhinah takes on the symbolic mantle of Rachel weeping for her children: For when Jerusalem was destroyed, Shekhinah ascended and visited all those places where She had previously dwelled, and She wept for Her dwelling and for Israel who were going into exile and for all the righteous and pious who had been there and perished. How do we know? A voice is heard on a height—wailing bitter weeping—Rachel weeping for her children [Jer. 31: 15] . . . Then the blessed Holy One asked Shekhinah, ‘What has happened to you now that you have gone . . .’ She replied before Him, ‘My children are in exile and the Temple is burnt, so what is left for me here . . .’ And we have established that the blessed Holy One said to Her, ‘Restrain your voice from weeping’ [Jer. 31: 16] . . . when the Temple existed, Israel would perform rituals, bringing offerings and sacrifices, and Shekhinah hovered over them in the Temple like a mother over her children. All faces were radiant, so that blessings appeared above and below; there was never a day without blessings and joys. Israel dwelled securely in the land, and the whole world was nourished because of them. Now that the Temple is destroyed and Shekhinah is with them in exile, no day passes without curses; the world is cursed, and joy cannot be found above or below. But one day, the blessed Holy One intends to raise the Assembly of Israel from the dust. (Zohar i. 203a, trans. Matt, iii. 243–5) 6

The German Pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz), a group of Jewish mystics and ascetics in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Rhineland, had paved the way for this very close association between Rachel the suffering mother and the exile of the Shekhinah.7 Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of the lunar month, was understood to be a holiday of particular significance for women. Indeed, several early medieval midrashim noted that the name Rachel was the acronym for the Hebrew phrase rosh h.odesh lenashim (‘Rosh Hodesh is for women’). The German Pietists added the community of Israel (keneset yisra’el) to this mix: ‘When Israel is forced into apostasy, the moon wanes, as it is written, “Rachel weeping for her children” [Jer. 31: 14]. And why was the woman compared to the moon? To tell you—as the moon waxes for half of the month and wanes for half of the month—so the woman is close to her husband for half a month and alone in her impurity for half a month’ (Judah Hehasid 1957: 571–2; Liebes 1993).

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Lunar cycles had long been associated with menses (Koren 2011a). In this excerpt, however, the author associates the moon with keneset yisra’el. When Israel sins, keneset yisra’el, that is, the Shekhinah, wanes. The progression from full moon to crescent is explicitly compared to Rachel weeping for her children (Koren 2011a; Liebes 1993: 51). The kabbalists take this idea to its logical conclusion, imagining ‘Rachel who weeps for her children’ as the suffering Shekhinah who intercedes with God on behalf of her people. As noted above, Rachel’s role as the suffering mother in exile is inextricably connected to her burial in a tomb that is purposefully placed by the side of the road. Sefer hayashar, dated to thirteenth-century Gerona and associated with the pre-zoharic Geronese school of kabbalah (Shokek 1987: 342), offers one of the most vivid descriptions of Rachel as a suffering mother. The midrash imagines Joseph passing his mother’s grave while travelling down to Egypt with his Midianite captors: When Joseph saw his mother’s grave, he ran toward it impulsively [and] threw himself upon the tomb and wept, wailing as he said . . . Mother! Mother! Wake up, arise and see your son! Weep with him, feel his anguish . . . Then Joseph heard a voice that spoke from under the earth, and it answered him with a bitter heart and a plaintive voice with these words: ‘Joseph my son, my son. I have heard your voice amidst your weeping, your voice bent in supplication! I have seen your tears, and I know your anguish . . . I share your anguish, and your grief so great joins mine. But now, my son, wait in the Lord and find your rescue in Him! Have no fear, for the Lord is with you. He will deliver you from anguish. Stand up, my son and go, go to Egypt with your master, but do not fear, for God is with you, my son! (Girón-Negrón 2012: 16, 19 n. 11)

The psychological force of Rachel’s suffering is most powerfully articulated in this text. A frightened Joseph needs his mother to reassure him, to let him know that he is not alone and that she loves him so much that she feels every moment, every trace of his anguish. Not only does she comfort him, but she also assures him that he will be redeemed. Muslims were the first to narrow the focus of Rachel’s weeping in Jeremiah. Jeremiah has Rachel weeping for all of her sons; in Muslim hadith she only weeps for Joseph, who is a symbol of the Arab people. Geronese kabbalists adapted the Islamic reworking of the midrashic motif to suit their own theology. In Catalonian kabbalah, Joseph was a symbol of the sefirah Yesod and the embodiment of the righteous man (tsadik). The authors of Sefer hayashar hoped that Rachel weeps for her righteous, that is mystical, sons. This story is a stunning example of narrative migration, whereby each group claims ownership of the same symbol, ironically used to protect one against the other (Bernstein 2006; Girón-Negrón 2012: 19 n. 11, 22 n. 18).8 The Zohar similarly reinterprets the spiritual and psychological impact of Rachel’s burial at the side of the road.

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‘Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave (it is the pillar of Rachel’s grave until this very day)’ [Gen. 35: 20]. Rabbi Yose said, ‘Why?’ ‘So her site would never be concealed until the day that the blessed Holy One intends to revive the dead’, as it is said, ‘Wait until the day, until that very day!’ Rav Yehudah said, ‘Until the day that Shekhinah returns to that site, together with the exiles of Israel, as it is said: “There is hope for your future; declares YHWH: children will return to your land” [Jer. 31: 17]. The blessed Holy One swore this oath to her, and as they return from exile, Israel are destined to stand by Rachel’s grave and weep there, just as she wept over Israel’s exile. So it is written: “With weeping they will come” [Jer. 9] and “There is reward for your labour” [Jer. 16]. At that moment, Rachel—who is by the road—is destined to rejoice along with Israel and the Shekhinah, as the companions have established.’ (Zohar i. 175b, trans. Matt, iii. 59)

Sacrificing her own well-being for that of her children, mother Rachel rejoices for them though she remains in exile. Elsewhere in the Zohar, Rachel is envisioned in exile mediating with God on behalf of her children. Isaiah 42: 24 reads, ‘Who gave up Jacob for spoil and Israel to plunderers? Was it not YHWH, against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they would not walk and whose Torah they would not obey?’ Seeking to understand the change in person—‘we’ and ‘they’— the Zohar imagines that: When the Sanctuary was destroyed, the Temple burned, and the people exiled, Shekhinah sought to be uprooted from Her site—to accompany them in exile. She said, ‘First, I will see my house, my Temple, and visit the site I used to inhabit and the stations of the priests and the Levites who served in my house.’ Rabbi Eleazar said, ‘At that moment, the Assembly of Israel looked up and saw that her husband [Tiferet, Jacob] had withdrawn from her [to] far, far above; she descended below and entered her house [the Temple], gazing at all those places.’ A voice was heard far, far above; a voice was heard below. ‘A voice is heard on a height—wailing bitter weeping—Rachel weeping for her children’ [Jer. 31: 14], as has been established. When she went into exile, she gazed at her people and saw them being oppressed, trampled under the feet of other nations. Then she said, ‘Who gave up Jacob for spoil?’ They said, ‘Was it not YHWH against whom we have sinned?’ She responded, ‘In whose ways they would not walk and whose Torah they would not obey’. (Zohar i. 134a, trans. Matt, ii. 255–6)

The authors here describe the tenth sefirah in three different ways: as the Shekhinah, the Assembly of Israel, and Rachel. It is worth paying attention to the nuances that each symbol brings to the teaching. In the first paragraph, when the tenth sefirah is still whole, the Zohar describes her as the Shekhinah. As soon as her husband Jacob withdraws, however, her aspect changes, and she becomes the Assembly of Israel (keneset yisra’el). No longer united with her husband, the Assembly of Israel is incomplete, and in her damaged state descends to survey the damage to the Temple. Keneset yisra’el gazes among the ruins. She becomes

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Rachel the moment she goes into exile and feels the suffering of her children. Moses de León explains that the Shekhinah’s different states of being correspond to her different aspects/levels: upper Shekhinah remains in the sefirotic realm, whereas lower Shekhinah feels her children’s pain so acutely that she remains inextricably bound with the twelve holy tribes in exile (Sefer shekel hakodesh 1996: 91–3). Rachel symbolizes the lower Shekhinah. Her purpose is to suffer in exile.

Rachel Doubly Exiled Rachel’s cosmic purpose is reinforced in Genesis. She dies giving birth to her second child while journeying to the promised land. Jacob’s decision to bury his beloved wife by the road rather than in his family’s tomb confounded scholars and inspired midrashists for many years. They strove to explain this unorthodox behaviour as an inspired choice. In a responsum on kabbalistic matters, Moses de León offers one such answer. Leviticus 18: 18 forbids men from marrying two sisters. How then could Jacob defy the law and marry Rachel and Leah? Nahmanides had suggested, in his commentary on the verse, that the prohibition against marrying two sisters applies only in the Land of Israel. Moses de León decodes the kabbalistic secret embedded in Nahmanides’ Torah commentary and explains that the Land of Israel is a reference to the upper Shekhinah. Rachel’s permanent position on the road outside Jacob’s ancestral homeland underscores her sefirotic status as the Shekhinah in exile. Terrestrial Rachel and her sefirotic counterpart must always remain outside the Holy Land. Her self-sacrifice ensures the salvation of her children. Rachel’s public tomb ensures that this suffering mother will always be available to pray and intercede on behalf of her people. The Zohar elaborates: When Rachel was aroused by this name, as it is written, ‘may YHWH yosef [add] another son to me!’ [Gen. 30: 24], Jacob knew she was worthy of completing all those tribes and would not endure in the world. So he wanted to leave but could not. However, when Benjamin’s time approached, he fled, so that his house would not be completed, linked with the [H]oly world in an alien land. This accords with what is written, ‘Elohim said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and your birthplace, and I will be with you”’ [Gen. 31: 3].9 What does this mean: ‘I will be with you?’ He was really telling him: ‘Until now Rachel was with you, the essence of the house. From here on, I will be with you, possessing the house with you, with the twelve tribes.’ This accords with what is written: ‘When I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died alai [upon me] [Gen. 48: 7], on account of me’. Because this event happened, she was thrust aside, while another dweller came and took over the house because of me, to dwell with me. (Zohar i. 160b, trans. Matt, ii. 397–8; cf. Zohar i. 158a (Matt, ii. 379), 165b (Matt, ii. 424), 175a (Matt, iii. 58))

Other sections of the Zohar explain Rachel’s displacement as a necessity, arguing that Jacob could not achieve his true destiny as the sefirah Tiferet and unite

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with the upper Shekhinah if he were still married to Rachel.10 Jacob, like Moses, is a symbol of Tiferet, the divine king, who unites with the Shekhinah on high. Many midrashim suggest that Moses did not engage in sexual relations with his wife Zipporah after he met God on Mount Sinai (BT Shab. 87a; Midrash tanh.uma, ‘Tsav’, 13; Sifrei Numbers 99). The Zohar states that Moses needed to separate from his terrestrial wife in order to remain in constant contact with the Shekhinah (Zohar i. 22a, 152b, 234b; ii. 222a). Jacob, by contrast, could not abandon his ‘earthly duties’—he was destined to sire the twelve tribes. Rachel therefore dies when Benjamin is born, and Jacob is free to lead a life of pure contemplation. He can now leave the lands of Laban and return to Canaan, his place of birth, and to his true spiritual homeland, the upper Shekhinah (that is, the upper female Binah). Rachel could not be part of this aspect of Jacob’s journey, just as Zipporah could not be part of Moses’ life after Sinai. Come and see what we have learned: Lower world was destined for Jacob as She was for Moses, but She was unable until there appeared in the house twelve tribes with whom She could join. Then, Rachel was thrust aside, and She possessed the house and all those tribes becoming ikara debeita, essence of the house. Then, ‘He settles akeret habayit [essence of the house]’ [Ps. 113: 9]. Precisely. Jacob said, ‘The time has arrived for twelve tribes to be completed. The world above will certainly descend to the house, joining them, while this poor woman will be pushed away before it. If she dies here, I will never escape. Furthermore, in this land, it is not fitting to complete the house.’ (Zohar i. 158a, trans. Matt, ii. 382)

Rachel is now doubly exiled—first, she accompanies her children in exile; second, she must remain in exile in order for her children and husband to achieve salvation (Zohar iii. 187a; Liebes 1976: 182). She is the mother of sorrow who weeps for the children she cannot have, for those that she does have, and for those who have abandoned her.11 Menahem Recanati, a thirteenth-century Italian kabbalist, explains that the Torah describes Rachel as a shepherdess because, like a shepherd leading her flock to the shearing, Rachel/Shekhinah accompanies her children—Israel— into exile. She is the daughter of Laban (Hebrew for ‘white’) because she is so pure in her suffering that it whitens the sins of Israel (Recanati 1880: 29). Rachel, through the Zohar, takes on the mantel of Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows, assuming the element of inescapable sorrow and consolation that had just become a widespread and popular aspect of Marian devotion among the Christian majority in Castile.

Mary and Rachel Though there were precedents for her suffering in the Eastern Church (Fulton 2002), Mary was portrayed in ecclesiastical circles in the West as a regal and remote queen until 1000 ce (Atkinson 1991: 115). In the eleventh century, in order

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to meet the religious and social needs brought about by Gregorian reforms relating to the independence of clergy and ethics in the Church, she became a more accessible figure and role model. As the Church centralized in the twelfth century, Mary began to take the place of local saints, and many of their qualities, including their immediacy and motherly characteristics (Atkinson 1991: 118). She became the super-parent who could save children from the reality of the sufferings of medieval life (Atkinson 1991: 137). Her deep connection to the faithful may derive from the profound pain she felt for her own child’s suffering on the cross. From the twelfth century, and certainly by the thirteenth, Mary had become the symbol of maternal anguish, a new voice of sorrow for those suffering. Rachel’s lament is interpreted as a foreshadowing of Mary’s suffering in contemporaneous biblical exegesis. Although images of Mary’s agony were already known in northern France and Germany, she only gained popularity as the symbol of maternal suffering in Iberia during the thirteenth century. Mary’s suffering at the foot of the cross became a popular subject in church sermons, biblical exegesis, and poetry, as well as in the fine arts and artefacts for the devoted. Later, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, images of Mary holding the body of the dead Jesus (the Pietà) were almost ubiquitous. Jews at the time must have seen and heard about this newly pervasive cultural symbol—especially given the close connection between Marian devotion and medieval anti-Judaism (Despres 1998; Rubin 2009b: 228–42; Tinkle 2003). Thirteenth-century kabbalists adapted and expanded their understanding of the significance of Rachel to counter the claims of their Catholic counterparts. This is a second striking example of narrative migration.

Rachel in Early Christianity As noted above, many Christian commentaries on Genesis contrasted beautiful and shapely Rachel with ‘dim-eyed’ Leah. Justin Martyr (100–165), in his dialogue with the Jewish Trypho, explains that ‘Leah is your people and synagogue, Rachel is our Church’ (1930: 134). Others compared Rachel and Leah to Mary and Martha, who were also sisters (Luke 10: 38–42: John 12: 1–8).12 In Luke 10: 38–42, Mary listens to Jesus’ teaching while Martha toils in the kitchen. Augustine (354–430) argues that Leah and Martha represent the action and passions of this world, whereas Rachel and Mary represent eternal life; he also suggests that Leah and Martha are the current Church, and Rachel and Mary the future Church (Augustine 1909: 52; Constable 1995: 19; Shacham-Rosby 2011: 40). Gregory the Great (510–604) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) interpret Rachel and Mary as the ‘contemplative life’ and Leah and Martha as the ‘active life’ (Aquinas 1964: 7; Shacham-Rosby 2011: 40). Lambert of Deutz (eleventh century) explains that Leah and Martha toiled so that Rachel and Mary could attain their goals (Consta-

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ble 1995: 10). Clerics who became monks and left the active life for the contemplative were said to have ‘left Leah for Rachel’ (Constable 1995: 35). In the context of her death in childbirth and her depiction in Jeremiah 31: 15, however, Rachel is understood most often as an allegory for the Church weeping over the death of her martyrs. Isidore explains that Rachel calls her second son ‘Ben Oni’ because she, as the Church, laments the future martyrdom of her children (Gen. 35: 18; Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria, i. 370). Matthew 2: 17–18 depicts Rachel’s weeping as foreshadowing the Massacre of the Innocents: When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under . . . Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’13

The author of Matthew represents Herod as one of Israel’s worst enemies: where Pharaoh only killed the firstborn sons of the Israelites in Egypt, Herod massacred all the children in Bethlehem. Just as Rachel cried for her children in exile in Jeremiah, mothers in Bethlehem wept for their own innocent children. The text, moreover, suggests familiarity with the midrashic idea that Rachel was buried on the road to Efrat so that she would be well positioned to cry for her children. Christian exegetes identified Efrat, the term used for Rachel’s burial site, as Bethlehem. Rachel and the mothers of the innocents were thus weeping in the same place. The Glossa Ordinaria, the standard Christian Bible commentary in the Middle Ages, reads the story allegorically, explaining, ‘Rachel, that is the Church, laments the dead lambs who have been killed.’ Other exegetes wondered why Rachel remains inconsolable (Jer. 31: 15; Matt. 2: 18). Thomas Aquinas explains that ‘Rachel affords a type of the Church long barren, now at length fruitful. She is heard weeping for her children, not because she mourned them dead, but because they were slaughtered by those whom she would have retained as her first born sons’ (quoted in Tinkle 2003: 228). In other words, the Church does not mourn the death of the martyrs who will be saved in heaven; she mourns the error of Rachel’s firstborn sons, the murderous Jews. Others view Rachel as both mother and metaphor. As a mother, she is inconsolable, but as Ecclesia she understands that her children will ultimately be saved. Paul the Deacon (720–99) explains: There is no one who denies that Rachel is in the first place a figure of the Church, and there is no one who would defend anything against the truth. But I perceive two different things in her, weeping and disdain for consolation. For affection and faith battle in the mother; humanity struggles with devotion; affection laments, but faith exults; humanity weeps, but devotion is consoled. (quoted in Boynton 1998: 51)

Revelation puts forth a theological justification for the Massacre of the Innocents in Matthew by imagining that the 144,000 martyrs will all be redeemed at

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the end of time: Then I looked and there was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion! And with him were one hundred forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the one hundred fortyfour thousand who have been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins; these follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been redeemed from humankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found; they are blameless. (Rev. 14: 1–5)

Revelation describes the joyous salvation of the innocents at the eschaton, the end of history. Rachel no longer weeps for them—in Revelation, the voice ‘heard on high’ is the heavenly host. Rachel’s lament in Jeremiah 31: 15 is transformed into an angelic song. In fact, Christian churches mourn the martyrs and express joy at their ultimate salvation every year on the Feast of the Holy Innocents on 28 December. The Massacre of the Innocents, one of the most widespread and popular subjects of medieval biblical drama, introduces a link between Rachel and Mary. The Fleury playbook, a collection of religious plays (one of which dramatizes the massacre) from high medieval northern Europe dated to around the year 1200, demonstrates the interplay between medieval biblical interpretation and the dramatic arts (Boynton 1998). The Glossa Ordinaria presents Herod as a Jew, and ‘the death of the little babes represents the passion of all the martyrs who were slain, small, humble, and innocent—not in Judea alone but everywhere they had suffered from the impious, whom Herod signifies’ (Tinkle 2003: 223). Thus, the Glossa Ordinaria sows the seeds of the belief that Jews not only killed Christian innocents in the past, but may also do so in the present.14 Theresa Tinkle explains that: ‘In short, this authoritative commentary treats biblical Jews as the original enemies of the faith, who reject Christ at the moment of his birth and who continually thereafter seek to kill him and his followers. Christian identity is defined by opposition to this other and by the suffering of Christ’ (2003: 212). The Fleury playbook, according to Tinkle, ‘amplifies earlier exegetes’ learned demonstrations of Jewish guilt by bringing to dramatic life the potent exegetical image of Jews as killers of Christ and of Christian infants’. Rachel’s lament is the subject of the second section of the Fleury playbook. Clifford Flanigan notes that the very human character of Rachel’s grief is intended to facilitate the audience’s identification with her: The emphasis on Rachel’s suffering reflects the interest and acceptance of human emotion in Christian theology in the twelfth century. Fleury’s liturgical drama is highly stylized except for Rachel’s lament. Whatever else Rachel may be, she is also presented as a

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very human mother, one whose expression of grief in her lament is almost unbearably painful even for modern audiences. It seems clear that one of the dramatic functions of this lament is to cause the audience to identify emotionally with Rachel; we are to feel rather than just understand her sorrow. (Flanigan 1979: 45)

Though not stating this explicitly, the Fleury playbook begins to draw a connection between Rachel and Mary. Miri Rubin has described this process as ‘marianization’; that is, the insertion of Mary into places previously occupied by other figures (Rubin 2009b: 177). Indeed, mother Rachel is described as ‘virgo mater’, a virgin mother (Boynton 1998: 54). Rachel is no longer the wife of Jacob, but rather the suffering and protective mother of the innocents—a role that the Virgin Mary will assume in many ritual murder tales.

Mary as Mater Dolorosa In the Gospel of Luke, Simeon prophesies that ‘a sword will pierce your soul also’, and, indeed, she feels the same pain as her son (Luke 2: 35). Mary had been shown in control of her suffering in the earlier Middle Ages, but beginning in the twelfth and especially in the thirteenth century, exegetes started depicting her as experiencing a co-crucifixion. Arnold of Bonneval (Bernard of Clairvaux’s biographer) describes how Mary experienced her son’s torture: Jesus, about to breathe his last, victor over his pains, and as if unmindful of himself, honours his mother with such great affection [affectu] that he turns to her from the cross and speaks with her, intimating how great her merits and grace were with him, she whom alone he looked to at that moment, when his head wounded, his hands and feet pierced, he was about to die. For his mother’s affection so moved him that at that moment there was for Christ and Mary but one will, and both offered one holocaust equally to God: she in the blood of her heart, he in the blood of his body. . . . The apostles having fled, the mother set herself before the face of her son, and a sword of grief was thrust through her soul; she was wounded in spirit and co-crucified in affection [concrucifigebatur affectu]; for just as the nails and lance drove into the flesh of Christ, so she suffered in her mind with the natural compassion and anguish of maternal affection [compassio naturalis et affectionis maternae angustia]. . . . For without a doubt, in this sanctuary could be seen two altars, the one in the breast of Mary, the other in the body of Christ. (quoted in Fulton 2002: 445)

Mary experienced a crucifixion in the spirit; Jesus, in the flesh. Both Mary and the cross offer salvation—Mary through bearing Jesus, the cross through the Passion. Mary must bear the pain of childbirth and the pain of losing her son for the good of humanity. Just as Rachel mourned the death of the innocents but understood that they would be saved, Mary suffers through Jesus’ death but knows that it is necessary.15

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Rachel and Mary in Castile Mary as suffering mother first became popular in the Iberian peninsula in the thirteenth century, at the time of the compilation of the Zohar. The Servites, a new Italian religious order devoted to the Virgin’s sorrow, established a presence in Castile in 1274 (Emery 1949: 238). Members, who wore a distinctive black cloth scapular to symbolize the suffering of the Virgin, were easily recognizable. In addition, Mary’s suffering began to feature widely in the visual arts during that period (Pelikan 1996: 125–36; Rubin 2009b: 246). Mary and John began to appear at the foot of the cross in Iberian art. As Rubin explains, Mary first begins to show her grief ‘with gentle hand gestures, then by the turning away of the head in pain, and ultimately, by the fourteenth century . . . utterly overcome by the sight before her’ (Rubin 2009b: 90; see also Robinson 2013). And in literature Mary was praised in Catalan, Castilian, and Galician compositions. Four major poets devoted works to the Virgin Mary in thirteenth-century Spain: Ramon Llull and Johannes Aegidii in Catalonia; Gonzalo de Berceo and Alfonso the Wise in Castile. They paid little attention to Mary’s life, but a great deal to her suffering at her son’s crucifixion (Marchand 1994). Of these four, the writings of Alfonso X the Wise, the king of Castile and León, had the most enduring influence. Alfonso spearheaded a cultural renaissance in the thirteenth century, with academic, educational, artistic, and social achievements. He employed Muslims and Jews to translate Arabic versions of Greek philosophical texts into Latin, sponsored the publication of a world history, a Spanish history, and the Siete Partidas, an influential digest of Spanish law. He created an intellectual environment that facilitated the flowering of kabbalistic symbolism, ultimately giving rise to the Zohar. Still, Alfonso’s reign was not convivencia redux. After his father’s successful campaigns, all of the Iberian peninsula, save Grenada, came under Christian control. Alfonso used the symbol of the Virgin Mary to allay Christian guilt over the violent conquest, to reorganize Christian culture in a newly united Christian land, and to assimilate Jewish and Muslim minorities into the dominant culture. To achieve those formidable goals, he established many new sites of Marian devotion, subordinated the Galician St James to the more universal Mary, and was responsible for the compilation of one of the largest collections of Marian miracle tales (over 400), which became known as the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Cantiga 403, translated below, is about the seven sorrows that Mary suffered because of her son: I could never have enough tears to shed as I might wish, if I did not first remember how the holy Mary suffered many things which sorrowed Her because of Her Son before He took Her to be with Him. One of the sorrows was when She fled to Egypt, as I found written, because of the thousands of male children that Herod had ordered slaughtered in order to keep his kingdom for himself [Matt. 2: 13–17].

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The second was when Her Son had been lost for three days. She thought that Jews held Him hidden and imagined that He was dead or betrayed, and while She was weeping for Him, He came back to Her [Luke 16: 19]. The third sorrow was very great indeed, when a messenger told Her that they had arrested Her true Son, Jesus Christ, and leading Him away in bonds, alone and abandoned by His followers [Matt. 27; Luke 15]. She suffered the fourth sorrow when She saw Her beautiful Son carrying the heavy cross, cruelly beaten, with His beard torn and spat upon and the shouting of the mob thronging about him. The fifth great grief was when they placed Him on the cross and gave Him vinegar and bile to quench His thirst. They cast lots for his clothes and hastened His death in which they took pleasure. The sixth was doubtless when they took Him down from the cross and carried Him to be buried in a shroud. Facing mischief, they guarded the sepulchre. However, later, as He is my aid, they did not find Him there. As the Scripture tells, the seventh sorrow was very deep and painful, when she saw God ascend on high whence He came [Luke 16: 19] and She then remained forlorn among strangers. (Alfonso the Wise 2000: 485)

The emphasis on Mary’s anguish drew attention to the Jews. Miri Rubin explains that ‘with Mary’s prominence at the foot of the cross and in the mind of Christians, a powerful new link emerged between the Jews’ perceived malevolence towards Christ and Mary’s sorrow. The Jews became Mary’s enemy’ (Rubin 2009b: 252). Jews appear in thirty of the 273 narrative Cantigas. Some of these describe Jews as villains—the moneylender who does not keep his promises, a heathen who defecates on images of the Virgin—others single out Jews as potential converts and describe Mary’s role in their conversion. Cantiga 12 below (Alfonso the Wise 2000: 19, also found in Berceo 1997: 18) describes how Jews force the Virgin to relive the Passion (Berceo 1997: 87–8; Rubin 2009b). This is how Holy Mary lamented in Toledo on the day of her feast in August [Feast of the Assumption, 15 August], because the Jews crucified a waxen image in the semblance of her Son. Refrain: What most offends Holy Mary is a wrong done to Her Son. Concerning this, I wish now to relate for you a great miracle which the Queen of Heaven performed in Toledo on the day God crowned Her, the day of Her feast, which falls in the month of August. Refrain On that day, the Archbishop sang solemn mass well; and when he began the secret and the people fell silent, they heard a woman’s voice, piteous, and sorrowful, which spoke to them. Refrain The voice, as though weeping, said: ‘Oh God, oh God, how great and manifest is the

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perfidy of the Jews, who killed my Son, though they were His own people, and even now they wish no peace with Him.’ Refrain After the mass was sung, the archbishop went out of the church and told everyone what he had heard the voice say, and the people replied: ‘The evil Jewish people did this deed.’ Refrain Then they all hastily set out for the Jewish quarter and found, it is no lie, an image of Jesus Christ which the Jews were striking and spitting upon. Refrain And furthermore, the Jews had made a cross upon which they intended to hang the image. For this deed they were all to die, and their pleasure turned to grief. Refrain. (adapted from Alfonso the Wise 2000: 19)

Imagine the power of this song, the way that the passion and ire of the group would increase with every repetition of the refrain: ‘What most offends Holy Mary is a wrong done to Her Son.’ The faithful would naturally want to protect the lonely, grieving mother who sacrificed her only son so that their own grace would be assured (Bagby 1971: 675).16 Just as the cult of the Virgin Mary became a catalyst for anti-Judaism, so too did the ‘marianization’ of Rachel. Rachel is the only Jewish woman named in the Cantigas. Her story is sung in Cantiga 4. This is how Holy Mary saved from the burning the son of the Jew, whose father had thrown him into the furnace. Refrain: The Mother of Him who delivered Daniel from the lions [Dan. 6: 16–23] saved a little boy of the tribe of Israel from the fire. In Bourges, there was a Jew who made glass. A son of his, the only one he had as nearly as I can determine, studied in the school among Christians, which grieved his father Samuel. The boy studied as well as he could, and he took great pleasure in learning all that he heard. Thus, he won such favour with the other boys with whom he had studied that he was accepted into their group. Concerning this, I wish to recount what happened to him one day at Easter-tide.17 He went into the church, where he saw the abbot at the altar giving communion wafers and wine from a beautiful chalice to the youths. The little Jew was pleased, for it seemed to him that Holy Mary, whom he saw resplendent on the altar, cradling Her Son Immanuel in her arms, was giving them the sacrament. When the boy saw this vision, it thrilled him so much that he placed himself among the others to receive his portion. Holy Mary then stretched out Her hand to him and gave him communion, which tasted sweeter than honey.

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After he had received the communion, he departed from there and entered his father’s house, as was his custom. His father asked what he had done, and the child said: ‘The Lady whom I saw on the pedestal gave me communion.’ The father who heard this became so enraged that he lost his reason. He caught his son, and when the furnace was burning brightly, he shut him in it, committing a cruel and treacherous deed. Rachel, the boy’s mother, who loved her son dearly, believing that he was burning in the furnace, began to cry loudly and ran out in the street. The people came in response to Rachel’s laments. When they discovered the true cause of her mourning, they went straight to the furnace where the boy lay, but the Virgin had protected him as God her Son protected Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael [Daniel 1]. With great rejoicing, they took the child out and asked him if he felt any pain. He said, ‘No, for I held close to me the One Whom the Lady on the altar with Her beautiful Son was holding close to her.’ Because of this great miracle, the Jewess came to believe [in Mary], and the boy received baptism at once. The father, who had done the evil deed in his madness, was put to death in the same manner that he had tried to kill his son, Abel.18 (Alfonso the Wise 2000: 6–7)

This miracle tale of rescue from death was known widely in medieval Europe, and it appears in Berceo’s Miracles of Our Lady. There are, however, several details unique to the Cantigas. First, the mother and the boy are named. The passage ‘Rachel, the boy’s mother . . . Rachel’s laments’ clearly alludes to Jeremiah 31: 15. Similarly, Rachel acts in a way reminiscent of Mary: both women love their sons and lament over their suffering in public. Their sons also bear resemblances to each other: Rachel’s son, who is rescued from his father’s hands, is named Abel, a prototype for Jesus. The tribulations of Rachel and Abel parallel those of Mary and Jesus. Both Jews and Christians are using the same narrative to prove the veracity of their own beliefs. In this tale, however, Mary redeems Rachel’s child and protects him from the flames, and Rachel is consoled through her belief in the Virgin.

The Zohar and Rachel and Mary Thirteenth-century kabbalists were undoubtedly aware of the new theological developments in Castile. They witnessed the new representations of Mary’s suffering and heard the Cantigas. Christian insistence on Mary’s tears might therefore have amplified Jewish conceptions of Rachel’s lament. The connection between Marian devotion and anti-Judaism influenced kabbalists—either consciously or unconsciously—prompting them to offer a more powerful Jewish Mater Dolorosa. In his article on the Virgin Mary, Arthur Green noted the connection between Mary’s suffering and the notion of the exile of the Shekhinah:

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Mary has witnessed the greatest suffering known to the Christian imagination: the torment and the death of her son on the cross. Shekhinah has witnessed and taken part in the greatest suffering experienced by the Jewish people: the destruction of the Temple and the exile of Israel. Both suffering Mothers thus serve as bearers of tears as well as prayers. (Green 2002: 34)

Some sections of the Zohar take this analogy one step further and describe Rachel as the lower Shekhinah, who must remain in exile to ensure the salvation of her children. Rachel and Mary—already understood to be symbols of the Church— are again symbolically united as suffering mothers. In the thirteenth century, Mary’s purpose is to suffer, just as Rachel’s is to remain in exile. By the end of the fifteenth century, when kabbalists were exiled from Spain, images of Mary suffering during the Passion were already ubiquitous in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Pious Christians would contemplate these images and try to feel Mary’s pain. Safed kabbalists did not need an image. They engaged in affective devotion to Rachel, the Shekhinah in exile. At midnight, they ripped their clothes, covered themselves in ashes, knelt in the entryways of their homes, and re-enacted the exile of the Shekhinah—a ceremony still performed by some Jews today and called tikun rah.el. At daybreak, they engaged in a joyous rite for Leah. Scholem explains that: According to this kabbalah,19 Rachel and Leah are two aspects of the Shekhinah, the one exiled from God and lamenting, the other in her perpetually repeated reunion with her Lord. Consequently, the tikkun Rachel, or the ‘rite for Rachel’ was the true rite of lamentation. (Scholem 1965: 149; see also Wineman 1985; Sered 1995: 113)

Though these sixteenth-century Safed kabbalists no longer lived in exile, the symbol of the suffering mother remained so potent that they created a ritual to re-enact the myth. This ceremony commemorates the pain of the doubly exiled Rachel, the Jewish Mater Dolorosa. The voices of Rachel and Mary are still conjoined in lament. Mother Israel gave birth to two siblings—rabbinic Judaism and Christianity— which developed in reaction to each other. Each claimed selfless Rachel, the devoted mother who weeps for her children (Jer. 31: 15), as its companion in suffering. For medieval Christians, Rachel’s lament became a foreshadowing of Mary’s anguish at the foot of the cross. The Zohar was unwilling to cede Rachel’s protective power to Mary and, consciously or unconsciously, made Rachel its own heavenly queen whose sole purpose is to suffer with her children in exile. Both medieval Jews and Christians desired the love and protection of a heavenly ubermother. The human need for love and protection is the same; the symbols differ.

Notes 1

There is an extensive bibliography on the cult of the Virgin Mary. The many studies consulted for this essay include: Carroll 1986; Hall 2004; Pelikan 1996; Rubin 2009a,

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2009b; Warner 1983. On the debate regarding the possible influence of the cult of the Virgin Mary on the kabbalistic Shekhinah, see Abrams 2004: 41–3 and 2014: 154–6; Green 2002; Idel 2005: 45–9; Koren 2011b; Liebes 2005; Schäfer 2002; Shoham-Steiner 2013; Weiss 2013; Wolfson 2006: 93. 2

Translation by Lundbom 1964: 433 (other translations from the Bible are taken from the New JPS Hebrew–English Tanakh). The term Ramah is the subject of scholarly debate. It can either mean ‘height’ or refer to a location; a number of sites are named Ramah in the Bible. Some scholars identify Ramah with Bethlehem, er-Ram, or Ramallah, and others with Rachel’s tomb. This last possibility, popular in midrashim, may be based on an ancient folk belief that mothers who die in childbirth continue to weep for their children after death (Lundbom 1964: 434).

3

On weeping in Jewish mysticism, see Fishbane 2002, Idel 1988, and Wolfson 1995.

4

Much of Lamentations Rabbah is dated to the 4th and 5th centuries, but as Susan Starr Sered noted, though this passage does not appear in many manuscripts before the 13th century, an abbreviated version is found in the 6th century, the 9th-century Pesikta rabati, and in Rashi’s 11th-century commentary. Thus the 13th-century narrative was built on earlier foundations (Sered 1995: 109–10).

5

Wendy Doniger remarked that ‘The sexual jealousy that is overcome in this way is then theologically analogized, in a brilliant original stroke of this text, to the divine jealousy that God feels toward his surrogates—toward the images of him that substitute for him in heathen Temples, even as false lovers substitute for one another in lustful beds’ (Doniger 2000: 163).

6

See also Mishnah Sot. 9: 12; Midrash tanh.uma ‘Toledot’ 1; ‘Tetsaveh’ 13.

7

The symbol of Rachel had already influenced Ashkenazi historical consciousness. In two of the three extant Ashkenazi Crusader chronicles, a woman called Rachel—the only female biblical name used in the chronicles—sacrifices her four children by the sword for the sanctification of God’s name. This Rachel was not a historical figure, but rather must be viewed through the lens of the Rachel of midrash (Chazan 1991; Cohen 2006; Marcus 1982; Shepkaru 1999). The iconic mother of the chronicles was named after the most famous ‘weeper’ in the Jewish tradition.

8

Cf. the Coplas de Yosef, a very popular later medieval Spanish Jewish rendering of Joseph’s story (McGaha 1997: 288).

9

The biblical text uses the Tetragrammaton, but Daniel Matt (2003: 398 n. 632) notes that manuscript variants also use elohim (masculine plural, representing divine concepts and suggesting ultimate creative power) to further the exegesis.

10

Isaac of Acre interpreted this story differently: ‘As long as Jacob, our ancestor, was living with the corporeal Rachel outside the Land of Israel, his soul could not unite with the supernal Rachel, the latter’s residence being in the Holy Land; but as soon as he reached the Holy Land, the lower Rachel died, and his soul united with the higher Rachel’s’ (Idel 2005: 168).

11

Ellen Haskell (2012) argues that this zoharic interlude equates Rachel with Jesus, who suffers and sacrifices himself for his people—an even more likely possibility when we consider that the name Rachel is Hebrew for ‘lamb’. My interpretation is more in line with the exegetical tradition.

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12

The sisters’ names are mentioned neither in Matthew 26: 6–12 nor in Mark 14: 3–9.

13

All translations from the New Testament are from the New Revised Standard Version, as quoted in Levine and Brettler 2011.

14

On the Glossa Ordinaria and antisemitism, see Signer 1997. The meshing of Rachel with the Feast of the Holy Innocents is found in Spanish literature contemporaneous with the Zohar, as well as in medieval Spanish verse such as Gonzalo de Berceo, Miracles of Our Lady (Berceo 1997: 38).

15

Consider the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, a 13th-century Catholic hymn to the Virgin usually attributed to Jacopone da Todi (1230–1306), which was set to music by many famous composers, including Vivaldi, Haydn, and Dvo ˇrak—a testimony to its popularity and expressive verse: ‘At the cross her station keeping, | Mary stood in sorrow weeping | When her Son was crucified . . . | Saviour, when my life shall leave me, | Through your mother’s prayers receive me | With the fruits of victory’ (McKenna 1990).

16

Berceo has also enlarged upon the antisemitism suggested in the Latin originals in his earlier translation of Marian Miracle Tales into Castilian. The Cantigas amplify the antisemitism even more. On Miracles of Our Lady, see Trimmons and Boenig 2007.

17

Berceo describes the Jewish boy as a ‘woolless lamb [who] took communion with the others’ (Berceo 1997: Miracle 16, para. 356, 78).

18

An earlier version of this tale intended for a monastic audience can be found in Berceo’s Miracles of Our Lady. It is important to note that Berceo does not name the mother and child (Berceo 1997: Miracle 16, para. 364, p. 78).

19

Other teachings suggest that Rachel is the Shekhinah and Leah represents the third sefirah, Binah. (I am currently preparing an article devoted to Leah in the Zohar.)

References Primary Sources alfonso the wise. 2000. Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, The Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill. Tempe, Ariz. aquinas, thomas. 1964. Summa Theologiae, vol. xlvi: Active and Contemplative Life, trans. Jordan Aumann. New York. augustine . 1909. Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. iv: Against Faustus, trans. Richard Stothert, ed. Phillip Shaff. New York. berceo, gonzalo de . 1997. Miracles of Our Lady, trans. Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash. Lexington, Ky. Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria. 1992. 4 vols. Facsimile reprint of 1st edn. (1480/1), introd. Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson. Turnhout. braude, william g., trans. 1968. Pesikta rabbati: Discourses for Feasts, Fasts, and Special Sabbaths. 2 vols. New Haven, Conn. judah hehasid . 1957. Sefer h.asidim, ed. Reuben Margaliot. Jerusalem. justin martyr . 1930. Dialogue with Trypho. New York. Midrash Lamentations Rabbah, trans. A. Cohen. 1983. London. Midrash tanh.uma, ed. Solomon Buber. 1885. Vilna; repr. Jerusalem, 1964.

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Midrash agadat bereshit. 1858. Lemberg. Midrash Genesis Rabbah, ed. J. Theodor and Hanokh Albeck. 1965. Jerusalem. Midrash pesikta rabati, ed. Meir Friedmann. 1880. Vienna. Midrash rabah. 1889. Warsaw. nahmanides. 1959. Perush al hatorah, ed. C. Chavel. 2 vols. Jerusalem. The New JPS Hebrew–English Tanakh. 2005. Philadelphia. recanati, menahem ben benjamin. 1880. Perush al hatorah. Lvov. Seder eliyahu rabah. 1902. Vienna. Sefer shekel hakodesh, ed. Charles Mopsik. 1996. Jerusalem. Sifrei Numbers, ed. H. S. Horovitz. 1966. Jerusalem wolfson, elliot r. 1988. The Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de León’s Sefer ha-Rimmon. Atlanta, Ga. Zohar, ed. Reuven Margaliot. 1978. 3 vols. Jerusalem. Zohar: The Pritzker Edition, trans. Daniel Matt. 2003–. Stanford, Calif.

Secondary Sources abrams, daniel. 2004. The Female Body of God in Kabbalistic Literature [Haguf ha’elohi hanashi bakabalah]. Jerusalem. —— 2014. Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism. Jerusalem. alter, robert. 1981. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York. atkinson, clarissa w. 1991. The Oldest Vocation: Motherhood in the Middle Ages. New York. bagby, albert. 1971. ‘The Jew in the Cantigas of Alfonso X, El Sabio’. Speculum, 46: 670–88. bernstein, marc steven. 2006. Stories of Joseph: Migrations Between Judaism and Islam. Detroit. blessing, kamila. 1998. ‘Desolate Jerusalem and Barren Matriarch: Two Distinct Figures in the Pseudepigrapha’. Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 9: 47–69. boynton, susan. 1998. ‘Performative Exegesis in the Fleury Perfectio Puerorum’. Viator, 29: 39–64. calloway, mary. 1986. Sing O Barren One: A Study in Comparative Midrash. Atlanta, Ga. carroll, michael p . 1986. The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins. Princeton. chazan, robert. 1991. ‘The Facticity of Medieval Narrative: A Case Study of the Hebrew First Crusade Narratives’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 16: 31–56. cohen, jeremy . 2006. Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade. Philadelphia. constable, giles. 1995. ‘The Interpretation of Mary and Martha’. In Giles Constable, ed., Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought. Cambridge. despres, denise l. 1998. ‘Immaculate Flesh and the Social Body’. Jewish History, 12: 47–69.

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doninger, wendy. 2000. The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade. Chicago. dresner, samuel. 1994. Rachel. Minneapolis, Minn. elitsur, shulamit. 1999. A Poem for Every Parasha: Torah Readings Reflected in the Piyutim [Shirah shel parashah]. Jerusalem. emery, richard w. 1949. ‘The Friars of the Blessed Mary and the Pied Friars’. Speculum, 24: 228–38. fishbane, eitan. 2002. ‘Tears of Disclosure: The Role of Weeping in Zoharic Narratives’. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 11: 25–47. flanigan, clifford c. 1979. ‘Rachel and Her Children: From Biblical Text to Musical Drama’. In Mitchel Breon, ed., Metamorphosis and the Arts. Bloomington, Ind. fulton, rachel. 2002. From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary: 800–1200. New York. girón-negrón, luis manuel. 2012. ‘Weeping Over Rachel’s Tomb: Literary Reelaborations of a Midrashic Motif in Medieval and Early Modern Spain’.  In Jonathan Decter and Arturo Prats Oliván, eds., The Hebrew Bible in FifteenthCentury Spain: Exegesis, Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts. Leiden. green, arthur. 2002. ‘Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic Symbol in Its Historical Context’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 26: 1–52. —— 2004. A Guide to the Zohar. Stanford, Calif. hall, linda b. 2004. Mary, Mother and Warrior: The Image of the Virgin Mary in Spain and the Americas. Austin, Tex. haskell, ellen. 2012. ‘The Death of Rachel and the Kingdom of Heaven: Jewish Engagement with Christian Themes in Sefer ha-Zohar’. Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 38: 1–31. idel, moshe . 1988. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven, Conn. —— 2005. Kabbalah and Eros. New Haven, Conn. kalmanofsky, amy . 2014. Dangerous Sisters of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis, Minn. koren, sharon f. 2011a. Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Waltham, Mass. —— 2011b. ‘Immaculate Sarah: Echoes of the Eve/Mary Dichotomy in the Zohar’. Viator, 41: 183–202. levine, amy-jill, and marc zvi brettler, eds. 2011. The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation. Oxford. liebes, yehuda. 1976. ‘Chapters for a Dictionary of the Book of the Zohar’ [Perakim bamilon sefer hazohar]. Ph.D. diss. Hebrew University, Jerusalem. —— 1993. ‘“De Natura Dei”: On the Development of Jewish Myth’. In Yehuda Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism, trans. Batya Stein. Albany, NY. —— 2005. ‘Is the Shekhinah Indeed a Virgin? On the Book by Arthur Green’ (Heb.). Pe’amim, 101–2: 303–15. lundbom, jack r. 1964. Jeremiah 21–36. New Haven, Conn. —— 2004. Jeremiah 27–52. New Haven, Conn. mcgaha, michael . 1997. Coat of Many Colors: The Story of Joseph in Spanish Literature 1200–1492. Philadelphia.

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mckenna, edward. 1990. The Collegeville Hymnal. Collegeville, Minn. marchand, j. w. 1994. ‘Singers of the Virgin in 13th-Century Spain’. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 71: 169–84. marcus, ivan. 1982. ‘From Politics to Martyrdom: Shifting Paradigms in the Hebrew Narratives of the 1096 Crusader Riots’. Prooftexts, 2: 1: 40–52. patton, kimberley christine, and john stratton hawley, eds. 2005. Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination. Princeton, NJ. pelikan, jaroslav. 1996. Mary through the Centuries. New Haven, Conn. robinson, cynthia. 2013. Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile: The Virgin, Christ, Devotions, and Images in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Philadelphia. rubin, miri. 2009a. Emotion and Devotion: The Meaning of Mary in Medieval Religious Culture. Budapest. —— 2009b. Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary. New York. sacks, jonathan. 2006. Koren-Sacks Siddur: A Hebrew/English Prayerbook. Jerusalem. —— 2012. Koren-Sacks Yom Kippur Mah.zor. Jerusalem. schäfer, peter. 2002. The Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah. Princeton. scholem, gershom . 1965. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. New York. sered, susan starr. 1986. ‘Rachel’s Tomb and the Milk Grotto of the Virgin Mary: Two Women’s Shrines in Bethlehem’. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2: 7–22. —— 1989. ‘Rachel’s Tomb: Societal Liminality and the Revitalization of a Shrine’. Religion, 19: 27–40. —— 1991. ‘Rachel, Mary and Fatima’. Cultural Anthropology, 6: 131–46. —— 1995. ‘Rachel’s Tomb: The Development of a Cult’. Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2: 103–48. —— 1998. ‘A Tale of Three Rachels, or the Cultural Herstory of a Symbol’. Nashim, 1: 5–41. shacham-rosby, chana. 2011. ‘Rachel the Matriarch in Early Palestinian Midrash and Piyut from the Byzantine Era and Her Role in the Jewish–Christian Polemic’ [Mimekomo shama tefilat rah.el vayizkereiha: demutah shel rah.el bamidrash uvapiyut ha’erets-yisra’eliyim min hatekufah habizantit umekomah bepolemus hayehudi–notsri]. MA thesis, Bar Ilan University. shepkaru, shmuel. 1999. ‘From After Death to Afterlife: Martyrdom and Its Recompense’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 24: 1–44. shoham-steiner, ephraim. 2013. ‘The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions to Marian Devotion in the High Middle Ages’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 37: 75–91. shokek, shimon. 1987. ‘The Affinity of Sefer hayashar to the Circle of Geronese Kabbalists’ (Heb.). In Joseph Dan, ed., Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the History of Jewish Mysticism: Beginnings of Jewish Mysticism in Europe [Divrei hakenes habeinle’umi hasheni letoledot hamistikah hayehudit: reshit hamistikah hayehudit be’eiropah], 337–66. Jerusalem.

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signer, michael a. 1997. ‘The Glossa ordinaria and the Transmission of Medieval Anti-Judaism’. In Jacqueline Brown and William P. Stoneman, eds., A Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P. Notre Dame, Ind. tinkle, theresa. 2003. ‘Exegesis Reconsidered: The Fleury Slaughter of Innocents and the Myth of Ritual Murder’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 102: 211–43. trimmons, patricia, and robert boenig. 2007. ‘The Miracles of the Virgin and Medieval “Spin”: Gonzalo de Berceo and his Latin Sources’. The Journal of Medieval Latin, 17: 226–37. warner, marina. 1983. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. New York. weiss, tsahi. 2013. ‘Who Is a Beautiful Maiden Without Eyes? The Metamorphosis of a Zohar Midrashic Image from a Christian Allegory to a Kabbalistic Metaphor’. Journal of Religion, 93: 60–76. wineman, aryeh. 1985. ‘The Metamorphosis of Narrative Traditions: Two Stories from Sixteenth-Century Safed’. Association for Jewish Studies Review, 10: 165–80. wolfson, elliot r. 1995. ‘Weeping, Death, and Spiritual Ascent in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Mysticism’. In John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane, eds., Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys. New York. —— 2006. Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism. Oxford. yisraeli, oded. 2009. ‘Honoring Father and Mother in Early Kabbalah: From Ethos to Mythos’. Jewish Quarterly Review, 99: 396–415. yuval, yisrael . 2008. Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Princeton.

t w e lv e

‘Where Was Sarah?’ Depictions of Mothers and Motherhood in Modern Israeli Poetry on the Binding of Isaac dalia marx

The Binding of Isaac, known as akedat yitsh.ak or the Akedah (Gen. 22: 1–19), is one of the most influential and controversial stories in the history of religion, playing a central role in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.1 Countless commentators, philosophers, theologians, poets, and now visual artists have examined and reflected upon it throughout the centuries. Scholars and readers have speculated about the mindset of the story’s protagonists: God, Abraham, and Isaac. However, Sarah, who surely had her son’s welfare at heart, is completely absent from the narrative, and therefore from the majority of exegetical material relating to Genesis 22. In classical as well as in modern literature, the story of the Akedah serves as a core source for examining either the relationship between God and the believer, or male-oriented father–child relationships. Isaac’s mother, in both cases, is left by the wayside. Indeed, her absence from far too many arguments and analyses of the Akedah limits its potential meaning. But what if we suggested that the main character in the biblical story of the Akedah was not Abraham, who accepted the divine command to sacrifice his beloved son? And what if we did not follow later traditional interpretations that emphasize the role of Isaac, the son, who lay down willingly upon the altar to be saved only at the last moment by the same God who, in order to test his father, decreed his death? In addition to these three protagonists, some scholars and artists have also focused on the two servants who were asked by Abraham to stay with the donkey while he and his son Isaac continued to the mountain on which the Akedah was to take place (22: 5). Others have considered the role of the angel who ordered Abraham to spare Isaac. All these characters are masculine, which raises a challenging question: where was Sarah during the course of these events? Although she was neither the one God tested nor the one God redeemed, how can we

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explain that Sarah, whose name can be translated as ‘noble woman’ and who is perhaps the main protagonist in the story of the announcement of Isaac’s birth in Genesis 17–18, is not even mentioned in the Akedah narrative? In fact, Ruth Kartun-Blum highlights this point when she writes, ‘Sarah, the main protagonist of [the Genesis] annunciation story, disappears completely when the child she has borne is about to be sacrificed’ (1999b: 43). One cannot help but wonder why Isaac’s loving mother, who yearned for a child for so long, is not mentioned at all in the context of her son’s near-death at his father’s hand. Many commentators, poets, and theologians have grappled with Sarah’s ‘presence of absence’ (for a survey, see Zierler 2005: 10). At times, these struggles are deliberately polemical, calling attention to a body of literature that remains too mute, too reserved, or too male-oriented. There are, however, those who are not only willing but who consciously choose to diverge from traditional biblical views, to probe for another perspective and introduce fresh ideas into a millennial conversation. Israeli poets are one such group: as artisans of language, poets expand the boundaries of our literary world, revealing insights yet to be heard. This essay examines modern Israeli poetic depictions of Sarah, the first matriarch. My aim is to fill the deafening biblical silence surrounding Sarah’s response to the Akedah using contemporary Israeli voices. While classical and medieval midrashic references give us some insight into the silent Sarah, as I will show, contemporary Israeli poetry is a central instrument used by poets to give themselves a voice by revealing the presence of Sarah in the Akedah narrative. The diversity of imagery in the poems I refer to draws attention to the wider range of insights regarding the treatment of Sarah in the context of present-day Jewish Israeli mothers and motherhood. In my conclusions, I discuss how these depictions bring aspects of a changing, developing Israeli culture to the foreground of political discourse.

Sarah in the Akedah in Classical Jewish Literature Classical accounts of the Akedah vary widely in action, motivation, and outcome, with the exception of the sparing of Isaac. In a fifth-century midrash, the fact that the passage following the Akedah speaks about the death of Sarah prompted the Sages to consider a meaningful connection between the two events. Genesis Rabbah states:

‘And Abraham came to mourn Sarah.’ [Gen. 23: 2] . . . Rabbi Yosi said: . . . where did he come from? He came from Mount Moriah, and Sarah died from that anguish, therefore the binding comes just before, ‘And the life of Sarah was’ [Gen. 23: 1]. (Genesis Rabbah 58: 5)

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A later medieval midrash elaborates upon the actual circumstances of Sarah’s death following the Akedah:

And when [Isaac] returned to his mother, she said to him: Where have you been, my son? He told her: Father took me and made me climb mountains and descend hills, and he took me to a certain mountain and built an altar and laid the wood upon it, and bound me and took the knife to slaughter me. Had an angel not came from heaven and called him: ‘Abraham, Abraham, lay not your hand upon the boy!’ I would have been slaughtered. When Sarah his mother heard it, she cried out and during her cry, her soul departed. (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 9)2

A different medieval midrashic tradition explains Sarah’s passivity and lack of response by stating that she was deceived by Abraham (who was worried about her reaction). Instead of telling her about God’s command, he asks her to prepare a feast for Isaac, and tells her that he plans to take him to a place ‘where they educate [or initiate] boys’. Sarah gives her blessing, but Abraham sneaks away from the house early in the morning before Sarah can change her mind (Tanh.uma, ‘Vayera’ 22). This midrashic tradition thus reveals a hidden criticism of Abraham’s blind obedience to God, and maybe even of God’s decision to test Abraham.3 Some early Christian depictions of the Akedah contain interesting traditions regarding Sarah’s role in the story. Ephrem the Syrian (d.373), for example, says in his commentary on Genesis that Abraham did not tell his wife about God’s command ‘because he had not been commanded to inform her. She would have persuaded him to let her go and participate in his sacrifice’ (McVey 1994: 168; see also Brock 1974; Harvey 2001). Susan Ashbrook Harvey (2001) surveys Syriac texts, most of which are liturgical poems depicting Sarah as a full-fledged partner in Abraham’s deadly mission.4 In some of these texts, she is even portrayed as a more devout believer than her husband: they expand on her love for her son, her grief for his imminent death, and her devotion to God in greater detail than for Abraham (Brock 1974). At the end of one of these poems, Abraham essentially disappears, allowing for a greater focus on Sarah’s merits (Harvey 2001: 116). The motivation to enhance Sarah’s presence in these texts is theological. Functionally, it generates a typological affinity between her and the Virgin Mary, since the latter also mourns the death of her son, not knowing that he will return to her (Harvey 2001: 116). Since they understood the Akedah as foreshadowing the Passion of Christ, some Christian commentators emphasized Sarah’s role in the narrative, and conversely felt little need to include a prominent male figure by her side.

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Jews, on the other hand, had no theological and educational motive to stress the role of the matriarch in the story. The Akedah is also a recurring theme in medieval piyutim (liturgical hymns). Not only is it read as part of the yearly Torah cycle, but it also appears as the special reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah (New Year). Additionally, it became part of the daily preliminary morning prayers in late medieval times.5 In fact, there is a specific sub-genre of Akedah piyutim recited in various penitential contexts as well as in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy (Elizur 1997). A typical example is ‘Et sha’arei ratson’, the central piyut for Rosh Hashanah in Sephardi communities. Composed by Judah Ibn Abbas in the twelfth century, it incorporates many midrashic accounts of the story of the Akedah, giving voice to the various characters and elaborating on their motivations. Towards the end, it puts words of grief into Isaac’s mouth, expressing love and concern for his mother, who is not present and is unaware of the unfolding tragedy: Tell my mother that her rejoicing is gone. The one whom she bore at ninety years Has become victim to the fire and a choice portion for the knife; Where shall I find someone to comfort her? It grieves me that [my] mother shall weep and wail; The binder, the bound, and the altar.

While Sarah is absent here and we are not given any insight into her thoughts and feelings, it is clear that Isaac is worried for his mother in a way that his father was not. This is a touching depiction of Isaac’s love for her, as it concentrates on his worries about her response to his death. Interestingly, the theme of Isaac’s concern for his mother before the Akedah is found in Jewish as well as in Samaritan and Christian poems from late antiquity (Münz-Manor 2009: 151–61). In many Ashkenazi liturgical hymns, the suffering of Isaac becomes emblematic of the fate of Jews in Europe who suffered extreme violence during the Crusades. Isaac’s own willingness to die epitomized the figure of the Jew who chose martyrdom over apostasy (Elizur 1997). That said, classical Jewish writings and visual depictions of the Akedah rarely include Sarah.6 If she appears at all, it is in the aftermath of the event or in Isaac’s thoughts. This silence is significant when compared with some early Christian writings, which, as noted above, give Sarah an important role as a prefiguration of Mary. This state of affairs has changed radically in recent decades, as many contemporary Israeli scholars, thinkers, and poets, most (but not all) of whom are women, began examining gaps in the biblical texts, speculating on Sarah’s position and feelings before, during, and as a result of the dramatic events of Israel’s wars and bloody conflicts. For them Sarah becomes the mother who witnesses

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these events; she is the prism through which Israeli poets deal with the challenges of Israeli statehood. Whereas ancient commentators and medieval liturgists mentioned Sarah in the context of the Akedah but without assigning much importance to her presence, for modern Israeli poets she has become a vital and provocative figure through which they can express their views about the conflicts they confront living in the modern State of Israel. I now wish to ponder how an ancient narrative that is silent about Sarah has granted poets the space to introduce her into the conversation about contemporary Israeli culture.

‘The Nation’s Womb’—Israeli Jewish Motherhood A recent statement by Smadar Shiffman—‘When nations are born, women are expected to give birth’ (2003: 142)—contains an age-old paradox regarding the role of women: on the one hand, they are expected to give life, nurture, and carefully protect their children; on the other hand, they are expected to sacrifice those children willingly for the sake of the nation. This situation is obviously not unique to Israel, though the circumstances there are unique in many ways. Shiffman points to a special dynamic created as a result of the tension between two strong female stereotypes: the ‘well known Jewish Mother, nurturing, caring, self-effacing and adoring; on the other hand, Israeli Jewish Mothers are harnessed to the national effort’ (Shiffman 2003: 139). These conflicting roles stand at the core of Israeli motherhood, and Sarah is a perfect model to represent this tension. Of course, fathers also suffer greatly due to the consequences of wars and violent conflicts, and some poems on the Akedah attest to this (Kartun-Blum 1999b). That being said, it seems that women are almost always identified with the attributes of grief and loss (Sperber and Chen 2002: 11)—which is why Sarah is so essential when unravelling the paradoxical struggle in modern Israeli society. Before the establishment of the State of Israel and during its early years, women were depicted as ‘mothers of the nation’, an expression used in relation to Sarah in Genesis 17: 16. Examining medical manuals from these years, Sachlav Stoler-Liss maintains that this image of the Israeli mother was ‘managed’ and brought about in a conscious manner through ‘an unremitting program of education, indoctrination and regulation’ (Stoler-Liss 2003: 104). Mothers required a proper education in order to be adequate ‘mothers of the nation’. The notion that mothers are inextricably linked to Israel’s survival appears in areas beyond those of literature or education. Nitza Berkovitch, who examines Israeli Jewish women’s legal status (rights and duties as citizens), argues that in Israeli society women are characterized primarily as wives and mothers, and not as individuals or citizens; Israeli motherhood is defined as a national role that

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belongs to the public sphere (Berkovitch 1997). Despite social and legislative changes regarding women’s rights in recent decades, ‘the primary definition of women as “the nation’s womb” . . . remains part of the public discourse’ (Guilat 2012: 290). It is not surprising, therefore, to find women protesting against the role of the mother as the enabler of what seems to them illegitimate national causes. The slogan lo yorah velo yoledet, bakibush ani moredet (‘I’m not shooting nor having babies—I’m rebelling against the occupation’) is used in demonstrations and painted on public walls. It does not necessarily mean that these women would refrain from having children; rather, it is a statement against the recruitment of their bodies for an unjustified military effort. To the best of my knowledge, the first time that the Akedah appears in the context of modern Israeli motherhood is in an autobiography by Devorah Dayan (1890–1956), a writer, Zionist leader, and the mother of Moshe Dayan. She writes about the terrible duty, not only to sacrifice a son, but also to do it with hashlamah ilemet (silent—or silenced—acceptance):

Maybe the tragic nature of the Akedah is harsher and nearer to us than to mothers of generations past. Out of acceptance you have to bring the son to the altar, out of silent [or silenced] acceptance, and only when no one sees—to tear your hair. (Dayan 1952: 247)

Public outcries and mourning are thus unacceptable. One must face the sacrifice and the potential loss stoically. Only when no one is there to witness may the mother bitterly mourn.

The Akedah in Modern Israeli Hebrew Poetry Israeli poets use the Akedah to bring acute tensions of recent history to the fore. Interestingly, these artists relate to the biblical text in a manner similar to that of classical Midrash and commentary, though they use different literary tools (Feldman 2010; Forti 2007; Sagi 1998). The composers of classical Midrash sought to prove that everything they created, including bold and subversive images, was already present in the Bible. Their innovations, as a result, appeared as profound ancient truths because of their rootedness in the authoritative biblical text (Stern 1996: 38). In contrast, modern-day Israeli poets very often re-imagine biblical language, imagery, and motifs in order to distance themselves from and even show disapproval of the values reflected in Scripture. More specifically, Israeli poets turn the Bible into a battlefield of ideas, often expressing anger against or total negation of biblical events and traditional ideas. One might even say that they ‘exercise literary violence upon the biblical text through misreading and

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rewriting’ (Kartun-Blum 1999b: 4). They may use canonical texts subversively to reject the values embedded within those very sources and make room for their own ideas. This attack on the Bible is also its triumph; it is ultimate proof of its ever-increasing centrality for contemporary Jews. It remains a major lens through which they consider and analyse their own reality. Writers dare to grapple with the Bible because of their sense of ownership of the sacred text. In spite of, and maybe because of, the subversive nature of so-called ‘secular’ Israeli poetry, it is linked at its core to these sacred sources and cannot be understood without paying close attention to the intertextual methods it applies (Hirschfeld 2002). In his introduction to an anthology of modern poetry on the Akedah, the Israeli author Haim Be’er writes: ‘The Akedah has a manifest, violent, and sinister presence in modern Hebrew literature—exactly like the storm-loaded thickening clouds that El Greco hung as an inevitable verdict over the skies of Toledo’ (Be’er 2002: 9). Indeed, the Akedah is arguably the biblical theme which appears most prominently in modern Israeli poetry. It serves as a lens to reflect on current situations in relation to the past and is a foil for examining the major questions of human, Jewish, and Israeli concerns (Feldman 2010; Forti 2007; Jacobson 1997: 93–5, 121–31). Sarah therefore becomes the archetypal mother, functioning as a reflective lens (Aharony 2007). Just as the Akedah became a metaphor for martyrdom in medieval Europe, modern Israeli poets use it as a powerful symbol for the devastation caused by the Holocaust and, later, artists look to it as a lens through which they can grapple with their feelings of grief, anger, or acceptance in relation to the death of young soldiers (Feldman 2010; Kartun-Blum 1996b: 15–62). Raya Harnik (b. 1933), for example, makes a bold statement in the poem below, transitioning from Holocaust imagery to a reflection on the human price demanded in order to establish and ensure the survival of the State of Israel: ‘Poems of Attrition [b]’, by Raya Harnik No longer 1942 No longer Treblinka No longer sheep led to slaughter Now proudly Now like Masada Now, sheep for sacrifice. (Harnick 1983: 9; trans. in Kartun-Blum 1999a: 18)

The post-Holocaust ‘never again’ rhetoric in the opening lines of the poem is deliberately misleading. We realize upon reaching its conclusion that death cannot be prevented; only the circumstances and causes change. Harnik cites the idiom: ‘sheep [led] to slaughter’, a common phrase in Israeli discourse alluding to the Jews marching passively to their deaths in the Nazi extermination camps. She

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draws a negative comparison between the victims of the Holocaust and the soldiers by referring to the latter as sheep brought as an olah (burnt offering), invoking the image of whole, holy, and pure sacrifices. This parallel is an example of what Suskin-Ostriker terms ‘stealing the language’, using it in ways that contradict its initial function—such as when poets take up linguistic mechanisms and dismantle them. In other words, the unexpected juxtaposition of common and unrelated (but linguistically similar) idioms creates new understandings for both (Suskin-Ostriker 1987). In the tragedy of the Second World War and the difficult reality of the State of Israel, the so-called submissive victims of the Holocaust as well as the heroic Israeli soldiers both meet their violent deaths (Kartun-Blum 1999a, 1999b). The motif of a parent ‘offering’ a son was a prominent one in the early years of the State of Israel, and connected perfectly with the Akedah, which therefore came to epitomize the death of so many young men of present conflicts (Feldman 2010). The Akedah was their fate: the descendants of Isaac were ‘born with a knife in their hearts’, in Haim Gouri’s words (Kartun-Blum 1999b: 23–4). Gradually, this attitude changed; Avi Sagi, a scholar of philosophy, writes: ‘It is precisely after two heroic wars—‘the War of Liberation’ [1948] and the ‘Six Day War’ [1967] —that the trend towards ‘normalization’ gained strength. Victory has been achieved . . . Sacrifices and Akedot are no longer justified.’ Sagi goes so far as to document earlier doubts regarding the validity of the Akedah allegory dating from the 1950s onwards (Sagi 1998: 46–52). But protests against accepting the Akedah as fate increased most prominently following the Yom Kippur War (1973). The loss of so many men and the sacrifice of young lives prompted dissent, which intensified after the first Lebanon War (1982). By this time, poets used the Akedah in their poetry as a symbol for an arbitrary father and absent God, rather than as a sign of heroic and holy sacrifice. Examining poetry that makes use of Akedah imagery reveals a transformation in Israeli society, from a nation willing to offer up her sons for a heroic cause to one reluctant to do so.

Sarah in Israeli Poems Dealing with the Akedah During the early years of the State of Israel and even before 1948, poets used the Akedah to reflect on the personal lives of the ‘bound’—those destined to be killed in the Holocaust or in the wars of the State of Israel. But these poems often dealt with father–son relationships (Shaked 2005: 109–59); mother figures hardly appeared in any of them. In later decades, mothers ultimately emerged more prominently in the literary context of the Akedah.7 More specifically, KartunBlum writes: ‘Up until the eighties it seems the Akedah remained an almost exclusively male topos . . . From the eighties onwards the rewriting of the Akedah grows more dominant in various sections of women’s poetry, both secular and

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religious, and affords rich pickings in different kinds of approaches as well as in poetic achievement’ (Kartun-Blum 1999a: 13–14). Kartun-Blum’s call for new interpretations of Genesis 22 in line with the growing dissent documented above is answered by those poems which ‘take up Sarah’, the matriarch, to carry a new banner of protest through which mothers could speak out to repudiate the Akedah. The ten poems I analyse in this section are examples of such dissenting voices, illuminating the character of Sarah in the context of the Akedah. My selection represents a larger literary phenomenon, and my intention is to provide as diverse a picture as possible of poets who speak through the biblical mother figure of Sarah in order to contest Israeli cultural norms.8 The discussion focuses on different ways in which she is depicted in relation to the biblical narrative, by looking at four dimensions of motherhood: anguished mothers; resisting mothers; blameworthy mothers; and praying mothers.9 Most, but not all, of the poets discussed below are women. They use Sarah to reflect their feelings and fears regarding Jewish-Israeli motherhood in a situation of ongoing conflict.10

Anguished Mothers In 1968, shortly after the Six Day War, Binyamin Galai (1921–95) published a poem entitled ‘And the Life of Sarah Was’. Galai, who served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and fought in the early wars of the State of Israel, witnessed the horrors of battle and realized that the tragedy of the death of Israeli sons was virtually lethal for their mothers as well, who were themselves unaccounted for or not considered as war casualties. He reflected these thoughts in his poetry, by alluding to the paradox which underlies the fact that the Torah portion entitled ‘The Life of Sarah’ (Gen. 23: 1) actually begins with her death. The explanation for Sarah’s death in Galai’s poem remains in line with the midrash cited above, according to which she died when she found out about the Akedah. The poem’s symbolism therefore suggests that the death of sons inevitably leads to the ‘death’ of their mothers: ‘And the Life of Sarah Was’, by Binyamin Galai And the life of Sarah was a hundred years, twenty years, seven years. And she died— She departed from the world on Mount Hebron. To the pattering of the feet of servants Whose names she even forgot. All the friends of the family came to the funeral. Shouldered her coffin. To its last place of rest.

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m a r x Its planks, it was said, were the thinnest of thin The lightest of light. And the life of Sarah was a hundred years, twenty years, seven years. The years of Sarah’s life. And she died— But really, Her candle had gone out many days, many before Her rest place was dust. And the coffin she lay in was made of all the years, The memory of wood cleft on another mount, On another mount, in the Land of Moriah. (Galai 1968: 46; trans. in Kartun-Blum 1999a: 44–5)

The poem is divided into two almost equal parts, each of which begins with the biblical verse from Genesis, yet portrays Sarah’s death very differently. In the first part, Sarah is a respectable member of the community, and she dies at a ripe old age surrounded by her loving family and household. The second half of the poem tells another story: ‘But really, | her candle had gone out many days, many before | Her rest place was dust.’ The reader suddenly understands that the coffin’s planks were ‘lightest of light’, first dying emotionally because she was actually not there and dying physically only later (Shaked 2005: 551–6; KartunBlum 1999b: 45). The ‘shouldering’ of the coffin also takes on a new meaning since it alludes to the way soldiers’ coffins are carried, thereby connecting Sarah’s death to the death of sons.11 The planks of Sarah’s coffin bring to mind the wood Abraham chopped for the sacrificial altar on Mount Moriah and therefore conjure the image of a father sacrificing his son in war, which ultimately prompts the death of his mother. According to a midrashic tradition, Isaac carried the wood on his back ‘as one carries his own cross [!]’, as if leading himself to his own death (Genesis Rabbah 56: 3). This brings to mind the danger attached to the wood that Isaac transported. Isaac did not die on that wood, but his mother, the mother who, in fact, also took part, or at least did not prevent her son’s sacrifice, was buried in it. The transition from the depiction of Sarah as the respectable woman in the first part of the poem to the broken and symbolically long dead woman in the second also reflects the transition from an apparent reality to the profoundly troubling state of affairs in Israeli society, in which mothers bury their own children. The poem expresses grief and profound empathy with modern-day Sarahs, but at the same time does not express defiance of or resistance to the situation in which people fight for their nation or country. In a certain way, it continues the tradi-

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tional midrashic reading of Sarah, who dies as a result of the Akedah. As a matter of fact, the writer embraces Sarah precisely because of her acceptance of the sacrifice. His reading of the story, however, also leaves room for subversive questions regarding the human costs of war.

Resisting Mothers Israeli poetry changed greatly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and even more so after the 1982 Lebanon War. Both were considered potentially avoidable conflicts, and therefore generated much debate. Resistance and defiance, rather than mournful acceptance, characterized their aftermath, because of the heavy price paid to stop the Egyptian-Syrian invasion and re-secure Israel’s borders. Following the Yom Kippur War, the voice of mothers became especially loud. Female authors began to use Sarah as a vehicle to express their innermost fears and objections to putting their children in danger. The four poems presented below bring to the fore these mothers who resist the Akedah, refusing to see it as a divine decree. Each deals with the story from a different perspective and views the tension between the biblical narrative and the contemporary Israeli situation in a unique way. The first, by Esther Ettinger (b. 1941 in Jerusalem), frantically addresses (in the first person and in the feminine voice) the angels who protect sons: By Esther Ettinger Bribing angels Tempting angels Bargaining with angels Appeasing angels Flirting with angels Tearing the heart with angels Watchful, not closing an eye Making a deal with angels Kissing the angels’ wings12 Scolding angels Being insolent with angels Singing with angels Burning, screaming at angels So that they may hold the hand Invent a ram. (Ettinger 1998: 68; trans. Dalia Marx)

The poem is written using the gerund (beinoni) and thus can be read in the first, second, or third person singular feminine. The frantic and constant appeal to the angels is the rhetoric of the powerless. The mother is trying to save her ‘Isaac’, knowing that she has no actual power or authority, since, in keeping with

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the biblical account, she did not receive a divine call as Abraham did and does not have a direct channel of communication with God. She has no choice but to use every possible means at her disposal to prevent the ordeal. The mother in this poem is depicted as weak, but not as passive (in contrast to the biblical narrative). She is resourceful, refuses to be silent, and does anything she possibly can, uses every possible word and gesture, to avert the impending decree. She pleads, scolds, tempts, and bargains, devices that are stereotypically associated with women, all of which are used by Ettinger to offer ammunition to the weak. Significantly, the speaker does not address God but his emissaries, the angels. This Sarah is not part of God’s covenant with Abraham, and she does not trust the One who ordered him to offer her son. This is a fierce statement regarding the current relationship of Jews (or Jewish mothers?) with God. Maybe this particular Sarah even believes that God has no authority over life and death, since it was his angel that prevented her son’s sacrifice. She pleads for Abraham’s or God’s ‘hand’, which is portrayed as the ultimate enemy, to be held back, and for a ram to be offered instead of her son.13 The angels do not respond and the poem ends abruptly. A ram will have to be provided somehow, since God will not perform the miraculous rescue described in the biblical narrative for the Israeli mother.14 The second poem in this section is written by Hava Jacober, who makes a bold argument about an essential difference between men and women, between fathers and mothers. She maintains that God would never have tested Sarah in the same way as he tested Abraham because ‘the essence of the woman’s merit’ is her refusal to abandon her child, in contrast to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac: ‘Sarai’, by Hava Jacober God tested Abraham —not Sarai. And maybe this is the essence of the woman’s merit: He who created her womb And placed in her the pain and the birth Did not dare to test his mercy, Would he be able to bear Her suffering. (Zion 2002: 325; trans. Dalia Marx)

The poet here explains the absence of Sarah from the Akedah. She is not part of the story because God would not put a mother through such a test. The Almighty would not dare to be tested against such suffering. The poem alludes to the birth pains afflicted upon women (Gen. 3: 16). God would not endure a greater agony on their behalf. Sarah becomes then the model of the mother, any mother.

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It is not coincidental that in this poem Sarah is called Sarai, which was her name before the covenant God made with Abraham (Gen. 17: 15). God promised that Sarai would bear a son, and he changed her name from Sarai to Sarah in assurance of this promise, as commentators duly note (see for example Lamentations Rabbah 5: 1). By returning to her old pre-covenantal name, the poet resists the kind of relationship with God that would require a mother to sacrifice her only son. The third poem, by Raya Harnik, who was born in Berlin and lives in Jerusalem, is the best known of all Israeli poems that relate to the Akedah with refusal and defiance: ‘Poems of Attrition [a]’, by Raya Harnik I will not sacrifice My firstborn as burnt offering. Not me. Night after night God and I barter Who ought to have what. I know and am Grateful. But not my son And not As a burnt offering. (Harnik 1983: 9; trans. in Raizen 2013: 140)

The Akedah is not mentioned explicitly here but the reference is clear. As opposed to Abraham’s hineni (‘Here I am!’ Gen. 22: 1, 7, 11), the poet makes her refusal to sacrifice her son very evident—lo ani (‘not I’ or ‘I shall not’). The short poem is an amalgam of lofty biblical Hebrew and colloquial Israeli idioms. Sarah and God are described as two individuals who argue like neighbours holding a grudge against each other, discussing their petty matters and clarifying ‘Who ought to have what’. Sarah acknowledges her debt to God but declares her total objection to her son’s inclusion in this equation, saying, ‘But not my son’. This act of refusal should be read in opposition to the Zionist rhetoric according to which Israelis must sacrifice young men to support the establishment and survival of the State of Israel. In an act of ‘pre-and counter-commemoration’ (Guilat 2012), the speaker in this poem refuses to assume the role assigned to mothers as mourners for lost young lives. The poem also reflects her life ‘with the certainty of [impending] death’ (Raizen 2013); it functions as a ‘[c]ollective cultural memory turned into personal memory’ (Kartun-Blum 1999b: 6). Harnik employs national slogans, empties them, and rejects their content, placing the focus instead on the individual and personal experience to heighten its gravity. At the same time, this poem

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deals with a universal theme that applies to every culture and era, namely a mother’s anxiety about the survival of her children. Her exclamation lo ani! contrasts the reaction of the biblical Sarah, who so desired a son yet remained silent in the story of the Akedah. This poem by Harnik and the one cited above are part of a series called Shirei hatashah (Poems of Attrition, 1969–70), written in the course of or shortly after the War of Attrition. They were not published, however, until much later, in Harnick’s Poems for Guni (1983), after her son Guni, the commander of the Golani Brigade elite commando unit, was killed on 6 June 1982 during the first Lebanon War (Raizen 2013: 136–7). The poem acquired an additional troubling meaning, as Guni’s death was indeed an ‘offering’. He was killed fighting in a politically and strategically controversial battle. In a recent interview, Harnik, who considers herself a completely secular Jew, told of a dark premonition about her son’s fate that she had felt since his childhood, which was powerful enough to shape her poetry long before his death (Raizen 2013). The final poem in the category of resisting mothers is by Shifra ShifmanShmuelovich (known as Shin Shifra, 1931–2012). A poet and scholar, she wrote several poems relating to the Akedah. This one focuses on the aftermath of ‘her’ Akedah: ‘Isaac’, by Shin Shifra No ram was caught in the thicket for me. I bound And I slaughtered. God did not accept He laughed. (Ben-Gurion 2002: 110; trans. Dalia Marx)

This brief poem presents the poet’s personal reaction to the Akedah. While she makes no reference to the context, she makes personal use of the story. Alluding to phrases that mirror the Akedah, such as ‘a ram caught in the thicket’, the poet creates an opposing set of images of an offering and God’s rejection of it. The poem stresses that this Akedah did not merit a revelation; no deus ex machina appears here to save a life at the last moment, pointing to the fact that one cannot depend on divine intervention for salvation. God does not respond; instead, he laughs at the suffering of the individual. A chilling reversal of roles occurs in Shifra’s poem. In the biblical story, Sarah laughs when she learns that she will give birth to a son in her old age (Gen. 18: 12–13). Here, God laughs instead. Sarah’s laugh is a sign of disbelief, arguably also a symbol of joy, in light of the promise of an unexpected life, that of Isaac; God’s laugh, in contrast, heralds death. This complicated type of revelation is a common theme in Israeli poetry.15 God is not thought of as absent (this is not a lament on the Nietzschean ‘death of

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God’), God appears—but he is an indifferent and even a hurtful entity. From this perspective, it is not only that God ignores the offering of the ram; he mocks the effort and the loss. In a world that was created with a very few carefully chosen words, humans are left to operate with no divine providence; they dwell in the world with a powerful mocking enemy. These four poems, by Ettinger, Jacober, Harnik, and Shifra, differ from each other, but all depict mothers who resist the central presumptions of the Akedah. They refuse to offer their dear ones and, therefore, must deny the sacred nature of their offering.

Blameworthy Mothers: Social, Familial, and Political Woes Countless jokes reflect on the theme of Jewish mothers and guilt. Tasteless as many of them can be, they reveal profound sentiments. Discussing motherhood in the context of the Akedah often brings to the fore, sometimes by accusing others, sometimes via self-accusation, the most fundamental sin of a mother: failing to protect her children. This sentiment is not culturally specific but probably universal. It lives, on the one hand, in the shadow of the Holocaust and the continued wars in Israel, and on the other, in the humorous stereotype of the protective Jewish mother. Indeed, it is especially present in the minds of Israeli poets, who depict mothers as collaborators with an aggressor or as indirect enablers of tragic circumstances (Raizen 2013). Below I discuss five poems in this category. One is filled with a feeling of indirect self-blame, the second contains a blunt accusation against Sarah, and the third tells of Sarah’s acknowledgment of her own iniquity, which brought the Akedah as a punishment. Following these are two additional poems embracing the perspective of the Akedah as punishment for Sarah’s wrongdoing against Hagar and Ishmael. ‘I am the Akedah’, by Tsipi Shahrur I am the crust of the milk And the kiss of faith I am the love The junction of the warm thigh I am the fire and constricted water I am the gate’s doorpost16 And the breathing And the slope. I am the Akedah and the [little] hole17 of shooting The smoke and the lament. (Ben-Gurion 2002: 121; trans. Dalia Marx)

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In this poem by Tsipi Shahrur, the mother is the ‘site’ of the Akedah; she not only embodies it, she is held accountable for it. The poet begins with a description of small tokens of tranquil motherhood: she is the serenity and faithfulness of the home, the personification of daily routine—its embodiment. She then describes the mother as the gateway through which everything passes before exiting, as in a perpetual birth—and the gateway to the dangers outside. She becomes so present and identified with her son that she becomes one with the rapid rhythm of his breathing—a symbiosis reflective of their oneness in pregnancy. Now we also understand that the fire is not just warm domestic heating. It symbolizes a deadly weapon heating the air as well as alluding to the fire Abraham brought to the Akedah. The mother is a hole through which the bullet is shot; she is the personification both of the act of killing on the battlefield and the act of mourning. The mother maintains the home, but with the same impulse allows for its destruction. The text is a (self-)criticism of mothers who, instead of using their protective instincts to promote peace, accept war and death and, therefore, allow them to occur.18 Ruchama Weiss (b. 1966), a poet, artist, and scholar, departs from the national understanding and the collective memory of the Akedah and brings its destructive potential to the fore in the realm of the family. She moves from the political to the personal and from the public sphere to the private. More to the point, the poem’s accusatory voice is directed to an abused mother. The threat to Isaac’s life therefore comes from an abusive father who has a dark history of hurting members of his family. Untitled, by Ruchama Weiss You poor old thing. What were you thinking? and why so late in the game? And when will you understand that any man who would bind even if you have insisted on it, and even if it was about your enemies Well, you cannot entrust a child to such a man, Sarah Iveret. (Weiss: 2004: 27; trans. in Cutter 2014: 114)

Using the Akedah imagery and the paradigmatic character of the mother figure who ‘does not know’, Weiss condemns the mother for being unaware of the abuse taking place in her family. A father who has abused once is surely going to continue abusing, and he who binds is bound to bind again if the opportunity presents itself. Weiss is referring here to Abraham sending his firstborn, Ishmael, to meet certain death in the wilderness in Genesis 21, the chapter that precedes the Akedah. Sarah is addressed as aluvah zekenah (‘You poor old thing’), a phrase taken from the words of Satan to Sarah in a midrash on the Akedah (Eisenstein 1915: 146).

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The poem ends with a coarse insult, sarah iveret (‘blind Sarah’), which alludes to the children’s game parah iveret (‘blind cow’), the Hebrew version of ‘blind man’s buff’ (Cutter 2014: 114). Weiss speaks for the increasing number of voices in Israeli society that protest against the victimization of those who cannot defend themselves. In this case, she talks about actual children as victims of domestic abuse. A similar charge is made in Yehudit Kafri’s poem Bareshiyot (‘In the Beginnings’): ‘In the Beginnings’, by Yehudit Kafri ... How could it have happened? And where was Sarai? How could she trust such a tyrannical God to defend in the last moment? Why didn’t she cry out Beforehand, When he saddled the ass And loaded the wood; Don’t raise your hand against the child?! Why didn’t she stand in his way whispering through pursed lips: You shall not pass this way as long as I live! Not this child For whom we waited a hundred years! Not the child of our very soul. (Kafri 1988: 4; trans. Dalia Marx)19

Kafri uses colloquial language, asking those same questions, crying out those same exclamations, whispering those same regrets that people do when the media reveal a case of child abuse or we learn of a case close to our home: ‘How could it have happened? And where was Sarai?’ The charge is not directed against God, maybe because God is ‘tyrannical’ by nature, nor against Abraham, whose name is not even mentioned. The indictment is against the mother, who failed to protect her long-desired child, born miraculously in her old age. The poem puts maternal (or perhaps parental) silence on trial in the face of the harsh reality of abuse that occurs within families (Feldman 2010: 277–8). The mother here is the only one who can save the child by speaking the words of God’s angel, ‘Don’t raise your hand’ (Gen. 22: 12). The poet criticizes her for

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not doing so in a way that explains why Sarah is identified once again by her precovenant name Sarai (Jacobson 1997: 217–18). And when she does not receive her covenantal name, she is indirectly excluded from the Covenant with God, in marked contrast to Jacober’s poem, where her use of the pre-covenant name is an act of conscious defiance by Sarah herself. A surprising insight into God’s motivation in the Akedah appears in Poems of the Akedah by Shalom Yosef Shapira (more often referred to by his pen name, Shin Shalom, 1904–1990). After describing the exile of Hagar and Ishmael, the poem continues as follows: Poems of the Akedah, by Shalom Yosef Shapira And suddenly Sarah knows: My happiness was aroused through sin. At a tent’s entrance she kneels, Bewildered by a furtive fear— Father and son spare for me Yah There on Mount Moriah! . . . (Ben-Gurion 2002: 44; trans. Dalia Marx)

Sarah sees Abraham and Isaac go on their way. She realizes that the Akedah is the consequence of her sinful action against Hagar. She acknowledges the fact that her maternal happiness is based on immoral action and that her suffering is caused by the suffering and misery she had inflicted previously upon Hagar and Ishmael.20 The poet blames Sarah and her unjust conduct for the dreadful Akedah. Another poem that dramatically ties the fate of Isaac to that of Ishmael is Orit Gidali’s ‘Yoresh ha’otser’ (Heir to the Curfew). The mother expresses an ambiguous feeling watching her sleeping baby; she is content but is also worried to see him grow. She is aware that in a few years, he will have reached the age of independence and will no longer need her care and guidance:

‘Heir to the Curfew’ (pt. 1), by Orit Gidali Your body spills onto the bed. Good days. And only your hair, which is growing longer, stops me from being happy. This week you learned to walk. Soon you will be able to climb Mount Moriah, your brother Ishmael at your side, and which of you will continue to the ascent, now that there is no one but you to offer a ram in your place. Son of mine, how is it that I do not extricate you, that I let time pass, your hair lengthens; bound by

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my hand while you sleep. Blindly groping, you found the nipple, and I offer you milk, anoint you with obligatory libations. (Gidali 2009; trans. in Sulak 2016)

When Isaac is old enough, he will ‘be able to climb Mount Moriah’ with his ‘brother Ishmael’ at his side. What appears to be a dreadful initiation ceremony, the ascent of both boys, is described as an inevitable course of events. The mother, in a premonitory sentiment reminiscent of Greek tragedy, feels that the story will not end well. The image of Isaac and Ishmael, walking together on a deadly path, clearly alludes to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (which is explicitly referred to in the verses that follow, not cited here). The brothers, the ancestors of two nations yet to be born, are walking together to be offered up to an unknown deity for an obscure cause. The poem reflects on the deadly and random nature of the conflict. No one goes up the mountain with the boys ‘to offer a ram’ instead of them; they are left to their fate. Even the mother is paralysed and does not ‘extricate’ her son; instead, she concentrates, horrified, on the sweetness of her young baby. The modern-day Sarah blames herself for the terrible fate awaiting her child, saying: ‘Son of mine, how is it that I do not extricate you?’ Marcela Sulak, Gidali’s translator, offers an empowering interpretation of this difficult poem, saying that it provides a new lens through which to view the mother as a ‘nation builder’: [Gidali’s poems] succeed, they sound convincing, because they employ the ancient tropes of woman as mother and nation builder with which Hebrew-language audiences are well acquainted. But this nation builder, this mother, is implying that she is the mother of both children of the conflict. God will not intervene this time. Thus does Gidali liberate the future for a new kind of narrative, one with the possibility of cooperation and coexistence based on the suggestion of an original cooperation and coexistence. (Sulak 2016)

Mothers Who Pray Prayer is not just an act of piety and subservience; it can also represent an act of defiance—the ammunition of the powerless and voiceless. Chava Pinchas-Cohen (b. 1955), a religious poet who has composed numerous prayer-poems, published ‘Petition’ in the early 1990s: ‘Petition’, Chava Pinchas-Cohen With a baby in my arms And human milk weaves his life, At night come beats and clipped sounds Trains— At a certain station on this earth, Barefoot and helpless I stretched out arms

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m a r x Like ram’s horns caught in a thicket The whisper of earth to Heaven Hear, and make Your tabernacle of mercy like the shade of the vine and the fig tree Do not test me, please! There are woods and a thicket, a smell of fire and the sight of smoke. With mothers You don’t play hide-and-seek— In my helplessness I cover my eyes My voice is lost in a voiceless cry Where are You? (Pinchas-Cohen 1994; trans. Dalia Marx)

This prayer-poem does not explicitly address the Akedah; however, its language and metaphors strongly allude to the story. The poem begins with the pleasantness of holding a baby whose life, as rendered in the Hebrew original, is ‘woven’ through the milk it is sucking (veh.alav enoshi rokem et h.ayav).21 The poet speaks of ‘beats’ that seem at first to relate to the tender heartbeats of the infant embracing his mother’s breast or the rhythm of the child’s sucking, but soon the ‘clipped sounds’ and the startling noise of trains interrupts the sweet scene, arousing dreadful memories of the Holocaust (Kartun-Blum 1999a: 21). Now the ‘beats’ seem to refer to the voice of marching soldiers (Ofer 2003). The mother, nestling the baby and feeding it in her arms, realizes that she cannot protect him from evil.22 The speaker cries out, ‘Do not test me, please [na]!’ This brief but urgent plea brings the Akedah to mind, both in the reference to divine testing and in its literary structure. The word na (a form of hastening) is used by God when he addresses Abraham at the beginning of the story (Gen. 22: 2). And the warning ‘Do not [al]!’ reminds us of the angel’s call to Abraham not to kill his son (22: 12). These two references together encase the biblical story in a very short ‘cry’ communicated in the language of prayer to accentuate the mother’s request for God’s intervention (Ofer 2003). A sense of danger from an unknown evil is felt throughout the poem: ‘There are woods and a thicket, a smell of fire | and the sight of smoke.’ The images, taken directly from the Akedah, are combined with the proverb ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ Throughout the poem, the mother repeatedly calls upon God to reveal himself and save her infant: she ‘stretched out arms’; she whispers from ‘earth to Heaven’, the opposite direction to that of a divine call. She invokes God’s mercy: ‘Hear, and make Your tabernacle of mercy’. Again there is a reversal of direction—in the Bible (and consequently also in liturgy), Israel is often in-

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structed to hearken to God (e.g. Deut. 6: 4); now God is asked to hearken, to listen, to attend to his servants.23 And the poet continues: ‘like the shade of the vine and the fig tree’, referring to the consolation prophecy of Micah (4: 4); but here, we hear the perspective of the one who yearns to experience the protective shade of God’s ‘tabernacle of peace’ (a common liturgical phrase), sitting under the vine and the fig tree. The speaker then scolds God as she cries out without a voice: ‘With mothers You don’t play hide-and-seek’.24 The poem ends with a heartfelt invocation—ayekah (‘Where are you?’). This is yet another reversal of roles. In many places in the Bible, God asks humans where they are—but here the human calls upon God, asking ayekah. Indeed, there is a chance that this unanswered call leaves room for hope, since the very act of calling out to him proclaims a fierce belief in God and in his ability to save and protect. The word ayekah, when written in unvocalized Hebrew, has the same spelling as the word eikhah (‘how’), which is also the Hebrew name of the book of Lamentations, ‘linking admonition and lamentation’ (Kartun-Blum 1999a: 21–2). In a scary and lonely world, as Pinchas-Cohen argues, God is present. Mothers, however, demand God’s revelation and intervention, but also fear it, hopeful about and lamenting what is possible on the part of God. Pinchas-Cohen’s ‘Petition’ resembles Harnik’s ‘Poems of Attrition’ in its refusal to accept reality and in its rejection of the Akedah as an inevitable fate. Still, the tone is very different; Harnik’s poem concentrates on her refusal to consent to death, while ‘Petition’ is a prayer for life. Another major difference is the extra-literary aspect; in the case of Harnik’s poem, the reader’s foreknowledge of the son’s death produces a violent effect, giving the impression that the poem was in vain. Harnik’s poems cited in this essay were written in the early 1970s but were published after the Lebanon War (1983). Pinchas-Cohen’s ‘Petition’, in spite of its gloomy feel, leaves room for divine intervention and contains hope that one will behold the redeeming power of a saving God. Her poem leaves the reader with cautious optimism for the renewal of the covenantal relationship with God and the preservation of the life of the child.

Reinterpreting the Akedah In the Bible, Sarah has no active relationship with God at the time of Abraham’s testing; she is the absent mother of the Akedah—silent and silenced. Ironically, centuries later, she acquires a significant presence in relation to the narrative in Genesis and becomes a prominent figure in contemporary literature, that is, in Israeli poetry. Indeed, Sarah emerges as part of a paradigmatic shift expressed by two independent yet related phenomena that stand at the intersection of two Israeli discourses: the figure of Sarah is used to address and challenge Jewish biblical tradition and her persona is invoked to reflect upon reality in modern Israel.

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Working to develop the persona of Sarah, modern Israeli poetry adopts a complex stance towards Jewish culture, specifically regarding religion and faith, nationhood and family, collective identity and individual personhood. Abraham is not present in many of these poems as he is not part of the difficult relationship which links the mother, her son, and God. Most poems feature Sarah (or others observing her), and make bold statements not only to reinterpret the biblical text, but also to engage with God, questioning whether there is divine justice and providence in the world. These poems demonstrate multifaceted attitudes towards the biblical narrative; they draw on tradition, reject it, and at the same time pledge allegiance, as it were, to its role in their heritage and their own internal language. It is this sense of ownership that empowers Israeli poets to engage creatively in recasting and moulding their depiction of the Akedah. At the same time, Israeli poets use Sarah, a mother who must sacrifice her only son, to grapple with broader issues of the contemporary world—the role of mothers and motherhood in the Israeli-Jewish cultural arena. Earlier Israeli poets focus on Abraham or the tragedy of modern-day ‘Isaacs’ (Feldman 2010; KartunBlum 1999b; Shaked 2005). The father–son tension and/or bonding, alluding to a military reality and suitable for the formative years of Israel and its heroic fight for independence, comes to the fore. But changes in perception, emerging from great loss and bereavement, especially with regard to the national need to maintain an active military (Sperber and Chen 2002), drove many poets to turn towards the ‘unseeable’ in the binding of Isaac; they discovered Sarah and began to focus on her ‘absent presence’. With the growing reservation and even opposition to the enormous price exacted by the ongoing military engagement, especially after the Yom Kippur War (1973) and even more so after the first Lebanon War (1982), a change of paradigm occurred. The former willingness to sacrifice one’s sons for the national cause gave way to resistance as well as refusal to do so. Artists expressed this shift by placing Sarah, as a mother, at the forefront. Internal familial issues such as abuse, which became better known, led to both the support and attack of the mother, who nurtured her children, but failed to protect them, and herself. She represents the complexities of Israeli culture, underscoring the attributes of longing and pain (Sperber and Chen 2002). The mother figure, whose role is to give life and to nurture, challenges the very concept of an Akedah in order to express the emotions of grief, fear, and guilt. Yael Guliat, who discusses a subversive kind of memory, calling it ‘pre- and counter-commemoration’, writes: The counter-memory concept evolved from a confrontation with the collective memory, which essentially banishes or represses memory that is personal or that fails to conform with hegemonic group memory. Counter-memory undermines the legitimacy of the historical memory that the collective memory created and strives for symbolic representation in history. (Guilat 2012: 286)

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The artistic creativity described here takes part in the larger domain of collective memory and its vicissitudes, mutabilities if you will. A political, ethical, and gendered critique expressed in the poetry I have examined redefines the balance between the characters of the Akedah story, using it to express complex attitudes towards mothers and expectations of motherhood, as influenced by both national and familial concerns. The mother figure, of which Sarah is an archetype, embodies a tremendous paradox. On the one hand, there is the imperative (and impulse) to nurture and preserve life that the ideal mother conjures up. On the other hand, mothers also critique the call to serve and the sacrifice involved in the actualization of a Zionist ideal. Mothers also represent the desire to build a culture that lives by a strong ethic of protecting its children under any circumstances, even from their own parents who might be abusing them. I have tried in this essay to bring a fresh perspective to an age-old debate about the meaning of the Akedah and the silence of Sarah. The biblical story is a language, a linguistic set of signs, to which each generation applies its own cultural reality and concerns. The Akedah is a salient example of this phenomenon, where the emergence of the role of Sarah illustrates the realignment of these literary ‘signs’ to construct a useful past for contemporary needs.

Acknowledgements I thank Professor William Cutter, Rabbi David Arial-Yoel, Rabbi Shelton Donnell, and Rabbi Tamar Duvdevani. I thank the poets too for granting permission to cite their work and for their generous help with the translations.

Notes 1

In the Muslim tradition, the story is told with Ishmael (son of Abraham and Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant) as the son to be sacrificed (Qur’an 37: 100–11).

2

In another medieval midrash, it is Satan who pretends to be Isaac and it is he who tells Sarah about the binding (Midrash tanh.uma, ‘Vayera’ 23). See also Sefer hayashar, ‘Vayera’; Yalkut shimoni, 98; Midrash hagadol 1902: 319.

3

I believe this criticism is intentional. Niehoff (1994) observes that at least in some cases such criticism reflects the subconscious beliefs of the rabbis.

4

There are, however, other presentations of Sarah’s response. For example, Romanos, a Christian liturgical poet from the 6th century, composed a hymn on ‘The Sacrifice of Abraham’, where he reflected on an imaginary objection Sarah would have made, had she been told about the Akedah (Moskhos 1972).

5

This practice is a Lurianic custom dating from the 16th century (Marx 2010: 71–5).

6

An exception to this rule may be the lavish biblical wall-paintings decorating the ancient synagogue of Dura Europos (3rd century, Syria). A tiny figure usually identified as Sarah stands in the doorway of her tent while the Akedah is taking place.

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7

Even poems that were composed earlier, such as those by Raya Harnik, were published well after their composition date (see below).

8

For more poems dealing with Sarah in the Akedah, see Aharony 2007: 166–86; Feldman 2010: 277–8; Jacobson 1997: 121–3.

9

Like any possible grouping, this one is somewhat technical, but I believe that it may be helpful. For a different typology, see Aharony 2007.

10

Here, I consider Israeli poetry. However, to understand Sarah’s role in the Akedah better in the context of contemporary discourse, one must also address the role and depiction of Sarah in theological writings (e.g. Berman 1997; Suskin-Ostriker 1993; Trible 1999; Zierler 2005); in feminist theory, modern Midrash and prose (e.g. Feldman 2004; Lubitz 2009; McNaughton 1996; Valdan 2009; Yanow 1994); theatre (Elion-Israeli 2009: 159–74); and visual arts (Sperber and Chen 2002).

11

The phrase ‘shouldered her coffin’ is also reminiscent of the Levites carrying the Ark (Num. 7: 9); in Hebrew, the word for both Ark and coffin is aron.

12

The word kenaf can also mean the hem of the angels’ garment. Kissing the hem of a garment is an act of utmost respect in the Bible (e.g. 1 Sam. 24: 4, 11).

13

The Hebrew word yamtsi’u can mean ‘they shall find’ or ‘provide’ or ‘offer’ in rabbinic Hebrew, but in modern Hebrew it means ‘invent’ or ‘fabricate’. The poet seems to play with all of these meanings.

14

Invoking angels is a common practice in Jewish tradition, and is sometimes deemed to be more efficacious than calling upon the Divine. Throughout the ages we encounter rabbinic objections to this practice (e.g. JT Ber. 9: 1, 13a).

15

The best-known example is Aharon Ze’ev’s poem ‘We Carry Torches’, in which it says, alluding to the miracle of Hanukah: ‘A miracle never happened to us | No vessel of oil did we find’ (Zion and Spectre 2000: 14). Referring to the Zionist project, it claims that we have done it all by ourselves, without divine intervention.

16

Mezuzat hasha’ar can also be translated as mezuzah, a talisman or object on the doorpost rather than the doorpost itself.

17

Eshnav can also be translated as ‘window’ but in this context it seems to allude to eshnav yeri (a loophole, a small hole through which one shoots a gun).

18

Maintaining that mothers have the ability (and obligation) to struggle effectively for peace and reconciliation is a common argument. Jeannine Hill Fletcher, a Christian theologian, argues in Motherhood as Metaphor (2013) that men should adopt maternal instincts in order to make the world more peaceful.

19

The last word in the poem, benafshenu, can be translated in more than one way: it can mean that our lives are dependent on the child. I would like to thank the author of the poem for his help with this translation.

20

Nahmanides (13th century, Spain) was the first to argue that Abraham and Sarah’s conduct towards Hagar resulted in punishment. According to him, the punishment was enslavement in Egypt (Nahmanides on Gen. 16: 6).

21

Professor of folklore Galit Hasan-Rokem addresses breastfeeding in her analysis of the rabbinic depictions of the destruction of the Temple, stating that the ‘direct bodily orality replaces the orality shaped by culture’ (Hasan-Rokem 2000: 116–17).

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22

The bringing together of the concepts of breastfeeding and sacrifice, of milk and blood, is found in classical Midrash (see Lamentations Rabbah 1: 50; BT Git. 57b).

23

Eliaz Cohen offers a similar interpretation in his poem ‘Shema adonai’ (Hear O Eternal), in which he turns the biblical call to Israel to listen (Deut. 6: 4), which became the core of the Shema liturgy, into an invocation to God to hearken to his people (Cohen 2004: 7).

24

This can also be read as a warning to the child, but I think that such a reading misses the strong feeling expressed towards God.

References Poems, Midrashim, and Primary Sources ben-gurion, arie, ed. 2002. Lay Not Thine Hand Upon the Lad [Al tishlah. yadekha el hana’ar]. Jerusalem. cohen, eliaz . 2004. Hear O Lord [Shema adonai]. Jerusalem. eisenstein, julius. 1915. Otsar midrashim, 2 vols. New York. elion-israeli, aliza. 2009. Stage of Midrash: Theatre Company Jerusalem [Midrash bamah: kevutsat hate’atron hayerushalmi]. Tel Aviv. ettinger, esther. 1998. My Life is Remarkably Bourgeois [H . ayai burganiyim lehafli]. Tel Aviv. galai, binyamin. 1968. A Journey to the North [Masa tsafonah]. Tel Aviv. gidali, orit. 2009. Closing In [Semikhut]. Tel Aviv. harnik, raya. 1983. Poems for Guni [Shirim leguni]. Tel Aviv. kafri, yehudit. 1988. Awn of Summer [Malan shel kayits]. Tel Aviv. lubitz, rivkah. 2009. ‘Sarah and the Akedah’ (Heb.). In Nehama Weingarten-Mintz and Tamar Biala, eds., Dirshuni: Israeli Women Writing Midrash [Dirshuni: midreshei nashim], 43. Tel Aviv. mcnaughton, marion. 1996. ‘Midrash’. In Daphne Hampson, After Christianity, 138–40. Valley Forge, Pa. Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah, ed. Solomon Buber. 1899. Vilna. Midrash Genesis Rabbah, ed. J. Theodor and Hanokh Albeck. 1936. Jerusalem. Midrash hagadol, ed. Solomon Schechter. 1902. Cambridge. Midrash Lamentations Rabbah, ed. Solomon Buber. 1899. Vilna. Midrash tanh.uma, Vilna edn. 1924. Berlin. pinchas-cohen, chava. 1994. Journey of a Doe [Masa ayalah]. Tel Aviv. Sefer hayashar. 1980. Tel Aviv. shahrur, tsipi. 1995. Carefree Swans [Barburim h.asrei de’agah]. Tel Aviv. shalom, shin. 1966. The Collected Poems of Shin Shalom [Ketavim: shirim]. Tel Aviv. sulak, marcela, ed. and trans. 2016. Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali (English–Hebrew bilingual edition). Austin, Tex. valdan, zvia. 2009. ‘Sarah and the Ram’ (Heb.). In Nehama Weingarten-Mintz and Tamar Biala, eds., Dirshuni: Israeli Women Writing Midrash [Dirshuni: midreshei nashim], 44. Tel Aviv.

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weiss, ruchama. 2004. Amulet [Shemirah]. Tel Aviv. Yalkut shimoni. 1944. New York. yanow, dvora. 1994. ‘Sarah’s Silence: A Newly Discovered Commentary on Genesis 22 by Rashi’s Sister’. Judaism, 43: 398–408. zion, noam, and barbara spectre, eds. 2000. A Different Light: The Hanukkah Book of Celebration. New York. zion, tania, ed. 2002. Stories of Our Beginnings [Sipurei reshit]. Tel Aviv.

Other Sources aharony, irit. 2007. ‘The Outcry, the Question and the Silence: Sarah and the Aqedah in the Midrash and in Contemporary Israeli Literature’. In Mishael M. Caspi and John T. Greene, eds., Unbinding the Binding of Isaac, 151–86. Lanham, Md. be’er, haim. 2002. ‘The Fire and the Woods’ (Heb.). In Arie Ben-Gurion, ed., Lay Not Thine Hand Upon the Lad [Al tishlah. yadekha el hana’ar], 9. Jerusalem. berkovitch, nitza. 1997. ‘Motherhood as a National Mission: The Construction of Womanhood in the Legal Discourse in Israel’. Women’s Studies International Forum, 20: 605–19. berman, louis. 1997. The Akedah. Northvale, NJ. brock, sebastian p. 1974. ‘Sarah and the Akedah’. Le Muséon, 87: 67–77. cutter, william. 2014. ‘Ruchama Weiss, Hebrew Poetry and Its Burdens of the Present’. CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Summer: 110–26. dayan, devorah. 1952. I Shall Tell [Asaper]. Tel Aviv. elizur, shulamit. 1997. ‘The Binding of Isaac—with Tears or with Joy: The Influence of the Crusades on the Biblical Story in Liturgy’ (Heb.). Et hada’at, 1: 15–35. feldman, yael. 2004. ‘A People that Dwells Alone? Toward Subversion of the Father’s Tongue in Israeli Women’s Fiction’. AJS Review, 28: 83–103. —— 2010. Glory and Agony: Isaac’s Sacrifice and National Narrative. Stanford, Calif. fletcher, jeannine hill. 2013. Motherhood as Metaphor: Engendering Interreligious Dialogue. Bronx, NY. forti, tova. 2007. ‘The Topos of the “Binding of Isaac” in Modern Hebrew Poetry’. In Mishael M. Caspi and John T. Greene, eds., Unbinding the Binding of Isaac, 135–50. Lanham, Md. guilat, yael. 2012. ‘Motherhood and Nation: The Voice of Women Artists in Israel’s Bereavement and Memorial Discourse’. Journal of Israeli History, 31: 283–318. harvey, susan ashbrook. 2001. ‘Spoken Words, Voiced Silence: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition’. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 9: 105–31. hasan-rokem, galit. 2000. Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature. Stanford, Calif. hirschfeld, ariel . 2002. ‘God’s Place in Hebrew Poetry in the Contemporary Generation’ (Heb.). In Israel Bartal, ed., The Full Wagon: One Hundred and Twenty Years of Israeli Culture [Ha’agalah hamele’ah: me’ah ve’esrim shenot tarbut yisra’el], 165–76. Jerusalem. jacobson, david c. 1997. Does David Still Play Before You? Israeli Poetry and the Bible. Detroit.

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kartun-blum, ruth. 1999a. ‘Don’t Play Hide and Seek with Mothers: Mother’s Voice and the Binding of Isaac in Contemporary Israeli Poetry’. Revue Européenne des Études Hébraïques, 1: 13–26. —— 1999b. Profane Scriptures: Reflections on the Dialogue with the Bible in Modern Hebrew Poetry. Cincinnati, Ohio. mcvey, kathleen, ed. 1994. St. Ephrem the Syrian: Selected Prose Works, trans. Edward G. Mathews, Jr., and Joseph P. Amar. Washington, DC. marx, dalia. 2010. When I Sleep and When I Wake: On Prayers between Dusk and Dawn [Be’et ishan ve’a’irah: al tefilot bein yom uvein lailah]. Tel Aviv. moskhos, mikhalis. 1972. ‘Romanos’ Hymn of the Sacrifice of Abraham: A Discussion of the Sources and the Translation’. Byzantion, 44: 310–28. münz-manor, ophir . 2009. ‘Reflections on Jewish and Christian Liturgical Poetry in Late Antiquity’ (Heb.). Pe’amim, 119: 131–72. niehoff, maren. 1994. ‘Associative Thinking in the Midrash: Exegesis on the Abraham and Sarah Story in Egypt’ (Heb.). Tarbiz, 62: 339–59. ofer, rachel. 2003. ‘The Akedah from a Feminist Perspective’ (Heb.). In Israel Rosenson and Binyamin Lau, eds., The Binding of Isaac for His Descendants: The Akedah from an Israeli Viewpoint [Akedat yitsh.ak lezaro: mabat be’ayin yisra’elit], 429–35. Jerusalem. raizen, esther. 2013. ‘Bereavement and Breakdown: War and Failed Motherhood in Raya Harnik’s Work’. In Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman, eds., Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture, 135–53. Detroit. sagi, avi. 1998. ‘Meaning of the Akedah in Israeli Culture and Jewish Tradition’. Israel Studies, 3: 45–60. shaked, malka. 2005. I Will Play You Forever: The Bible in Modern Hebrew Poetry [Lanetsah. enagnekh: hamikra bashirah ha’ivrit hah.adashah—antologiyah] Tel Aviv. shiffman, smadar. 2003. ‘Motherhood Under Zionism’. Hebrew Studies, 44: 139–56. sperber, david, and anat chen. 2002. ‘But the Weeping of the Mother will be for Evermore’: The Appearance of Sarah in the Akedah Narrative in Israeli Art [Akh bekhi ha’em yeh.i le’olamim: hofa’atah shel sarah bistsenat ha’akedah be’omanut hayisra’elit]. Ramat Gan. stern, david. 1996. Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies. Evanston, Ill. stoler-liss, sachlav. 2003. ‘“Mothers Birth the Nation”: The Social Construction of Zionist Motherhood in Wartime in Israeli Parents’ Manuals’. Nashim, 6: 104–18. suskin-ostriker, alicia. 1987. Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. London. —— 1993. Feminist Revision of the Bible. Cambridge. trible, phyllis . 1999. ‘Genesis 22: The Sacrifice of Sarah’. In Alice Bach, ed., Women in the Hebrew Bible, 271–92. New York. zierler,wendy i. 2005. ‘In Search of a Feminist Reading of the Akedah’. Nashim, 6: 10–26.

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Depictions of Childbirth in Rabbinic Literature: The Innovation of a Genizah Midrashic Text shana strauch schick

F o r m a n y w o m e n pregnancy and childbirth rank among the most extraordinary experiences of their lives. Yet since these experiences are so acutely visceral, women who attempt to articulate them—from the transformation that is part of gestating a foetus to the pain/euphoria of labour and delivery—often run up against their ineffable nature. Perhaps as a result, and because until recently women’s own discourses on their bodies have rarely been committed to writing, the topic of pregnancy and childbirth has historically been taken up by men from an external perspective. Beginning with the bio-philosophical theories of ancient Greece and continuing through the objectifying mode of modern medical literature, there is a surfeit of texts offering the male perspective on the female experience of childbirth. Unsurprisingly, rabbinic literature, both halakhic and midrashic, is replete with discussions pertaining to pregnancy and the new mother. Yet, as is true of classical sources in Graeco-Roman literature, the subjective perspective and experience of the mother is largely bypassed in rabbinic texts.1 The absence of a female perspective is not an unusual feature in rabbinic discourse, and it is for this reason that a midrashic text discovered in the Cairo Genizah almost a century ago represents a striking exception to this general picture.

Birthing Mothers in Rabbinic Literature To bring out the significance of this midrash, I first survey the manner in which birthing mothers are marginalized in rabbinic texts. Broadly, this occurs in one of three ways: (1) the mother is absent altogether; (2) she is depicted as a mere receptacle for the foetus; or (3) she is the objectified subject of rabbinic discourse.2 As will become evident, the texts surveyed for this study span many hundreds of

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years and different locales. These include tannaitic sources dating from the first two centuries ce and composed in the Land of Israel; amoraic sources, both Babylonian and Palestinian, which continue up to the sixth century; and sources from the Tanhuma corpus which, though comprising multiple strata from different times and places, were for the most part redacted between the sixth and seventh centuries ce in the Land of Israel (Bregman 2003: 13). A large number of texts examined in this essay appear in the fourteenth chapter of Leviticus Rabbah, the amoraic midrashic collection written in the Land of Israel and dated by scholars to somewhere between the mid-fourth and the late fifth centuries (Margulies 1972; Visotzky 2003: 6). Leviticus Rabbah 14 is particularly relevant since, as a homily on Leviticus 12: 2, ‘when a woman conceives’, it is primarily devoted to the subject of childbirth. Although the bulk of the texts surveyed pre-date the midrash discovered in the Genizah by centuries, these rabbinic traditions served as the authoritative sources for the later medieval midrashic collections. Moreover, all of the rabbinic sources which discuss childbirth are consistent in their depiction of the mother, making the temporal or geographical distance between them somewhat secondary.

The Absent Mother In a number of rabbinic texts which discuss pregnancy and childbirth, the mother is simply not mentioned. Although all human procreation is deemed dependent on God, the Sages view the father’s cell as the primary material factor in reproduction. Leviticus Rabbah 14: 2, for example, cites R. Levi, a thirdgeneration Palestinian amora, who describes the act of procreation as a man placing a ‘white drop in secret’ in the womb which God then forms into an embryo. Scholars have noted that many rabbinic texts which discuss procreation, including Leviticus Rabbah 14, focus exclusively on the male role in the process, ignoring any possible contribution on the part of the female (Kessler 2009: 92–3). These texts are seemingly informed by the ‘one-seed’ theory championed by Soranus of Ephesus, a Greek contemporary of the tana’im, according to which only man produces the seeds of procreation. He ‘plants’ them in the woman’s body, where they develop into a foetus. The Sages’ adoption of Soranus’s one-seed theory is telling, given that other Graeco-Roman writers maintained that women do contribute to the formation of the foetus to some degree. Indeed, the two-seed theory, which posits that both man and woman carry reproductive cells which together form the embryo, represented the predominant position during the classical period (Dean-Jones 1994: 149; Lloyd 1983: 88–94). It underlies the Hippocratic and Galenic gynaecological traditions, though the latter understands the female’s reproductive cell as significantly weaker than the male’s due to the woman’s lack of ‘natural heat’ (Galen 1968: ii. 630; 1992: 50). Moreover, while Aristotle champions a one-seed theory, he maintains that the woman supplies menstrual blood (matter), which is shaped

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by the male seed (form) to create an embryo (Aristotle 1943: 716a, 729b, 737a5). In the Aristotelian view the woman thus has a role, although it is inferior to the man’s (Kessler 2009: 110 n. 123). In most ancient theories of procreation, the woman is understood to contribute in at least some sense to the formation of the embryo. This highlights how remarkable the negation of the mother’s part in conception in the bulk of rabbinic texts is. It is only in the Babylonian Talmud that we first find scattered references to women’s seed and the value of women ‘giving forth seed’ (BT Ber. 60a, H . ul. 69a, Nid. 31a).3 Just as the one-seed theory downplays the mother’s part in conception, so too does a recurring focus on the foetus. Gwynn Kessler has drawn attention to a body of aggadic material in which depictions of the foetus reflect the theological motif of Israel’s chosenness. The bulk of these texts make no mention of the mother, and those that do still centre exclusively on the foetus (Kessler 2009: 23). They demonstrate the Sages’ complete disregard of the woman and emphasize God’s total control over procreation and prime role in forming the embryo from the father’s semen. The mother is effectively rendered invisible.4

The Mother as a Receptacle This phenomenon, where the mother is depicted as a receptacle, occurs mainly in midrashic texts, such as Leviticus Rabbah, Midrash agadah, and Midrash tanh.uma, and to a lesser extent in halakhic sources such as the Babylonian Talmud and the Tosefta. 5 The idea that the mother is merely the container that hosts the foetus is highlighted by the extended rabbinic metaphor of the woman’s body as a house, discussed by Charlotte Fonrobert and Cynthia Baker (Baker 2002: 34–76; Fonrobert 2000: 48–60). Leviticus Rabbah 14: 3, for example, compares both a woman’s body and her birth pangs to various parts of a house (Gen. Rab. 18: 3; BT Bekh. 45a). In other texts, even the mother’s role in nourishing the foetus and the newborn is rendered as passive and secondary. Leviticus Rabbah 14: 3, for example, states that God turns menstrual blood into milk and is responsible for the care of newborn babies. The active role of the mother is thereby erased from these texts (Kessler 2009: 23–4).6 Moreover, the home that the mother’s womb purportedly represents is often depicted as a place of danger—quite unlike the image of the womb as the safe, nurturing place that we are familiar with today.7 The threatening nature of the womb comes to the fore in a number of passages in Leviticus Rabbah 14 (see BT Nid. 30b for a parallel statement in the name of a second-generation Palestinian amora, R. Simlai), in which it is described as a dark, menacing, and solitary place in which the foetus is imprisoned (14: 2).8 We find this image in three statements attributed to R. Abba b. Kahana, a third-generation Palestinian amora, the first of which says:

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‘You have granted me life and favour, and your providence has preserved my spirit.’ (Job 10: 12) R. Abba b. Kahana said . . . if someone took a purse full of coins and turned it upside down, would its coins not fall out? So too, the foetus rests in its mother’s womb and God protects it so that it won’t fall out and die—is this not life and favour? (Lev. Rab. 14: 3 and BT Nid. 31a)

This is followed by a statement of R. Eleazar, also a third-generation Palestinian amora: R. Eleazar: If one is in an oven for even a moment, does he not die? But the womb of a woman boils and the foetus is placed inside her womb and the Holy Blessed One guards it so that it is not miscarried. Is this not life and favour?

R. Abba describes the womb as a vessel open at its bottom, from which the foetus would be in danger of falling were it not for God’s protection. R. Eleazar goes on to compare the womb to an oven whose temperature would prevent the development of the foetus without God’s intervention. God thus cares for the foetus (Lev. Rab. 14: 2, 3), protects it, and releases it at birth (Lev. Rab. 14: 2). GraecoRoman sources likewise compare the womb to an oven, but only insofar as heat is necessary for the seed to be incubated (Kessler 2009: 94–5). Overall, this second group of texts focuses largely on the foetus; the mother’s role in relation to it ranges from that of a passive recipient to a potential threat.9 Its safety and nourishment rest, according to the Sages, solely in the hands of God. At best, the mother is merely the object through which God cares for the foetus.

The Mother as Objectified Subject The final group of texts—the third chapter of tractate Nidah in the Mishnah and the Talmud, expanding on Leviticus 12: 2—largely comprises halakhic discussions regarding the ritual status of a woman after she gives birth and whether ritual requirements may be violated on her account when their observance exposes her to further dangers.10 Jewish mothers wore amulets to provide protection by God for the mother and her newborn child. In these texts the mother is presented as a subject who participates in the act of childbirth, and whose pains, along with their underlying causes, are acknowledged by the Sages.11 She is depicted as crying out in anguish and pleading for her own death to escape her suffering (Lev. Rab. 27: 7; Eccles. Rab. 3; Midrash tanh.uma, ‘Tazria’, 6; Midrash hagadol Gen. 25: 24).12 One later tradition even likens a woman sitting on the birthing stool to one approaching death (Midrash hagadol Gen. 25: 24), a sentiment corroborated by a number of wills of pregnant women discovered in the Cairo Genizah testifying to the fear that they would not survive childbirth (Goitein 1967: 231). Another tradition expands on the biblical

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Figure 1 Amulet for the protection of the mother and newborn child; from Galicia, by David Elias Krieger, c.1900. Courtesy Yeshiva University Museum, New York; made available under the Creative Commons CC0 2.0 University Public Domain Dedication

statement ‘in pain shall you bear children’ (Gen. 3: 16) to delineate the many physical (and psychological) hardships endured by women during pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond (Gen. Rab. 20; BT Eruv. 100b; Midrash hagadol Gen. 3: 16).13 Although pain is perhaps the strongest indicator of an embodied, lived experience, the mother is nevertheless represented as an object of discussion (Scarry 1985). The experiences of pregnancy and delivery are described for her rather than by her.14 In a few instances, the Mishnah and the Talmud compare the birthing woman to a birthing animal, underscoring her objectification (Shab. 18: 3; BT Nid. 24b, 29a). They even attribute the act of praying for a healthy child to the

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Figure 2 German etching by Philipp Gottfried Harder, c.1731, of a Jewish lying-in scene of uncleanliness for a mother after giving birth (Leviticus 12: 2–5). The scene shows a mother in bed eating a meal, surrounded by women and children. Her baby is rocked in a crib. In the foreground, three children ladle water from a jar. Courtesy Wellcome Library, London

man, when we would expect the woman to play an active role in such a practice (Ber. 9: 3, BT Ber. 60a). The experiences of birth are described in general terms, using phrases such as ‘she was in difficult labour’, and ‘the pains of women’ (BT Nid. 21a, 31a).15 These texts do not describe what these pains are or how women experience them. Women are also presented as being unable to determine accurately the ritual status of their own body after losing a pregnancy. In a series of tannaitic baraitot and amoraic statements in the third chapter of tractate Nidah, we read of miscarrying women who enlist rabbinic authorities to clarify for them whether they have aborted a foetus or a bloody mass. This distinction allows the rabbis to rule regarding a woman’s ritual status. A woman can thus be classified as either a yoledet, one who has given birth, or a nidah, one with a menstrual flow. The mis-

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carrying woman is not deemed to have either the knowledge or the authority to issue this ruling on her own. A number of discussions explore how the rabbis determine what she has aborted by conducting experiments (Nid. 3: 2, JT Nid. 9a; BT Nid. 21b), making assumptions about women’s menstrual flow (JT Nid. 9a; BT Nid. 21b–22a), and consulting medical authorities (JT Nid. 9b; BT Nid. 22b). It is noteworthy that only two cases in the whole of the third chapter of tractate Nidah record women’s voices or present them as active participants in halakhic discussions relating to childbirth—albeit through the mediating voice of the redactors of the Babylonian Talmud. Neither of these accounts, however, displays the woman’s knowledge derived from her own experience as reliable; rather, they both ultimately rely on the Sages’ understanding of women’s bodies and thereby affirm rabbinic authority. In the first story, the (nameless) daughter-in-law of the tana Hananyah questions R. Joshua (also a second-generation tana) about the ritual status of a woman who aborts a foetus in the shape of a serpent. When R. Joshua rules that the woman is pure, the girl argues that he previously issued the opposite ruling to her mother-in-law. After looking into the matter, R. Joshua realizes he was mistaken and rescinds his later ruling (24b). The second story tells of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra conducting an experiment on two female prisoners under sentence of death in order to determine the number of days it takes for male versus female foetuses to form. This story is cited in two different versions of a talmudic discussion, one in response to and the other in support of R. Ishmael’s ruling cited in Nidah 3: 7, which states that a female foetus takes more time to form than a male one. In both versions, Cleopatra’s conclusion is seen as fundamentally flawed and hence unreliable in determining whether female foetuses develop more slowly (30b). Although women participate actively in both stories, their personal knowledge is never viewed as reliable. Hananyah’s daughter-in-law is active only insofar as she reminds R. Joshua of his own earlier ruling; Cleopatra’s experimental evidence is dismissed. Neither account depicts a woman’s own knowledge as reliable.16 I shall analyse one final text from the tenth-century midrashic collection Exodus Rabbah (Stemberger and Strack 1996: 308–9), which describes to some extent what happens to a woman’s body during childbirth. The excerpt, which appears among a series of interpretations of the word ovna’im (birthing stone; Exod. 1: 16), indicates that her limbs become hard (during contractions) like a stone, her legs surround the emerging baby in a manner that resembles a potter working at a stone wheel, and her thighs grow cold like a stone during the last stage of labour. While these all reflect phenomena that are experienced by birthing women, they nevertheless describe only what is discernible to an outside observer, and not the interior experience of childbirth from the mother’s viewpoint.17 Even the reference to her legs becoming cold relates only to the

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observable temperature of her legs. Indeed, the repeated imagery of a stone connotes a lack of feeling. This final group of sources thus presents the act of giving birth from an external perspective; they make no reference to a mother’s own experience. The pain of childbirth is acknowledged only in general terms.18 Male authorities determine the woman’s ritual status, tell her what she has aborted, and describe the delivery in objective terms. In sum, in rabbinic discussions pertaining to childbirth from the Land of Israel and from Babylonia, the mother is either completely absent or depicted as a receptacle which passively houses an embryo, a compliant subject who submits the details of her bodily emissions to the rabbinic authorities. The few texts which do discuss the process of childbirth describe the experience from an onlooker’s point of view and only acknowledge the woman’s pain in general terms. None of them describes her inner-body experience, or even bothers to speculate on the matter. The phenomena that I have surveyed in this section are in no way exclusive to rabbinic discourse. In general, it is far more the rule than the exception that texts discussing pregnancy and childbirth present women as passive or as secondary. Sources from ancient Greece to the present have been critiqued for their focus on the foetus at the expense of the mother (Dean-Jones 1994; Kessler 2009: 22; Kukla 2005; Michaels 1999). Moreover, the notion of the passive female body is characteristic of other rabbinic texts. BT Sanhedrin 74b, for example, justifies Esther’s sexual relationship with the non-Jewish king Ahasuerus by characterizing her as karka olam, ‘the ground of the earth’. The Sages indicate that she behaved in a completely passive way, rather than as a willing agent, while engaging in sexual intercourse with the king.19 It is therefore not surprising that rabbinic texts that touch upon a distinctly feminine inner experience turn to objective external descriptions. This highlights the exceptional character of the midrashic Genizah text which I introduce in the next section. It diverges from this norm in the most unexpected way.

Midrash h.ad shenati: The Appearance of the Female Subject Midrash h.ad shenati is an early medieval midrashic collection, most likely of eastern provenance, dating from the late tenth/early eleventh century.20 It contains homilies on the beginning of the weekly lections from the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus. Despite its fragmentary form typical of Genizah material, a significant portion of the work has been preserved, and it has been published in several editions (Mann 1940–66: 167–203; Yeivin 1974: 11). Midrash h.ad shenati displays a clear and defined structure, as well as evidence of an active editor who

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did not merely collate thematically related texts from earlier rabbinic sources, but sometimes reshaped them as well. The section devoted to the first four verses of the lection of ‘Toledot’ is particularly noteworthy. It presents a series of midrashim that centre on the matriarch Rebekah, which evince a markedly less androcentric perspective and a more sympathetic tone towards their subject than parallel texts from other sources. Although almost all of the traditions cited in this section contain parallels in other midrashic collections (e.g. Gen. Rab., Midrash agadah, Midrash tanh.uma, and Midrash hagadol), Midrash h.ad shenati is unique in that nearly all the midrashim it contains focus on Rebekah. In the following excerpt, I have omitted the introductory poem and included likely reconstructions of missing words and letters. (1) ‘These are the generations of Isaac son of Abraham’ (Gen. 25: 19): The righteous are venerated as their ancestry is traced back through their fathers. Although Ishmael’s ancestors are mentioned, it is only through his mother, as it is written (Gen. 25: 12) ‘these are the generations of Ishmael whom Hagar the Egyptian bore . . .’. But Isaac’s ancestry is only traced back through his father. It [Scripture] does not write ‘whom Sarah bore’, rather ‘Abraham begat Isaac’. (2) ‘Isaac was 40 years old [when he took Rebekah the daughter of Bethuel to wife]’ (Gen. 25: 20). Why does Scripture mention ‘Rebekah the daughter of Bethuel’? The righteous woman’s ancestry is traced through her father and brother, to teach you that even though they were deceivers and Rebekah was raised among them, she did not learn from their wicked deeds. (3) ‘Isaac entreated the Lord on behalf of his wife’ (Gen. 25: 21). Come and see: the conduct of Isaac is not like the conduct of Abraham. Abraham’s wife was barren for many years and he did not plead for mercy on her behalf. But our forefather Isaac, when he saw the matter, that his wife was barren, he began to plead for mercy on her behalf. (4a) ‘On behalf of [lit. across from] his wife.’ Should it [Scripture] have written ‘Isaac entreated for his wife’? This teaches that the two of them prayed opposite one another. She said: ‘Master of the universe, if it be your will to grant me a child, grant me only from this righteous one.’ He further said: ‘Master of the universe, if it be your will to grant me a child, grant me only from this righteous woman.’ (4b) Rebekah said further before the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘You did not create anything in a person for naught: You created eyes to see; ears to hear; a mouth to speak; a heart to understand; hands to feel; legs to walk. What is the purpose of these breasts? To suckle!’ This teaches that both of their prayers ascended before God, and He granted her pregnancy. (5) ‘And the Lord responded to his plea’ (Gen. 25: 21). Through his prayer; ‘and his wife Rebekah conceived’: through her prayer. (6) ‘The children struggled inside her’ (Gen. 25: 22). They were descending and ascending in her womb like the swells of the ocean.

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(7) Since she was especially pained, ‘she went to inquire of the Lord’ (Gen. 25: 22). Where did she go? To the study house of . . . (Cambridge University Library, MS T.S. C2.42 2v/C237433; Yeivin 1974: 200)

Each of the first three sections presents biblical characters and their respective foils: (1) Isaac and his brother Ishmael; (2) Rebekah and her brother and father; and (3) Isaac and his father Abraham. Yet the tone of section 1, which presents maternal lineage as a testament to Ishmael’s rejected status, diverges significantly from that of sections 2 and 3, which portray female characters in a far more positive light. Section 2, which in effect builds on the claim in section 1 that the righteous can trace their ancestry through their paternal lineage, extols Rebekah for being righteous despite her flawed lineage. Section 3, which has no known parallel, praises Isaac for praying on behalf of his barren wife rather than following the example of his father Abraham, who did not pray on behalf of Sarah.21 Section 4a portrays Rebekah as actively praying for a child in the same manner as Isaac while standing opposite him. (This tradition contrasts with the mishnaic and talmudic texts noted above, which only depict the would-be father as engaged in prayer.) Moreover, Rebekah’s prayer appears before Isaac’s, whereas in every other parallel occurrence of this midrash, Isaac’s prayer precedes Rebekah’s (Gen. Rab. 63; Midrash shemu’el 6; Pesikta zutarta Gen. 24, and later citations in Yalkut shimoni ‘Toledot’ 110, 1 Sam. 87). Section 4b gives more space to Rebekah than to Isaac, with the inclusion of another prayer of hers—an addition which finds only one parallel, in Midrash hagadol. Section 5 concludes the exposition of verse 21 with the assertion that both Isaac’s and Rebekah’s prayers were heeded by God, a claim already expressed at the end of section 4. This tradition finds only one known parallel, in Midrash hagadol; Rebekah’s prayers are deemed ineffective in all other versions of this midrash because she is the daughter and sister of wicked men, and God responds to Isaac alone (BT Yev. 64b; Midrash agadah Gen. 25: 21). Section 7 expounds the final clause of verse 22 with a well-known midrash which understands Rebekah’s enquiry to God as an anachronistic reference to the ‘study house’ of Shem and Ever (see Gen. Rab. ‘Toledot’ 63; Agadat bereshit 73; Midrash agadah Gen. 25, s.v. vatelekh).22 Although most of the traditions in this extract find parallels scattered in other midrashic sources, what is unique to Midrash h.ad shenati is that they have all been edited together into a collection that differs in tone from what is commonly found in other rabbinic texts. Returning to section 6, a terse and, on the face of it, unassuming midrash is cited regarding Genesis 25: 22: ‘The children struggled within her’: They were descending and ascending in her womb [like] the swells of the ocean. [‘Vayitrotsetsu habanim bekirbah’: Hayu yordin ve’olin bemei’eha kemegalei hayam.]

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In contrast to other exegetical expositions of Genesis 25: 22 (Gen. Rab. 63: 6–8; Pesikta derav kahana 3), this passage makes no mention of Jacob and Esau.23 When comparing this midrash with its only known parallel, we find that it likely derives from a larger and more developed exegetical tradition depicting the two brothers’ struggle in the womb. The parallel extract is preserved in the fourteenth-century midrashic collection Midrash hagadol, which makes it clear that this prenatal conflict occurs immediately before their birth and that Rebekah’s pains therefore correspond to her labour contractions. The two passages, however, differ significantly. Midrash hagadol states: R. Levi said in the name of R. Simeon: Even when the righteous and the wicked are in their mother‘s womb, the Holy One, blessed be He, exposes their ways. What is [meant by] ‘they struggled [inside her womb]’? [It means] that they were ascending and descending in her womb like the swells of the ocean [shehayu olin veyordin bemei’eha kegalei hayam]. One said, ‘I will go out first’, and the other said, ‘I will go out first’. Esau said to Jacob, ‘If you do not let me leave first, I will kill my mother and exit from her side.’ Jacob said, ‘This wicked one is a murderer from his very beginning’, and he [Jacob] allowed him to leave first. (Midrash hagadol Gen. 25: 22)

Although Midrash hagadol is a much later work, the near-verbatim repetition of the simile comparing the babies in the womb to the swells of the ocean, also found in Midrash h.ad shenati, suggests the existence of a common, earlier source which Midrash h.ad shenati only partially cites (Mann 1940: 170 n. 5, 195 n. 10). In the Midrash hagadol version, Jacob and Esau’s struggle is described in further detail, leading to a demonstration of Jacob’s moral superiority. The midrash thus justifies subsequent events, in which Jacob deceives his father and steals the firstborn’s blessing from Esau (Gen. 22). Kessler has described in great detail the theological significance which midrashim attribute to foetal Jacob, and how the struggle between Jacob and Esau, respectively deemed righteous and wicked, carries national and theological significance which transcends both figures (Kessler 2009: 3; see also Fishbane 1985). The image of the foetus is employed to symbolize how Jacob—and in turn rabbinic Israel—is righteous and loved by God. In this way the origins of rabbinic Israel are located even earlier than Jacob/Israel’s birth (Kessler 2009: 48). Although the figures of Jacob and Esau are imbued with deep cultural resonances in these midrashim, Rebekah is bypassed. She is a secondary presence, and only serves to house her warring children; she is at their mercy. Indeed, Esau is quite willing to kill her in order to be the firstborn, and refrains only once Jacob surrenders his birthright. Rebekah thus appears as a pawn in this narrative; her womb is the site of other characters’ confrontation. Midrash hagadol’s purpose is to contrast Jacob and Esau’s shared womb with their diverging destinies as two nations in eternal strife (Kessler 2009: 61–2). In Midrash h.ad shenati, in contrast, Jacob and Esau’s names, their struggle, and its theological import have all been removed. What is merely a descriptive

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aside in Midrash hagadol—‘swells of the ocean’—in Midrash h.ad shenati takes centre stage: in describing the movements of the unnamed foetuses in Rebekah’s womb, it depicts not the twin brothers’ experience, but Rebekah’s, and in doing so brilliantly expresses the intense and powerful pains of labour. It is worth noting that the biblical account of Rebekah’s pregnancy is itself exceptional, being the only pregnancy in the Bible to be described at all; all others move directly from conception to birth (vatahar vateled), dispensing with the intervening stages (Gottlieb Zornberg 2009: 208–9). It is impossible to ascertain whether the compiler of Midrash h.ad shenati was deliberately intending to highlight women’s experience when making his editorial choices. The later appearance of the tradition in Midrash hagadol is seemingly suggestive of the existence of an earlier source from which Midrash h.ad shenati drew, indicating that much of the narrative was omitted. If this is the case, the absence of the motif of Jacob and Esau’s struggle, which features prominently in Midrash hagadol’s interpretation of galei hayam, might reflect a tendency evidenced elsewhere in Midrash h.ad shenati to greatly condense its source material (Mann 1940: 170 n. 5, 195 n. 10, 173 n. 2, 174 n. 12, 180 n. 3). Indeed, Mann sees the treatment of this episode in Midrash h.ad shenati as an abridged citation of an earlier source to reduce it to that which best captures the struggle described in the biblical account, while dispensing with what he characterizes as ‘fantasy and poetry’ (Mann 1940: 170 n. 8). Midrash h.ad shenati’s use of ‘ascending and descending’ might also be alluding to the midrashic tradition which portrays Jacob and Esau in an eternal struggle in which they will never enjoy equal status; when one prospers, the other is laid low (BT Meg. 6a; BT Pes. 42b). Rashi’s commentary on the same verse touches on this idea: ‘when one is raised up, the other must fall’ (Rashi on Gen. 25: 23). If Midrash h.ad shenati does indeed allude to this dynamic, however, it is far from explicit and, given that Jacob and Esau are not mentioned, appears unlikely. If the compiler of Midrash h.ad shenati does indeed tend to excerpt from larger midrashim in a manner that keeps them closer to the plain meaning of the verse, then his omission of Jacob and Esau’s struggle seems reasonable, given that Genesis 25: 23 centres on Rebekah’s experience and actions. The midrashic exposition therefore maintains its focus on her. It illuminates how the first half of the verse, ‘The children struggled in her womb’, could prompt such a drastic response from Rebekah in the second half of the verse, where she questions her very existence and seeks heavenly counsel. Midrash h.ad shenati explains that she experienced the struggling of the foetuses so intensely—as they turbulently pushed up and down inside her— that ‘she was especially pained’, as the midrash indicates in section 7. Regardless of its authorial intent, Midrash h.ad shenati accomplishes something quite extraordinary: it effectively captures something of the inner-body experience of labour contractions. Encountering this midrash, I was moved by the

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extent to which it brought to mind my own experiences of giving birth, and this in turn spurred me to consider whether my response reflected something unique about the midrash. Perusing online testimonials, one finds that many women use the metaphor of gushing waves when recounting their experience of childbirth. A woman offered this account of her labour contractions on one website devoted to the subject: A contraction starts off with a small tingle somewhere in the middle of the torso . . . it grows and grows . . . It is like a tide which pushes and pushes up and up in intensity while you breathe through it in big deep breaths, until you can feel it ‘let go’ and start to recede back down again. (Pyanov 2015)

The imagery of surging waves is therefore an appropriate description of the visceral experience of labour. But it also occurs in earlier sources, which may well have contributed to its appearance in the midrashic tradition that Midrash h.ad shenati draws from. These sources, however, do not anticipate Midrash h.ad shenati’s lack of attention to the foetus.

Birth and Waves: Literary Precedents There is a precedent in Jewish texts for a literary connection between labour, birth, and ocean waves which possibly contributes to its appearance in the midrashic comments on Genesis 25: 23.24 Job 38: 8 has the following striking image: ‘Who closed the sea behind doors when it gushed forth out of the womb?’ (Vayasekh bedelatayim yam begih.o mereh.em yetse). In this verse, which is part of God’s response to Job, birth is used as a metaphor to describe God’s role in creation (Alter 1985: 90–102). God is envisioned as a midwife: he controls the violent gushing of the sea as she enables the baby to emerge from the womb. Leviticus Rabbah 14: 4 further develops the connection between birth and the gushing sea found in Job 38: 8 (Jacobowitz 2010: 75).25 The midrash appears below, preceded by the relevant passage from Job: Who closed the sea behind doors when it gushed forth out of the womb? When I clothed it in clouds, swaddled it in dense clouds. When I made breakers My limit for it, and set up its bar and doors. And I said, ‘you may come so far and no farther, here your surging waves will stop’. (Job 38: 8–11) (1) R. Eliezer and R. Joshua and R. Akiva . . . (2) ‘When it gushed forth from the womb’: since it lifts itself up [shemitga’eh] to leave. (3) ‘When I clothed it in clouds’: that is the shapir [amniotic sac]. (4) ‘Swaddled it in dense clouds’: that is the shilyah [placenta]. (5) ‘When I made breakers My limit for it’: these are the nine months [of pregnancy]. (6) ‘And set up its bars’: these are the first three months.

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(7) ‘And doors’: these are the three middle months. (8) ‘And said, “You may come so far and no farther . . .”’: these are the final three months. (9) ‘Here your surging [i.e. proud] waves [galeikha] will stop.’ R. Aibo said: with the majesty/pride of your excrement [galeleikha]. Although this child leaves [the womb] filled with excrement [galelin] and all types of foul-smelling things, everyone hugs him and kisses him. All the more so if it is a boy!

In God’s response to Job, the creation of the sea is set within a matrix of architectural and gestation/birth metaphors. Yet, as Tamar Jacobowitz (2010) has detailed, Leviticus Rabbah 14: 4 repurposes the birth metaphor and renders it, rather than creation, the focus of the exposition, using the imagery of the roaring sea to describe birth and God’s control over it. Lines 2 and 9 are of particular importance for our discussion, since they contain elements of the galei hayam exposition of Midrash h.ad shenati. Like Midrash h.ad shenati, line 2 presents the foetus rising up, clamouring to leave the womb. The passage concludes with the baby’s delivery in line 9, where it emerges like the surging waves, galeikha, depicted in the biblical verse. Although line 9 introduces a wordplay between galeikha, waves, and galeleikha, excrement, to depict the paradox of childbirth— covered in excrement yet still beloved—the plain sense of the verse, ‘here your surging [proud] waves will stop’ (ufo yashit bige’on galeikha), is still apparent. The foetus rises to exit the womb but is contained throughout pregnancy, much as the tides of the ocean gush to submerge the dry land but are contained within the boundaries of the sea (cf. Psalm 104: 9, ‘You set a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth’). It is only due to God’s intervention that the baby is held back and then finally allowed to break free at birth (Jacobowitz 2010: 76, 79). Although the connection between the surging waves and childbirth is found in Leviticus Rabbah (and Job to an extent), it clearly differs from Midrash h.ad shenati in its exclusive focus on the foetus’s experience. Leviticus Rabbah makes no mention of the mother; her womb is depicted as an element of nature that God must control. In Midrash h.ad shenati, in contrast, the midrash’s attention to Rebekah may be read as an attempt to give voice to the mother’s experiences. It is certainly possible that the observation recorded in Midrash h.ad shenati has literary roots in Leviticus Rabbah’s interpretation of the passage from Job, but the way it puts forward this image is unique.

Context In the absence of knowledge of the intended audience and context of Midrash h.ad shenati, any explanation for the emergence of this unique text must be tentative. As noted earlier, its exposition may result primarily from exegetical concerns: to explain the twins’ struggle and how it induced Rebekah to wish for her own death

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and turn to God for answers. Yet in context, this exposition meshes with the section of Midrash h.ad shenati on ‘Toledot’ in Genesis in which it appears, and which is distinctive in that it offers a sustained and sympathetic treatment of a female biblical character who is portrayed as the spiritual equal of her husband. In excerpting from the original longer exposition attested to in Midrash hagadol, the compiler of Midrash h.ad shenati may have been tailoring the midrashic tradition to this new context. In other words, this compiler consciously sought to produce a collection of midrashim that centre on female characters. If this is indeed the case, then it represents a unique example of a midrash that picks up on a biblical narrative sympathetic to female concerns and attempts to give voice to women’s experience. It is worth noting that Midrash h.ad shenati is not entirely out of character in the larger context of midrashic texts discovered in the Cairo Genizah. A number of them also put forward the perspective of an array of traditionally marginalized others. Moshe Lavee (2013) has recently described a series of Genizah texts which portray non-Jews and women—who generally stand on the margins of society as envisioned by the rabbis—in an uncharacteristically positive light. He surmises that the loss of these works might be the result of a type of traditionalist selfcensorship, be it conscious or not. Hence these texts were neither canonized nor transmitted in what eventually became the traditional rabbinic corpus, and found themselves relegated to the Genizah archives. Midrash h.ad shenati may therefore be situated within (and represent evidence of) a larger literary-cultural movement that was lost over the course of time. This text may also reflect a period in which women’s knowledge had greater cultural currency. In Muslim lands, most of the treatment of female patients was undertaken by female healers, and in some cases female physicians (usually from medical families) who had received elite medical training. Male physicians did not generally treat female patients, but only copied and transmitted theories regarding female medical conditions from ancient sources.26 Indeed, much to the chagrin of trained male physicians, female patients preferred consulting women (Caballero-Navas 2013: 62; Pormann 2009: 1598–9).27 Midrash h.ad shenati might also reflect the observations and discourses of ordinary women who shared and talked about their experiences. This, too, can seep into scholarly discourse; folklorist Galit Hasan-Rokem offers a distinction between the folk narratives embedded in rabbinic texts and the rest of rabbinic literature, noting their potential for expressing the voices of women, their life experiences, and their institutions (2003: 9, 22–3). We could offer an array of theories to account for the emergence of Midrash h.ad shenati’s unique tradition, but a lack of certainty regarding its precise origins and the history of its reception severely limits the possibility of speaking about an identifiable author, audience, and purpose. Yet from a comparative perspective this is somewhat secondary. Regardless of its origins or the motives invested in

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compiling and editing it, the result is a text that turns away from a traditional rabbinic disregard for the perspective of women—particularly those experiencing pregnancy and childbirth. Midrash h.ad shenati transforms a tradition that typically emphasizes the chosen status of the nation of Israel and its eternal physical and ideological struggle with Esau into a depiction of the experience of labour. In this text the mother, who is usually silenced in depictions of childbirth in rabbinic literature, becomes the primary focus.

Acknowledgements Research for this essay was done through the support of the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of the Cairo Genizah at the University of Haifa in conjunction with the Grandchamp project. I wish to thank Carmen Carabello-Navas, Moshe Lavee, Ayelet Leibson, and Ari Schick, along with the editors of this volume, Marjorie Lehman, Jane L. Kanarek, and Simon J. Bronner, for their insightful comments, feedback, and suggestions.

Notes 1

Biblical and Second Temple texts, in contrast, depict an active mother. See e.g. Gen. 4: 1, and Lev. 12: 2. The latter, in stating ishah ki tazria, seems to indicate that the woman ejaculates (this is indeed how the medieval commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra understands this phrase). Furthermore, biblical terms such as vatahar vateled (‘she became pregnant and gave birth’), at least grammatically, imply female agency in pregnancy and birth (Kessler 2009: 113). For Second Temple sources see Wisd. 7: 2; 4 Macc. 13: 19–221; 1 Enoch 5: 14.

2

Quite tellingly, according to one tannaitic opinion—which is espoused in the Babylonian Talmud—a woman is exempt from the biblical obligation to procreate; she only enables a man to fulfil his obligation to do so (Yev. 6: 6, BT Yev. 65b).

3

See Van der Horst and Willem 1990: 300–1. Although Samuel Kottek infers from the talmudic text that the rabbis generally subscribed to a two-seed theory, Gwynn Kessler has shown that the Babylonian Talmud proves to be the exception rather than the rule (Kottek 1981: 301–2).

4

Her absence may be attributed to the general downplaying of human agency, particularly with regard to procreation, found in rabbinic texts such as Lev. Rab., and hence of the sense of power parents may feel when birthing a child. It is possible that the mother’s role is minimized precisely because she is the one most directly involved in giving birth (Jacobowitz 2010: 96). Her absence is nevertheless acute.

5

For a discussion regarding passivity versus domination as defining gender characteristics, see Levinson 2000: 119–40.

6

Another telling example is Exod. Rab. 23: 8, in which God is depicted as a midwife to the solitary labouring Israelite women in Egypt.

7

The Babylonian Talmud again presents an exception, recording the view that envisions the time in the womb as the happiest of one’s life (BT Nid. 30b).

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8

See Jacobowitz 2010: 61. Kessler notes that while Lev. Rab. 13: 3 is indeed gynophobic, the comparison between the womb and prison need not reflect a gynophobic stance (Kessler 2009: 93 n. 23).

9

This depiction of women as unknowingly yet innately dangerous correlates with Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s discussion regarding the ‘female threat of sexual temptation’ in the Testament literature of the Second Temple period and how she is perceived as the source of men’s inner struggles (Rosen-Zvi 2006: 81–2). He notes that Bilhah, and indeed all women presented therein, are deemed the instigators of sexual indiscretions by virtue of their gender—despite their passivity in the sexual acts in question. Rosen-Zvi writes, ‘Bilhah does not become temptress because she is being deliberately incriminated or in order to lessen Reuben’s responsibility. Her role is determined by the way in which the Testament of Reuben constructs an all embracing economy of gender’ (2006: 74).

10

For example, BT Shab. 129a discusses the point at which a woman is considered to be in labour such that one (specifically a midwife) may violate the sabbath for her. Although the determining point is when kever patuah., her uterus opens—clearly an internal experience—it is nevertheless defined by objective external criteria: when she can no longer walk, when she bleeds, or when she sits on a mashbir, the birthing stone. Ayelet Leibson demonstrates how each of these criteria finds precedence in tannaitic law (Leibson 2014: 161 n. 64). In the case of Yoma 8: 5, where a pregnant woman is seized by hunger on Yom Kippur, she is fed until ‘her spirits are restored’, and not following the guidance of an expert. In contrast to how they respond to a sick person in the same situation, the rabbis grant the woman the authority to assess her own needs (Leibson 2014: 181–7).

11

e.g. Nid. 4: 4; BT Nid. 21a; Ohol. 7: 6; Tosefta Yev. 9: 5; Midrash tanh.uma (ed. Buber) ‘Vayera’ 37; ‘Vayetse’ 19; Gen. Rab. 20; Exod. Rab. 1; Lev. Rab. 14: 9; BT Eruv. 100b; BT Nid. 31a; see also BT Yev. 65b, where the wife of R. Hiya, a fifth-generation tana, reportedly drinks a sterilizing potion to avoid another agonizing labour.

12

Due to lack of scholarly consensus, Eccles. Rab. is dated between the 6th century and the second half of the 10th century (Knobel 1991: 4–6, 12–15).

13

It is worth noting that the Babylonian version is unique in attributing a positive aspect to Eve’s eternal curses; women, as opposed to men, do not give verbal expression to their sexual yearnings.

14

Modern medical language has likewise been accused of depicting labouring women as ‘passive subjects, putting the doctors in the role of “managing labour” and delivering babies’ (Women’s Boston Health Book Collective 2008: 17).

15

As scholars have already shown, many rabbinic discussions regarding childbirth are guided by Graeco-Roman notions of pregnancy and foetal development (Kottek 1980; Muntner 1977; Newmyer 1985; Stoll 2000a, 2000b): the debates on the different forms of foetuses or pre-foetuses (BT Nid. 21b–22a); at what point a woman may give birth to a viable foetus (BT Nid. 24b; Gen. Rab. 20: 6, 14: 2; Aristotle ed. Barnes 1984: 583b); and how far apart twins may be born (BT Nid. 27a; Kottek 2000: 86–7). The crucial difference between the rabbis and their contemporaries concerns the extent of divine involvement in the processes of reproduction.

16

This correlates with Roman gynaecological texts, which also typically distrust women’s claims about their own bodies (Hippocrates, Epidemics IV, Diseases of Women I; Leibson 2014: ch. 3).

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17

During pushing, a woman’s limbs naturally stiffen and her legs may likewise grow cold. This has been confirmed to me by Dr Laura Greenbaum MD, a currently practising OBGYN, via email communication, 8 May 2014.

18

It is worth pointing out again that of all the classical rabbinic sources surveyed for this essay, the Babylonian Talmud contains the most (if not the only) texts which present women as active or contributing subjects. See e.g. BT Ber. 60a, in which women are depicted as emitting seed; BT Nid. 31a, which includes women in the partnership between human beings and God thanks to which the embryo develops (a version of this appears in Gen. Rab. 87: 14 and JT Kel. 8: 3 but the woman is not active in these sources; see Kessler 2009: 107.) Why these active (and positive) depictions of the mother appear in the Babylonian Talmud whereas Palestinian sources minimize her role in the different stages of childbirth is beyond the scope of this essay. A study of the Babylonian Talmud’s broader Middle Persian context might shed light on this question.

19

In a broader sense, as Christine Hayes has pointed out, the objectification of the subject is itself a hallmark of legal discourse in general, and does not only occur when the subject in question is a woman (Hayes 2001: 550–2; Leibson 2014: ch. 2); it should be noted that Hayes refers only to legal discourse. In a similar manner, recent scholarly discussions have focused on the extent to which talmudic discourses evince interest in the interior world of their subjects. Scholars such as Ishay Rosen-Zvi have demonstrated that tannaitic legal literature is not at all concerned with interiority, but rather with the external world of subjects (Rosen-Zvi 2011: 132; 2015). The texts surveyed thus far, which offer no insight into the internal experience of giving birth, correlate with Rosen-Zvi’s claims regarding tannaitic legal texts. It is worth pointing out that a similar phenomenon occurs with regard to the ‘sensation’ which the first-generation amora Samuel ascribes to menstruating women (BT Nid. 57a), as opposed to the sensation he claims men experience on ejaculation. Women are assumed to experience a hargashah (sensation) which is seemingly described at the beginning of BT Nid. 3a as a pain that would arouse them from sleep. Yet the sensation that men are said to feel prior to ejaculation (from which the description of the female sensation very possibly derives) is described as ‘his limbs trembling’ (Nid. 5: 2) and as being ‘felt by his whole body’ (BT Nid. 43a). What is described in subjective terms for a man is described in general terms for a woman.

20

Its eastern provenance is attested to by the strong parallels it shares with other eastern anthologies such as Midrash agadah, Midrash hagadol, and Pitron torah (9th century), and from the fact that it has only been documented in Genizah fragments. It therefore seems that Midrash h.ad shenati was unknown in the European West. A related midrash found in Midrash tanh.uma (ed. Buber) ‘Vayetse’ 19 admonishes Jacob for his cruel response to Rachel, who begs him to ‘give her children’. In contrast to Midrash h.ad shenati, however, the Midrash tanh.uma tradition reports that Rachel points to Isaac as well as Abraham, who both prayed on behalf of their barren wives as examples for Jacob to emulate. Mann long ago noted Midrash h.ad shenati’s affinity with the Midrash tanh.uma corpus (Mann 1940: 168 nn. 2, 4).

21

22

While the last tradition could be interpreted as another indication of Rebekah’s righteousness, it might also be a return to the more misogynistic tone of section 1. One possible interpretation of the biblical verse ‘she went to inquire of the Lord’ is that she consulted directly with God, which is reported in a tradition in Gen. Rab. 63: 7. This would therefore offer another opportunity to demonstrate how worthy Rebekah is. However, Midrash h.ad

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shenati’s tradition has Rebekah enlisting a male authority to communicate with God on her behalf, perhaps in an attempt to ‘tame’ the message imparted in the middle of the section and return to the more misogynistic one presented in the first exposition. 23

Kessler notes that traditions which directly address prenatal Jacob and Esau receive surprisingly little attention. Boyarin likewise points out the scant attention Gen. 25: 22 has received from the major medieval biblical commentators (Boyarin 1999: 5; Kessler 2009: 48).

24

A search on demonstrates that galei yam, ‘swells of the ocean’, usually appears in rabbinic literature in passages about the splitting of the sea. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg has noted the birth imagery employed in ‘splitting of the sea’ narratives (Gottlieb Zornberg 2009: 218, 223–4).

25

It is perhaps not a coincidence that the account of Rebekah’s difficult pregnancy shares other features with Job’s tale of suffering. Both endure unusual pain, seek out God for an explanation, and question whether there is any point to life. Rebekah turns to God to understand the churning within her womb because she wonders ‘Why do I exist?’ (lamah zeh anokhi), while Job asks, amid a long series of questions relating to his suffering, ‘Why did You bring me forth from the womb?’ (lamah mereh.em hotsetani; Job 10: 18) and repeatedly employs birth and womb motifs (e.g. Job 3). Gottlieb Zornberg points out that Job questions the human condition of being born from a woman’s womb, while Rebekah questions the condition of her womb (2009: 214–15). The two accounts also feature wordplay on the root k-r-v/k-v-r. Rebekah’s babies struggle inside her womb (bekirbah), making her question why she lives at all. Job laments, ‘had I been carried from the womb to the grave’ (mibeten lakever uval; Job 10: 19), using an inversion of the same root k-r-v/k-v-r and likewise connecting the womb with death.

26

The eastern Arabic lands from which Midrash h.ad shenati originates, with their strong scholarly medical history, might have contributed to the diffusion of medical knowledge regarding pregnancy and childbirth. While there were no treatises exclusively devoted to gynaecology, Arabic medical encyclopedias deal extensively with women’s conditions (Bos 1993: 296–312). During the 10th century Ibn al-Jazza ¯ r published Za¯d al-musa¯fir wa-qu ¯ t al h.a¯d.ir (Provisions for the Traveller and Nourishment for the Settled), a comprehensive medical handbook, which devotes a number of chapters to gynaecology and ‘women’s diseases’. His major sources in the area of gynaecology, the 2nd-century physician Galen and 7th-century Byzantine compiler Paul of Aegina, were both popular in the medieval Islamic world. Arabic medical scholars and physicians further developed the Galenic theory of the humours to explain the functioning of the female body (Caballero-Navas 2008: 251). They likewise espoused Galen’s view that the female body is excessively cold and moist, and that menstruation is the vital component to rid the body of its excess, a theory that eventually penetrated Latin and Hebrew gynaecological works (Bos 1993: 298). Medieval physicians also seem to espouse the ancient Graeco-Roman theory about the non-viability of babies born during the eighth month (likewise espoused in talmudic literature), and explain this as stemming from the coldness and dryness of the planet Saturn and its link with the eighth month (Berkai 1989: 118). Because Saturn is deemed cold and dry and therefore immobile, it causes babies born under its influence to likewise be immobile.

27

Ibn Khaldu ¯ n (14th century) even noted the general rule that only midwives were permitted to treat women (Ibn Khaldu ¯ n 1958: 368; Bos 1993: 305).

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f o u r t e e n

Upending the Curse of Eve: A Reframing of Maternal Breastfeeding in BT Ketubot miriam-simma walfish

In the Roman writer Aulus Gellius’s Attic Nights (second century ce), the author reports a story in which the philosopher Favorinus visits a nobleman to congratulate him on the birth of his newborn son. After enquiring after the details of the mother’s labour, he discusses with the family her plans regarding breastfeeding: When the girl’s mother said that her daughter should be spared this and nurses provided so as not to add the burdensome and difficult task of nursing to the pains of childbirth, he said, ‘I pray you, woman, let her be completely the mother of her own child. What sort of half-baked, unnatural kind of mother bears a child and then sends it away? To have nourished in her womb with her own blood something she could not see, and now that she can see it not to feed it with her own milk, now that it’s alive and human, crying for its mother’s attentions? Or do you think,’ he said, ‘that women have nipples for decoration and not for feeding their babies?’ (Lefkowitz and Fant 2005: 189)

Aulus Gellius here presents a colourful snapshot of the post-partum period. A new mother slumbers, conveniently out of the picture, while her mother and the distinguished guest decide how she should best proceed to nourish the young soul she has just given birth to. As reflected by the attitude of the grandmother in this story, it was very common in the ancient world to hire wet nurses to breastfeed children, or even for infants to be sent to live with nurses until the age of 2.1 Favorinus rails against this practice, calling on women to be exclusive mothers to their children. This story presents a number of different parties with potentially competing interests regarding maternal breastfeeding. The grandmother is presented as advocating for the mother, giving the pain of childbirth as a reason for her daughter to be spared the trials of breastfeeding. Favorinus, on the other hand, purports to uphold the interests of the child, painting a picture of an infant ‘crying for its mother’s attentions’. Favorinus’s rhetorical jibe, ‘do you think that women have nipples for decoration and not for feeding their babies?’, may also hint at the interests of the silent

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husband. Perhaps Favorinus is concerned that the husband will not encourage his wife to breastfeed the child so that she can remain an attractive sexual partner for him and return quickly to her pre-pregnancy glory. Conversely, a husband might be concerned about the family’s financial situation and thus may have an interest in the mother breastfeeding her child. The mother herself, slumbering peacefully, is absent from the discussion; we do not know what choice she would make were she part of the conversation. In addition to the mother, the infant, the father, and the grandmother, who all have a vested interest in the breastfeeding decision, there is a fifth interested party: Favorinus himself. When he calls mothers who give their children to wet nurses ‘unnatural’, Favorinus is engaged in a discursive project to construct the role of the ideal mother. Breastfeeding is a physical activity, one which only women can perform. When we read Favorinus’s views on the issue, we are reading his attempt to understand, influence, and control how women use their bodies. The story of Favorinus’s visit to the family of a new mother shows that discussions on breastfeeding are a fruitful locus for exploring cultural constructions of motherhood. They reveal the weight a culture places on mother–infant bonding, and on the respective roles a woman plays as wife and mother. They also demonstrate a culture’s concern—or lack thereof—for the physical well-being or agency of the mother herself. The early rabbis (tana’im) of the Mishnah and the Tosefta (first to third centuries ce) employ a discourse that is primarily the language of legal rulings rather than that of narratives like the one about Favorinus; in various places they nonetheless engage in a similar project to define and control how women use their bodies. Their works form the basis of the later Talmuds, redacted in the sixth or seventh century ce, in which later rabbis (amora’im) study, expand, and respond to their pronouncements. Studying discussions in the Babylonian Talmud provides us with a unique opportunity to chart the development of ideas over time because each sugya (unit of discussion) comprises earlier sources that are organized, commented on, and at times reworked by later editorial voices.2 Throughout this process, the editor shapes the earlier material in new ways, placing it in ideological frameworks that would have been unrecognizable to its original authors. These earlier traditions are often preserved in other sources as well, enabling us to compare the way the anonymous editor treats his sources to their formulation in other contexts. Such comparisons allow us to chart the development of ideas, attitudes, and cultural constructions over the course of hundreds of years of legal debate. Analysis of early rabbinic material in its original context can clarify the paradigms available to the talmudic editorial voices who constructed their discussions around these earlier texts. Additionally, discerning points of rupture or departure from the para-

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digms present in the earlier material can highlight the ways in which the editorial voices inserted their own perspectives into the discussion while maintaining fealty to earlier traditions. I chart such a course in this essay, through an analysis of the discussion of breastfeeding in BT Ketubot 59b–61a. The sugya is loosely structured around two sets of tannaitic material, from tractates Ketubot and Nidah. I will deconstruct the sugya by analysing this material in the context in which it appears in independent tannaitic works. I will argue, first, that the tannaitic sources in tractate Ketubot embed breastfeeding in the framework of the subjugation of a wife to her husband, while those in tractate Nidah view breastfeeding as an obligation of the mother, not to her husband, but rather to her child. Second, I will show that although the discussion in the Babylonian Talmud expands both of these frameworks, an anonymous editorial voice also introduces a new concern for the mother’s pain, which acts as a decisive factor in three legal decisions around breastfeeding. This concern for the mother’s well-being transforms her from an object to a subject and agent whose experiences carry significance and weight. In addition to shedding light on rabbinic constructions of the roles of the mother and the wife, the discussion of the Sages’ assumptions and rhetoric around breastfeeding reveals new insights into modern conceptions of the maternal role. Studying these texts and considering the shifts in discourse over generations can invite us to consider the ways in which the mother is also often described in our society as an object or instrument dedicated to nourishment rather than as a subject whose experiences and needs are important.

Tractate Ketubot: Breastfeeding and the Fallacy of Mutual Exchange In her book Spinning Fantasies (1997), Miriam Peskowitz defines the rabbinic presentation of marriage as one of ‘mutual exchange’: early rabbis describe marriage as an economic partnership between two individuals. According to this model, the husband is obligated to support his wife, and in return she performs a series of duties central to the upkeep of the household (1997: 110). Mishnah Ketubot 5: 5, the basis of the talmudic discussion introduced above, is one example of such a presentation: A. These are the labours that the wife performs [osah] for her husband: B. She grinds, bakes, launders, cooks, breastfeeds her child, makes the bed, and works with wool. C. If she brought in one slave-woman—she does not grind, bake, or launder. D. Two—she does not cook or breastfeed her child. E. Three—she does not make the bed or work with wool. F. Four—she sits in an easy chair.

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G. Rabbi Eliezer says: Even if she brought in a hundred slave-women—he forces her [kofah] to work with wool, because idleness leads to immorality.3

This mishnah delineates the physical household duties for which the wife is responsible. Alongside Mishnah Ketubot 5: 7–8, which lays out the obligations of a husband to his wife, the rabbis define realms of responsibility for both partners—hence the notion of ‘mutual exchange’. Lines A–F highlight the financial side of this contract by stating explicitly that a well-to-do woman who enters the marriage with her own property, using her own financial resources, may supply slaves to perform these obligations in her stead. They do not present the duties as intrinsically tied to an ideal of feminine domesticity, but rather delineate the tasks that go into maintaining a household. Breastfeeding is part of this model of the household economy. A mother contributes to the household either by breastfeeding her infants herself or, if she has the financial means, by hiring a wet nurse to do so. Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion in line G introduces a crack into the veneer of mutuality by ruling that whether or not a wife has found substitutes (i.e. slave-women) to supply the needs of the household in her stead, her husband should nonetheless force her (kofah) ‘to work with wool’. In her analysis of this mishnah, Peskowitz points out that by withdrawing the possibility that a married woman could ‘trade away’ all her domestic duties, Rabbi Eliezer ensures that all married women retain a link to domesticity (1997: 99). He could have made this same point, however, by stating that the wife performs (osah) wool work. The use of the word kofah (‘he forces her’) is significant;4 it exposes the power dynamic in the marital relationship. The husband can force his wife to attend to domestic work whether or not she has found other means of providing for her household. At first glance, one could characterize Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion as a minority view, and argue that its inclusion here reflects rabbinic multivocality rather than broader cultural attitudes towards marriage. Tosefta Ketubot 5: 5, however, presents a similar interest in female domesticity, this time homing in on breastfeeding as a source of marital conflict. This passage, like Mishnah Ketubot 5: 5, also deploys the word kofah when discussing this issue:5 A. If she took a vow not to breastfeed her child— B. Beit Shammai say: She removes her breasts from its mouth. C. And Beit Hillel say: He forces her [kofah] to breastfeed it. D. If she were divorced she may not be forced [ein kofin otah] to breastfeed. E. [But] if her child recognizes her, she is allotted a wage and she breastfeeds it because of the danger [i.e. that the child might not accept milk from someone else]. F. The husband may not force [kofeh] his wife to breastfeed the child of his friend, nor may the wife force [kofah] her husband [to let] her breastfeed the child of her friend.

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In lines A–C we see a breakdown in the language of mutuality around breastfeeding when the Sages imagine a mother rejecting her duty to breastfeed her child by means of a vow. While Beit Shammai view this vow as efficacious, Beit Hillel use the language of coercion: a husband should, or at least may, force her to breastfeed the child, thereby overriding her vow. The choice of word here is deliberate; after all, in rabbinic law, a husband is always entitled to abrogate his wife’s vows when he hears them (see Num. 30 and Mishnah Ned. 7). Using ‘force’ (the root k-f-h) instead of ‘abrogate’ (h-f-r) connects breastfeeding with other instances in which the husband may assert his authority over his wife. It allows him to take advantage of the same unequal power dynamic evident in Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion in the previous source. At first glance, line F (‘The husband may not force [kofeh] his wife to nurse the child of his friend, nor may the wife force [kofah] her husband to let her nurse the child of her friend’) contradicts this line of reasoning because it uses the same verb (kofah) to refer to a potential action of the wife; neither husband nor wife may force the other to take on extra nursing charges. A closer examination, however, shows that this line is an example of what Peskowitz terms an ‘inversion’ that portrays the weaker party in a relationship as more powerful than she is in reality: In these interchanges, a figure who seems to have power is cast as less powerful or powerless, and a figure who would seem to be less powerful is recast as powerful. However . . . the actual position, advantages, and rights do not change. The powerless do not really become powerful and those with power do not really lose it. Paradoxically, this formula both discusses power and keeps its workings invisible. (1997: 114)

The idea that a wife may not force her husband to allow her to take on a breastfeeding charge is an example of just such an interchange. The wife is obviously the one who is the potential breastfeeder. In both cases listed in line F, the rabbinic ruling prevents the husband from deploying his general right to force his wife to comply with his orders. The force that the wife is prevented from exercising, however, is imagined—the rabbis do not allow her to ‘force him’ to let her nurse another woman’s baby. Tosefta Ketubot thus engages in a rhetoric of enforcement that highlights the husband’s ability to exercise control over his wife’s choices concerning breastfeeding. Although it states limits to this control, it nonetheless upholds a relationship around breastfeeding that is far from equal. The husband has essentially outsourced his responsibility to nourish his children to his wife; the wife does not have an independent obligation to her own children; and the rabbis, unlike Favorinus, do not seem to value her own relationship with them. The rhetoric of enforcement implies a lack of agency on the part of the mother and puts decisionmaking powers regarding her bodily labour primarily in the hands of her husband.

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The Mother as Wet Nurse: Reserving the Breastfeeding Body for Its Infant While the sugya in tractate Ketubot 59b–61a opens with a discussion which by and large upholds the rhetoric of enforcement, it subsequently addresses another concern—one for the welfare of the infant. We saw a hint of this in lines D and E in Tosefta Ketubot above. The passage indicates that a mother must continue breastfeeding her baby if it recognizes her (even if she is no longer married to her husband), because of a perceived threat to the infant’s life. Tosefta Nidah 2: 5, which forms the basis of much of the rest of the lengthy talmudic sugya, echoes this fear: ‘A baby who recognizes its mother is not given to another wet nurse because of the danger to its life.’ The word ‘its mother’ (imo) does not appear anywhere else in this chapter of the Tosefta. The terms meinikah/meineket (breastfeeder), or simply ishah (woman), are used instead when referring to the person engaged in the act of breastfeeding. Mishnah Nidah 1: 4 defines a meinikah as follows: ‘A [woman is considered a] meinikah—until she weans her child. If she gave her child to a meinikah, weaned it, or it died [there is a dispute about how to view her status for purposes of ritual impurity].’ The mishnah’s use of the word meinikah to refer both to the mother and the wet nurse is striking. The term is difficult to translate into English, which distinguishes between a breastfeeding mother and a wet nurse. By using the same word for both figures, the mishnah conflates their roles; the identity of the mother is subsumed into her role as breastfeeder.6 Once a woman starts breastfeeding, the language of Tosefta and Mishnah Nidah implies that this duty takes precedence over all other familial obligations she has. The Tosefta states that, regardless of whether she is the infant’s mother or its wet nurse, she is legally obligated (h.ayevet) to care for it for a full twentyfour months.7 If she is its wet nurse, additional laws apply: ‘A woman to whom an infant was given to nurse should not perform labour [melakhah] with it and should not nurse another baby at the same time’ (Tosefta Nid. 2: 4). While the Tosefta’s language is opaque regarding the type of ‘labour’ to which it refers, the word melakhah echoes the language for the duties of a woman to her husband, thereby suggesting that once she has started breastfeeding her child, or even that of another couple, her husband’s needs become secondary. This shift in obligation stems from the Sages’ desire to protect the breastfeeding infant—a concern also evident in their warning against conception during the nursing period. This warning is based on the widespread idea, already found in the writings of Aristotle, that a new pregnancy can dry up the mother’s milk supply, a belief based on the idea that breast milk is produced from menstrual blood.8 According to one rabbinic statement, when a woman becomes pregnant, her menstrual blood transforms into milk, which is then stored until the birth of the infant. If the woman becomes pregnant again while breastfeeding, the milk

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will run out after three months, since her body reserves the milk for the next infant.9 The rabbis thus urged breastfeeding wives to use a sponge (mokh) during intercourse to avoid conception (Tosefta Nid. 2: 6). This fear of conception may have had more detrimental effects on women whose marriage ended before they weaned their children. If a woman was breastfeeding when her marriage ended, the rabbis forbade her to remarry until her child was weaned, lest nuptial sex lead to conception and harm the well-being of the nursing infant (Tosefta Nid. 2: 2). The delay in remarriage undoubtedly caused difficulties for nursing mothers, since women were usually financially dependent on their husbands. The fifth-century Babylonian sage Mar bar Rav Ashi expresses this in stark terms: ‘Even if [the nursing infant] dies it is prohibited [for the breastfeeding woman to marry] lest she kill the infant in order to remarry’ (BT Ket. 60b). He suggests that a nursing mother might be so desperate to remarry that she might murder her own child. Despite the misogynist undertones in this statement, Mar bar Rav Ashi raises a real concern: a mother might feel severely handicapped by the demands imposed on breastfeeding women. In her book The Anthropology of Breastfeeding: Natural Law or Social Construct (1992), Vanessa Maher explores these demands and argues that there is a cost to the model of long-term breastfeeding without appropriate support for the mother, stating that: ‘One of the conditions which frequently occurs together with lengthy breastfeeding in developing societies is that of “maternal depletion”, that is, a severe breakdown in maternal health . . . maternal health both influences and is affected by the way women feed their children’ (Maher 1992: 153). The Sages show some awareness of the danger of maternal depletion, as is demonstrated by the limitation they impose on breastfeeding mothers engaging in heavy labour and in their instruction to their husbands to provide them with more food (Mishnah Ket. 5: 9). Setting a minimum period for breastfeeding, however, especially one as long as eighteen to twenty-four months, betrays an ignorance of individual circumstances that might make extended breastfeeding an undesirable option for some mothers.

Nahum of Gallia: The Pain of Breastfeeding and Ritual Law At first blush, the talmudic discussion surrounding this tannaitic material in BT Ketubot seems to be a synthesis of the concerns highlighted by Tosefta Ketubot and Nidah. BT Ketubot 59b–61a, too, begins with the assumption that a wife is obligated to breastfeed her husband’s children; once she has started doing so, her primary responsibility is to her child, to the extent that the rabbis can, in theory, intervene if she fails to fulfil this duty. On two occasions, however, an editorial voice glosses and edits earlier traditions in order to introduce the concept of pain

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(tsa’ar) into the discussion, setting up maternal pain as a decisive factor in legal decisions around breastfeeding. In each case, this concern turns the mother from an object, used to fulfil the needs of her family, into a subject, whose experience and needs matter. This editorial innovation introduces a subjective consideration that provides mothers with agency such that ultimately their voices can no longer be ignored. By examining these editorial interventions, we can get a glimpse of what a more subjectively driven discourse around breastfeeding could look like. The first reference to pain occurs in the editor’s discussion of two tannaitic sources regarding sabbath law that seem only tangentially connected to the issue of breastfeeding:10 A. [Ar.] It was taught in an early rabbinic tradition: [Heb.] Rabbi Marinos says: A person who has angina [gone’ah.] suckles [from a goat] on the sabbath. B. [Ar.] What is the reason? [Heb.] Suckling is removing [the milk] in an unusual way [Ar.] and where there is pain [tsa’ar] involved the rabbis did not decree. C. [Heb.] Rabbi Joseph said: The ruling follows Rabbi Marinos. D. [Ar.] It was taught in an early rabbinic tradition: [Heb.] Nahum of Gallia says: A drainpipe that acquires scaly debris—one may crush the scaly debris with one’s foot discreetly on the sabbath without fear [of transgression]. E. [Ar.] What is the reason? [Heb.] This is fixing something in an unusual way [Ar.] and where there is loss involved the rabbis did not decree. F. [Heb.] Rabbi Joseph said: The ruling follows Nahum of Gallia. (BT Ket. 60a)

In the first discussion (line A), Rabbi Marinos permits an adult suffering from angina to suckle from an animal on the sabbath despite a general prohibition against milking animals (see BT Shab. 95a); in the second, Nahum of Gallia permits the removal of scaly debris from a clogged drainpipe on the sabbath. At first glance it is difficult to ascertain the connection between these two tannaitic sources, either to each other or to the topic of breastfeeding, which is the issue at the heart of our sugya. The teaching of Nahum of Gallia presents an additional difficulty: while numerous sources discuss the prohibition against milking animals on the sabbath, which makes Rabbi Marinos’s permission significant, the potential prohibition to which Nahum of Gallia is responding is unclear.11 A close examination of a parallel text in Tosefta Shabat, however, suggests that the editor includes Nahum of Gallia’s teaching in order to respond to a voice that seeks to limit the agency of the breastfeeding woman. The toseftan parallel reads: 1. One may not suckle from a kosher animal on festival days, and needless to say not on the sabbath. 2. Abba Shaul said: We used to suckle from a kosher animal on festival days. 3. A woman may not lighten her breasts by expressing into a cup or into a bowl and feed her child.

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4. One may not suckle from a non-Jew or from a non-kosher animal. 5. But if the matter involves danger to life there is nothing that stands in the way of saving a life. (Tosefta Shab. 9: 22)

When Rabbi Marinos in the Babylonian Talmud grants permission to an adult to suckle from a goat on the sabbath, he disputes the first prohibition listed in the Tosefta against suckling from a kosher animal on the sabbath (line 1).12 This first parallel also highlights the second prohibition, more relevant to our context, according to which a breastfeeding woman may not express milk to relieve her breasts on the sabbath. No explanation is given as to why such a woman would want to ‘lighten’ her breasts,13 although we could imagine many reasons: for example, to enable the child to suckle more effectively or to relieve the pain associated with clogged ducts. This toseftan tradition rules that the only consideration that overrides the prohibition against ‘lightening her breasts’ on the sabbath is that of mortal danger to the infant (line 5). The woman’s physical pain does not rise to the level of saving a life, and thus does not override the prohibition of ‘milking’ on the sabbath. This ruling ignores the subjective experience of the breastfeeding woman. Rabbinic discourse often frames rulings about women’s bodies in architectural terms. Charlotte Fonrobert goes so far as to argue for the existence of a ‘tannaitic project to represent the female body linguistically in terms of domestic architecture’ (2000: 276).14 Reading Nahum of Gallia’s opinion in this light allows us to see how his ruling disputes the toseftan prohibition, and thereby restores the breastfeeder’s agency. If we see the ‘drainpipe’ as actually referring metaphorically to a milk duct, then Nahum of Gallia’s teaching reads as follows: A drainpipe [i.e. breast] that acquired scaly debris [i.e. is clogged with milk]—one may crush the scaly debris [i.e. remove the milk] with one’s foot [i.e. in an unusual way] discreetly on the sabbath without fear of transgression.

Nahum of Gallia’s ruling thus permits a woman to unclog her breasts on the sabbath as long as she does so discreetly and in an unusual way. It contradicts the toseftan law prohibiting a nursing woman from relieving the pain of her clogged breasts on the sabbath (line 3 above), and is thus relevant to the broader discussion of breastfeeding. The rationales, provided in Aramaic, for R. Marinos’s and Nahum of Gallia’s rulings (lines B and E above) explore the reasons for each leniency. The parallel between the textual units is instructive. The editor begins by labelling each activity as ‘unusual’.15 If we assume that Nahum of Gallia does indeed refer to a woman’s breasts when discussing ‘drainpipes’, then the editor claims that it is equally unusual for a grown person to suckle directly from an animal and for a baby to ‘suckle’ from a vessel rather than from a woman’s breasts. The fact that this action is performed in an unusual way, suggests the editor, then enables the

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Sages to introduce a second criterion in order to transform the prohibition into a permission. This second criterion is different in each ruling: in the first, it is the pain suffered by the suckling adult (tsa’ar), while in the second it is the potential financial loss incurred by the individual. The similarity between the two textual units encourages the reader to elide pain and loss, and hence understand the ruling as saying: ‘[A person] is [performing a potentially prohibited action] in an unusual way and where there is pain/loss involved the rabbis did not decree.’ The acknowledgement of the individual’s pain therefore appears not only in Rabbi Marinos’s ruling, but in Nahum of Gallia’s as well. As a result, the Babylonian Talmud can be read as allowing a mother to express her milk in an unusual way on the sabbath, whether she is in pain, or seeks to avoid a loss for her child.16 The inclusion of Nahum of Gallia’s comment, as well as the editor’s explanation, are thus not happenstance or tangential but, rather, an expression of the editor’s awareness that maternal pain can be associated with breastfeeding. This editorial voice discreetly qualifies a sabbath prohibition on expressing milk by introducing a source that obliquely contradicts it. It then embeds the source in a discussion of pain in order to adjure the rabbinic authorities to take the mother’s subjective experience into account when making legal decisions around breastfeeding. The woman is no longer exclusively a vessel whose sole purpose is to shield her child from risk; she is a person, a subject, whose ability to experience pain has legal significance and may, in some cases, allow her to override sabbath observance. The source also provides nursing mothers with agency by uncovering the complexities of the nursing relationship. They empower the mother to determine what she needs to do to help make the relationship successful, giving her the power to alleviate her own pain through expressing her milk, even on the sabbath, and allowing her to save the milk for her child.

A Mother’s Pain, a Mother’s Voice Nahum of Gallia’s comment in BT Shabat 95a invoked the concept of pain to reinstate the breastfeeding mother as a subject where an earlier source saw her experience as irrelevant. Similarly, the editorial voice in the coda of BT Ketubot 61a invokes the same concern for maternal pain to distance itself from the model of mutual exchange with regard to breastfeeding. The editorial voice revises a conversation between the third-century Babylonian sage Rav Huna and his teacher about whether or not a husband may impose his will on his wife in decisions about breastfeeding. The original conversation between the teacher and his student centres on the financial implications of this choice, while the editorial voice showcases the impact of the mother’s pain on the decision, thus shifting our gaze to her subjective experience.

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A. [Heb. or Ar.] Rav Huna said: [Ar.] Rav Huna b. Hinena tested us: B. [Heb.] If she wants to breastfeed and he does not want her to—we heed her [wish] [Ar.] [since] it is her pain [tsa’ara didah hu]. C. [Heb.] If he wants her to breastfeed and she does not want to—what is the legal ruling? D. [Ar.] Any time it is not her family’s custom [to breastfeed] we heed her [wish]. E. If it is her family’s custom [to breastfeed] but not his what [happens]? Do we follow him or follow her? F. [Ar.] And I [Rav Huna] explained it from this: [Heb.] She rises with him [in wealth] but does not sink with him [i.e. to become impoverished]. G. Rav Huna said: [Ar.] What is its verse? [Heb.] vehi be’ulat ba’al (Gen. 20: 3)—with the rise of a husband [be’aliyato shel ba’al] and not with his fall. H. Rabbi Eleazar said: From here: ‘for she was the mother of all life’ (Gen 3: 20)—for life she was given and not for pain [tsa’ar]. (BT Ket. 61a) (emphasis added)

In this text, Rav Huna relates that he and his fellow students were tested by Rav Huna b. Hinena (line A). Their teacher’s question begins with a given—a husband may not forbid his wife to breastfeed (line B). The question itself follows: may a husband require his wife to breastfeed the child (line C)? The anonymous editorial voice interjects between the statement of fact supplied in line B and the question in line C. According to the editor, Rav Huna b. Hinena is certain that we must pay heed to the wife’s wishes if the husband attempts to stop her from breastfeeding, on the basis that ‘it is her pain’.17 Without this explanatory phrase, we would have read the statement in the light of Mishnah Ketubot and identified the concern as monetary; the husband may not induce the wife to expend her own resources to hire a wet nurse if she would rather breastfeed the baby herself. By adding those three words, tsa’ara didah hu (‘it is her pain’), the editor draws the reader’s attention momentarily away from financial considerations and towards a concern for the pain felt by the mother. This addition invites us to imagine the way she would feel if prevented from breastfeeding her child. The allusiveness of the editorial gloss is strengthened by its cryptic nature; it is unclear what pain would ensue if the wife was not allowed to breastfeed. Does it refer to the physical pain of engorgement while the milk dries up, or to the emotional pain of separation from the baby?18 By leaving the phrase without further explanation, the editor raises the mother’s physical and emotional experience as a serious factor to be taken into consideration in legal debates, and foreshadows the final line of the sugya (discussed below), in which pain plays a decisive role.19 The significance of this editorial gloss becomes clear when we examine the original discussion between Rav Huna b. Hinena and Rav Huna. After recounting his teacher’s question about what happens when a mother does not want to

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breastfeed her child but her husband wants her to (line C), Rav Huna relates his own response, ruling in favour of the wife through an analogy with Tosefta Ketubot 5: 9: ‘If the husband becomes rich—she rises with him, while if he becomes poor she does not go down with him’ (line F). This law originally appears in the Tosefta in a discussion about the respective financial rights of husbands and wives— it provides at least de jure protection for a wife whose husband goes bankrupt. Its relevance to the issue of breastfeeding appears quite clearly in the Favorinus anecdote at the start of this essay: in the ancient world, whether or not a woman breastfed her child depended a great deal on her social status—the better off a wife was, the more likely she was to hire a wet nurse.20 Rav Huna supports his analogy with the toseftan law by invoking a prooftext from Genesis 20: 3 (line G): ‘for she is a married woman [vehi be’ulat ba’al]’—with the rise of the husband and not with his fall.’ The statement is based on a pun: by shifting around some letters in the phrase be’ulat ba’al, he comes up with the phrase be’aliyat ba’al—with the rise of the husband. His argument is very much in line with the economic model of marriage outlined by Peskowitz, as it protects the wife’s social standing contractually. Hence while Rav Huna sides with the mother by preventing a hypothetical crisis from affecting her status, he also maintains the economic foundations of marriage outlined in Mishnah and Tosefta Ketubot. The wife’s decision-making ability is tied to social status: if either she or her husband is of high social status, she is free to decide whether to breastfeed herself or hire a wet nurse instead. Rav Huna’s method of elucidation takes wealth and social status into consideration, and is therefore still wrapped up in a hierarchical system which places the power in the hands of the husband.

‘For She Was the Mother of All Life’: Contrasting Interpretations Genesis Rabbah contains a teaching concerning Eve that is strikingly similar to Rav Huna’s: ‘For she was the mother of all life [ki hi em kol h.ai]’ [Gen. 3: 20]. Rabbi Simeon b. Eleazar said: With [im] all of life. It is taught in an early rabbinic teaching: If the husband becomes rich—she rises with him, while if he becomes poor she does not go down with him. (Genesis Rabbah 20: 11)

Like Rav Huna, Rabbi Simeon b. Eleazar quotes a biblical prooftext to support the statement of Tosefta Ketubot 5: 9. However, he refers to Genesis 3: 20, which describes the naming of Eve after she and Adam ate from the tree: ‘The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all who live’ (NRSV). Rabbi Simeon b. Eleazar also uses a pun to explain that a wife can refuse to suffer the social demotion experienced by her husband. By replacing one letter with

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another, he transforms the biblical ‘Mother [em] of all life’ into ‘with [im] all who live’, thereby implying that she rises in status ‘with’ her husband. The sugya regarding breastfeeding in BT Ketubot 61a concludes with an editorial revision of Rabbi Simeon b. Eleazar’s teaching to provide biblical support for the idea that the mother may refuse to breastfeed her child in spite of her husband’s wishes: ‘Rabbi Eleazar said: From here: “for she was the mother of all life”—for life she was given and not for pain [tsa’ar].’ This statement shares a number of features with the source in Genesis Rabbah: it is tied to the same verse, takes into account the social status of the husband and the wife, and is even taught by a rabbi with a similar-sounding name. When the editorial voice brings Genesis Rabbah into the discussion, however, it reworks the language of the source, expressing concern for the mother’s pain: ‘for life she was given and not for tsa’ar’. It thereby departs from the economic and social considerations surrounding marriage and the responsibilities of motherhood in BT Ketubot and introduces the mother’s pain as a decisive factor in decision-making around breastfeeding. By omitting the content of Tosefta Ketubot found in Genesis Rabbah from the talmudic passage and replacing it with a statement of concern for the mother’s pain, the editor supplants the economic model of marriage in favour of an acknowledgement of her subjective experience. The editor’s use of tsa’ar not only provides a different approach to the tannaitic views explored above, but also upends the dynamic present in the biblical narrative. After the sin in the Garden of Eden, God curses Eve, saying, ‘I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain [be’etsev] you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you’ (Gen. 3: 16, NRSV, emphasis added). In a way, this verse sets up the paradigm by which the tannaitic material of tractates Ketubot and Nidah function by insisting, first, that a mother must suffer for the sake of her children, and second, that a wife should be subjugated to her husband. By claiming that Eve’s status as life-giver need not be a source of pain, the editorial voice in the coda of the sugya subverts the dynamic present in the first half of the verse and in the tannaitic material of tractate Nidah. In doing so, it tacitly admits that the pain which Genesis claims to be an intrinsic part of bearing children need not and should not extend to breastfeeding. The life of an infant should not be a source of maternal pain, and those who bring life into the world need not suffer against their will. Read in the context of the sugya in BT Ketubot, the newly crafted statement of Rabbi Eleazar also upsets the power dynamic of ‘and he shall rule over you’ presented at the end of the verse and in the tannaitic material of tractate Ketubot. If a husband must defer to his wife in decisions concerning breastfeeding, he no longer rules over her and she is no longer subordinate to him; because of her pain, he must heed her wishes and listen to her voice.

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Enduring Constructions of the Breastfeeding Mother The tana’im avoided providing breastfeeding women with agency and choice with regards to their maternal role. Mishnah and Tosefta Ketubot envisage marriage as a ‘mutual’ economic exchange in which the wife is the less powerful party and must perform household duties including breastfeeding in return for financial support. The rabbinic ruling which stipulates that a husband may force his wife to continue breastfeeding even if she vows not to do so highlights her subordinate status and lack of agency. There is no attempt to account for the reasons the mother might make such a vow—her perspective is irrelevant. Once she starts breastfeeding, a second construction comes into operation: the infant’s protection becomes her main priority, and takes precedence over the husband’s needs. Breastfeeding women are entitled to additional portions of food and to a reduction in physical labour. The Sages also impose restrictions designed to protect the mother’s milk from drying up, thereby ensuring the survival of the infant. While these dispensations demonstrate a degree of awareness of the physical factors affecting milk production, tana’im largely ignore the ways in which their strictures might negatively affect breastfeeding mothers. Tosefta Shabat, for example, disregards the woman’s experience by prohibiting her from expressing milk into a vessel on the sabbath. These tannaitic attitudes towards breastfeeding do not take into consideration the subjective experiences, concerns, and needs of the mother. Turning to modern treatments of the topic of breastfeeding, I find startling similarities between the discursive project through which the role of the mother is envisaged in the mainstream literature dealing with the issue and materials from antiquity. Modern society (perhaps more in line with Favorinus than with the Sages) tends to suggest to mothers that exclusive mothering is the ‘natural ideal’. Public pronouncements parallel the rabbinic construction of the mother as a shield who protects her infant from risk.21 Consider, for example, this recommendation from the World Health Organization: As a global public health recommendation, infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health. Thereafter, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond. (WHO 2002)

Like the rabbis in Tosefta Nidah and elsewhere, WHO suggests that breastfeeding for a protracted period is the best way to achieve and maintain infant health and development. Employing the same methods of close reading to this policy statement as we have to the rabbinic sources and Favorinus, we note that the authors of this recommendation do not mention the person feeding the baby. It is noteworthy that, at least upfront, this policy fails to mention the circumstances that might support or hinder breastfeeding.

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By ignoring the fact that the burden of infant nutrition falls exclusively on the shoulders of the mother, such recommendations can maintain the differential power dynamic made explicit in tractate Ketubot that set the mother up as the bulwark of the family, connecting her inextricably with domesticity. Unless breastfeeding is financially valued and supported by society, recommending that all mothers do so sets them up as the subordinate party in the relationship by making the father responsible for the financial sustenance of the family and making the mother dependent on him, at least temporarily. Until societal structures are reformed in a way that ensures breastfeeding mothers continue earning a wage as they engage in this domestic function, it may not be a viable choice for single mothers or for wives looking for greater equality in apportioning of household and breadwinning responsibilities. Presenting exclusive, long-term breastfeeding as the safest method of infant nutrition thus ignores women’s individuality by implying that they should conform to an ideal model. Such an approach leads to a societal perception of mothers who choose formula over breastmilk as incompetent or even selfish, leading to a negative culture of blame and maternal guilt over decisions regarding infant nutrition. Policy statements like the one quoted above are also undermined by the difficulties mothers experience when attempting to implement them. As Allison Bartlett states, ‘If breastfeeding policy and promotion aim to persuade women to voluntarily adopt breastfeeding as best for the baby and themselves, then women’s distressing experiences of breastfeeding provide a counterpoint that opens up the limited efficacy and appeal of policy’ (2005: 166). Perhaps contemporary literature on breastfeeding would benefit from an editorial voice like the one in BT Ketubot which takes into consideration the subjective experiences of individual mothers. When an editorial voice like the one in BT Ketubot introduces Nahum of Gallia’s ruling opposing the restriction on a mother’s ability to choose how to express her milk and then connects this permission to considerations of pain and loss, it acknowledges the fact that breastfeeding may at times be a difficult and painful experience for mothers. This awareness has the potential to shift both how a mother who chooses to express her milk on the sabbath feels about that choice and how others perceive this choice. Readers of Tosefta Shabat would see it as a sin, while readers of BT Ketubot who understand the import of Nahum of Gallia’s teaching would judge the mother more charitably, because they would understand the factors involved in such a decision. We too would do better to support and empathize with mothers in their decisions around infant nutrition rather than judge them. So, too, the editorial voice’s choice to introduce pain as an explanation for the maternal decision whether or not to breastfeed acknowledges a variety of maternal experiences, emotions, and preferences. It suggests that such variety is natural and should carry prescriptive weight. Siding with the wife over the husband in

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each case undermines the subordinate status of the wife to her husband with regards to breastfeeding. With the words ‘For life she was given and not for pain’ in the final clause of the sugya (BT Ket. 61a), the editorial voice makes its boldest move and reframes what it means for Eve to be the ‘mother of all life’ by overturning the identification of Eve with the pain of childbirth. In doing so, it claims that not only are there particular narratives and experiences that might contribute to a mother’s choice to breastfeed, not to breastfeed, or how to breastfeed, but that mothers should not see themselves as needing to sacrifice their whole subjective being in the service of their children and husbands. Such language can allow us to engage in thoughtful and caring discourse around breastfeeding that takes into account the mother’s well-being in ways which satisfy the baby’s needs. In this way, we can support the mothers in our lives wholeheartedly in their decisions about how to feed their children. 쏋 I dedicate this article to the memory of Rabbi Dr Bonna Devora Haberman, a true em kol h.ai whose thought was characterized by an authentic engagement with Torah and feminism such that each continually deepened the other.

Notes 1

For a full treatment of the institution of wet-nursing in antiquity see the first chapter of Fildes 1988.

2

For more background about the formation of the Babylonian Talmud, see Kalmin 2006.

3

All translations from the Mishnah and the Talmud are my own, unless otherwise noted. References to Tosefta Ketubot and Shabat are from Tosefta kifeshutah, ed. Saul Lieberman (1955). References to Tosefta Nidah are from Tosefta, ed. Moses Samuel Zuckermandl (1975).

4

The root k-f-h appears in the singular only a handful of times in tannaitic literature and in most cases describes the potential power of the stronger party in an unequal relationship to exercise force over the weaker party. See for example Mishnah Naz. 9: 1, BM 7: 1, and Tosefta Ned. 7: 1. The word also appears many times in Tosefta Ket. 5: 4 regarding labours the husband may force his wife to perform.

5

My analysis of this text differs from that of Gail Labovitz (2000), who identifies line E of Tosefta Ket. 5: 5 as evidence that the Tosefta defines breastfeeding in terms of the baby. In my view, defining breastfeeding as a labour that a wife performs for her husband allows breastfeeding—once initiated—to be an obligation to the baby. There is a shift in responsibility in the eyes of the Sages. Before starting breastfeeding, a wife must ensure that any of her husband’s children are also breastfed, either by doing so herself or by providing a wet nurse to do so. Once she has begun to breastfeed, however, her obligation centres on that baby specifically, and overrides other obligations she might have towards her husband. The Mishnah and the Tosefta thus need to be read as contradicting each other.

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6

It is notable that Roman material from the same period does not express this conflation of the mother and the wet nurse. In contrast to the rabbinic material, the Roman sources raise concerns stemming from the closeness of relationship between the infant and its milk provider. The extant Roman sources praise mothers who breastfeed their own children. While they acknowledge a reality in which at least well-to-do families hired wet nurses, both medical and philosophical treatises explore the desirable personal qualities of a wet nurse, going so far as to claim that she can pass negative character traits through her milk. The early rabbis seem much less interested in such a view of breastfeeding and do not balk at the idea of wet nurses as a commonplace institution. Wet nurses and breastfeeding mothers were equally obligated in the care of their nursling. On the Roman material, see Dixon 1988: ch. 2, and Lefkowitz and Fant 2005: 187–9, 268–70.

7

There is a dispute reported between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel in Tosefta Nidah 2: 2 regarding how long the breastfeeding woman must remain unmarried. Beit Shammai claim that she must remain unmarried until the nursling turns 2, while Beit Hillel allow her to remarry once it is 18 months old. The underlying assumption seems to be similar to that of the World Health Organization (see below) that this is the minimum period for which an infant should be breastfed intensively.

8

In her book The Anthropology of Breast-Feeding: Natural Law or Social Construct, Vanessa Maher (1992) points out that ‘Many agrarian societies stress the need to distance births . . . This norm is related to the belief that pregnancy “spoils” the milk, endangering the nursling and compelling the mother to wean it, and/or that semen spoils the milk. According to this view the mother should abstain from sexual intercourse during the breast-feeding period which may last two or three years’ (1992: 157). Rabbinic views on the subject are thus far from unique.

9

This view is attributed to Rabbi Meir (BT Nid. 9b) and is attested as well in JT Nid. 1: 5 and Lev. Rab. 14: 3. Gwynn Kessler (2009) explores this belief and its Graeco-Roman underpinnings.

10

For a classic articulation of the source-critical methods behind my analysis, see Friedman 1977. Most relevant here, Friedman identifies language shifts from Hebrew into Aramaic and explanatory glosses as evidence of a redactional hand. I have thus labelled the original language in my translations ‘Ar.’ (Aramaic); ‘Heb.’ (Hebrew).

11

In his commentary on the Tosafists’ discussion of the phrase mefarek kele’ah.ar yad hu (BT Ket. 60a) the 18th-century commentator Joshua Falk raises this difficulty, stating that even clearing a clogged drainpipe with a special implement would not be considered biblically prohibited because it is not similar to building. He claims that only if the action fixed the pipe itself rather than unclogging material within it would it be similar to building on the sabbath, which is prohibited.

12

Saul Lieberman also connects R. Marinos with Tosefta Shab. 9: 22 in Tosefta kifeshutah (1955: iii: 148).

13

According to Saul Lieberman, some later commentators explain that her breasts may be painfully clogged such that the Tosefta is prohibiting her from relieving this pain by hand rather than having her child breastfed, which would be permitted. Lieberman notes that others (such as the Shulh.an arukh, ‘Orah. h.ayim’, 328: 34–5) permit it when the infant has difficulty latching on due to the fullness of the breasts. Perhaps based on Moses Isserles’s gloss on ‘Orah. h.ayim’, 328: 35, Lieberman suggests that this ruling is against sprinkling

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breastmilk on a person thought to be possessed by an evil spirit. This interpretation seems forced to me. For a full discussion of the toseftan text, see Lieberman 1955: iii: 149. 14

Chapter 2 of Fonrobert 2007 is devoted to the collection of such metaphors, as is ch. 2 of Baker 2002.

15

The rabbis rule that if an action does not resemble the way in which a forbidden activity is generally performed it is no longer considered ‘biblically’ prohibited, but rather ‘rabbinically’ prohibited, such that another concern might enable the rabbis to permit it.

16

Perhaps the editor chooses not to use pain in the second case because the mother’s pain alone would not permit her to express the milk into a vessel. Because of her pain she would be able to express her milk, but she would likely have to do so in a non-constructive way, such as spilling her milk onto the ground. Because of this the editor adds the consideration of loss because there would be a loss of milk to the child if the mother were required to spill her milk.

17

It is interesting to note that the St Petersburg manuscript of BT Ketubot 61a has a different interjection: ‘We heed her wish because she said, “I cannot [stand] for the baby to suffer.”’ This difference is further evidence for the fact that the phrase is an editorial addition to R. Huna b. Hinena’s statement. It is, however, the only manuscript which does not ascribe the decision to heed the mother directly to her pain.

18

Rashi on BT Ket. 61a, s.v. tsa’ara didah hu, suggests the physical pain of the excess milk in her breasts, while Maimonides (Mishneh torah, ‘Laws of Marriage’, 21: 13) claims that the pain is an emotional pain at being separated from her child. This dispute highlights the ambiguity of the original explanation.

19

I would like to thank Miri Fenton for helping me think through the function of the phrase ‘It is her pain’ more clearly.

20

For some examples of this see Fildes 1988: 9, 15 and Dixon 1988: 59, who quotes Juvenal’s Satires, wherein he praises poor mothers for breastfeeding their infants and contrasts them to the aristocratic women whose ‘gilded beds seldom see labour’. It is notable that in the modern world breastfeeding is often more feasible for upper-middle-class women, whose working lives may be more flexible than those of women in lower classes.

21

See Muers 2010, in which she explores the conception of the ‘total mother’ that pervades modern society’s views of motherhood. This mother, claims Muers (citing Joan Wolf), is responsible for using her own body to shield her infant from risk (2010: 9).

References baker, cynthia. 2002. Rebuilding the House of Israel. Stanford, Calif. bartlett, alison. 2005. Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding. Sydney. dixon, suzanne. 1988. The Roman Mother. London. fildes, valerie. 1988. Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford. fonrobert, charlotte elisheva . 2000. Menstrual Purity. Stanford, Calif. —— 2007. ‘Regulating the Human Body: Rabbinic Legal Discourse and the Making of Jewish Gender’. In C. E. Fonrobert and M. Jaffee, eds., Cambridge Companion to Rabbinic Literature. Cambridge.

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friedman, shamma. 1977. ‘A Critical Study of Yevamot X with a Methodological Introduction’ (Heb.). In Hayim Dimitrovsky, ed., Texts and Studies: Analecta Judaica [Meh.karim umekorot: me’asef lemada’ei hayahadut], i: 283–314. New York. kalmin, richard. 2006. ‘The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud’. In Steven Katz, ed., Cambridge History of Judaism. vol. iv, pp. 840–76. Cambridge. kessler, gwynn . 2009. Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives. Philadelphia. labovitz, gail. 2000. ‘“These Are the Labours”: Constructions of the Woman Nursing Her Child in the Mishnah and Tosefta’, Nashim, 3: 15–42. lefkowitz, mary r., and maureen b. fant , eds. 2005. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation. 3rd edn. Baltimore, Md. maher, vanessa. 1992. ‘Breast-Feeding and Maternal Depletion: Natural Law or Cultural Arrangements?’ In Vanessa Maher, ed., The Anthropology of Breast-Feeding: Natural Law or Social Construct. Providence, RI. Midrash Genesis Rabbah, ed. J. Theodor and Hanokh Albeck. 1903–29. Berlin. Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, ed. Mordechai Margulies. 1993. New York. muers, rachel. 2010. ‘The Ethics of Breastfeeding: A Feminist Theological Exploration’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 26(1): 7–24. peskowitz, miriam. 1997. Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History. Berkeley, Calif. Tosefta, ed. Moses Samuel Zuckermandl. 1975. Jerusalem. Tosefta kifeshutah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta [Tosefta kefeshutah: be’ur arokh latosefta], ed. Saul Lieberman. 1955. New York. WHO (World Health Organization). 2002 (April). ‘The World Health Organization’s Infant Feeding Recommendation.’ , accessed 13 Aug. 2015.

f i f t e e n

The Biblical Root ’mn: Retrieval of a Term and Its Household Context deena aranoff

‘There is no such thing as a baby’—meaning that if you set out to describe a baby, you will find you are describing a baby and someone. A baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship. donald winnicott (1964: 88)

This essay examines the relationship between the most common meaning of the Hebrew root ’mn, faithfulness or constancy, and its less common meaning, to rear or nurse a child. In contrast to previous lexicographical presentations of the term, it argues that the act of rearing a child provided the concrete referent from which the more abstract meaning of faithfulness was derived. Through a process of metaphorical extension, the signature feature of childrearing—the constant provision of basic needs necessary for an infant to survive—came to function as a signifier of faithfulness more generally. As a consequence, the Hebrew word for faithfulness, central in biblical literature as well as post-biblical Judaism, has its origins in the steady relation between a mother/nurse and an infant. The Hebrew root ’mn is one of the chief characterizations of divine and human faithfulness in the Bible. It appears over 200 times in biblical literature— over 100 times in the book of Psalms alone. It is used in reference to figures such as Abraham and Moses (Gen. 15: 6; Num. 12: 7). It forms the basis for the liturgical formula amen by which the witness accepts the validity of a declaration or curse (e.g. Num. 5: 22; Ps. 41: 14). It is also the root of the word emunah, which came to carry significant theological overtones in the medieval and modern periods as a reference to the espousal of doctrine, though in its early Hebrew context it refers to reliability, constancy, and trustworthiness. The present discussion locates this key term in the maternal activity of childrearing. The term’s maternal associations point to the inextricable link between household relations and the formal religious language of ancient Israel. Scholarship has generally been silent on the relationship between the Hebrew term for ‘nurse’ and the more common meaning of the root ’mn as faithfulness. Reverend Professor Thomas F. Torrance explored a basic association between the two in a short piece published in 1956, in which he speculated that the Hebrew

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term for ‘fidelity’ seems closely related to ‘the intense family-consciousness of Israel’ and that the ‘constancy and steadfastness of a parent to her child lurks behind the Old Testament conception of faithfulness’ (Torrance 1956–7: 111). A decade later, the scholar of Hebrew semantic studies James Barr rejected this connection (Barr 1961). For Barr, this etymology was symptomatic of the regrettable tendency among Christian theologians to characterize the Hebrew Bible as overly concrete and primitive, in contrast to more advanced Graeco-Christian writings. Indeed, Barr devotes much of his classic volume The Semantics of Biblical Language to a critique of this crude contrast which, he argues, continues to underpin Christian semantic analysis. Torrance’s claim that the Hebrew term for faithfulness is somehow linked to the ordinary tasks of child-rearing is, according to Barr, yet another example of this type of dubious etymology: it takes the Hebrew word for faith and sullies it with household associations.1 While Barr’s effort to expose a bias in biblical scholarship is laudable, in this case he dismissed what I believe to be a strong etymological possibility. Indeed, this essay posits that there is more than a vague association between the two terms, and argues that the more common meaning of ’mn, faithfulness, may be a second-order development based upon an initial maternal valence. My larger objective is twofold: to restore the relationship between the two primary meanings of the Hebrew term and to suggest a likely direction of linguistic development: from concrete to abstract meaning. Accordingly, the defining aspect of childrearing—its requisite constancy—supplied the primary experience from which the abstract notion of fidelity was derived. The maternal valence of ’mn is further enhanced by its possible relationship to the Hebrew designation for mother, ’m. This word is an early lexical unit that verges on the onomatopoeic; it is a simple, labial sound that is suggestive of a want for food and refers to mother in languages worldwide (Jakobson 1962: 538–45). It is quite possible that this simple sound came to refer to those providing for a young child more generally. This is a speculative possibility, to be sure, but the echoes between the two terms are striking. I therefore find myself in strange company as I examine an etymology that, when first suggested, may have provided fodder for the characterization of the Hebrew mind as inferior. The present recovery of the household origins of the Hebrew term for faithfulness, however, is not an exposé of the unfortunate materiality of the Hebrew language or a lament for the maternal associations that lurk behind the Hebrew conception of faithfulness.2 Rather, it is a corrective for the tendency to neglect the role of everyday social realities in the formation of more elite aspects of Israelite and Jewish culture. The proposed link between childcare and faithfulness recovers continuities between household life and the religious imagination and the ways in which maternal activity provided the vocabulary for more abstract theological concepts.

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The difficulty in making this etymological claim, of course, is that the term ’mn refers to childrearing only a handful of times in the biblical text: Numbers 11: 12; 2 Samuel 4: 4; 2 Kings 10: 1, 5; Isaiah 49: 23; 60: 4; Ruth 4: 16; Esther 2: 7, 20. A slightly more figurative use can be found in Lamentations 4: 5. In the vast majority of cases, ’mn denotes loyalty or constant support. This ratio of concrete to abstract significations is reflected in the major lexicons of the Hebrew Bible. The ‘basic meaning’ offered by the Köhler–Baumgartner lexicon is: ‘to be firm, trustworthy, safe’, to ‘occupy oneself constantly with’. After a thorough presentation of this basic meaning and its various forms, the lexicon presents a second meaning, namely, ‘attendant (with acc.) of children’, ‘guardian’, or, in the feminine, ‘nurse’ (1994: 1: 63–5). The 1906 Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew lexicon contains a similar entry, although it does not entirely disentangle its definitions (1906: 52–3; see also Barr 1961: 172). It lists the primary meaning of ’mn as ‘confirm, support’, followed by the second meaning: ‘support, nourish’. The lexicon substantiates the general meaning of ‘support, nourish’ with three biblical references to childrearing: 2 Kings 10: 1, 5 and Esther 2: 7. Thus, it does not distinguish as sharply between the abstract meaning of ‘support’ and childcare. The last definition it lists is ‘foster-father’, followed by ‘foster-mother, nurse’ (1906: 52). It must be asked: if the early meaning of ’mn was childrearing, why does it rarely appear as such in biblical literature? The answer, I believe, lies in a broader methodological point. Analysis of ancient Hebrew requires that one pay attention not only to the statistical frequency with which a term appears in a particular sense, but also to the topical emphases in biblical literature. The relative paucity of certain domestic and household settings and their related terminology in the biblical text cannot be read as an indication of the significance of such domains in the cultural landscape of ancient Israel, but rather as an indication of the interests of the biblical authors and compilers. A crude statistical approach that does not take this into account would exclude settings whose vocabulary no doubt provided the basic building blocks for Hebrew expression. The root ’mn therefore appears in relation to subjects of greater concern to biblical authors than family ties, namely, divine–human relations. The term acquired prominence in a figurative sense, while its root meaning, as well as many other aspects of household life, were obscured. Indeed, the few attestations of ’mn as ‘nurse’ tend to refer to male figures. This is not surprising since these allusions to nursing break to the surface of the text precisely because they deviate from the more common household context and apply to men in public contexts: Moses as an imagined nurse (Num. 11: 12), the adoptive figure of Mordecai (Esther 2: 7, 20), and a crew of caregivers for the sons of a king (2 Kgs 10: 1). Descriptions of nursing and early infancy also appear in figurative depictions of Zion and the people of Israel: the promise of royal caregivers (Isa. 49: 23) and of redemption more

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generally (Isa. 60: 4; see also the related verse, Isa. 66: 12). The two attestations of female nurses are linked to male, royal figures (2 Sam. 4: 4; Ruth 4: 16). The recovery of the household context of the biblical root ’mn therefore participates in the larger scholarly effort to recover the broader social landscape of ancient Israel and the place of the household within it.3 To be sure, the effort to retrieve any aspect of Israelite culture not central to the aims of the biblical compilers—or even antithetical to them—requires that one read against the grain of the text and enliven bits of evidence in ways that might seem speculative.4 Such efforts are worthwhile, however, as they convey a more accurate representation of the multiple sites of Israelite cultural production, central among which is the household. I am also building here on scholarly efforts to explore key biblical terms, the earlier and broader cultural associations of which lie buried beneath the surface of the text. The word tehom, for example, may contain a shadowy reference to Tiamat, a deity associated with ancient Near Eastern creation narratives (Sarna 1970: 22). The term yam in its earliest Semitic form was a reference to the sea and, in an undifferentiated way, to the sea god as well. Eventually, in the imagination of ancient Israel, the deity was forgotten and the term came to refer to the sea alone (Alter 2011: 14). Only a fine attunement to the literary qualities of the biblical text reveals the ways in which yam is animated by these earlier meanings. Similarly, names for God such as El, El-Shadai, and Elohim bear traces of Canaanite cultural associations and their corresponding polytheistic and feminine meanings. In the biblical context, however, they operate as designations for a single, male deity; these names evoke their earlier significations in only the subtlest of ways. In contrast to the scholarly efforts to identify the polytheistic prehistory of ancient Israel, however, my analysis here identifies the way in which the figures charged with the ongoing task of childrearing fell out of Israel’s formal canon. Nevertheless, the mother–child relation provided the terminology for a subject of concern to the biblical authors, namely, divine and human faithfulness. The mother became invisible while her metonym flourished as a designation for the abstract notion of fidelity. One more avenue must be explored in a discussion of the possible etymology of the root ’mn, namely, its relationship to the Hebrew word for craftsperson, oman. Philological analysis suggests that oman comes from the Akkadian ummânu, meaning financier, craftsman, artisan, expert, and scholar (Biggs 2010: 108–16; Köhler and Baumgartner 1994: 62). The Akkadian term, in turn, may derive from the Sumerian form um-mi-a, meaning master of a craft, though it is hard to determine in which language the term first appeared. In light of the great antiquity of both Akkadian and Sumerian, it is tempting to speculate that the Hebrew ’mn is somehow related to ummânu. The fact that oman is poorly attested as a designation for craftsman in the Bible, however, makes it highly unlikely that ummânu provided the source word for the common Hebrew term ’mn. There is

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only one clear attestation of oman as craft (S. of S. 7: 2); it would become a common designation for art only in later forms of Hebrew. Furthermore, Akkadian lacks the verbal root ’mn—making it even less likely to have served as the source language for ’mn and its cluster of meanings. A far more likely scenario is that oman was a loanword from the Akkadian and is unrelated to the Hebrew verb ’mn. Before abandoning this line of enquiry entirely, however, it is tempting to consider the possibility that somewhere in the Akkadian ummânu lies a similar, lost reference to the rearing of young children. After all, craft skills in the ancient world were transmitted from parent to child, and, in rarer instances, from master to apprentice (Cohen and Kedar 2011: 237). Instruction in craft skills required an extended period of custody and education that took place almost exclusively in the home (Cohen and Kedar 2011; Kedar 2014: 537–46). Interestingly, the term ummânu is resonant with the Sumerian and Akkadian terms for mother: ama, ummu(m). The Sumerian word for nurse is ummeda. It is possible that the word ummânu came to mean craft by virtue of the household context within which such skills were transmitted as well as the prolonged period of instruction that they required. The history of the term ummânu, however, is almost impossible to trace due to the lack of sufficient examples in both Akkadian and Sumerian. Despite our inability to produce a sound etymological connection between craft skills and childrearing in ancient Semitic languages, we do have one fascinating instance in which they display a functional equivalence: the laws that treat the case of a foundling in the Code of Hammurabi. The laws read as follows: 188: If a craftsman has taken a [child as] a son to rear and teaches him his craft, he shall not be reclaimed. 189: If he does not teach him his handicraft, that rearling shall return to his father’s house. (Biggs 2010: 111; Cohen and Kedar 2011: 237; Driver and Miles 1955: 75)

In these laws, childrearing and craft-training are treated as functional equivalents. A master craftsman secures parental rights by virtue of transmitting his trade to a foundling, in effect becoming the child’s legal father. These parental rights cannot be rescinded after the period of custody and training (Cohen and Kedar 2011: 238). In a manner of speaking, therefore, apprenticeship was a form of adoption in the ancient world. Or, put differently, instruction was a defining aspect of parenting. Like the example of ’mn above, however, parental instruction per se does not appear in the Code of Hammurabi. It surfaces only when transferred to a sphere outside the home and, notably, to a male teacher. Perhaps future studies of Sumerian and Akkadian languages will yield valuable insights into the ways in which the household provided the terminology for other aspects of formal education. For example, advanced students in the scribal school were

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called ‘big brothers’ and beginning students were called ‘sons of the tablet house’ (Kelly-Buccellati 2012: 207). This connection between childrearing and prolonged instruction in the Akkadian is similar to the way in which, in Hebrew, the maternal relation may have served as the primary social matrix from which the abstract concepts of constancy and faithfulness were derived. The maternal origins of the Hebrew word for faithfulness therefore provide a useful cipher for the exploration of etymological developments in other languages, suggesting the formative role of childrearing in the development of terminology that pertains to other, more public, spheres of human experience. My thesis—that the abstract sense of the Hebrew root ’mn has its origins in the process of childrearing—opens up new and rich possibilities for interpreting its manifold appearances throughout biblical and post-biblical literature. Attending to the maternal associations of the term allows for a more complete understanding of its meaning. Rather than engage in a close reading of its many attestations as a designation for ‘faithfulness’, however, I shall explore one of its most difficult and tantalizing occurrences: in the description of Wisdom in chapter 8 of the book of Proverbs. In this passage, the figure of Wisdom speaks of her origin with God: [22] The Lord created me at the beginning of his way, At the start of his works of old. [23] In the distant past I was formed, at the start of the first things of the earth. · · · · · · · [30] And I was near him, growing up [amon], And I was his delight day after day, Playing before him at all times, [31] Playing in the expanse of his earth, And my delight was with humankind. (Prov. 8: 22–31)5

While many aspects of this passage deserve comment, the penultimate verse, ‘And I was near him, growing up [amon]’, is most relevant to the present discussion.6 This verse depicts an intimate relationship between Wisdom and the Creator. The company she keeps with God is steady and playful. She is a source of delight as she traverses the expanse of God’s Earth and interacts with humankind. Who is this figure of Wisdom and what are we to make of her relationship with God? Is God her parent, friend, or even lover? What is the nature of this divine ‘delight’? The tenor of this relationship has confounded readers for millennia and the term amon figures prominently in efforts to comprehend this intimate interplay. Drawing on the resonance between amon and the biblical word for craftsman, oman, ancient translators argued that Wisdom here declares herself to be an active participant in the craftwork of creation. The Septuagint renders the term

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as ‘fitting together’, an ambiguous phrase that may allude to Wisdom’s role in arranging the material world (Cook 2009).7 The Vulgate offers a term of similar semantic range, componens, another possible reference to Wisdom’s role in the process of creation (Weber 1969: 964). These translations, as well as their corresponding cosmology, however, are out of place in the plain sense of the verse and entail an implicit emendation of the word as it is presently vocalized (Fox 2000: 286). Furthermore, as noted above, the association between ’mn and craftsman is poorly attested in biblical literature. Indeed, it is quite likely that the most common translations of amon in antiquity, namely, ‘uniting or fitting together’ and ‘craftsman’, derive not from the plain sense of the word but from the growing association between the biblical figure of Wisdom and the Logos of Hellenistic cosmology (Boyarin 2006: 128–30). The notion of the Logos as an instrument in the craftwork of creation was a fixture of Neoplatonic discussion and our verse in Proverbs became its clarion call.8 This doctrine, rather than careful etymological consideration, is the likely basis for these early translations of amon. By the early modern period these logocentric readings seem to have receded. Taking their cue from the parental imagery threaded throughout the passage, and drawing from the well-attested association between ’mn and the act of nursing a child, later translators suggested that amon refers to a nurse. The unusual vocalization of the word, however, as well as the unlikely possibility that Wisdom declares herself to be a nurse to God, prompted them to modify the term somewhat. The King James Bible translates the phrase as ‘Then I was by him, as one brought up with him’ (Prov. 8: 30). This translation evokes childrearing in a general sense; Wisdom, having been fashioned by God, persists alongside God in custodial companionship. The 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation offers ‘Then I was by Him, as a nursling’, which evokes childrearing in more concrete terms and alludes to God’s continued role in nourishing and caring for Wisdom.9 The translation ‘nursling’ also hints at the physical aspect of childrearing, perhaps alluding to breastfeeding, an element that is obscured in translations that refer to childrearing in a more generalized way. In the Anchor Bible translation and commentary, Michael Fox proposes: ‘And I was near him, growing up’ (2000: 264). Fox joins translators since those of the King James Bible who draw on the term’s association with childrearing. These translations resonate nicely with the parental themes in the passage. Indeed, a second term in the passage—the one used for ‘delight’ in verses 30 and 31, sha’ashu’im—further establishes the mood of parental intimacy. This term commonly appears in biblical accounts of parental affection, for example in Jeremiah as part of a description of God’s visceral attachment to Ephraim, God’s child of delight (yeled sha’ashu’im) (Jer. 31: 19; see a similar appearance in Isa. 5: 7). Sha’ashu’im also refers to the delight one takes in a child in the concluding chapter of Isaiah (66: 12), in which Jerusalem is depicted as a mother who suckles all those who have returned to her until they have been ‘satisfied by the comforts of

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her breast’ (Isa. 66: 11). This image is followed by the promise that God will bequeath the honour of the nations to the people and they will ‘suckle [of it]’, they will ‘be carried on the hip’, and will ‘delight [tisha’ashu] upon the knees’ (Isa. 66: 12). Here too, sha’ashu’im evokes the sensual delights of childcare, loosely associated with breastfeeding. The association between sha’ashu’im and the delights of childhood also appears in Isaiah’s famous portrait of peace in which the ‘nursling shall delight [shi’asha] at the viper’s hole’ (Isa. 11: 8). The term appears twice in our passage in Proverbs: God delights in Wisdom (Prov. 8: 30) and Wisdom takes similar delight in her audience, here as elsewhere depicted as children (Prov. 8: 31). Proverbs 8 therefore depicts God and Wisdom as sharing in sensual delights akin to those shared between parent and child. As noted above, most modern translators—no doubt struck by the scene of parental intimacy as well as the strong feminine voice of Wisdom herself—propose translations of amon that refer to childcare. Indeed, few ever consider the more common meaning of ’mn, namely, faithfulness or constancy (Fox 2000: 286; Mihâilâ 2013: 79; Waltke 2004: 420). In the following analysis, however, I would like to suggest that ‘constancy’ may be the most apt translation of amon. Let us examine the verse in Proverbs closely: [30] And I was near him, growing up [amon], And I was his delight day after day [yom yom], Playing before him at all times [bekhol et]

This verse contains three sections of increasing length. Each section is composed of two units. The first treats Wisdom’s relation to God; the second consists of an adverbial complement that describes the temporal aspect of this relation. This adverbial complement increases in length, from amon, the first and most abbreviated reference, to the lengthier yom yom, culminating in the longest phrase, bekhol et. The tripartite structure of the verse suggests that the term amon is equivalent to the other phrases that refer to the steadiness of the relationship between God and Wisdom. Thus, a better translation would be: [30] And I was near Him constantly, And I was his delight day after day, Playing before him at all times

This translation restores the parallel structure of the verse as well as its literary elegance. It also draws upon the most common meaning of the root ’mn: faithfulness or temporal constancy. Translations of amon that return to the meaning of childcare, in contrast, not only neglect the poetic structure of the verse, but minimize the figurative force that ’mn acquired in biblical Hebrew. The diligent efforts of translators to strip away the theologically motivated translations of earlier eras resulted in the hyper-literalization of a term that had undergone significant fig-

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urative expansion. Such translations collapse the process whereby childcare evolved into a reference to constancy more generally. It should be noted that the proposed translation of amon as ‘constantly’ does not exclude the association with childcare. On the contrary, the word was chosen precisely because of the way in which it echoes the parental themes in the passage. Amon fulfils two roles here: its plain signification is ‘constancy’, as dictated by the structure of the verse; at the same time, it evokes parental intimacy by virtue of its associated root meaning. We find a similar use of ’mn in Deuteronomy 32: 1–43, a poem in which parental imagery is summoned to narrate the vagaries of the relations between God and the people of Israel. God is depicted as a parent who threatens to hide his countenance from his ‘sons and daughters’, complaining that ‘They are a treacherous breed, not a faithful one [emun] among the children’ (32: 20). The plain meaning of emun as ‘faithful’ is established by the parallel structure of the verse. The parental metaphor that runs throughout the poem, in particular God’s threat to abandon his children, however, suggests a possible counter-reading of ‘there is no parent among them’. As in Proverbs, the structure of the poem dictates a plain meaning. At the same time, the word draws poetic force from its association with childcare and in this case produces an ironic, even tragic effect. God’s indictment of the people becomes their lament as they are abandoned (and thus ‘orphaned’) by God. In an essay on reading biblical literature, Alan Cooper extols the multivalent capacities of biblical Hebrew and cites the word amon in Proverbs as an example of a term whose real meaning cannot be determined and which must be understood in ‘several senses simultaneously’ (Cooper 1987: 74). I concur that the word amon displays an astounding variety of associations. I would argue, however, that the multivalent capacity of this term, along with many other Hebrew terms for that matter, does not require the negation of a plain meaning but can be coterminous with it. Cooper’s insight applies not only to difficult or ambiguous terms in the Bible but to the entire biblical text, as Hebrew words commonly host a wide range of intertextual and etymological associations. In the case of amon, a plain meaning does exist, one that is determined by the literary structure of the verse. At the same time, the word summons a host of associations by virtue of its relationship to nursing and childcare. The proposed translation of amon as ‘constantly’ is somewhat surprising in light of the fact that the overarching aim of this essay is to restore the association between ’mn and childrearing. My goal, however, is not only to recover the term’s maternal valence, but to suggest that the semantic sphere of the household informed the later and more common signification of ‘faithfulness’. The proposed etymological account does not claim that the early signification of ’mn is more correct or must claim primacy of place; the later meaning of ’mn indicates neither a corruption nor an advancement of the term. My claim here is that the

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etymological history of ’mn is one in which the concrete, socio-biological function of childrearing yielded the abstract term for faithfulness that became central to the Hebrew corpus. It is quite curious that most modern translators of our verse in Proverbs have rarely considered the more common meaning of ’mn in their translations. It could be argued, however, that modern readers inherited a notion of the inscrutable and enigmatic nature of the term amon even as they struggled to depart from earlier, logocentric readings. The centrality of amon in the cosmogonic speculation of late antiquity shrouded the term in mystery. The Greek-speaking Origen and the translator Jerome, as well as the authors of rabbinic Midrash, all read amon as a reference to the Logos and its role in creation; the unusual form of the word enabled these logocentric interpretations. I thus conclude with an examination of a rabbinic reading of amon, one that bequeathed to later readers a sense of its impenetrable nature and contributed to the further elision of its basic meaning. The opening midrash of Genesis Rabbah begins with our verse in Proverbs (8: 30). It is not surprising that the rabbis were drawn to this passage; it presents a view of creation that is at odds with the first account in Genesis. The creation story in Genesis 1 is populated by a single divine entity, Elohim, who is gendered only by the use of male pronouns and verbal conjugations. The staccato, almost ethereal account in Genesis is in tension with the passage in Proverbs in which the fem-inine voice of Wisdom narrates her beginnings as God’s companion before the ordering of the material world. Rather than shrink away from the unsettling dissonance between these narratives, the midrash relies upon philological echoes, especially the shared use of the signature word reshit, to integrate the two ac-counts and to yield a Neoplatonic conclusion. Playing upon the resonance be-tween oman and amon, the midrash concludes that Wisdom, or as the rabbis would call it, Torah, was the instrument of God in the craft of creation. In its climactic conclusion, the midrash states: ‘The Torah is saying [Prov. 8: 30]: “I was the craft-instrument [keli omunato] of God”’ (1: 1). This midrash raises many questions and warrants extensive analysis. For the purposes of this essay, however, I shall focus on its treatment of the term amon. Before arriving at the above reading of amon as craftsman, the midrash entertains a handful of other possible meanings of the term. The first to be considered is ‘pedagogue’, in support of which the midrash cites Moses’ complaint in the desert: ‘Was I pregnant with this people? Did I give birth to it, so that you might say to me: carry it in your bosom as a nurse [omen] carries a nursling, upon the land that you promised to their ancestors?’ (Num. 11: 12). The meaning of omen in this verse—the nurse of a young child—is made abundantly clear by the string of maternal images that surround it. Yet the midrash suggests ‘pedagogue’, eschewing the obvious meaning and substituting a more abstract, Greek term. The

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midrash then presents another possible meaning of amon as ‘covered’. The prooftext is a verse from Lamentations in which the tragic fate of the people is described in the following terms: children ‘reared [emunim] in silk’ now ‘cling to garbage piles’ (Lam. 4: 5). Here too, one suspects that the rabbis intentionally evade the plain meaning of the term—to be reared in or accustomed to silk—and instead propose the over-literal substitute of ‘covered’. Are we to assume that the rabbis did not comprehend the figurative function of ’mn in this passage? The next possible meaning of amon is ‘hidden’. This time, the prooftext is from the book of Esther: ‘And behold, Mordecai was omen et Hadassah, that is, Esther, the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother . . . upon the death of her father and her mother, Mordecai took her for his daughter’ (Esther 2: 7; see also 2: 20). Once again, the plain meaning of parental custody is clear. Yet here too the midrash posits an alternative meaning of ‘hidden’, a translation that is at odds with the plain sense of the verse. The midrash concludes with a final, possible meaning of amon: it may refer to the ancient metropolis of Amon, named in Nahum 3: 8. The consistent association between ’mn and childcare found in all but the final example cited above suggests that a larger rhetorical strategy is at play. This midrash includes some of the most explicit attestations of ’mn as childcare in the Bible. Indeed, elsewhere in Genesis Rabbah the midrash interprets the appearance of ’mn in the book of Esther to suggest that Mordecai grew breasts and nursed Esther (Genesis Rabbah 30: 8). Why does our midrash cite three references to childcare only to offer alternative, and, in the final example, near-absurd meanings for the word amon? I would like to suggest that although on the surface this midrash seems to engage in careful philological review of the root ’mn, we must consider another possibility, namely, that this midrash attempts to draw the reader away from the consistent, feminine valence of the term by positing a list of alternative possibilities. The final example of amon as an ancient metropolis confounds the word so entirely that by the conclusion of the midrash the word could mean anything at all. In other words, this midrash does not try to determine the plain meaning of ’mn but the very opposite—to empty it of any plain meaning and to establish its incomprehensibility. In particular, this midrash clears the term of its feminine associations so that, in its wake, a male Neoplatonic figure of the Logos—God’s instrument in the formation of the world—could emerge.10 The first translation of amon as ‘pedagogue’ initiates the transformation away from the maternal valence of the term; the final interpretation of ‘craftsman’ completes the pivot. Thus, the seemingly dutiful review of ’mn in fact serves to cloud its basic meaning so as to make room for an account of creation that is perhaps more radical than the one suggested in Proverbs itself, namely, that of the Torah/Logos as a necessary instrument in the craftwork of creation.

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Modern translators of amon, in an effort to depart from this type of logocentric interpretation, recovered the term’s feminine valence and its association with child-rearing. Despite their efforts to correct for the bias of early translators, however, they unwittingly retained something in common with them, namely, the notion of amon as difficult, mysterious, and indeterminate. What began as a late antique rhetorical strategy to embed a logocentric ideology in the passage left an imprint on all later readers of the Bible. The modern translation of amon as ‘nursling’, no doubt part of efforts to clear away the distortions that resulted from Neoplatonic impositions on the text, is itself a distortion resulting from the theological freight with which this passage has been burdened through the ages.

Conclusion The importance of childrearing in human civilization hardly requires argumentation. The relative absence of references to this aspect of human experience in biblical and rabbinic literature is also self-evident. This study has aimed to establish the ways in which the maternal act of childrearing nevertheless provided the concrete social referent from which the abstract notion of fidelity was derived. The recovery of the maternal function, however, also involves its disappearance, as the term ’mn acquired far greater visibility as an abstract reference to loyalty, applied most frequently and emblematically to male figures in the public context. Only close philological analysis indicates the ways in which the mother/nurse informed this general term. In other words, the discursive formation I examine here is characterized by a combination of presence and absence: the maternal figure has been recovered while we note her disappearance behind a metaphorical extension. Much has been written about the disappearance of the goddesses from the formal religion of ancient Israel; here I have treated another aspect of human experience that was relegated to the margins of Israelite literature, namely, childrearing and those charged with the task. The marginalization of the mother is perhaps more notable, however, since she no doubt continued to play a central role in the life of ancient Israel. I have recovered traces of the maternal figure in a key religious term despite her general disappearance from elite forms of literary expression.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people with whom I have explored these ideas over the years and who offered invaluable suggestions and critique: Rutie Adler, Mara Benjamin, Dianne Cohler-Esses, Tammy Jacobowitz, Seth L. Sanders, Naomi Seidman, and Karen Stern. Thank you to Joshua A. Nelson, John Hayes, and Niek Veldhuis for their consultations regarding the Greek, Akkadian, and Sumerian materials.

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Notes 1

It should be noted that Barr’s characterization of Torrance somewhat misses the mark. Torrance does not describe the maternal valence of ’mn as inferior, but praises the Hebrew term for capturing a critical component of divine virtue: steadfast care. He acknowledges that the Greek term for faith (pistis) contains an admirable emphasis upon the intellectual aspect of belief, but he criticizes the Greek term as inferior (Torrance 1956–7: 111).

2

Recent trends in the academic study of Jewish culture reflect a more positive valuation of materiality as a characteristic of the Hebrew language and Jewish culture generally. This new perspective on materiality was taken up most notably in Boyarin 1993. See also Seidman 2006. As Seidman notes, the concrete and material nature of the Hebrew language was embraced by figures such as Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig in their approach to the biblical text (see Buber and Rosenzweig 1994). On the Christian notion of the concrete and action-oriented nature of the Hebrew language, see Barr 1961: 85.

3

References to childrearing and household culture are rare in biblical literature, and one of the chief tasks of archaeologists of ancient Israel is to restore the household as a site of significant Israelite cultural production. On the ancient Israelite household, see Meyers 2013; Perdue, Blenkinsopp, Collins, et al. 1997, as well as the more recent work of Schloen 2001. See also Bodel and Olyan 2008 and Stager 1985.

4

Attempts to read biblical literature for social-historical realia are ongoing and diverse. They include the recovery of women’s history, as well as household culture and worship. The present volume is part of such efforts. See an earlier programmatic essay on this trend by Jo Ann Hackett (1987). Similar work has been undertaken with regard to rabbinic literature. For a beautiful description of the methodological quandary of such efforts, see Fonrobert 1999.

5

My translation reflects the many existing English translations of this passage. I have drawn significantly from Fox 2000: 264, as well as Alter 2010.

6

The term amon has received much attention in the scholarship due to its centrality in Christian biblical interpretation. A helpful survey can be found at the start of Mihâilâ 2013. See also Waltke 2004. Waltke directs readers to Scott 1960. Recent discussions of the term in its Hebrew context include Michael Fox’s overview in the Anchor Bible series, vol. 18a, Proverbs 1–9 (2000: 285–9). Alan Cooper (1987) discusses the term amon as part of a broader examination of biblical language and its ambiguities.

7

See the English translation offered in The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English, trans. Lancelot C. L. Brenton (1980). There it reads ‘suiting myself to Him’ and, in the notes, ‘arranging all things’.

8

The ancient Greek translator Aquila represents an interesting exception to this rule. He translated amon as ‘nurtured’, a rare instance of a Greek-speaking sage who parted from the more logocentric translations of his era and drew upon the term’s relationship to childrearing. In her work Faithful Renderings, Naomi Seidman argues that Aquila produced his rather clumsy, word-for-word translation as part of an effort to resist the allegorizing tendencies of other Greek translators. Amon would therefore serve as an excellent example of Aquila’s rejection of the more Hellenized readings of his contemporaries. See Seidman 2006: ch. 2. Mention of Aquila’s translation appears in Mihâilâ 2013: 78 and in Waltke 2004: 419.

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9

Consider that the 1985 Jewish Publication Society version altered the translation to read: ‘I was with Him as a confidant’, evoking an intimacy of a more indeterminate nature. Other recent translations have departed from the parental emphasis discussed here as well. Robert Alter offers ‘And I was by Him, an intimate’. In his notes, Alter states that the ‘winsome Lady Wisdom’ served as God’s ‘delightful and entertaining bosom companion’. Alter’s emphasis upon Wisdom as an adult companion to God departs from the parent– child dynamic emphasized in the present essay.

10

It is possible that the re-gendering of the figure of Wisdom to accommodate the masculine figure of Logos/Torah accounts for the resurfacing of Wisdom in medieval kabbalah as a (semi-)masculine divine potency despite its explicitly feminine characteristics in biblical literature.

References alter, robert. 2010. The Wisdom Books, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. New York. —— 2011. The Art of Biblical Narrative, 2nd edn. New York. barr, james. 1961. The Semantics of Biblical Language. Oxford. biggs, martha t., ed. 2010. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. xx. Chicago. bodel, john, and saul olyan, eds. 2008. Household and Family Religion in Antiquity. Oxford. boyarin, daniel. 1993. Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture. Berkeley, Calif. —— 2006. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia. brenton, lancelot c. l., trans. 1980. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. Grand Rapids, Mich. brown, francis, samuel r. driver, and charles a. briggs, eds. 1906. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford. buber, martin, and franz rosenzweig. 1994. Scripture and Translation, trans. Everett Fox and Lawrence Rosenwald. Bloomington, Ind. cohen, yoram, and sivan kedar . 2011. ‘Teacher–Student Relationships, Two Case Studies’. In Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, 229–47. Oxford. cook, johann . 2009. ‘Proverbs’. In Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, eds., A New English Translation of the Septuagint, 621–47. Oxford. cooper, alan. 1987. ‘On Reading the Bible Critically and Otherwise’. In Richard Elliot Freedman and H. G. M. Williamson, eds., The Future of Biblical Studies: The Hebrew Scriptures, 61–79. Atlanta, Ga. driver, g. r., and john c. miles , eds. 1955. Ancient Codes and Laws of the Near East: The Babylonian Laws. Oxford. fonrobert, charlotte elisheva. 1999. ‘Yalta’s Ruse: Resistance against Rabbinic Menstrual Authority in Talmudic Literature’. In Rahel R. Wasserfall, ed., Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law, 60–81. Waltham, Mass. fox, michael . 2000. Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Hartford, Conn.

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hackett, jo ann. 1987. ‘Women’s Studies and the Hebrew Bible’. In Richard Elliot Freedman and H. G. M. Williamson, eds., The Future of Biblical Studies: The Hebrew Scriptures, 141–64. Atlanta, Ga. jakobson, roman. 1962. Selected Writings, vol. i: Phonological Studies. The Hague. kedar, sivan. 2014. ‘Apprenticeship in the Neo-Babylonian Period: A Study of Bargaining Power’. In Lionel Marti, ed., La Famille dans le Proche-Orient ancien: Réalités, symbolismes, et images, 537–46. Winona Lake, Ind. kelly-buccellati, marilyn. 2012. ‘Apprenticeship and Learning from the Ancestors: The Case of Urkesh’. In Willeke Wendrich, ed., Archeology and Apprenticeship: Body Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice, 1–19. Tuscon, Ariz. köhler, ludwig, and walter baumgartner. 1994. The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 5 vols. Leiden. meyers, carol. 2013. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. Oxford. mihâilâ, alexandru. 2013. ‘Searching for Divine Wisdom: Proverbs 8: 22–31 in Its Interpretive Context’. In Nicholai Roddy, ed., Festschrift in Honor of Professor Paul Nadim Tarazi, 73–90. Bern. perdue, leo g., joseph blenkinsopp, john j. collins, and carol meyers. 1997. Families in Ancient Israel. Louisville, Ky. sarna, nahum. 1970. Understanding Genesis. New York. schloen, david . 2001. The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, Ind. scott, robert balgarnie young. 1960. ‘Wisdom in Creation: The ‘Amôn of Proverbs viii 30’. Vetus Testamentum, 10: 213–23. seidman, naomi. 2006. Faithful Renderings: Jewish–Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation. Chicago. stager, larry. 1985. ‘Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel’. Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, 260: 1–35. torrance, thomas. f. 1956–7. ‘One Aspect of the Biblical Conception of Faith’. Expository Times, 68: 111–14. waltke, bruce k. 2004. The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1–15. Grand Rapids, Mich. weber, r. 1969. Bibla Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem. Stuttgart. winnicott, donald w. 1964 (repr. 1987). The Child, the Family and the Outside World. Cambridge, Mass.

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Recasting Mothers

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Mothers and Ma’asim: Maternal Roles in Medieval Hebrew Tales elisheva baumgarten

O n c e u p o n a t i m e there were two brothers, one rich and the other poor. The poor man had sons and daughters and the rich brother had but one daughter. And the rich brother begrudged the poor brother the little he had and refused to do anything at all in the world to benefit him . . .

These lines introduce one of the longest stories in MS Oxford Bodleian Or. 135 (fo. 327b), a text known to scholars as Sefer hama’asim, which was copied in the early thirteenth century in northern France.1 Sefer hama’asim is one of the few collections of stories in Hebrew that have survived from medieval Ashkenaz (Kushelevsky 2017; Yassif 2004: 136–65). The sixty-seven stories in the collection combine retellings of ancient talmudic and midrashic tales alongside unique stories unknown in previous Hebrew sources. The collection acquired its name from the word ma’aseh, meaning ‘once’ or, literally, ‘it happened’, with which each story begins. Many of these tales, both those that are retellings and those that are unique to the manuscript, echo the themes and mores of medieval life and literature (Kushelevsky 2017). In this essay I analyse the depiction of mothers in three stories from this collection and point to some directions for future research (Baumgarten 2004; Grossman 2004: 123–32). While some of my conclusions concerning motherhood can be broadened and generalized as applying to women at large, I believe that the specificity of mothering merits separate consideration (Atkinson 1991: 144–93; Berkvam 1981). To some extent the role of mothers has been reduced to providing children, especially young children, with their needs. The portrayal of mother figures has also been romanticized, even idealized, but on the whole, the role of mothers as cultural actors has been ignored. In looking at these stories I consider the forms of agency attributed to mothers in the medieval Jewish imagination and the impact these understandings can have, not only on the way we read these medieval texts, but also on our conceptions of Jewish families and communities in the medieval world. At the outset it is important to note that the medieval Jewish cultural world in northern Europe is best known to us today through the texts penned by its male elite. These men were writing for their fellow scholars. For this reason, women’s

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roles and lives do not feature prominently in these writings (Baskin 1998: Baumgarten 2004, 2009; Grossman 2004). Stories such as those from Sefer hama’asim therefore provide an unusual point of access to this culture, as they were often recounted in sermons or at communal gatherings and as such may have been geared towards a somewhat different audience (Koopmans 2011: 9–27; Kushelevsky 2010: 12–20). Now let us turn back to the tale with which I began. As the story proceeds, a romance develops between the unnamed daughter of the rich brother and Isaac, the son of the poor brother. The drama unfolds as the young couple, who see each other daily, fall in love with one another. As pious and obedient children, however, they do not act on their mutual love—until Isaac’s rabbi becomes aware of their feelings and instructs Isaac to hug and kiss his beloved. The plot thickens as the rabbi then tells Isaac to sleep chastely by her side, and the rich uncle finds them in bed together: His rabbi said: Do what I command you and don’t desist. The boy went home and slept with her in her bed and took a sword and placed it between them and they lay together and slept until morning. And in the morning, the uncle arose and crossed the courtyard to relieve himself and he found them sleeping together with the sword between them as they slept. He took his robe and covered them and said: May it be the will of the God of Israel that your bed be complete and that no fault be found with you. He went to the courtyard and returned to his room and told his wife. And she was resentful of Isaac because she did not like him. And she said: Will he make a harlot of our daughter? [based on Gen. 34: 31] He said: If he intended to spoil her, he would not have placed a sword between them. But he did not because they love each other. His wife, however, had thought to give their daughter to her [own] brother, but he was ignorant and was not a scholar. (MS Oxford, fo. 327b)

This scene finds its parallels in a number of medieval texts including, as Rella Kushelevsky has demonstrated, the medieval story of Tristan and Isolde (Kushelevsky 2017) where they are found in a similar manner. These analogous stories would have been familiar to medieval audiences. I would like to focus, however, on the role played by the bride’s mother. According to the narrative, she had her own designs for her daughter—she wanted her to marry her own brother (and later in the plot, her nephew) and is unhappy with her husband’s matchmaking plans. Subsequently, Isaac awakens and sees his uncle’s cloak covering him and his beloved (compare BT San. 19b). Fearing his uncle’s rage, he flees: When they awoke, Isaac saw his uncle’s robe spread out over them and he cried out and said: What shall I do, because my uncle was here and saw us, and he said: Woe is me. I shall have to flee from him for he will kill me. Better I should drown myself in the river, and not wait for my uncle to come, because he must have gone to bring a sword to kill me, because he didn’t see the sword. What did he do? He arose and dressed and when he was dressed, he started to go down to the river to drown himself. And while he was running to the river, he encountered his mother. She said: My son, where are you run-

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ning to? He said: Mother, please leave me be. She said: I will not leave you be until you tell me where you are going. He told her everything that had happened. She said: My son, be not sad or troubled, because with God’s help I will save you. I will hide you until I know what your uncle is plotting, and until his anger is spent and he has forgotten what he wished to do to you. He went with his mother and did everything she told him, and she hid him . . . What did his mother do? She went to the rabbi and told him everything that had happened. And he said: My daughter, I was the cause of this and my intentions were to honour the heavens. Wait and I will speak to the uncle and perhaps he will give Isaac his daughter’s hand. She returned home and he went to speak to the uncle. (MS Oxford, fos. 327b–328a)

Although the role of the rabbi is central to the mediation that follows, we once again see a mother, this time Isaac’s mother, playing a key role in the plot. She encounters her son as he is about to commit suicide, perceptively asks the right questions, and goes to the rabbi to devise a contingency plan. Further, she has the authority to ensure that her son follows her instructions. Isaac’s mother serves as a foil to the girl’s antagonistic mother, who tries to prevent the union between the two lovers. The girl’s mother now takes the plot a stage further. The rabbi approaches the girl’s father to talk to him about Isaac and his love for his daughter: Why do you not marry off your daughter? She is old enough and has reached a marriageable age. He said: I know she is marriageable but I did not know to whom to give her. The rabbi said: Whom do you want to give her to? Why don’t you give her to your nephew Isaac, who is handsome and pleasant and a scholar and humble and modest and clever and wise, and better you should give her to him than to any other. He said: I know all these things, that they are true and correct and that he indeed has all the qualities as you say, and he is indeed pleasant and agreeable and I love him very much. But my wife does not want to give our daughter to him, she wants to give her to her [own] brother. The rabbi said: Her brother is ignorant and knows nothing of scholarship and Isaac is a Torah scholar and there is none wiser than him in the entire yeshiva. He said: If you so wish, send for my wife and we will see what she plans to do about this matter. He sent for her and she came to the rabbi and asked after his health. And the rabbi said: May you be blessed to God, my daughter. And he talked to her about the matter and she said that she wanted only to give her daughter to her brother. The rabbi said: Your brother is an ignoramus and he knows nothing of learning, and this one is exceedingly wise in the Torah. And it would be better to give her to Isaac your nephew than to any other. She said: If so then let us see how he is in business. I will give each of them, Isaac and my brother, one hundred dinars, and whoever earns more in a year’s time, to him will I give my daughter. And the rabbi and her husband agreed to do what she said. They departed from the rabbi and went to their house and gave each one of them one hundred dinars and each went on his own way. (MS Oxford, fo. 328a–b)

Thus the mother of the bride challenged both suitors, a common feature of medieval tales, in order to determine who would marry her daughter.

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This story continues by describing in great detail the quest, the (predictable) success of Isaac, and his return to the town just as the allotted year ends and the rival suitor is standing with his cherished bride under the h.upah. With an eye towards the role of mothers in this story, one sees that each mother plays a key role in these events: one saves Isaac from committing suicide and conspires with the rabbi; the other tries to prevent the marriage by setting up the terms of the lovers’ trial to win her daughter. The reader may wonder whether this tale is characteristic of marriage arrangements during the Middle Ages and if the roles the mothers play find any parallel in reality.2 It is worth focusing on the mothers’ involvement in its different forms. Although they are not the main protagonists, the amount of authority they wield is noteworthy. In contrast to stereotypical accounts in which fathers determine their children’s marriages with little consideration for the opinions of others (including the children themselves), in this tale both women are active and command significant respect and obedience. The girl’s father is not willing to make a decision without his wife’s agreement, although he accepts the rabbi’s judgement concerning the prospective grooms. Isaac’s father made the original agreement to ‘loan’ his son to his brother but he does not appear in the narrative beyond the opening scene. Instead it is Isaac’s mother who persuades him not to drown himself and goes with him to the rabbi. Both women are presented as strong figures who have the power to assert themselves over the men in their families and who can freely approach and contend with the rabbinic authorities. The girl’s mother is powerful enough to stand against the rabbi, her husband, her sister-in-law, and the young couple, and to set Isaac on a test to prove his worth. A look at the other stories in Sefer hama’asim yields further insight into the role of women, and especially the role of mothers. I will briefly discuss two of them. The story of the cistern and the weasel addresses the issue of marriage most pointedly, and also features a mother. The version in Sefer hama’asim follows the one found in Nathan b. Yehiel’s Sefer he’arukh, written in Italy in the eleventh century (iii: 395–6),3 and expands on a story told by Rashi and the Tosafists in their commentary on tractate Ta’anit (s.v. beh.uldah vebor, BT Ta’an. 8a).4 In this tale, a young woman on the way to her mother’s house falls into a cistern and is saved by a man who asks to marry her. They pledge their commitment to each other with the unusual witnesses of the heavens, the cistern, and a weasel that happens to pass by. The woman remains true to her promise, but the young man returns home and forgets his pledge. He marries another woman, with whom he has two sons. Both sons die a tragic death—the elder brother falls into a cistern and the younger one is bitten by a weasel. Their mother asks her husband why their children have met such dreadful fates: The wife said to the man: If the children had died in the way most people die, I would accept the judgement [of God]. But now that they have died in such a strange way, this is not for no reason. Tell me what have you done? He told her what had happened and she

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divorced him. And she said to him, go to the fate that God has destined you for. (MS Oxford, fos. 320b–321a)

In contrast to the first story examined above, the female character here is a mother, whose question alludes to a topic discussed in the Talmud concerning the appropriate response to the death of children. The Talmud recommends that parents, and especially mothers, not mourn excessively (BT MK 27b). The woman indicates in her remark that she is aware of this, and questions the exceptional circumstances of her children’s passing rather than God’s judgement (Baumgarten 2004: 165–9). She then divorces her husband, an action that is usually considered a male prerogative (Grossman 2004: 232–9). Indeed, the wording in Sefer hama’asim differs from that in Sefer he’arukh and in the Tosafists’ commentary on the Talmud, in which the man divorces his wife (s.v. beh.uldah vebor, BT Ta’an. 8a). This young mother, like the two in the first story, is depicted as strong and wise. She believes in God and responds in a pious manner to the loss of her children. Yet she is also wise enough to realize that the circumstances of their death carry a deeper message. Moreover, her character departs from female stereotypes in rabbinic literature, as she proves willing to divorce (BT Yev. 118a; Ket. 65b; Kid. 7a, 41a; BK 111a). Once again the mother is portrayed as a figure with agency and authority. The boundaries of patriarchy, while evident in some parts of the story, do not limit the active role she plays, a role that hardly surfaces in other known sources. It is also worth noting that none of these characters is a ‘bad mother’. Even the prospective bride’s mother in the first story, who plots against the man her daughter wants to marry, is not wicked. On the basis of these examples, it would seem that all mothers love their children and want what is best for them, even if their views at times clash with those of their children. Their motives, even when they err, do not stem from ‘unmotherly’ thoughts or intentions. A third story in Sefer hama’asim features a well-known mother in the Jewish collective consciousness: the Maccabean mother of the seven sons. Unlike her counterparts in the first two stories, she is also mentioned frequently in other medieval texts such as the Crusade chronicles (Baumgarten and Kushelevsky 2006; G. Cohen 1991: 51–4; J. Cohen 2004: 106–29). The medieval Ashkenazi version of the Maccabean mother, however, possesses agency and authority, much like the mothers discussed above. In that respect, she stands out when compared to non-Ashkenazi and pre-medieval portrayals of the same character (Baumgarten and Kushelevsky 2006; Sela 2009: 141–4). The story of the Maccabean mother and her seven sons killed by Antiochus appears in 2 and 4 Maccabees, as well as in the Talmud and in Lamentations Rabbah (2 Macc. 7; 4 Macc. 15–16; BT Git. 57b; Lam. Rab. 84–6).5 In the ancient texts, the mother, after seeing six of her seven sons killed, exhorts her youngest son to ignore her sorrow

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and to choose death and secure a place in heaven. In 2 Maccabees, each of the sons gives a small speech before death. In her own speech, which can be interpreted as part of the same pattern, the mother comforts the youngest son before his death. She offers, according to the narrator, ‘in the spirit of a man’ and ‘in the language of the fathers’, that she does not know how her children ‘entered her womb’, and acts with ‘man-like courage’ (2 Macc. 7: 20–3). She then dies after the last of her sons is killed. In Lamentations Rabbah, she appears in an epilogue and beseeches Abraham to come and see the sacrifice she has made. The story ends with an ironic quotation from Psalms: ‘the mother of the sons rejoices’ (Lam. Rab. 86). The Maccabean mother became a cultural role model in medieval Germany and northern France during the years following the First Crusade, when many Jews chose death over apostasy (J. Cohen 2004: 106–29). As a result, her story was told and retold during the Middle Ages, with many additions and elaborations. Medieval Jews fused the many versions of the story that appeared in earlier texts and ultimately reversed the meaning of the psalmic verse cited above. Instead of exhorting her sons in a manly spirit, the mother recalls the fact that she bore the children in pain, fed them and nursed them, and in her capacity as a mother, goes on to command them to die rather than convert (Baumgarten and Kushelevsky 2006; Bonfil 1996). In one medieval version of the story from Sefer yosipon, she says: ‘My son, forsake all this! For I bore you in my belly for nine months and nursed you for three years. And after I nursed you . . . I sustained you with food until this very day and taught you the fear of the Lord. And now, my son, look up to the heavens and see the earth and the sea with your brothers . . . Go, my son, and cleave onto your brothers, and may you enjoy the lot of their glory.’ (Sefer yosipon, ed. Flusser: 15, 60–7, 74; cf. Sefer yosipon, ed. Houminer: 19, 76; Bonfil 1996: 3–11)

In Sefer hama’asim, in contrast to earlier versions in which the mother and her sons share centre stage, she is presented as the main character of the story, which begins as follows: Once [ma’aseh] there was a woman who had seven sons. They were brought before the Caesar and the Caesar said to the eldest: ‘Worship idolatry’. He said: ‘No, I will not betray God for it says in our [texts] “I am the Lord, your God”.’ And he [Caesar] killed him. And he called each and every one of them, and each of them told him [Caesar] his verse. And he killed them all. And when he told the seventh son ‘Worship idolatry’, he said: ‘I would like to go receive counsel from my mother.’ And he [Caesar] said to him: ‘Go’. (MS Oxford, fo. 305a)

A striking feature of this account is that the mother opens the narrative, and the dialogues are shortened, turning her into the main protagonist. In that sense, it differs from versions from late antiquity, in which she and her sons receive an equal amount of space. This feature of the story in Sefer hama’asim becomes even

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more apparent when comparing it to contemporaneous versions of the story from the Genizah, in which the mother is hardly mentioned and does not engage in any dialogue (Sela 2009: 183–6). In Sefer hama’asim the mother persuades her son not to worship idols by warning him that if he does, all his brothers will go to heaven and sit near God while he will not be admitted into God’s presence. Subsequently, she commits suicide, but only after kissing all of her sons goodbye and turning to Abraham with the statement attributed to her in Lamentations Rabbah: ‘Do not be haughty, for you sacrificed one and I have sacrificed many’ (Lam. Rab. 86). The story concludes with an epilogue that threatens to punish all those who pray to the dead rather than to God and praises those who repent (Baumgarten and Kushelevsky 2006: 326–7). In Sefer hama’asim, the medieval authors who both copied and retold this story transformed it, emphasizing the role of the mother, her connection to her children, and her steadfast belief in God (Baumgarten 2009: 158–9). The three stories presented above are examples in which mothers play a central role. They are involved in marriage arrangements (in the first story), show a sensitivity to and understanding of divine messages (in the second story), or provide a prototype for martyrdom, willing to give up their own children so that they might go to heaven (in the third story). They are active players rather than passive presences. This seems to contradict the observations of Miri Rubin and Sara Lipton who, in their respective analyses of the portrayal of Jewish families in medieval Christian art and narrative, have argued that women in general, and Jewish mothers in particular, are depicted as characterless, often serving as secondary figures rather than as protagonists (Lipton 2008; Rubin 1998: 93–103). From this perspective it would seem that these Hebrew stories provide a unique angle on mothers that rarely emerges from sources examined to date. The stories from Sefer hama’asim portray active mothers, deeply involved in the lives of both their younger and, especially, their older children. Sefer hama’asim contains numerous examples of women, with and without a husband, in an active parental role. It is worth noting that the stories often depict the sons in relation to both father and mother, whereas earlier versions of the same stories include only the father. These examples contribute to a more detailed understanding of gender roles in medieval Jewish culture. Each of the stories examined above provides a glimpse into the social and cultural frameworks in which it was told; in our case, northern France in the thirteenth century. As a result, this study carries several implications for further research that I will outline below. The story of the Maccabean mother has been examined repeatedly in recent years. Scholars have suggested that she is a symbol of Ashkenazi attitudes towards martyrdom. She became a central figure in the Hanukah liturgy and even appears in a number of illustrations (MS Hamburg, fo. 79b; Sabar 1995). Together with Judith, she was considered a prototype of female courage (Gera

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2014: 11–25). Yet I suggest that an examination of the Sefer hama’asim version of this story can yield further fruitful insights into the subject. Her prominence in the narrative, combined with the reduction of the roles of the male protagonists, echoes the prominent role of women in the Crusade chronicles (Einbinder 2000; Goldin 2008: 75–7; Grossman 2004: 198–211). Scholars have debated the extent to which this prominence was reflective of women’s roles in everyday life within the Jewish community. The fact that this story was revised and reworked over the years leads one to assume that each version reflects a specific time and place; otherwise the copyist would not have deviated from the standard texts known to him and his readers (Kushelevsky 2010: 3–5). If the Maccabean story is read in the context of a particular historical setting as feeding into a central theme in Ashkenazi culture—kidush hashem (martyrdom in the name of sanctifying God) in times of persecution—the other two stories reflect on issues pertaining to daily life. They, as well as many other stories in Sefer hama’asim, offer insights into family matters and, more specifically, relationships between mothers and sons. In the first story, one mother is portrayed as a villain of sorts while the other prevents her son from committing suicide and approaches the rabbi on his behalf (see for comparison Blamires 1992). Both these mothers play an exceptionally active role in the plot. Many stories in Sefer hama’asim note the presence of a mother alongside the father, even when she is not an active character. This may be an indication of the centrality of the nuclear family unit in medieval Ashkenaz, a point that has been made repeatedly in scholarship on family history (Grossman 2004; Stow 1987). It also underlines the visibility of women in medieval Ashkenazi culture. Both are remarkable features of medieval Ashkenazi communities in comparison with their counterparts under Muslim rule (Goitein 1987; Krakowski 2012). More to the point, the mother who demands a divorce in the story of the weasel and the cistern raises numerous questions regarding women’s involvement in family negotiations, be they divorce or marriage. Although this story does not indicate how the matter was resolved, it does suggest that a revision of commonly claimed assumptions may be called for. Historians have argued that women could not be divorced against their will in medieval Ashkenaz, following R. Gershom Me’or Hagolah (Rabbenu Gershom, 960–1028). Yet this is not the same as claiming that they could demand a divorce (Falk 1966; Grossman 2004: 231–52; Westreich 1988; Yuval 1983). Although this story does not indicate how divorce was actually implemented, it joins numerous other sources, many of which are legal documents, in which women are seen as active protagonists demanding divorce. The most famous of these is R. Meir of Rothenburg’s declaration that women of his day were haughty and constantly ‘rebelling’ against their husbands by pursuing divorce (Meir of Rothenburg, Sefer she’elot uteshuvot: no. 946). While this was not the province of mothers specifically, many of the women who sought divorce were mothers and their motherhood impacted on

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their rights and freedom. Divorced mothers with young children faced monetary and social challenges that women without children did not, whether in their dayto-day attempts to support themselves or when seeking remarriage (Baumgarten 2004: 144–52; Ta-Shma 1988). Recent studies have used legal sources to emphasize the active role medieval Ashkenazi women played in issues relating to divorce. Previous scholars, in contrast, consistently relied on Jacob Katz’s presentation of the subject in his 1949 article in Zion, ‘Marriage and Sexual Life among the Jews at the Close of the Middle Ages’, and later in his classic work, Tradition and Crisis (1993). Katz described the creation of a marriage, a shidukh, as the parental prerogative. He stated: In our period, the Jewish family was created by an agreement between those considered the couple’s logical representatives—the parents or, if they were no longer among the living, the couple’s relatives or publicly appointed guardians. . . . As a rule, the couple had no voice whatsoever in formulating these terms. . . . First, each agreed to pay a heavy forfeit—usually half the dowry—for violating the contract. . . . The enormous degree of control that parents exerted over the match reflects the fact that the engaged parties themselves were expected to be young, lacking in experience, and unable to know their own minds. And indeed, marriage at as early an age as possible was typical of the era. This tendency stemmed, first, from the parents’ desire to settle their children’s future while they, the parents, were still alive. But beyond any personal and material concerns, we have here a reflection of the traditional religious and ethical norms regarding sexual activity. All sexual contact and erotic satisfaction was forbidden outside of monogamous marriage. The ideal of sexual purity applied equally to both men and women. (Katz 1993: 137–8)

Over the years this statement has been refined and reinterpreted. Although Katz emphasized the parental role in the matchmaking enterprise, most scholars have read this as the patriarchal prerogative. Avraham Grossman, for example, states that: The accepted norm in Jewish society, in both Muslim countries and in Christian Europe was for the parents to choose the partner for their children. Already the Babylonian geonim described it as ‘immodesty’ and ‘arrogance’ for the girl to involve herself in the choice of spouse against the wishes of her father, even if she is a mature woman twenty years old. (Grossman 2004: 55)

The automatic equation of the parental choice with the paternal one is evident in research on medieval marriage (Cohen and Horowitz 1990; Grossman 2004: 55–60). However, both stories in which the theme of marriage appears in Sefer hama’asim point to maternal involvement at all levels and to the importance of understanding the mother’s role as well as the agency of young women in the arrangement of their own marriage. The active role of mothers in particular and of women in general within stories such as those in Sefer hama’asim lead one to ponder the extent to which

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they depict the society in which they were written. I would argue that, although they are by no means direct reflections, these stories convey cultural mindsets and values. I have demonstrated this briefly by indicating parallels with other sources: the mother of seven sons appears frequently in medieval chronicles and liturgical texts; marriage and divorce feature in a wide variety of exegetical and legal writings. Perhaps finding such active mothers in these stories can provide the impetus for future research that will balance the portraits that emerge from Sefer hama’asim. Even if this broader search provides a more nuanced picture of medieval Jewish life, I would still suggest that the ma’asim are important both as a catalyst for further research and as an additional voice that bears evidence of the past. As fantastic as stories may be, folklorists have convincingly argued that one who tells a story must strike what Elliot Oring calls ‘a rhetoric of truth’ (Oring 2008; see also Bonfil 1993: 233–4; LeGoff 1988: 181–3). The mothers in Sefer hama’asim provide a portrait of Jewish mothers that is often missing from traditional sources written by and for men. It is striking that they are often mothers of adult children. In contrast to legal texts, in which women frequently appear as mothers of young children with special needs (Baumgarten 2004), they appear here as social actors in familial settings where their role goes beyond their reproductive abilities. This idea of the influence of mothers on the lives of their adult children is a feature of medieval life that is rarely studied. These mothers can and should also be compared to fathers in the same stories. The mother of the seven sons has no male partner, but the other two stories examined in this essay do feature mothers and fathers side by side. In both of them, it is the women who propel the plot forward and to a large extent determine the course of events, even when men also play a crucial role. If this agency reflects reality to any extent, then it has the potential of significantly changing the patriarchal-based narrative that has been used by scholars to date and refining our conception of medieval Ashkenazi culture. This society was, of course, a patriarchal one, but that is not the whole story, and our understanding needs to become far more nuanced. Comparisons between Sefer hama’asim and versions of those same stories as told in Jewish communities under Muslim rule provide further evidence of their cultural variants. For example, even the story of the Maccabean mother in the Arabic Yosipon (Sela 2009) highlights these cultural discrepancies: the mother is obliterated in the title and the story is simply that of the seven Maccabean sons (Baumgarten and Kushelevsky 2006: 312). In conclusion, I suggest that this essay is an example of how medieval texts can be mined in order to collect evidence to understand the role of the mother in medieval Jewish society. This research can open the door to a more accurate and detailed appreciation not only of motherhood and family life but of other aspects of medieval Jewish society as a whole.

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Notes 1

All translations from MS Oxford Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. Or. 135 are as cited in Rella Kushelevsky’s Tales in Context: Sefer ha-ma’asim in Medieval Northern France (2017). The research for this essay was supported by ISF grant 328/06. The author received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n. 681507).

2

When examining stories one must always reflect on their mimetic features. Let me emphasize that I am not arguing that the stories are an accurate reflection of reality. I am, however, questioning what can be learned from them about the customs and norms of the time.

3

This story has a fascinating Bedouin parallel. I thank my student Amnon Katz for pointing this out to me.

4

In the case of the Tosafist commentary, it postdates Sefer hama’asim (Urbach 1980: ii: 615–16).

5

References to Maccabees are to Schwartz 2008 (2 Maccabees) and Hartom 1958 (4 Maccabees).

References Primary Sources MS Hamburg, Staatsbibliothek, Heb. 37 (Jerusalem, Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts 26289). MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Or. 135 (1466) (Jerusalem, Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts 16385). Lamentations Rabbah, ed. Solomon Buber. Vilna, 1899. 2 Maccabees, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz. Berlin, 2008. 4 Maccabees (Heb.), ed. A. S. Hartom. Tel Aviv, 1958. Meir of Rothenburg (Maharam Rothenburg), Sefer she’elot uteshuvot maharam berabi barukh merotenburg [Responsa], ed. Moshe Blach. Budapest, 1895. Nathan ben Yehiel, Sefer arukh hashalem, ed. Alexander Kohut, 8 vols. Vienna, 1926. Sefer yosipon, ed. Haim Houminer. Jerusalem, 1955. Sefer yosipon, ed. David Flusser. Jerusalem, 1979. sela, shulamit, The Arabic Yosipon [Sefer yosifon ben gurion ha’aravi]. Tel Aviv, 2009.

Other Sources atkinson, clarissa . 1991. The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY. baskin, judith r. 1998. ‘Jewish Women in the Middle Ages’. In Judith R. Baskin, ed., Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, 101–27. Detroit. baumgarten, elisheva. 2004. Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe. Princeton. —— 2009. ‘Jewish Conceptions of Motherhood in Medieval Christian Europe: Dialogue and Difference’. Micrologus, 17: 149–65.

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baumgarten, elisheva, and rella kushelevsky. 2006. ‘From “The Mother and her Sons” to “The Mother of the Sons” in Medieval Ashkenaz’ (Heb.). Zion, 71: 301–42. berkvam, doris desclais. 1981. Enfance et maternité dans la littérature française des XIIème et XIIIème siècles. Paris. blamires, alcuin. 1992. Women Defamed and Women Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Oxford. bonfil, robert. 1993. ‘Can Medieval Storytelling Help Understanding Midrash? The Story of Paltiel: A Preliminary Study on History and Midrash’. In Michael Fishbane, ed., The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought and History, 228–54. Albany, NY. —— 1996. ‘Cultura ebraica e cultura cristiana in Italia meridionale’. In Robert Bonfil, Tra due mondi: cultura ebraica e cultura cristiana nel medioevo, 3–11. Naples. cohen, esther, and elliott horowitz. 1990. ‘In Search of the Sacred: Jews, Christians and Rituals of Marriage in the Later Middle Ages’. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 20: 225–50. cohen, gerson d. 1991.‘Hannah and Her Seven Sons in Hebrew Literature’. In id., Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures, 39–60. Philadelphia. cohen, jeremy . 2004. Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade. Philadelphia. einbinder. susan l. 2000. ‘Jewish Women Martyrs: Changing Models of Representation’. Exemplaria, 12: 105–27. falk, ze’ev w. 1966. Jewish Matrimonial Law in the Middle Ages. Oxford. gera, deborah levine. 2014. Judith. Berlin. goitein, shlomo dov. 1967–93. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. 6 vols. Berkeley, Calif. goldin, simcha. 2008. The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom, trans. Yigal Levin, ed. C. Michael Copeland. Turnhout. grossman, avraham . 2004. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in the Middle Ages, trans. Jonathan Chipman. Waltham, Mass. katz, jacob. 1949. ‘Marriage and Sexual Life among the Jews at the Close of the Middle Ages’ (Heb.). Zion, 10: 21–54. —— 1993. Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman. New York. koopmans, rachel. 2011. Wonderful to Relate: Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia. krakowski, eve. 2012. ‘Female Adolescence in the Cairo Geniza Documents’. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. kushelevsky, rella. 2010. Penalty and Temptation: Hebrew Tales in Ashkenaz: MS Parma 2295 (de-Rossi 563) [Sigufim ufituyim: hasipur ha’ivri be’ashkenaz al pi ketav yad parma 2295 (de rosi 563)]. Jerusalem. —— 2017. Tales in Context: Sefer ha-ma’asim in Medieval Northern France Detroit, Mich. le goff, jacques. 1988. ‘Social Realities and Ideological Codes in the Early Thirteenth

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Century: An Exemplum by James of Vitry’. In Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, 181–91. Chicago. lipton, sara. 2008. ‘Where Are the Gothic Jewish Women? On the Non-Iconography of the Jewess in the Cantigas de Santa Maria’. Jewish History, 22: 139–77. oring, elliott. 2008. ‘Legendary and the Rhetoric of Truth’. Journal of American Folklore, 121: 27–66. rubin, miri. 1999. Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. New Haven. sabar, shalom. 1995. ‘The Bravery of the Hasmoneans in Jewish Art in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance Period’ (Heb.). In Hanan Eshel and David Amit, eds., The Days of the Hasmonean Dynasty (Heb.), 277–90. Jerusalem. stow, kenneth r. 1987. ‘The Jewish Family in the Rhineland: Form and Function’. American Historical Review, 92: 1085–1110. ta-shma, israel m. 1988. ‘On the History of Polish Jewry in the Twelfth to Thirteenth Centuries’ (Heb.). Zion, 53: 347–69. urbach, ephraim elimelech. 1980. The Tosaphists: History, Writings, and Methods [Ba’alei hatosafot: toledoteihem, h.ibureihem, shitatam], 2 vols. Jerusalem. westreich, elimelech. 1988. ‘Polygamy and Compulsory Divorce of the Wife in the Decisions of the Rabbis of Ashkenaz in the 11th and 12th Centuries’ (Heb.). Bar Ilan Law Studies, 6: 118–64. yassif, eli. 2004. ‘Sefer hama’asim’ (Heb.). In Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Collection of Tales in the Middle Ages [Kovets hasipurim ha’ivri bimei habeinayim], 42–79. Tel Aviv. yuval, israel j. 1983. ‘An Appeal Against the Proliferation of Divorce in FifteenthCentury Germany’ (Heb.). Zion, 48: 177–216.

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On Teachers, Rabbinic and Maternal mara h. benjamin

In the wake of dislocation and upheaval, the Sages of classical Judaism undertook an ambitious project of cultural production that centred on the reformulation of Torah within a new discipleship community. The relationship between master and disciple, teacher and student, became a critical context for rabbinic creativity and, as such, was a site of considerable cultural investment. The master and disciple, bound by their mutual devotion to explicating Torah, formed a relationship that would mediate and reinvent the teachings of the elders for the current and future community of rabbinic Jews. The magnitude of this relationship for the rabbinic project is evident in parental metaphors that recur throughout rabbinic literature describing the connection between master and disciple. Buttressing this extravagant language are the many explicit early rabbinic traditions asserting the sage’s role to be equivalent to or even greater than that of the social (that is, the familial or biological) parent. Feminist attention to gender and embodiment has led a number of scholars to attend to the engenderment of this construct of master and disciple, and to examine in particular the rabbis’ mobilization of metaphorical ‘parenthood’ from the perspective of the male community of Sages (Boyarin 1993; Eilberg-Schwartz 1994). In this essay, I focus on the other side of that metaphor. I investigate the implications of the rabbis’ appropriation of maternal and paternal language for actual parents and for non-metaphorical parenthood. I argue that the rabbis’ construction of the master–student relationship in terms equivalent to the father– son relationship yields a problematic legacy for the conception of parenthood in Jewish discourse, one that marginalizes the very bond it appropriates. Yet this construction of ‘parenthood’ as constituted by teaching Torah also contains enormous potential for the task of rendering parenthood both visible and valued within a Jewish framework. Here I retrieve the possibilities latent within the rabbinic insistence on teaching-as-parenting by turning the rabbinic metaphor on its head: rather than the rabbinic master as metaphorical parent, I propose we imagine the parent who is engaged in routine acts of care and childrearing as the metaphorical sage. Likewise, in contrast with the ritual and intellectual understanding of Torah espoused in rabbinic texts, I posit an expansive meaning of

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‘Torah’ that is grasped and transmitted in the quotidian work of caring for young children. To make such an assertion is to claim that the repetitive, daily tasks of child-rearing constitute a kind of teaching that undergirds, and perhaps even constitutes, the transmission of Torah. In my constructive proposal, I use the gender-neutral or gender-inclusive term ‘parents’ to speak about the potential participants in relationships of daily care and teaching. But such a term does not suit the highly gendered rabbinic texts that I treat below, nor does it do justice to the fact that, for centuries, this kind of work was (and largely remains, even in the United States) the domain of women.1 Thus I speak primarily of ‘maternal teaching’ and ‘maternal work’. I do not use this language prescriptively, nor do I wish to reinscribe women’s relegation to the role of ‘primary’ childcare provider. Instead, I wish to revalue and examine a possible meaning of the daily care for children in which, in general, mothers and not fathers, or at least women and not men, have engaged. I will suggest that a full encounter with Torah, for men and women, can best be achieved by means of relationships of response and responsibility, the paradigmatic embodiment of which occurs in quotidian parental care. As such, this caregiving work should be reintegrated into the very meaning of Torah itself. This endeavour participates in the ongoing effort among feminists to continue to transform Judaism’s patriarchal foundations and so create new possibilities for a humane and inclusive future. It is striking that the key theological texts of Jewish feminism (Adler 1998; Plaskow 1991), which made possible the scholarly attention to gender in rabbinic culture on which I build, have largely ignored maternal questions. I seek to introduce the maternal as a question for Jewish feminist thought. I build on this intellectual movement to document the parallel and intersecting traditions of women and other non-elite groups that have always existed alongside normative Judaism as transmitted by authorized figures (Boustan, Kosansky, and Rustow 2011; Sered 1992; Weissler 1998). As Sered has argued, the authority of texts in normative Judaism means that ‘the anthropology of Jewish women is the anthropology of women who stand in relationship of some sort (worshipful, antagonistic, creative) to Jewish texts. The anthropological challenge, as I see it, is to explore the nature of that relationship’ (Sered 1995: 216). The challenge Sered has articulated belongs no less to the realm of Jewish theology and thought than it does to the realm of anthropology. Here I neither dispense with traditional Jewish texts and thought nor seek simply to expand the androcentric tradition by giving it an egalitarian gloss for contemporary practitioners. Rather, I locate maternity as an area of experience through which traditional religious practices can be redefined . To do so, I critically examine and creatively reconstruct the textual traditions of normative Judaism, drawing on a

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hermeneutics of suspicion and of retrieval. My hope is that this double move will enable a ubiquitous but marginalized element of human experience to become available as a religiously relevant site. Classical Judaism, in which later Jewish tradition located the sources for its normative practices, placed at its centre the figure of the teacher or sage (rabbi, h.akham), the disciple, and the mutually binding activity of Torah study. While most contemporary scholars now recognize that the Sages were a politically marginal group with limited influence and little power in late antiquity (Schwartz 2001), their traditions nonetheless articulated the cultural logic of Torah study in powerful ways for later Jewish cultures. Increasingly, scholars understand the practices of the Sages, particularly in the influential Babylonian community, as those of a semi- (or aspirationally) ascetic, homosocial discipleship community that stood in tension with women and the familial and worldly responsibilities marriage signified (Boyarin 1993; Diamond 2004; Fraade 1986; Satlow 2003; Schofer 2004). This tension emerged, in part, by virtue of the construction of the rabbinic circle as what Martin Jaffee has called ‘a reconstruction of the parent–child relationship in a non-familial instructional setting’. In such a discipleship community, ‘Teachers are not biologically the mothers or fathers, the grandparents, uncles, or aunts of their pupils, and they do not normally relate to their pupils as kin. But in a system of discipleship the teacher bears for each student a responsibility appropriate to that of kin—particularly the father or mother—or even replac[es] it.’ This attempt to replace the pupil’s social and familial upbringing intended to help disciples ‘repattern’ their habits of mind and action: ‘whereas the child is formed through emulation of the adult kin, the disciple’s task of emulation involves absorbing the teaching of a master in such a way as to embody the master’s own human achievement’. In the context of rabbinic Judaism, Jaffee argues, face-to-face transmission and mimetic learning were the ways in which the promise of ‘Torah in the mouth’ was to be realized. When successful, ‘the Rabbinic Sage was Torah transformed into an embodied form of human being’ (Jaffee 1997: 530, 541). The rabbis’ insistent use of paternal and parental metaphors to describe the relationship between sage and disciple testifies to this idea of the community of teachers and learners as the locus of proper socialization. Throughout tannaitic and amoraic literature, we find the claim that the master is the ‘true’ parent of the disciple. The ‘natural’ father merely gives the raw material for life, whereas the master gives this creation its form and brings it to its ultimate purpose: Torah. In keeping with this ethos, the Sages utilize the appearances of ‘father’ and ‘son’ in the biblical text as locutions for the rabbinic master and his disciple. To choose but one example from Sifrei on Deuteronomy (‘Va’eth.anan’ 34): ‘Your children’ [Deut. 11: 19]: these are your pupils. And thus you find that pupils are always called sons, as it says, ‘And the sons of the prophets that were in the house went

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out to Elisha’ [2 Kgs 2: 3]. Were these the prophets’ sons? [No!] They were their pupils! From this we know that pupils are called sons. . . . and just as pupils are called ‘sons’, so the master is called ‘father’.2

When the biblical text speaks of ‘children’ (or, perhaps, only of sons, beneikhem), the Sifrei insists that it is referring to students, a pattern that recurs throughout this midrashic interpretation of Deuteronomy (Fraade 1991: 77). Such a text exerts virtually no exegetical effort to claim that the biblical text ‘really’ speaks about the sage and his disciple rather than about children and fathers; so too with many other midrashic transformations, whereby biblical bloodlines become lines of metaphorical, that is, spiritual or intellectual, ‘kinship’.3 The dominant metaphor in such texts is that of the father. Yet at times the Sages also lay claim to metaphorical motherhood, as in Tosefta Horayot 2: 7: ‘He who teaches his fellow Mishnah is considered to have conceived him, formed [rokmo] him, and brought him into the world.’ The master of Torah lays claim to quintessentially maternal activities, evoking the physical dimension of ‘knitting together’ the foetus in the womb along with giving birth, in a discipleship community that systematically excluded actual women.4 Likewise, Song of Songs Rabbah (on S. of S. 4: 5, ‘Your breasts are like two fawns | Twins of a gazelle, browsing among the lilies’) reads: Just as these breasts are the splendour and glory of a woman, so too Moses and Aaron are the splendour and glory of Israel . . . Just as these breasts are full of milk, Moses and Aaron fill Israel with Torah. And just as with these breasts, all that a woman eats, the baby eats and nurses from them, so too all of the Torah that Moses learned he taught to Aaron. This is what is meant by ‘Moses told Aaron all of the words of God’. (Exod. 4: 28)

Women’s breasts, beautiful and life-sustaining, capable of a unique alchemy by which ordinary food is transmuted into nurturing milk, serve here as a metaphor for Torah and its transmission to the people of Israel. For the rabbis who produced such an image, the homosocial beit midrash held just such a dual capacity: pulsing with eros and sustaining culture and life in the face of exile and dispersion.5 Such a privileging of metaphorical fatherhood and motherhood over social or biological parenthood occurs in a wide variety of cultures and literatures. Most familiar from philosophical discourse is the figure of the man, in Plato’s Symposium, whose soul is divine and who therefore gives birth to immortal beauty. ‘Everyone’, Diotima declaims, ‘would prefer to have children like that rather than human ones’ (Plato 2003: 209d). The male philosopher (or, in some later incarnations, artist) is the creator whose intellectual generativity surpasses women’s merely physical generativity. As Rachel Bowlby writes of this trope of metaphorical offspring, ‘what is desirable is a form of parenthood that exceeds—and thereby demotes—the physical reproduction of ordinary mortals. The creative person generates babies that are so much better than the ones that appear in everyday

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life; but babies is what he (or she) generates, and a parent, intellectual rather than bodily, is what the maker is, in relation to his or her creative productions’ (Bowlby 2013: 11–12). In the rabbinic context, this trope finds expression in a wide range of texts, in which, Boyarin asserts, ‘the production of spiritual children, those who will follow in the moral and religious ways of the parent, is claimed . . . as more important than the production of biological children’ (Boyarin 1993: 217). As powerful as this trope is in Western thought, the rabbinic construct differs from the Platonic example in one key respect: the ‘children’ to which the rabbinic sage lays parental claim are not ideas but actual people; they are students of the Sages. Plato’s Socrates can essentially dispense with the biological or social family: a child, after all, can never be transformed into an idea. By contrast, the rabbinic sage will constantly engage the family—the familial son will always be a potential talmid in the rabbinic circle. The Sages’ constructions of their own communities of scholars were, by and large, only symbolically distinct; practically, they lived, met with each other, and conversed within normal families, spaces, and communities even as they counselled symbolic separation from familial life and the porous, vulnerable body (Baker 2002; Hezser 1997; Schofer 2010; Sivertsev 2005). Likewise, they did not posit that cultural reproduction could entirely displace biological reproduction; rather, each was to exist alongside the other, and the former would serve as the telos of the latter (Alexander 2013: 185; Schofer 2004: 83). The rabbinic sage, standing in relative proximity to the social parent, would thus necessarily compete with him for the title of ‘father’. The language of metaphorical fatherhood for the rabbinic master could thus produce only a pale rendering of actual fatherhood and barely a sketch of motherhood. In their haste to replace him with the rabbinic sage, the Sages circumvented the familial father. Rather than elevating the prestige of the father and the birth-giving mother, the construct in fact diminishes, even undermines, the familial parents.6 The father would be judged successful only to the extent that he could replicate or mimic the sage’s identity within the family. The complementary cultural construct of the rabbinic sage as father, then, is the construct of the lay paterfamilias as would-be sage, the father who will ritually teach his sons Torah so as to mimetically reproduce the Torah learning of the sage with his disciples. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander argues that the locus classicus for the talmudic delineation of paternal responsibility should be read as an endeavour to make some aspects of the Sages’ practice available to laymen. Tosefta Kidushin 1: 11 states: Our Rabbis taught: A father is obligated to his son [ha’av h.ayav bivno]: to circumcise him, to redeem him [if he is a firstborn], to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a craft.7

This Tosefta forms the basis for the amoraic discussion of a father’s obligations

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towards his son (BT Kid. 29a), presenting, in the order of a boy’s developmental stages, the paternal tasks necessary to ensure the son’s participation in and replication of the covenantal community. Alternatively, this delineation of the father’s responsibility to his son centres on the cultivation of the social, intellectual, and economic skills the son would need in order for the covenantal community to replicate itself. In either case, the gender-specificity of this text cannot be erased: it concerns fathers, not parents, and sons, not children. Alexander argues that the gender economy of this text reveals a broader vision in which the teaching of Torah in a lay context is constructed as a means for the lay paterfamilias to replicate the (male) sage and his community (Alexander 2013: 184–8). Beyond the significant consequences for women encoded in this text, the major implication of the rabbinic claim to the role of spiritual, intellectual, and cultural paternity is that social, familial fatherhood is best accomplished when it consists in the work of teaching one’s own child Torah. Thus fathers have a limited visibility in these texts; they provide the raw material for a child’s conception and then train their sons in the ways of Torah, the premier example of which is teaching, or inculcating, Torah itself (Margalit 2004). Any further aspect of ‘fatherhood’ is evacuated and replaced with a pedagogical meaning, such that to be a father is to be, ideally, a teacher of Torah. The construction of paternity as exemplified by teaching sons Torah is, thus, the complement of the claim of the sage as father. Taken together, these two constructs produce the critical homology between ‘fathering’ and ‘teaching’ that Blidstein (1975) describes as an axiological structure in rabbinic texts. Fathers are legible only as (and to the extent that they are) teachers of Torah, inculcators of children into a cultural system. The intellectual, textual, and practical legacy of this conceptual world is as problematic for mothers as it is for fathers. The Talmud contains nothing comparable to the list of paternal obligations in BT Kidushin 29a for the mother. Even the most quintessential of the biological mother’s roles—breastfeeding her child—is explicitly named as a woman’s obligation to her husband, not to her child (Mishnah Ket. 5: 5; see also Baumgarten 2007: 119–54). Neither do we find a comparable normative statement on what daughters should be given or taught by parents of either gender. The system of parents and children here is a male economy of fathers and sons, in which the only truly visible bayit (home) is the symbolic one, that is, the beit midrash. Moreover, the particular social roles and responsibilities of rabbinic culture yield, in BT Kidushin 29a, a limited sense of the specific kind of teaching that is visible in its construction of the halakhic obligations of fathering. Teaching here is visible only insofar as it is directly linked to and responsible for a culturally valued activity: knowledge of Torah. As Natan Margalit argues, this text ‘is not interested in the day-to-day nurturing, the feeding and clothing of the child, but, rather, it is concerned with what Lawrence Hoffman has labelled the “covenantal obligations”’ (Margalit 2004: 310, quoting Hoffman 1996: 80–1). Absent are

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the repetitive, daily labours of childrearing, of raising a child from infancy to the point at which he can be schooled and taught Torah, married off, or trained in a trade. That is, the text of BT Kidushin 29a imagines a boy who has already been born, cared for, and sustained in the variety of material ways necessary for the culturally valued activities of Torah, marriage, and work to be eventually available to him as an adult. It does not imagine the woman or women who have gestated, fed, and cared for him—nor, of course, the daughter, who will never be formally accepted into the covenantal community.8 A short discussion in BT Sukah 28b exemplifies this rabbinic occlusion of maternal work precisely by gesturing briefly towards it. Mishnah Sukah 2: 8 speaks of ‘a minor [katan] who does not need his mother’ as being obligated in the mitsvah of sukkah. The discussion in the gemara reads as follows: A minor who does not need his mother, etc. . . . The school of R. Jannai says, One whose mother does not have to wipe him when he relieves himself. R. Simeon says: One who, when sleeping does not [awake] call[ing] his mother. But do not older children also call their mother? Rather, one who awakes from his sleep and does not call ‘Mommy! Mommy!’

The charm of this text lies in its evocation, across so many hundreds of years, of the daily, familiar, and at times tedious duties of childcare. The editors of this text recognize and mention these moments, but then quickly dispense with them in order to concentrate on the halakhic issue at hand: the point at which a minor male child becomes obligated to dwell in the sukkah. Maternal activity, the daily care of young children, is assumed, but remains in the background; paternal activity is commanded, and thus enjoys a religious imprimatur—but only, as I have suggested above, to the extent that it produces a new member of the community of sages. In this literature, and the practices to which it is linked, women are clearly expected to perform much of the cleaning, soothing, feeding, and other duties that comprise the bulk of childrearing. But these ‘maternal’ obligations, when they are visible within the rabbinic corpus at all, are—as with breastfeeding—conceived as duties to the male head of house. The line between mother and child cannot be drawn directly, for rabbinic texts cannot conceive of mothers directly participating in the economy of cultural transmission. Only men, not women, are teachers; fathers are ‘fathers’ only insofar as they are ‘teachers’; and only the rabbinic ideal of Torah, not what Adrienne Rich called ‘the small, routine chores of socializing a human being’ (1986: 33), is the stuff of teaching.9 The limitations of the rabbinic constructs of the father as teacher and the teacher as ‘father’ (and ‘mother’) are clear: the rabbis defined fatherhood narrowly, as the ritual teaching of Torah and the discharging of covenantal duties associated with upholding the community of rabbis; and Sages engage in ‘fatherly’ relationships with disciples only in this metaphorical and narrow sense.

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Other parental work—gestation and feeding, nose-wiping and tear-drying—is not conceptualized as religiously or culturally meaningful. The work of childrearing typically associated with female actors is absent from normative descriptions of parental responsibility, except through metaphorical appropriations. Certainly, none of the texts we have encountered could imagine the daily, repetitive work of caring for a small child as teaching at all, let alone as the teaching of Torah. Let me now reverse the foreground and background in this discourse. What happens if, rather than seeing the father as mimicking the Sages in a discipleship relationship with his sons, we include mothers, and see both parents, with all the varied skills they possess, as teachers? Can we imagine the mother as the master, and what she teaches as not only Torah in the narrow sense, conceived as a discrete ritual or intellectual activity, but rather in its broadest sense, as a capacious body of knowledge that children absorb? Could this latter, expansive sense of what the maternal sage teaches be called Torah? These are the possibilities to which I now turn. Maternal work at its most basic involves substantive social and dispositional, cultural, intellectual, and existential teaching. It is, more often than not, implicit rather than explicit, the work of modelling rather than of verbal instruction. It involves a host of skills: how to tie one’s shoes or blow one’s nose, interact with others, recover from disappointment, know what is worthy in life, in what ways the world can be trusted, and so on. This is not to say that an infant comes into the world a tabula rasa, but rather that hospitable circumstances permit its inherent capabilities to flourish. While we debate endlessly about how learning is best accomplished and what constitutes successful learning, it is clear that from the moment we are born we gain experience of the world, and our innate capacities are thereby transformed into reliable knowledge and skills. It is not only, or initially, the world at large that is our primary ‘teacher’. Rather, it is a small number of other figures who accompany us on this journey—for longer or shorter periods, and with greater or lesser patience, skill, and interest in guiding us. In many cultures and for many centuries, this is what has defined mothering, the quotidian, repetitive work that mediates the world during the formative years of life: wiping bottoms and answering insistent cries in the middle of the night. This labour is not usually thought of as ‘teaching’ per se. But viewing mundane childrearing tasks through this lens allows us to understand a fundamental aspect of human society and to see the vital role it plays in Jewish religious life. Describing maternal caregiving as teaching in its broadest sense requires us to acknowledge that the actors who perform these tasks are teachers, and to relinquish the intellectual habit of reducing such activities to ‘maternal instinct’. Feeding an infant, to take one example, cannot be fully comprehended if it is seen merely as an evolutionarily determined, instinctual means to ensure the child’s continued survival and growth. It is an activity that inextricably teaches the fact of responsive presence, and the primary experiences of hunger and satiety. This

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form of instruction is not merely preparatory, to be surpassed by more ‘mature’ lessons, but rather forms the entire substructure of the interior world each of us inhabits thereafter (Traina 2011). It is a matter of teaching an infant how to be a human being. The responsibility for teaching these lessons has been, for centuries, that of mothers. It begins in embodied intimacy, in a sustained attention to the physical body of the child. The language of the body is each person’s first language: years before the mouth can utter words, the body speaks a more primal language, composed of tears, grunts, movements, sensitive spots, gurgles, softness, smells, warm skin, raised or drooping eyelids. As infants, we depend on being met by someone who can decode it and answer back in this language: with skin, cooing, sing-song, an open gaze. To become a teacher in this language, long forgotten or buried by the time one reaches adulthood, is also to become a learner, aware of the body’s power and its precedence over all other kinds of experience of the world. The physical intimacy that is the most elemental substance of maternal teaching engenders a deep knowledge, a familiarity that is not mastery but rather the constant surprise of difference and strangeness within the familiar. Out of palpable closeness comes the possibility of recognizing the subtle but sudden change in gait or expression or shape of the face, that is, of noticing the gap between expectation and present reality.10 The daily fare of maternal struggle is being caught in between a deep familiarity and a deep division between child and parent. The fantasy embedded in the concept of ‘reproduction’—that a child replicates the parent; that it is a ‘product’ identical in kind to its progenitor—does not admit the knowledge that children come into the world not as miniature versions of the parents, nor as the simple result of genetically determined factors, but as unique humans. They are neither empty slates nor an unformed mass of clay waiting to be shaped. Maternal teaching faces, gladly or not, the otherness of the child. The daily duties of the mother demand a different attitude towards one’s child from those put forward in rabbinic discourse, which aims for the cultivation and replication of the figure of the sage. The rabbis’ appropriation of familial language adapted the authority the priesthood once enjoyed to a new social form. Boyarin argues: The signifier of biological filiation has a strong anchoring in the values of the culture. As such, the rabbinic mantle should have passed from father to son, as does the crown of priesthood. But it doesn’t, at least not in any straightforward way. On the one hand, the Rabbis have created a sort of meritocracy to replace the religious aristocracy that the Bible ordains. Filiation is no longer from father to son but from teacher to disciple . . . But the desire that genetic replicability be homologous with pedagogical replicability persists. (Boyarin 1993: 208)

The rabbis were caught, in this account, in the tension between their ‘desire on the one hand to pass on the mantle of Torah from father to son and the anxiety

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that, in a profound sense, people do not reproduce each other’ (Boyarin 1993: 208, 210–11). Paradoxically, perhaps, the context of intimate familiarity and involvement with one’s child makes clear the great extent to which ‘genetic replicability’ is a fantasy. As Boyarin has demonstrated, ‘paternity’ (biological or intellectual) serves as rabbinic shorthand for identity and replicability. But the actual work of attending to one’s children constantly demands confrontation with the unexpected and unfamiliar in a creature one may have anticipated would be the familiar ‘product’ of the self. The task of biological parents is to surrender the fantasy that their children are extensions of themselves.11 Thus, to the extent that the rabbinic ambition of replicability is modelled on biological paternity, it is an ambition grounded in a fantasy that the daily work of childrearing erodes. Against this paternal conception of teaching as simply transmitting or replicating what has come before, I argue that maternal teaching acknowledges a child’s temperament, abilities, and disposition as unpredictable and unique. Recognition of this otherness means a reorientation of what we understand teaching to be. Rather than conceiving of it as primarily concerned with inculcating norms or values, the maternal instruction I propose tolerates (and perhaps occasionally embraces) the difference between the (adult) self and the (young) other. Hence parents’ success as teachers depends on the degree to which they recognize the impossibility and ultimate undesirability of shaping the child, or the student, in their own image. It accepts the constant erosion and reconstitution of the very self who is the teacher.12 Adrienne Rich thus argues: Most of the literature of infant care and psychology has assumed that the process toward individuation is essentially the child’s drama, played out against and with a parent or parents who are, for better or worse, givens. Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother, one of those givens, when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself. (Rich 1986: 17; emphasis added)

Paradoxically, it is precisely the parent’s openness to being taught by the work of parenting that renders childrearing perhaps the most intimate form of instruction. A practice in which teaching does not demand detachment from but rather embrace of the body; in which the pupil retains her otherness and does not need to become a replica of the instructor; in which the teacher herself is destabilized and reconstituted—can this be thought of as ‘Torah’? In this final section, I use a hermeneutics of retrieval to suggest how some of these possibilities can be wrested from an androcentric tradition. I do not claim to recover a forgotten or suppressed consciousness of Jewish women’s experience from centuries past; the scarcity of women’s writings and the participation of those writings that do exist in the structures of androcentric Judaism (Tiktiner 2008; Weissler 1998) would necessarily render such a claim untenable. Rather, I wish to unearth from patriarchal frameworks a trope present in biblical and midrashic sources that

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imagines childrearing as both maternal work and as Torah (Jacobowitz 2010). The most expansive notion of teaching, according to these sources, begins by attending to the basic physical needs of a dependent child. In contrast to the powerful rhetoric in the books of the prophets (especially Deutero- or Trito-Isaiah), according to which God is depicted as Mother Zion— carrying, labouring, birthing, nursing, dandling, and comforting her child Israel —pentateuchal passages do not explicitly name or imagine God in maternal terms (on maternal divine imagery, see Brettler 1998: 115–18; Gruber 1992). Yet, as Ilana Pardes has documented, in God’s bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt, feeding them, and giving them instruction (Torah), we find a complex and rich relationship drawn in ‘maternal’ terms (Pardes 2000). The pentateuchal narrative, Pardes argues, yields a nuanced portrait of maternal teaching. Against the narrow strand of rabbinic thought in which parenthood can be mobilized only within the rabbinic circle of masters and disciples, this reading suggests an alternative set of images of a God who feeds and cares for the people of Israel in material ways and on a daily basis, not distinguishing sons from daughters. These sources offer the possibility of claiming maternal work as the very essence of Torah. As Pardes has shown, birth is a powerful metaphor for the generation of nations, including the biblical nation of Israel, from the narrative of its passage from slavery in Egypt through the desert to Sinai and beyond (Pardes 2000: 16). The narrative of Exodus suggests the process of childbirth: the plagues, coming wave upon wave, with momentary reprieve between each one, recall labour contractions; the passage through the ‘narrow [tsa’ar] straits’ of Egypt and the Sea of Reeds evoke the breaking of the waters and the journey through the birth canal (Pardes 2000: 28). If these allusions are not clear from the pentateuchal text itself, the Prophets and later midrashic literature make the parallel explicit, depicting God alternately as midwife or as nursing mother. We see such readings in Ezekiel’s narrative of the care of the bloody newborn (Ezek. 16) and in the midrashic comment on Deuteronomy 4: 34 (‘Has God ever ventured to go and take himself one nation from the midst of [mikerev] another?’): ‘What is the force of one nation from the midst of [from the innards [kerev] of ] another nation? Like a person who extracts a foetus from the bowels of the mother animal, God brought Israel out of Egypt’ (Yalkut shimoni 5: 91–2 ( piskah 828)).13 But childbirth is merely the first episode in the long process of childrearing. Beyond the narratives of redemption in terms of childbirth, the more important texts for our purposes are those that continue the metaphor, seeing in the stories of Israel in the desert the sometimes tedious and burdensome, sometimes delightful, work of childrearing. I focus here on but one aspect of this care: the manna with which God fed Israel, which one midrashic tradition likens to mother’s milk (others compare it to water and bread: see Marcus 1996; Rosenblum 2010: 58–63; Vermes 1975).

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Manna is the first food the Israelites consume after their birth, as it were, as a nation. No wonder the midrash likens it to the mother’s ‘milk’, as in BT Yoma 75a: ‘And the taste of it was the taste of a cake [leshad] baked with oil’ (Num. 11: 8). Rabbi Abbahu said: ‘Read not cake [leshad], but breast [shad].’ Hence, just as an infant, whenever he touches the breast, finds many flavours in it, so it was with manna. Whenever Israel ate it, they found many flavours in it.

A later (eleventh-century) tradition, building on the same wordplay between leshad (cake) and shad (breast), reads this form of nourishment as the paradigm for all other food: Just as the breast [shad] in which the baby tastes all sweet things, so too was the manna to Israel. Just as the breast gives the primary food for the baby, and all other food is secondary, so too the manna was primary and all other food was secondary. (Pesikta zutarta on Num. ‘Beha’alotekha’)

Returning to Exodus itself with this image in mind, we see that manna offers Israel its first experience of divine instruction: ‘And the Lord said to Moses: “I will rain down bread for you from the sky; and the people shall go out and gather each day that day’s portion—that I may test them, to see whether they will follow My Torah or not”’ (Exod. 16: 4). The ‘Torah’ (torati) referred to here—not to gather more, nor to go out on the sabbath—is a gateway into ‘Torah’ in its more general sense, as divine teaching: the manna, like milk, is the ‘children’s’ first taste of God’s Torah. Midrashic teaching extends this point to a more radical reading of the manna not as the introduction to Torah, but as Torah, which the people of Israel take into their bodies (see Mekhilta derabi yishma’el on Exod. 13: 17–18 in Vermes 1975: 142; Rosenblum 2010: 58–63). Where the rabbinic tradition mobilizes the mother’s milk as a symbol for Torah but then displaces the mother–child relationship in favour of the male enterprise of Torah study (Marcus 1996: 85–6, 91), I suggest the retrieval of the mother’s milk as Torah, and of the maternal figure as its primary transmitter. The Pentateuch’s portrayal of maternal care, when associated with God and Moses, is not only located in demonstrations of generosity and caregiving, but also in the uniquely challenging work of being the primary teacher of one’s own child. Thus the feeding that transmits Torah as ‘mother’s milk’ is simultaneously a site of frustration and exasperation, as the infant Israel longs to return from the wilderness to the apparent security of Egypt and transgresses the Torah: ‘And God said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to obey My commandments and My teachings?”’ (Exod. 16: 28). In Numbers 11, as Pardes (2000: 51) notes, the ‘children’s’ resistance to the manna triggers God’s anger: God grants Israel food as punishment rather than nurture; the plague that follows leads to death. As indicated in this passage, an honest portrayal of the trials of maternal feeding as teaching suggests that rage and frustration should be understood as continuous with, and not only as a contradiction to, giving and nurture.14

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In these biblical texts and their midrashic elaborations, Torah is embedded in the prosaic work of feeding and carrying one’s child. The child Israel cannot and does not become a copy of the mother, but rather is imagined as insisting on its difference from her, a difference that makes relationship, and thus covenant, possible. Torah here concerns not only intellectual learning, but the ceaseless work of mediating the world—and indeed being the world—for the child or children in one’s care. It is this form of instruction that is portrayed as the most basic meaning of Torah itself, and it is God who instructs the children of Israel. In this reading, God too is in a state of ‘uncreation’, still in the process of learning and becoming. I return from the divine to the human realm. I have argued that we may understand Torah teaching, at its root, to consist in the embodied, quotidian work that parents perform for their young children. It is repetitive, tiresome, and often exasperating. It is also the primary means of communicating with and showing devotion to human beings. I have located a model for this work in God’s care for Israel in order to suggest one resource for the contemporary feminist project of recognizing and revaluing the work of mothers within Jewish traditions. But this route is not the only means at our disposal for recognizing maternal work as Torah. Let me return once more to the figure of the sage and quote at length from Jaffee’s account of the process by which Written Torah was to be transformed, ultimately, not only into ‘Torah in the mouth’ but, even more, into the ‘embodiment of the text in the form of a human act’: In truth, Oral Torah was never merely a collection of words on or off a page. In the discipleship-communities of the Sages Oral Torah was a form of tradition that overcame anything written or spoken. Grounded in speech, it nevertheless absorbed all discourse into something even more concrete. This, as I have explained, was nothing less than the living presence of the Master, whose very bodily motions were read as wordless texts disclosing the essence of Torah. The Sage, then, the person of the living Master, is our last crucial text of Torah. And the code he embodied could be read only by one devoted to his personal service. (Jaffee 1997: 542)

The ultimate test of the success for all Torah, in this account, lies in its ability to become embodied in a human being, and in the possibility of a disciple ‘reading’ the text that his master embodies.15 To once again draw on, but then invert, the rabbinic discourse of the sage: imagine that parents’ bodies, actions, and movements are the Torah that their children absorb.16 The parent—engaged in ordinary, quotidian duties of care and responsibility, whom we can speak of historically, but not normatively, as ‘the mother’—then becomes the sage, the ‘living scroll’ whose embodied Torah is precisely what the child learns to ‘read’. This parental teaching is not, as in the historical model of the sage, to be superseded by the teaching of the sage, but is rather the teaching itself, and simultaneously the foundation upon which all later learning builds.

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To hold up the parent as the sage who embodies Torah is to suggest that the practice of ritual and intellectual Torah study is derivative. The more basic and embodied practice of attention, care, and openness to the other to which all ritualized Torah study points is available, not exclusively but perhaps most obviously, in the kind of care that mothers undertake for their children. Thus to truly absorb Torah in its fullest sense cannot be accomplished solely by the type of learning that has been valorized for generations in Jewish life. It requires the care that Jewish tradition has failed to recognize as the daily work of those who respond, in the wee hours of the night, to a child calling, ‘Mommy! Mommy!’

Acknowledgements I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute for their financial support during the research and writing of this essay. I am also grateful to Deena Aranoff, Charlotte Fonrobert, Jane Kanarek, Riv-Ellen Prell, Devorah Zlochower, and participants in the Jewish Feminist Research Group at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2014 for offering constructive feedback on earlier drafts.

Notes 1

See the American Time Use Survey, published yearly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (). Regarding men’s involvement in daily care and responsibility for young children, see Laughlin 2010. Note that the Bureau decided to count the time that fathers (but not mothers) spent with their children as time children were in ‘childcare’, i.e. as indistinguishable from time spent in daycare outside the home. See .

2

See discussion in Blidstein 1975: 138. Translations from rabbinic works are my own. Biblical translations are adapted from JPS 1917.

3

There are many halakhic implications of such an equation or substitution; for example, Mishnah BM 2: 11 (BT BM 33a) asserts that one should give priority to one’s teacher over one’s father (see Blidstein 1975: 141–3). When a father is not a learned man, he is expected to arrange for a man who is learned in Torah to teach his son as a proxy; in this case, the teacher acquires a stature that is analogous to that of the father (BT Kid. 30a).

4

Women, of course, appear as speakers in anecdotes in talmudic literature, but scholars debate the extent to which we can imagine the women portrayed to correlate with actual women’s voices. Within the voluminous literature on this topic, see especially Fonrobert 2000 and Hauptman 2010.

5

For a comparative and theoretical perspective on men’s appropriations of maternal imagery in a religious context, see Bynum 1984 and 1987.

6

Fraade briefly notes the possible negative implication of this ideological structure for the biological father (1991: 257).

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7

In the Babylonian Talmud, the discussion of this passage is framed by a discussion on the gendered nature and requirements of various mitsvot. Women’s exemption from all timebound positive mitsvot is deduced from their exemption from wearing tefilin. For a few of the many treatments of the relationship between women’s exemption from time-bound mitsvot and the exclusion of girls from talmud torah, see Alexander 2013; Hauptman 1998; Margalit 2004.

8

On the issue of women in the ‘covenantal community’, see Cohen 2005.

9

The gemara recognizes a commandment (mitsvah) incumbent upon the father of educating/training (h.inukh) a son in mitsvot. H . inukh does not refer to ‘socialization’ per se but rather specific ritual acts construed as ‘positive commandments’, such as fasting on Yom Kippur (BT Yoma 82a) or blowing the shofar (BT RH 32b–33a). BT Naz. 28b–29a establishes that a father is obligated to train his son, but not his daughter, and that a mother is not obligated to train her son (nor, we may infer, her daughter).

10

Note that the discourse of replicability and sameness often, in androcentric texts, remains focused on physical resemblance: does the child ‘look like’ his or her father to the paternal or non-parental observer? Such a focus befits a patriarchal anxiety about the adequate control of women’s sexuality. For discussions of this issue with regard to rabbinic literature and in comparative religious perspective, see Kessler 2009 and Kueny 2014.

11

Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity (2012) reveals how challenging such a task can be for the biological parents of children whose social identities land more obviously far from the parental ‘tree’. However, his rich investigation yields the understanding that the work of recognizing a child’s difference is one of the core tasks of parenthood.

12

Griffin 1992 reflects beautifully on the capacity for such a ‘maternal’ mode of instruction to be defined as ‘true teaching’.

13

See also the discussion of this metaphor in Zornberg 2001: 84–5.

14

Although my reading differs from that of Pardes in referring to this explosive anger as maternal rather than paternal rage, her overall gloss on this verse and its difference from its retelling in Deuteronomy is astute (cf. Pardes 2000: 55).

15

Daniel Boyarin (1993: 122 ff.) and others (more recently, Simon-Shoshan 2013) have investigated this type of ‘imitative’ learning, exemplified most famously in the story (BT Ber. 62a and elsewhere) of Rabbi Kahana lying under Rav’s bed, listening to his teacher and his teacher’s wife having sex, and justifying his impertinence by exclaiming ‘It is Torah, and I must learn it.’ Simon-Shoshan considers the potential problems of what he calls the ‘rabbinic exemplum’, the embodied sage whose exemplary acts are understood to ‘bridge the gap between lived experience and legal principles by bringing the exemplar’s actual living deeds into the legal discourse’ (2013: 464).

16

I am grateful to Liz Shanks Alexander for suggesting the use of Jaffee’s insight in this way.

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Contributors Deena Aranoff is faculty director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies and senior lecturer in medieval Jewish studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Her interests include medieval patterns of Jewish thought, rabbinic literature, and the broader question of continuity and change in Jewish history. She completed her Ph.D. in 2006 in the Department of History at Columbia University with a dissertation entitled ‘In Pursuit of the Holy Tongue: Jewish Conceptions of Hebrew in the Sixteenth Century’ and has published on the subject of Christian Hebraism as well as contemporary modalities of Jewish learning. She is also a community educator and teaches Bible, rabbinics, and Jewish mysticism throughout the Bay Area. Carole B. Balin is Professor Emerita of History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. With Wendy I. Zierler, she co-edited ‘To Tread on New Ground’: Selected Hebrew Writings of Hava Shapiro (2014). Balin and Zierler’s Hebrew edition of Shapiro’s writing, Behikansi atah (2008) brought the first broad attention and readership to Shapiro’s remarkable biography and works. Balin’s scholarly interest in Jewish women extends from eastern Europe to America. Her most recent work on the latter includes the co-editorship, with Dana Herman, Jonathan Sarna, and Gary Zola, of Sisterhood: A Centennial History of Women of Reform Judaism (2014), to which she contributed a chapter. She also co-curated the national travelling exhibition, ‘Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age’, a joint project of the National Museum of American Jewish History and Moving Traditions. She narrates the widely aired PBS documentary, The Jewish People: A Story of Survival, and blogs for the Huffington Post. Elisheva Baumgarten holds the Professor Yitzchak Becker Chair in Jewish Studies and is an associate professor in the Department of Jewish History and the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her publications include Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (2004) and Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women and Everyday Religious Observance (2014). She is the author of many articles and has edited five collected volumes, the most recent of which are Jews and Christians in Thirteenth Century France, with Judah D. Galinsky (2015), and Entangled Histories: Knowledge, Authority, and Transmission in the Long Thirteenth Century, with Ruth Mazo Karras and Katelyn Mesler (2016). Mara H. Benjamin is Irene Kaplan Leiwant Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Mount Holyoke College. She is a recipient of a Summer Stipend and a fullyear fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her

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c o n t r i b u t o r s forthcoming book, The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (Indiana University Press). She holds a Ph.D. in religious and Jewish studies from Stanford University and has held appointments at the University of Washington and Yale University. She is the author of Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity (2009). Her field of specialization is modern Jewish thought. Simon J. Bronner is Distinguished University Professor of American Studies and Folklore at the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, where he was founding director of the campus’s Holocaust and Jewish Studies Center. He has also taught at Harvard, Leiden (the Netherlands), and Osaka (Japan) universities. He is the author and editor of over thirty books, including Greater Harrisburg’s Jewish Community (2011), Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture (2011), and Encyclopedia of American Folklife (2006). He edits the Material Worlds series for the University Press of Kentucky and has published on Jewish cultural studies in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Jewish History, Yiddish, Markers, and Chuliyot: Journal of Yiddish Literature. As well as editing the Littman Library’s Jewish Cultural Studies series, he leads the Jewish Folklore and Ethnology section of the American Folklore Society and has been president of the Fellows of the American Folklore Society. He has received the Mary Turpie Prize from the American Studies Association and the Kenneth Goldstein Award for Lifetime Academic Leadership, the Wayland D. Hand Prize in history and folklore, and the Peter and Iona Opie Prize in children’s culture from the American Folklore Society for his scholarly accomplishments. Jodi Eichler-Levine is the Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization and Associate Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University. She is the author of Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature (2013). Her articles have appeared in American Quarterly and Shofar, among other journals. Professor Eichler-Levine also writes for online publications, including Religion Dispatches and Tikkun. She holds a BA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in religion from Columbia University. Her teaching and research foci include American Judaism(s), religion and literature, material culture, and the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and class in the production of religious identities. Krisztina Frauhammer is a member of the Research Group of Religious Cultures of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on vernacular written records of religious observance such as prayers entered in church guest books, votive graffiti, and the prayer pages of virtual churches on the Internet. These are analysed in her book Írásba foglalt vágyak és imák: Magyar kegyhelyek vendégkönyveinek összehasonlító elemzése (Desires and Prayers: A Comparative Analysis of the Guest Books of Hungarian Pilgrimages) (2012). More recently she

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has also studied nineteenth- and twentieth-century spiritual history through the lens of contemporary prayer books, particularly for women and girls, and has created an online prayer-book database of previously unavailable Hungarian sources. Jane L. Kanarek is Associate Professor of Rabbinics and Associate Dean of Academic Development and Advising at Hebrew College. She is the author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law (2014). She holds a Ph.D. in the history of Judaism from the University of Chicago, where she was a recipient of a Wexner Graduate Fellowship. Her research interests centre on three areas: legal theory and rabbinic exegesis, feminist interpretation of the Talmud, and the pedagogy of talmudic literature. Her articles have appeared in the AJS Review, the Journal of Jewish Education, Nashim, and Teaching Theology and Religion, among other journals. She is co-editor with Marjorie Lehman of Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens (2016). She is currently writing a feminist commentary on tractate Arakhin. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History at Rowan University and book review editor of the journal American Jewish History. She is the author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860–1920 (2005) and Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880–1925 (2007). Her most recent book, Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890–1940 (2013), won the 2013 National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies. Sharon Koren is Associate Professor of Medieval Jewish Culture at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. She holds the Norman Cohen Chair for an Emerging Jewish Scholar. Her research interests include kabbalah, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim relations in the Middles Ages, and gender studies. Her book Forsaken: The Symbol of the Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Culture (2011) addresses the rationales for the absence of women in medieval Jewish mysticism. She is currently working on a study of the matriarchs in the Zohar. Josh Lambert is the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture (2014), which received a Canadian Jewish Book Award and the Association for Jewish Studies’ Jordan Schnitzer Award. He also authored American Jewish Fiction: A JPS Guide (2009). He writes a column about comedy for Tablet magazine and has contributed to Haaretz, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Forward. Ruth Lamdan has taught for many years in the Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, and is a research member in the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora

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c o n t r i b u t o r s Research Center in the same university. Her current research project examines the attitude towards old age in Ottoman Jewish society. Her book Sefer tikun soferim of Rabbi Isaac Tsabah (2009) is a study of one hundred legal and communal Hebrew documents (shetarot), copied in Jerusalem in 1635. Recent publications include ‘The Jewish Community of Jerusalem according to 17th Century Hebrew Legal Documents’, in Jewish Law Association Studies XXIII: The Fordham Conference Volume (2012) and ‘Jewish Encounters in Muslim Courts: The Ottoman Empire, 16th–17th Centuries’, in Jewish Law and its Interaction with Other Legal Systems, edited by Christine Hayes and Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer (2014). Moshe Lavee is a lecturer in Talmud and Midrash and co-chair of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Cairo Genizah at the University of Haifa. He has also been a senior lecturer in rabbinics at Leo Baeck College in London. His publications deal with canonization, family relations, and the construction of identity in rabbinic literature. He is the author of The Rabbinic Conversion of Judaism (2017). He is also devoted to bridging academic studies and Jewish renewal by lecturing in various Jewish communities and participating in religious feminist and liberal groups in Israel. Marjorie Lehman is Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She is the author of The En Yaaqov: Jacob ibn Habib’s Search for Faith in the Talmudic Corpus (2012), which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award–Nahum Sarna Memorial Award in the scholarship category. She is the co-editor, with Jane L. Kanarek, of Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens (2016). Her work on the history of the Hebrew book has resulted in the construction of a database, Footprints, that weds research on the Jewish book with technological advances in the digital humanities. She has published numerous articles on gender and talmudic literature and is working on a feminist commentary on tractate Yoma. Dalia Marx is Associate Professor of Liturgy and Midrash at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and teaches in various institutions and projects in Israel and Europe. Marx, a tenth-generation resident of Jerusalem, earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University and her rabbinic ordination at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem and Cincinnati. She is the author of When I Sleep and When I Wake: On Prayers between Dusk and Dawn (Hebrew; 2010) and A Feminist Commentary of the Babylonian Talmud (2013). In addition to co-editing several books, she is active in promoting liberal Judaism in Israel and in interfaith dialogue. Emily Sigalow is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke University. She is currently working on a collaborative research project about genetics and Jewish women’s health. She is also working on a book about the historical and contemporary encounter between Judaism and Buddhism in Amer-

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ica, ‘The JUBUs’, which explains how Judaism and Buddhism have influenced and changed in relation to each other in America since 1893. Sigalow’s work has been supported by the Berman Foundation, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Research Circle on Democracy and Pluralism, and the Tauber Institute. Shana Strauch Schick is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Cairo Genizah at Haifa University. In 2011 she became the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in talmudic literature by the Bernard Revel Graduate School at Yeshiva University, where she also completed an MA in Bible. She has held a joint postdoctoral fellowship in Jewish culture in the ancient world at Haifa, Bar Ilan, and Tel Aviv universities, and has articles published in Dinei Israel, Jewish Law Association Studies, and Zion. In addition to academic research, she has completed the Graduate Program in Advanced Talmud at Stern College and teaches in women’s educational institutions and midrashot in both New York and Jerusalem. Caryn Tamber-Rosenau is instructional assistant professor of Jewish studies and religious studies at the University of Houston. She is the author of ‘Female Diplomats in Jewish Elephantine? A New Look at a Papyrus from the Yedaniah Archive’ (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, June 2016), and is currently revising her dissertation, ‘Striking Women: Performance and Gender in the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Literature’, for publication. Miriam-Simma Walfish teaches ancient Judaism at Harvard University. She is interested in biblical interpretation in rabbinic literature as well as in the editorial process of the Babylonian Talmud. She is particularly fascinated by the shifts in ideological world-view that can be uncovered using source-critical methodology. She was awarded the Leo Flax Fellowship in Jewish Studies in 2014. She coauthored the chapter ‘Conflict and Co-existence: Hagar and Sarah in Jewish Interpretation’, in Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives, edited by Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell (2006), and she contributed an annotated translation of Mishnah Shekalim for the Oxford Mishnah Project (2018). Tsila Zan-Bar Tsur’s research focuses on exploring women’s place in Jewish society in Afghanistan during the first half of the twentieth century from folkloristic, ethnographic, anthropological, and gender-study perspectives. Her essays have appeared in Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies (2008), Pe’amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry (2013), the Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Tradition (2013), AB”A—Journal for the Research and Study of Jews and Iran, Bukhara and Afghanistan (2014), and Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore (2015), and in Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World: Patterns of Interaction across the Centuries, edited by Julia Rubanovitch (2015).

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c o n t r i b u t o r s Wendy I. Zierler is Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, where she serves as the head of the Hebrew Department. She is the author of And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Women’s Writing (2004); co-editor with Carole B. Balin and translator of ‘To Tread on New Ground’: Selected Hebrew Writings of Hava Shapiro (2014), and has just completed a new book, Midrash and Movies: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation (2017). She has been the recipient of Fulbright and Whiting Grants and most recently received a grant from the Hadassah Brandeis Institute for a new comparative study of the fiction of S. Y. Agnon and Devorah Baron.

Index A Aaron (biblical figure) 362 Abba b. Kahana (rabbi, talmudic figure) 287–8 Abbahu (rabbi, talmudic figure) 370 Abraham (biblical figure) 257, 293 Abraham, Karl 172–3 absence: of fathers/sons: due to Torah studies 13, 108–9, 110–14, 115; enabled by mother– daughter relationship 4, 106, 109, 116, 117–19, 120–3 of mothers: in Akedah 255–6, 258; in breastfeeding advice 320–1; in children’s literature 151–7, 160; in midrashic childbirth accounts 286–7, 300 n. 4 abuse of children 270–1 Ackerman, Susan 189 activism: of biblical women 14–15 of Jewish American women 207; maternalism in 208, 211, 213–14, 215, 216–17, 221; peace movement 214–21; suffrage movement 209–14 Adams, Rebecca 162 adoption, apprenticeship as form of 331 Afghani Jews/Jewish culture 59, 60 bread in 60; practices and rituals related to 62, 65–73 motherhood in 12; and bread 62, 63, 64, 65–6, 72–3 women in 60–2; breadmaking by 62–73 agency: of biblical mothers 3 of breastfeeding mothers 316 of medieval Ashkenazi

mothers 349, 351, 352, 353–4 of Ottoman Jewish women 89–93, 94 aginut (desertion of wives) 87–8, 90, 137 Agudat Hovevei Sefat Ever (Society of the Lovers of the Hebrew Language) 133 Ahasuerus (king, biblical figure) 292 Akedah (binding of Isaac) 255 and Abraham 257 Christian versions 257, 277 n. 4 Israeli poetry on 256, 258–9, 261–77 Muslim versions 277 n. 1 Sarah’s role in 255–7, 258; and Israeli motherhood 260; Israeli poetry on 256, 258–9, 262–77 Akiva (rabbi, talmudic figure) 108–9, 114, 115 Akkadian language 330, 331 Al kanfei hanefesh (prayer book, Krausz) 49–50 Aleichem, Sholem (Solomon Rabinovitz) 33–4 Alexander, Elizabeth Shanks 363, 364 Alfonso X (the Wise, king of Castile and León) 243–6 Almosnino, Moses 81–2 Alter, Robert 340 n. 9 Alzayag, Joseph 77, 82 Amarillo, Moses 78 amen (term) 327 American Hebrew (journal) 210–11, 220 American Jewish culture: Jewish identities in 178, 179 motherhood in 8, 13–14; in children’s literature 11, 13, 23–5, 26–37, 149–50, 151–63, 165–6;

stereotypes of 6, 151, 169, 170–80 amon, meanings of 332–3, 334–5, 336–8, 339 nn. 6 & 8 amulets, to protect mothers and newborn children 288, 289 ‘And the Life of Sarah Was’ (poem, Galai) 263–5 angels, invocation of 278 n. 14 Aninku (fictional character) 158–9, 160, 165 Anne Frank House (Amsterdam) 164 Anthropology of Breastfeeding (Maher) 313, 323 n. 8 anthropology, of Jewish women 360 Antiochus 349 antiquity: childbirth theories of 301 nn. 15 & 16 reproduction theories in 286–7 wet nurses in 307–8, 318, 323 n. 6; see also breastfeeding antisemitism 216, 219 Christian 241, 244–5 Antler, Joyce 7–8, 37, 179–80 anxieties: about changing American Jewish society 37 about modernization 55 of mothers 268; prayers for 51–2 apostasy, forced, medieval stories on 350–1 apprenticeship, as form of adoption 331 Aquila 339 n. 8 Aquinas, Thomas 239, 240 Arabic Yosipon 354 Aranoff, Deena 16, 377 Aristotle 286–7 Arnold of Bonneval 242 Art of Maurice Sendak (Lanes) 153

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As Good As Anybody (Michelson and Colon) 33–4, 36 ascetic religiosity 105, 123, 126 n. 24 Asher yatsar prayer 137 Ashkenazi Jewry: medieval literature of: Crusader chronicles 248 n. 7; motherhood in 17, 345–54 mysticism of 234 Assael, Hayim 82 assimilation of Jews: allegories of 175–6 in Hungary 42–4, 55–6 n. 1 Association of Jewish Libraries 24, 25, 38 n. 2 Attic Nights (Aulus Gellius) 307 Augustine 239 authors, see writers B ‘baby made of ice’ image (Sendak) 162–3 Babylonian Talmud 107–8, 125–6 n. 23 on breastfeeding 308–9, 312, 313–14, 316–18, 319–20, 321–2 on childbirth 301 nn. 10 & 15, 302 n. 18 on ejaculation 302 n. 19 on fathers: absence due to Torah studies 108–9, 110–14, 115, 116, 117–18; relationship with sons 105, 108, 110–12, 115; teaching obligations 363–5, 372 n. 3, 373 n. 9 husband–wife relationships in 114–15, 120–1, 310, 311, 316–18, 319 on menstruation 302 n. 19 monastic religiosity of men/‘married monk’ model in 105, 112–13, 115–17, 123, 126 n. 24 mother–daughter relationships in 12–13, 105–6, 109, 112–14, 116–19, 120

on mourning for death of children 349–50 Sages of 105, 361, 363, 371, 373 n. 15; parents as 17, 359, 371–2 on women: exemptions from mitsvot for 373 n. 7; passivity of body 292, 300 n. 2 Baer, Gertrude 215–16 Baker, Cynthia 287 Bal, Mieke 189, 194, 203 nn. 4 & 8 Balin, Carole B. 13, 377 Barak (biblical figure) 189 Bar-avaz (Devorah Baron) 139, 146 nn. 1 & 5 Baron, Benjamin 139 Baron, Devorah 138–9 Barr, James 328, 339 n. 1 barrenness 50–1, 81 and Afghani doll breadmaking 66–7 biblical accounts of 3–4, 227–8; miraculous cures 202 n. 1, 227, 230 midrashic texts on 293, 294 as social death 112 see also childlessness Barthes, Roland 204 n. 14 Bartlett, Allison 321 Baumgarten, Elisheva 5, 17, 377 Bava metsia (talmudic tractate) 105, 107, 119 Be’er, Haim 261 Ben Azzai (talmudic figure) 109, 133 Ben Refaela, Judah 87 Ben Soshan, Moses 83 Ben Ya’ish, Jacob 85 Ben-Yehuda, Hemda 146 n. 1 Benjamin, Jessica 162 Benjamin, Mara H. 17, 377–8 Benveniste, Moses 82 Berab, Jacob 92 Berceo, Gonzalo de 246, 248 nn. 16–18 Berg, Gertrude 6, 170 Berkovitch, Nitza 259 Beyond Ethnicity (Sollors) 173

Bible 202 n. 2 on childbirth 297 Christian commentaries/ interpretations 239–42, 257, 277 n. 4, 328 Hebrew lexicons of 329 Israeli poetic use of 260–1 ’mn root in 327, 329 on nursing 329–30 on parental affection 333–4 patriarchy in 4 on pregnancy 296, 300 n. 1 reproductive futurism in 192 translations 189, 336, 339 n. 8, 340 n. 9 weeping in 228–9 women in: barrenness of 3–4, 202 n. 1, 227–8, 230; leadership of 14–15, 190, 191–2, 193, 200, 201; matriarchs 230; motherhood 3, 14, 192, 202 n. 1; warriors 185–6, 188–202 Biblical Antiquities (PseudoPhilo): on Deborah 190, 193, 203 n. 6 on Jael 196–7 biblical Hebrew: interpretations of 329, 330, 335, 336–8, 339 nn. 1, 2, 6 & 8 words for childrearing 327, 334–5 biblical studies, queer theory applied to 186–8, 192–3, 199–201, 202 Bilhah (character in Second Temple literature) 301 n. 9 biological parenthood/motherhood 5, 368, 373 n. 11 Blau, Zena Smith 170, 173 blessings, Jewish 160 Blidstein, Gerald J. 124 n. 3 Bloom, Harold 138 B’nai B’rith Magazine 216 bodies of mothers/women 16 in childbirth, midrashic texts on 291–2 house as metaphor of 287

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i n d e x knowledge of: Muslim medical 299, 303 n. 26; of women 290–1 passivity of 292 rabbinic rulings on 315 Book of the Pomegranate (Sefer harimonim, de León) 233 Booker, Bob 171 bourgeoisie, European Jewish 42, 134 Bowlby, Rachel 362–3 Boyarin, Daniel 109, 123, 125 n. 17, 303 n. 23, 363, 367, 368, 373 n. 15 boycott movements, in USA against German products 220 boys, study of Torah by 134 see also sons Brainin, Reuven 135, 142–3 Braude, William G. 231 bread: in Afghani Jewish culture 60; practices and rituals related to 62, 65–72 and motherhood 59, 62, 63, 64–6, 72, 72–3 bread-making: by Afghani Jewish women 12, 59, 62–72, 73 challah (sabbath bread) 28 breastfeeding 16, 81, 278 n. 21, 279 n. 22 in antiquity 307–8 length of, and mother’s health 313–14 Midrash on 16, 292–7, 298–300, 302 nn. 20–22, 318, 319 modern advice on 320–1 rabbinic literature on 16, 308–9, 312, 313–14, 316–18, 319–20, 321–2, 323 nn. 7 & 13, 364 brides, presents for 85 Brin, Fanny 217, 221 Bronner, Leila Leah 191 Bronner, Simon J. 378 Brown, Cheryl Anne 190 Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew lexicon 329

Brundibar (book, Sendak and Kushner) 157, 158–9, 160, 163, 164, 165 Brundibar (opera, Krása) 158 Brundibar (fictional character) 158 Buber, Martin 339 n. 2 burnt bread, hatred/ugliness associated with 66 Butler, Judith 6, 150, 185–6, 187–8 C Cairo Genizah texts 292, 299 Canada: literature in 174 see also American Jewish culture candle-lighting ritual for sabbath 28 Cantigas de Santa Maria (Alfonso the Wise) 243–6 cantors, female, in children’s literature 29, 30 Carol (film character) 154, 155–6 Castile: kabbalist Rachel cult in 225–6, 231–8, 247; and Mary’s suffering mother image 15, 226, 239, 246–7 Mary’s suffering mother image in 243–6 Castle on Hester Street (Heller and Kuliko) 34 challah (sabbath bread), baking of 28 Chicken Soup with Rice (Sendak) 156, 160 childbearing, men’s jealousy of women’s ability to 122 childbirth: anxieties of mothers about safety of 51, 288 biblical accounts of 297 labour contractions 297, 302 n. 17 metaphors for 195 metaphorical 164–5, 297–8, 362, 369 Midrash on 16, 285–6, 287–92, 297–300, 301 nn. 8 & 15

modern medical accounts of 301 n. 14, 302 n. 17 pains of 3, 266, 289–90 surging/gushing waves as imagery for 297–8, 303 n. 24 talmudic literature on 301 nn. 10 & 15, 302 n. 18 childlessness: of biblical women warriors 185–6, 202; Deborah 189, 192; Jael 193–4; Judith 198–200 miraculous endings of 202 n. 1, 227, 230 see also barrenness childrearing 16, 327 biblical Hebrew terms for 327, 334–5 equated to craft-training 331–2 as faithfulness signifier 327, 328, 332, 335–6, 337, 338 by fathers 372 n. 1 prayers on 51–2 as teaching/transmission of Torah 360, 365–6, 368–9, 370–1 women’s responsibilities for 53, 365, 366 children: abuse of 270–1 custody of 81, 89–90 exaggerated focus on 188, 192 literature for, see children’s literature mourning for death of 349–50 nurturing parents by 160–1 spiritual 363 children’s literature: cleaning by mothers in 32 cooking by mothers in 32 cuddling by mothers in 32 cultural objects, children’s books as 25 fathers in 11, 27, 28–9, 30, 33, 34, 35 female cantors in 29, 30 gender stereotyping in 25, 35–7

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children’s literature (cont.): grandfathers in 34–5 households in 32 as indicator of cultural norms 25 motherhood in American Jewish 11, 13, 23–5, 26–37, 149–50, 151–63, 165–6 parenthood in 158–9, 160–1 religious leadership in 29, 30 on Reform Judaism 29–30 single men/women in 31 stepmothers in 32–3 widows in 31 see also Sendak, Maurice Christian literature: early 239–42, 257, 277 n. 4 medieval 243–6 monastic 125 n. 15 Christianity: biblical interpretations of 239–42, 257, 277 n. 4, 328 in Castile 243 Hungarian Jewish homes influenced by 43–4 Jews/Judaism perceived by 241, 244–5 and Judaism 247 Mary cult in 15, 226, 238–46, 247 Rachel cult in 226, 239–42, 245–6 ‘cistern and the weasel’ story 348–9 Cleopatra (Egyptian queen) 291 clergymen, and peace movement 218 Code of Hammurabi 331 Cohen, Eliaz 279 n. 23 Cohen, Jeremy 226 Cohen, Sadie 220 Cohen, Samuel S. 213 collective memories 276–7 colour motif analysis 125–6 n. 23 Cooper, Alan 335, 339 n. 6 Cooper, Samuel Williams 24 Coplas de Yosef 248 n. 8 counter-memories 276 Crackpot (Wiseman) 14, 169, 173, 174–9, 180

craft skills, learning 331–2 Craven, Toni 200 creation: birth metaphor for 297–8 Midrash on 336 crucifixion of Christ, Mary experiencing pain of 242 Crusader chronicles: Ashkenazi 248 n. 7 women in 349, 352 Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon) 171–2 cultural change, mothers as agents of 13–14 cultural norms: children’s literature as indicator of 25 non-conformation with 13 cultural reproduction 1, 362–3, 367–8 culture: and Bible interpretation 330 and language 16 and nature 7 curses, on women 80, 95 n. 5 custody of children 81, 89–90 customs, of marriage 96 n. 14 D Daddy’s Chair (Lanton and Haas) 31 Danforth, Loring 228 Dari language 74 n. 2 daughters: betrothal of 96 nn. 12 & 18 custody of 89 education of 45 relationships with mothers: in Ottoman Jewish society 91–3; in prayer books 53–4; of Rakovsky mother and daughter 142; of Shapiro mother and daughter 129–30, 131–2, 138, 140–1, 142, 144, 146 n. 2; talmudic literature on 12–13, 105–6, 109, 116–19, 120; Torah study of fathers and sons enabled by 4, 106, 109, 116, 117–19, 120–3 see also girls David, Joseph 82

Dayan, Devorah 260 Dear Mili (Sendak) 157, 158, 159, 163, 164 death: of children, mourning for 349 fear of mothers in childbirth 288 of husbands, care for wives after 88 of Rachel 231, 237 of Sarah 256–7, 263–4 social, of barren women 112 Deborah (biblical figure) 14, 185, 188–93 ‘Mother in Israel’ title 189–90, 192, 201, 203 n. 4 demons, rituals for protection against 67 depression, Jewish 161 Deuteronomy (biblical book) 335 divine mother, Shekhinah represented as 225 divorce: divorcees 89, 90 mothers assisting daughters in disputes over 92 women seeking 142–3, 144, 349, 352–3 Dixon, Suzanne 324 n. 20 doll bread 66–7 domestic work: by grandfathers 34–5 by mothers/wives: in children’s literature 32; talmudic literature on 309–11 by servants 140, 141 dowries, mothers contributing to 91 ‘dream bread’ 73 n. 1 Dropkin, Lillian 219 Dura Europos synagogue (Syria) 277 n. 6 E eating, importance of 156 see also food Ecclesiastes Rabbah (midrashic collection) 257, 301 n. 12

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i n d e x economic independence, of Ottoman Jewish women 84, 88 Edelman, Lee 185, 186, 188, 192, 199, 200, 204 n. 13 Edrabi, Isaac 86 education: of girls 45, 133–4, 142 religious: of girls and women 46–7; parental responsibility for 30, 44, 46, 54, 136, 363–5, 372 n. 3 of women 46, 136; by husbands 79 see also teaching Egyenlo˝ség (journal, Hungary) 44–5, 46 Eichler-Levine, Jodi 13–14, 378 Eidels, Samuel 191 Eim Kol Hai, see Shapiro, Hava ejaculation, in talmudic literature 302 n. 19 Eleazar (rabbi, talmudic figure) 288 Eleazar ben Shimon (rabbi, talmudic figure) 105–6, 118–22, 124 nn. 5 & 8 Eliezer (rabbi, talmudic figure) 310 Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, stories on 125 n. 19 Elisha (biblical figure) 202 n. 1 emancipation, of Hungarian Jewry 42 emun/emunah, meanings of 327, 335 endogamy, in Judaism 172–3, 177 Engel, Kay 221 Ephrem the Syrian 257 Esau (biblical figure) 16, 295–6 eshet h.ayil (‘woman of valour’) 81–2, 131, 132 Esther (biblical book) 337 Esther (biblical figure) 292, 337 Estrosa, Daniel 85 ‘Et sha’arei ratson’ (piyut, Ibn Abbas) 258 ethnic-religious cultures, Jewish communities as 1–2 Ettinger, Esther 265–6

eulogies for mothers, of Ottoman rabbis 77, 81–3 Europe: central, modernization of Jews in 42 eastern, literacy of women in 135 Jewish bourgeoisie in 42, 134 Eve (biblical figure) 3, 137, 202 n. 1 as mother of all life 318–19, 322 ewe motif, in talmudic stories 109 exile: of Rachel 238 of Shekhinah 246–7 Exodus (biblical book) 369, 370 Exodus Rabbah (midrashic collection) 291–2 exogamy: male-centred narratives of 176 neurotic 172–3 Exum, J. Cheryl 190 F Faithful Renderings (Seidman) 339 n. 8 faithfulness 327 childrearing as signifier of 327, 328, 332, 335–6, 337, 338 Falk, Joshua 323 n. 11 family: challenges to stability of 105; absence of fathers/sons due to Torah studies 108–9, 110–14, 115, 116, 117–18 Ottoman Jewish 77 patterns, and culture theories 1 preservation of tradition in 46 sabbath celebrations with 28 Sendak’s portrayal of 160, 165–6 family disputes, role of mothers in 86–90, 91–4 family, Afghani Jewish, and bread-making 12

fantasy 150 Sendak’s focus on 161, 162 Far from the Tree (Solomon) 373 n. 11 father–son relationships 12–13 of maskilim 129–30 master–disciple relation seen as 106, 117, 361–2 in modern literature 143 in talmudic literature 105, 106, 108, 110–12, 115 fathers: absence due to Torah studies 13, 108–9, 112–14, 115; enabled by mother–daughter relationship 4, 106, 109, 116, 117–19, 120–3 abusive 270–1 in Afghani Jewish culture 63–4 childrearing by 372 n. 1 in children’s literature 11, 27, 28–9, 30, 33, 34, 35 custody of children by 89 domineering/overbearing 114–15 and manhood 2, 31 teaching obligations of 363–5, 372 n. 3, 373 n. 9 Fathers and Sons (Turgenev) 143 Favorinus 307–8 Fear of Flying (Jong) 179–80 Federbush, Judy 38 n. 3 femininity, Jewish 165 feminism: on female authorship 138 fiction of 180 n. 1 first wave of, and Jewish motherhood 15 of Hava Shapiro 137 Jewish 179, 360 and maternalism 208 feminist analysis: of motherhood 2, 5, 6–7; in Bible 3–4, 202 of talmudic stories 123 femme fatale trope 197 fertility: of men, meat seen as connected to 63

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fertility (cont.): of women: bread related to 70–1, 72; restoring 121–2, 202 n. 1, 227, 230; status related to 61–2, 73, 79–80 Fewell, Danna Nolan 190, 191–2, 201, 203 n. 8 Fiedler, Leslie 175 Fildes, Valerie 324 n. 20 financial protection, of wives 88, 318 financial support, by mothers, for sons 84 Flanigan, Clifford 241–2 Fletcher, Jeannine Hill 278 n. 18 Fleury playbook 241–2 foetus: development 291 Midrash on 287, 288 Fohász (prayer book, Hevesi) 44, 47, 51–2, 53–4, 55 folk tales: Afghani Jewish 69–70, 74 n. 7 midrashic 299, 345–54 Fonrobert, Charlotte 287, 315, 339 n. 4 food: maternal associations of 156–7, 160 rituals, Afghani Jewish 61, 62, 67 Foster, George 171 Fox, Michael 333, 339 n. 6 Fox, Nicole 26, 38 n. 4 Fraade, Steven 372 n. 6 Frauhammer, Krisztina 11–12, 378–9 Fraynd, Der (journal) 15, 211 Freud, Sigmund 177 Friedman, Shamma 124 n. 7, 323 n. 10 Frischmann, David 135–6 Froyen Velt, Di (journal, USA) 211–12 Futterman, Millie 219 G Galai, Binyamin 263–5 Galen (Claudius Galenus) 303 n. 26

Gellius, Aulus 307–8 gemara, see talmudic literature gender performance theory 185–6, 187–8 applied to biblical women warriors 192–3, 197–8, 200, 201, 202 gender/gender roles: in Bible 187 crossing boundaries of 165 idealized views of 43 Jewish: medieval 351; nonJewish views of 165 and motherhood 2 stereotyping of: in children’s literature 25, 35–7; in prayer books 53 Genesis (biblical book) 227, 237, 296, 336 Genesis Rabbah (midrashic collection) 230, 256, 264, 318, 319, 336–7 German Pietists, see Hasidei Ashkenaz Geronese school of kabbalah 235 Gidali, Orit 272–3 Gilbert, Sandra 138 girls, education of 45, 133–4, 142 minor, marriage arrangements for 96 nn. 12 & 18 see also daughters Gittelsohn, Roland 218–19 Glossa Ordinaria 240, 241 God: in Israeli poetry 268–9 kabbalist views of 232 as midwife 297, 300 n. 6, 369 names for 330 relationship with: of people of Israel 335; of Rachel 230; of Sarah 275; of Wisdom 332, 334, 336, 340 n. 9 Goldbergs, The (TV series, USA) 6 good fortune, bread associated with 65 Gordon, Yehudah Leib 137, 146 n. 1 Gottlieb Zornberg, Avivah 303 nn. 24 & 25

Gouri, Haim 262 Graiver, Inbar 125 n. 15 grandfathers, in children’s literature 34–5 Green, Arthur 226, 232, 246–7 Greenbaum, Laura 302 n. 17 Greenblatt, Robert 179 Greenburg, Dan 170 Gregory the Great 239 grief: for death of children 349–50 in Sendak’s work 157–9, 163, 166 of women 91 see also mourning rituals Griffin, Gail B. 373 n. 12 Griswold, Wendy 25 Grossman, Avraham 5, 353 Gubar, Susan 138 Guest, Deryn 191–2 Guliat, Yael 276 Gunn, David M. 190, 191–2, 201, 203 n. 8 gynaecology, Muslim knowledge of 303 n. 26 H Haber, Samu 46 Haberman, Bonna Devora 322 Hackett, Jo Ann 339 n. 4 Hagar (biblical figure) 202 n. 1, 269, 272, 278 n. 20, 293 Haggadah, see Venice Haggadah Hakohen, Elijah 78–9, 80–1, 82, 94 n. 2 Halevi, Abraham 86 Halevi, Joseph 86 Halpern-Amaru, Betsy 203 n. 6 Hama bar Bisa (rabbi, talmudic figure) 108, 112, 113–14 Hammurabi, Code of 331 Hananiah ben Hakhinai (rabbi, talmudic figure) 108, 112–13, 125 n. 15 Hannah (biblical figure) 50–1, 202 n. 1 Hannah’s Way (Glaser) 27 Harder, Philipp Gottfried 290 Harnik, Raya 261–2, 267–8, 275, 278 n. 7

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i n d e x Harshav, Barbara 147 n. 10 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook 257 Hasan-Rokem, Galit 278 n. 21, 299 Hashoshanah (Hava Shapiro) 138 Hasidei Ashkenaz 234 Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) 13, 143 female adherents (maskilot) 129, 139 Hebrew language use promoted by 135 male adherents (maskilim) 129–30, 135, 143, 144 Haskell, Ellen 248 n. 11 h.avurah movement 178 Hawley, John 228 Hayes, Christine 302 n. 19 Hazan, Raphael Joseph 82–3 Hebrew language: Bible lexicons 329 modern literature in 3, 135, 136–7, 138–41, 143–6; poetry 15, 256, 258–9, 260–77 promoted by Haskalah 135 use/study of: by men 134; by women 131, 133–4, 136–41, 143–6 see also biblical Hebrew ‘Heir to the Curfew’ (poem, Gidali) 272–3 Herat (Afghanistan), Jewish community in 68 Herod 240, 241 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 33 heterosexuality, in feminist fiction 180 n. 1 Hevesi, Ferenc 44, 47, 50–1, 52, 53–4, 56 n. 2 Hevesi, Simon 56 n. 2 Hiya bar Ashi (rabbi, talmudic figure) 126 n. 26 Hoda (fictional character) 14, 175, 176–7, 178, 178–9, 180 Hoffman, Lawrence 364 Holocaust: compulsory parenthood after 163–4 literature, and Akedah narrative 261–2

resonances in Sendak’s work 158–9 second-generation survivors 151, 164 Holofernes 198 Holy Tears (Patton and Hawley) 228 home, as centre of religious life for women 49 homosexuality: in feminist fiction 180 n. 1 Jewish motherhood seen as cause of 172 and reproductive futurism 200, 204 n. 13 honouring of mothers, by sons 82, 95 n. 8 Hoshaia (rabbi, talmudic figure) 113–14, 125 n. 20 house, as metaphor of woman’s body 287 households: ancient Israelite 339 n. 3 duties of wives/mothers in 309–11; in children’s literature 32 servants in 140, 141 How To Be a Jewish Mother (Greenburg) 170 How To Be a Jewish Mother (LP, Berg) 170 Huffer, Lynne 7 Huna (talmudic figure) 316–18 Huna b. Hinena (talmudic figure) 317 Hungarian language, use of 48–9 Hungary: Jews in, modernization/ assimilation of 42–4, 55–6 n. 1 prayer books for Jewish women in 11, 41–2, 45–55 Hunter College (USA) 219 husband–wife relationships 79, 88 hierarchy in/power of husbands 109, 310, 311, 316–18, 319–20 in talmudic literature 114–15, 120–1, 310, 311, 316–18, 319

Hyman, Paula 147 n. 10, 169–70 I ‘I am the Akedah’ (poem, Shahrur) 269–70 Ibn Abbas, Judah 258 Ibn al-Jazza–r 303 n. 26 Ibn Khaldu–n 303 n. 27 Ida (fictional character) 157, 163 idealization: of family life 46 of gender roles 43 of motherhood 8–12, 36, 37, 49–50, 53, 55, 78, 81–3 of patriarchy 106 of women 77 identity crossings 140 impurity of women: after childbirth 290 and menstruation 121 after miscarriage 290–1 ‘In the Beginnings’ (poem, Kafri) 271–2 In the Night Kitchen (Sendak) 152, 160, 162, 163, 164–5, 166 incestuous relationships: fiction on 14, 175–8 implicit in Jewish motherhood stereotypes 172–4 infertility, see barrenness inheritance: disputes 86, 87; agency of Ottoman Jewish mothers in 89–90 Jewish law on 83, 95 n. 9 intergenerational tensions, in Talmud stories 109–15 International Woman Suffrage Alliance 215 Isaac (biblical figure) 15, 293, 294 story of binding, see Akedah Isaac (fictional character) 346–8 ‘Isaac’ (poem, ShifmanShmuelovich) 268–9 Isaac of Acre 248 n. 10 Isaiah (biblical book) 228, 333, 334

390

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Ishmael (biblical figure) 269, 270, 272–3, 293, 294 Isidore 240 Islamic (qadi) courts, and Jewish family disputes 89–90 Israel (ancient), birth of nation 369–70 Israel (modern): Afghani Jewish community in 59–60, 73; see also Afghani Jews motherhood in 15, 259–60 poetry 15, 260–1; on Akedah 256, 258–9, 261–2, 262–77; on Israeli–Palestinian conflict 273 Israel, Edward 218 Izzy (fictional character) 29 J Jackson, Rosemary 162 Jacob (biblical figure) 229, 233, 237–8, 248 n. 10 birth of 16 in Rebekah’s womb 295–6 Jacober, Hava 266–7 Jacobowitz, Tamar 298 Jacopone da Todi 248 n. 15 Jael (biblical figure) 14, 185, 193–8, 201, 204 n. 9 Jaffee, Martin 361, 371 Jeremiah (biblical book) 228, 234, 235 Jerome 336 Jerusalem, position of women in 90 Jerusalem Talmud, see Palestinian Talmud Jesus’ crucifixion, Mary experiences pain of 242 Jew Looks at War and Peace, The (Gittelsohn) 218–19 Jewish community: as ethnic–religious culture 1–2 Jewish motherhood stereotypes as metonym for 169, 173, 177–8 motherhood in 1, 2–3, 7–8, 17–18

Jewish identities/Jewishness: importance of continuity of 3, 4; responsibility of mothers for 52, 55 and Jewish motherhood stereotypes 169–70, 176 and maternalism 15 non-racial conceptions of 14 and peace activism 217, 221 of Sendak 162 stereotypes of 216 in United States 178, 179, 208 Jewish law: on betrothal of women 96 nn. 12 & 18 on inheritance 83, 95 n. 9 women’s second-class status in 137 Jewish tradition, preservation of, by mothers 45–6, 54, 55 ‘Jewishness’ (essay, Wiseman) 176 Jews: Christian negative views of 241, 244–5 monsterizing of 153 Job (biblical book) 297 Job (biblical figure), suffering of 302 n. 25 Jong, Erica 179–80 Jonze, Spike 153–5, 166 n. 1 Jorsich, Stephane 32 Joseph (biblical figure) 235 Joseph (fictional character) 28 Joseph Who Loved the Sabbath (Hirsh and Grebu) 28, 31 Joshua (rabbi, talmudic figure) 291 jouissance 204 n. 14 Judah (rabbi, talmudic figure) 108, 110 Judaism: centrality of Torah study in 4, 80, 361 and Christianity 241, 244–5, 247 domestic 27 endogamy in 172–3, 177 master–disciple relationship in 4, 13, 359, 361, 363–4, 371 Orthodox 56 n. 1

patriarchy of 360–1 priesthood in 367–8 public 29 Reform 29–30, 218–19 weeping in 228–9 Judges (biblical book) 188, 193, 203–4 n. 8 Judith (biblical figure) 14, 185, 198–1, 204 n. 11, 351 Judith (film character) 155 Julie (fictional character) 34 Justin Martyr 239 K kabbalists 340 n. 10 of Castile: cult of Rachel 15, 225–6, 231–8, 239, 246–7; on Jacob 237–8 of Gerona 235 of Safed 95 n. 8, 247 Kafri, Yehudit 271–2 Kahana (rabbi, talmudic figure) 373 n. 15 Kalba Savua (talmudic figure) 114 Kalir, Eleazar 230 Kalmanofsky, Amy 227 Kanarek, Jane L. 379 Kaplan, Marion 27 Kartun-Blum, Ruth 256, 262–3 Katz, Jacob 353 Katzenstein, Caroline 126–7 Kaufmann, Dávid 47 Keener, Catherine 154 Kellogg–Briand pact (1928) 219 Kessler, Gwynn 287, 295, 300 n. 3, 303 n. 23 ketubot (marriage contracts) 91 Ketubot (talmudic tractate) 105, 107–8, 119 on breastfeeding 309, 313–14, 316–18, 319, 321–2 on marriage 309–10 St Petersburg manuscript of 324 n. 17 Ketubot (Tosefta) 310–12, 318 khesht ritual 67 Kheziche, Meshya 141 Khuli, Jacob 79, 80, 95 n. 3, 95 n. 5

391

i n d e x Kidush levanah (Sanctification of the Moon, Hava Shapiro) 133 kidushin (consecrated bond) 96 n. 14 Kidushin (talmudic tractate) 363–5 King, Alberta 34 King, Martin Luther 33–4 Kiss, Arnold 41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 55, 56 n. 2 Klapper, Melissa R. 15, 379 knowledge of women, about their bodies 290–1 Köhler–Baumgartner lexicon of Hebrew Bible 329 Kohut, Rebekah 211 Koren, Sharon 15, 379 kosher meat riots (USA) 207 Kötelességtan (spiritual readings, Singer) 43, 52, 53 Kotso shel yod (poem, Gordon) 137 Kottek, Samuel 300 n. 3 Kovets tsiyurim (Hava Shapiro) 129, 136–7, 138 Krása, Hans 158 Krieger, David Elias 289 Kristeva, Julia 161, 163 Kushelevsky, Rella 346, 355 n. 1 Kushner, Tony 158, 161, 162, 165 KW (film character) 154, 155 L Laban (biblical figure) 229 Labovitz, Gail 322 n. 5 Lacan, Jacques 204 n. 13 Ladino, use of 79 Lambert, Josh 13, 14, 379 Lambert of Deutz 239 Lamdan, Ruth 12, 379–80 Lamentations (biblical book) 337 Lamentations Rabbah (midrashic collection) 229–30, 248 n. 4, 350, 351 Lanes, Selma 153, 160, 161, 164–5 language: for biblical women warriors 185, 186, 189–93, 194, 195–8, 199, 200, 201, 202

and culture 16 ‘stealing’ of 262 in US Jewish women’s activism 208, 211, 213–14, 215, 216–17, 221 use of: by Afghani Jews in Israel 59–60; in Afghanistan 74 n. 2; gender divide in 135; in prayer 48–9 Lässig, Simone 42 Lavee, Moshe 12–13, 299, 380 Lawrence, Beatrice 187 leadership: of biblical women 14–15, 190, 191–2, 193, 200, 201 religious 105, 367–8; in children’s literature 29, 30; prayer books for women by 46 Leah (biblical figure) 202 n. 1, 227, 229, 231 Christian views of 239 Lehman, Marjorie 380 Lehmann, Matthias B. 95 n. 3 Leibson, Ayelet 301 n. 10 León, Moses de 233, 237 Levi (rabbi) 286, 295 Levin, Theresa 219 levirate marriage, intervention of mothers in 86 Leviticus Rabbah (midrashic collection) 286, 287, 297–8, 301 n. 8 Levitt, Laura 164 Lewis, Meredith 38 n. 3 lexicons, of Hebrew Bible 329 Lieberman, Saul 323–4 nn. 12 & 13 Lipton, Sara 351 literacy of Jewish women 79, 135 literature: for children: Jewish 24–5; Jewish mothers in 11, 13, 23–4, 26–37, 149–50, 151–63, 165–6 Christian: early 239–42, 257, 277 n. 4; medieval 243–6; monastic 125 n. 15 early Jewish 301 n. 9; on Deborah 190–1, 193; on

Jael 196–7; see also Bible; Midrash; talmudic literature; Zohar folk tales 69–70, 74 n. 7, 299 Muslim, on Rachel 235 Russian 143 secular/modern: father–son relationships in 143; in Hebrew 3, 135, 136–7, 138–41, 143–6; mother–son relationships in 14, 172–4, 175, 176–8; poetry 15, 256, 258–9, 260–77; read by women 47, 134 Yiddish 142 Livia (cantor, fictional character) 29 Logos notion 333, 337 loss, sense of: in mother–child relationship 162 in Sendak’s work 163 love, food equated with 156–7, 160 Lo˝ w, Immánuel 52, 56 n. 2 Luke (Gospel) 239, 242 Luria, Isaac (the Ari) 95 n. 8 M ’m (mother) 328 ‘Maccabean mother and seven sons’, story 349–51, 352, 354 Maccabees (apocryphal book) 349–50 Mack, Marcia 174 Magnus, Shulamit 141, 147 n. 8 Maher, Vanessa 313, 323 n. 8 Maimonides 324 n. 18 manhood, and fatherhood 31 Mann, Louis 218 manna, symbolic meanings of 370 Mar bar Rav Ashi (rabbi, talmudic figure) 313 Margalit, Natan 364 marginalization: benefits of 134 of mothers 338 Marinos (rabbi, talmudic figure) 314, 315, 316, 323 n. 12

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i n d e x

marriage: arranging 85–6, 90, 170, 348, 353–4 betrothal 96 nn. 12 & 18 contracts (ketubot) 91 customs 96 n. 14 economic model 319 failure, reasons for 112 instrumental models 117, 125 n. 18 levirate, intervention of mothers in 86 medieval 353 in patriarchal family structures 111–12 sexual relations in 108 talmudic literature on 309–10 see also husband–wife relationships; remarriage ‘Marriage and Sexual Life’ (article, Katz) 353 ‘married monk’ model, talmudic literature on 112–13, 115–17, 123, 126 n. 24 Martha (biblical figure, sister of Mary) 239 martyrdom: Christian 240–1 Jewish 351–2 Marx, Dalia 15, 380 Mary 225 Christian cult of 15, 225, 238–46, 247 and her sister Martha 239 suffering mother image of 228, 239, 242–6, 257; similarities with Rachel 226, 238, 242, 246–7 masculinity 2 Jewish 165, 170 meat seen as connected to 63 maskilim (enlightened men) 129–30, 135, 143, 144 maskilot (enlightened women) 129, 139 Massacre of the Innocents 240, 241 master–disciple relationship in Judaism 4, 13, 359, 361, 363–4, 371

enabled by mother–daughter relationships 4, 106, 109, 116, 117, 117–19, 120–3 as father–son relationship/metaphorical parenthood 106, 117, 359, 361–2, 363–4 Midrash on 361–2 talmudic literature on 362, 363–5 match–making: by fathers 353 by mothers 85–6, 90, 170, 348, 353–4 materiality 339 n. 2 maternalism/maternal language 15, 208 in activism of Jewish American women 208, 211, 213–14, 215, 216–17, 221 of biblical women warriors 185, 186, 189–93, 194, 195–8, 199, 200, 201, 202 in metaphorical parenthood of master–disciple relationship 362 matriarchal power, in Babylonian Talmud 116 matriarchs, biblical 230, 256 matrilineality of Jewish descent 170, 176 ‘matrophobia’ 131 Matt, Daniel 248 n. 9 Matthew (Gospel) 240 Max (fictional character) 151–2, 153, 154–6 Me’am lo’ez (Khuli) 79, 95 n. 3 media coverage, of suffrage movement 210–12 medical knowledge, of Muslims 299, 303 n. 26 medical literature: on breastfeeding 320–1 on childbirth 301 n. 14 medieval literature: Christian, on Mary 243–6 Jewish, motherhood in 17, 345–54 Medina, Samuel de 85, 86, 88, 92 Meir of Rothenburg 352

memories, collective 276–7 menstruation: and bread-making 71 ceremonies at first occurrence 61 impurity related to 121 post-menopausal women, power of 62 talmudic literature on 302 n. 19 messages, bread used to send 67–8 Michael (fictional character) 31 Michelson, Richard 36 Mickey (fictional character) 152, 160, 162, 163, 166 middle class, Jewish 43–4, 134 Midrash: on breastfeeding 16, 292–7, 298–300, 302 nn. 20–22, 318, 319 on childbirth 16, 285–6, 287–92, 297–300, 301 nn. 8 & 15 folk tales/storytelling in 299, 345–54 on master–disciple relationship 361–2 motherhood in 287–92, 345–54 on mother’s milk 370 on Proverbs 336–7 on Rachel 229–31, 235, 302 n. 21 on rape 117 on Rebekah 16, 293–6, 302–3 n. 22 on Sarah 256–7, 263, 264, 277 n. 2 on womb 287–8, 301 n. 8 Midrash agadat bereshit 231 Midrash h.ad shenati 16, 292–7, 298–300, 302–3 nn. 20–22 Midrash hagadol 294, 295, 296, 299 Midrash tanh.uma 231, 257, 302 n. 21 midwife image of God 297, 300 n. 6, 369 Mili (fictional character) 158, 165

393

i n d e x milk: of mothers, as teaching Torah 362, 370–1 symbolism of, in Sendak’s work 160–1, 163, 166 Mill, John Stuart 146 n. 4 miracles: biblical, curing barrenness 202 n. 1, 227, 230 medieval stories of 245–6 Miracles of Our Lady (Berceo) 246, 248 n. 18 Mirjam (prayer book, Kiss) 41, 48, 49, 51, 55 miscarriage, impurity of women after 290–1 Misch, Marion 213–14 Mishnah: birthing woman compared to birthing animal 289 breastfeeding 312 household duties of wife 310 husband’s obligation to provide wife with food 313 Judith not mentioned in 198 language of legal rulings applied in 308 minor who doesn’t need his mother 365 precedence of husband over baby 322 n. 5 priority of one’s teacher over one’s father 372 teaching 362 tractates: Ketubot 309, 310, 317, 318, 320; Nidah 288, 312; Sukah 365 misogyny, Jewish 133 Mizrachi, Elijah 85 ’mn: biblical occurrences 327, 329 meanings 16, 327–38, 339 n. 1 modernity/modernization: breastfeeding advice in 320–1 grievances against 141 of Hungarian Jewry 42–4, 55 monastic religiosity of men: enabled by mother–daughter relationships 106, 109, 116, 117–19, 120–3

talmudic literature on 105, 112–13, 115–17, 123, 126 n. 24 monsters, portrayal of Jewish mothers as 153 Mordecai (biblical figure) 337 Moseley, Marcus 143 Moses (biblical figure) 238, 362 Moskowitz, Mrs (fictional character) 28 ‘Mother is like bread…’ (proverb) 59, 63, 72 mother–child bond: bread as expression of 65–6 cultural reproduction based on 1 of Jael and Sisera 195–7 in prayer books 52–3 reinforced through food 156–7 sense of loss in 162 mother–daughter relationship: and cultural norms 13 in Ottoman Jewish society 91–3 in prayer books 53–4 of Rakovsky mother and daughter 142 of Shapiro mother and daughter 129–30, 131–2, 138, 140–1, 142, 144, 146 n. 2 talmudic literature on 12–13, 105–6, 109, 116–19, 120 Torah study of fathers and sons enabled by 4, 106, 109, 116, 117–19, 120–3 mother–son relationship: depictions of 14, 53; in Ottoman Jewish society 83–9 in modern literature 13–14, 172–4, 175, 176–8 of Sendak mother and son 13–14, 149–50, 151, 160, 161 of Shapiro mother and son 144–6 ‘motherfucker’, origin of term 174 motherhood: advice books on 43, 52, 53, 78–9 cultural analysis of 6–7

essentialist understandings of 5 figurative, of biblical women warriors 185, 189–90, 191 future of 16–17 humour on Jewish 170–1 mothers as nation-builders 273 Nene mesl-e na–n (‘mother is like bread’) 59, 64 and peace 15, 278 n. 18 politicization of 6–7, 215 rabbinic literature on 4, 5, 12–13, 78–94, 95 n. 4, 105–6, 109, 116–19, 120 universalist perceptions of 6 yiddishe mama 6, 151 Motherhood as Metaphor (Fletcher) 278 n. 18 ‘mothers of the nation’ 259 mourning rituals 152–3 see also grief Mrs. Moskowitz and the Sabbath Candlesticks (Schwartz) 28 Muers, Rachel 324 n. 21 musar (ethical) literature 78–9 Muslims: Akedah narrative of 277 n. 1 charitable institutions (waqfs), Ottoman Jewish use of 95 n. 9 courts (qadi), Jewish family disputes dealt with 89–90 Rachel viewed by 235 superiority of medical knowledge of 299, 303 n. 26 mystics, see kabbalists N Nahmanides 237, 278 n. 20 Nahum of Gallia (talmudic figure) 314, 315–16, 321 Najara, Israel 83 na–n (bread) 68 Nathan, Maud 209–10 Nathan b. Yehiel 348 National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War (USA) 220

394

i n d e x

National Council of Jewish Women (USA) 209, 213, 217, 219, 220, 221 National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (USA) 209, 217–18, 220 nature: and culture 7 and women 5–6 Nazism, and peace movement 220–1 Neolog Judaism 41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 54, 55, 56 n. 1 Neuda, Abraham 56 n. 2 Neuda, Fanny Schmiedl 45, 49, 53, 56 n. 2 New Year at the Pier (Wayland) 29–30, 31–2, 36 nicknames for mothers, Afghani Jewish 64–5 Nidah (talmudic tractate) 290–1, 309 Nidah (Tosefta) 312–13 Niehoff, Maren 277 n. 3 No Future (Edelman) 188 nostalgia, about Jewish family life 37 Numbers (biblical book) 370 nursing 16, 329–30 nurturing, of parents, by children 160–1 O oaths, annulment of 85–6, 88, 89 objectification 302 n. 19 of mothers, in Midrash on childbirth 288–91 Of Woman Born (Rich) 2 offerings: of bread to demons 67 after childbirth 3 oman, meanings of 330–1 ‘one-seed’ reproduction theory 286–7 Oral Torah 371 Origen 336 Oring, Elliot 354 Orthodox Judaism, in Hungary 56 n. 1 Ortner, Sherry 7

Ottoman Jewish motherhood 12, 77–89 agency of 89–93, 94 Outside Over There (Sendak) 157, 162–3 oven: transformative powers of 66, 68–70, 71, 72, 73 as womb metaphor 73, 288 P pain: of breastfeeding 313–16, 317–18, 319, 321, 324 nn. 16 & 18 of childbirth 3, 266, 289–90 of crucifixion, experienced by Mary 242 Palestine, Ottoman rule of 90 Palestinian Talmud 107, 124 n. 8, 125 nn. 12 & 23 Panofsky, Ruth 174 Pardes, Ilana 369, 370, 373 n. 14 parenthood: absence of instructions for 5 biological 368, 373 n. 11 in children’s literature 158–9, 160–1 compulsory, after Holocaust 163–4 metaphorical 362–3; in master–disciple relationship 4, 359, 361–2, 363–4 parents: affection of, biblical accounts of 333–4 craft training provided by 331–2 as metaphor for God 335 as metaphorical sages 17, 359, 371–2 nurtured by children 160–1 Parush, Iris 134 passivity of mothers in childbirth accounts: in Midrash 287–8, 292 in modern medical literature 301 n. 14 ‘Passover Nights’ (Leilei pesah., Hava Shapiro) 139–41, 146 n. 2

Passover rituals 9–11, 140, 141 patriarchy: Afghani 62 biblical 4 idealized views of 106 of Judaism 360–1 in talmudic literature 110, 111–12, 125 n. 14 women’s sexuality seen as dangerous 301 n. 9, 373 n. 10 Patton, Kimberley 228 Paul of Aegina 303 n. 26 Paul the Deacon 240 peace movement, Jewish American women activists in 214–21 Pepicek (fictional character) 158–9, 160, 165 Perah, Isaac 96 n. 11 Perahia, Aaron Hakohen 80 Peretz, Y. L. 135 Perlow, Reizel 34 Perrot, Jean 159 personal experiences of mothering 4 Pesikta rabati (midrashic collection) 230, 248 n. 4 Peskowitz, Miriam 309, 310, 311, 318 ‘Petition’ (poem, Pinchas-Cohen) 273–5 physicians, medieval 303 n. 26 pilgrimage sites, Rachel’s tomb 231 Pillitz, Dániel 56 n. 2 Pinchas-Cohen, Chava 273–5 Pinhas of Korets 132 Pious and Rebellious (Grossman) 5 Pipick (fictional character) 14, 175, 176–7 piyutim (liturgical hymns), on Akedah 258 PJ Library (USA) 24–5 Plato 362 Poems of the Akedah (Shapira) 272 ‘Poems of Attrition’ (Harnik) 267–8, 275 Poems for Guni (Harnik) 268

395

i n d e x poetry: Israeli 15, 260–1; on Akedah 261–2; Sarah’s role in 256, 258–9, 262–77 piyutim, on Akedah 258 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth) 172–3 postcards, bread used as 67–8 poverty, of women in Palestine 90 power: of husbands over wives 310, 311, 316–18, 319–20 of mothers: in Babylonian Talmud 116; in medieval Ashkenaz 348; in Ottoman Jewish society 80, 93 of post-menopausal women 62 prayer, by women/mothers 45, 48–9, 273 Rebekah 294 prayer books for women 41, 45–7, 48–9, 55 motherhood in 11, 41–2, 45, 48, 49–55, 94 n. 2 prayers: Asher yatsar 137 for new mothers 80–1 pregnancy: biblical accounts of 296, 300 n. 1, 302 n. 25 importance of 51 talmudic literature on 301 n. 10 Prell, Riv-Ellen 169, 171, 178 priesthood in Judaism, see rabbis; religious leadership prostitutes: fiction on 175, 176 talmudic literature on wives as 116, 117 protection: against demons 67 financial, of wives 88, 318 of mothers and newborn children, amulets for 288, 289 Protocols of the Elders of Zion 216 proverbs, Afghani Jewish, on bread 59, 63, 70–2

Proverbs (biblical book) 332–3, 334 Midrash on 336–7 ‘woman of valour’ in 81–2, 131, 132 Pseudo-Philo: on Deborah 190, 193, 203 n. 6 on Jael 196–7 psychology, developmental 162 purity: and bread-making 71 see also impurity Purvin, Jennie Franklin 217 Pyanov, Maria 297 Pynchon, Thomas 171–2 Q qadi, see under Muslims queer theory 185 application to biblical studies 186–8, 192–3, 199–1, 202 R rabbinic Judaism, see Judaism rabbinic literature, see Midrash; talmudic literature rabbis: in children’s literature 29 consulted by women on miscarriage 290–1 fertility of women restored by 121–2 leadership role, enabled by mother–daughter relationships 105 Ottoman, on motherhood 77, 78–94 and peace movement 218 teaching by, see master–disciple relationship women’s suffrage movement endorsed by 213 see also Sages Rabkin, Eric 162 Rachel (biblical figure) 15, 202 n. 1, 227 Christian cult of 226, 239–42, 245–6 death of 231, 237 and God 230 kabbalist cult of 225–6, 231–8, 247;

and Mary’s suffering mother image 15, 226, 239, 246–7 Midrash on 229–31, 235, 302 n. 21 tomb of 230–1, 235–6, 237, 240, 248 n. 2 weeping/suffering of: Christian interpretations 240, 241–2; Jewish interpretations 228, 229–30, 231, 234, 235, 238 Ráhel (prayer book, Weisz) 54 Rahumi (rabbi, talmudic figure) 107 Rakovsky, Puah 142 Ramah 248 n. 2 rape 117, 197 Rashi 296, 324 n. 18 Ratner, Berta and Eva 212 Rava (rabbi, talmudic figure) 108, 115, 116 Rebekah (biblical figure) 202 n. 1 Midrash on 16, 293–6, 302–3 n. 22 pregnancy of 294–6, 302 n. 25 Recanati, Menahem 238 ‘red stew’ ceremony 61 Reform Judaism: children’s literature on 29–30 and peace movement 218–19 refusal of marriage, right of girls to 96 n. 18 Reiner, Carl 173 Reis, Pamela Tamarkin 203 n. 8 religiosity, ascetic 105, 123, 126 n. 24 religious education: of girls and women 46–7 parental responsibility: of fathers 30, 363–5, 372 n. 3; of mothers/women 44, 46, 54, 136 religious leadership 105, 367–8 in children’s literature 29, 30 prayer books for women by 46 see also rabbis

396

i n d e x

remarriage: breastfeeding women prohibited from 313, 323 n. 7 of widows and divorcees 90 Remy, Nahida 50, 52 replicability discourse 373 n. 10 reproduction: biblical focus on 185 cultural 1, 362–3, 367–8 theories of 286–7, 300 n. 3 women reduced to instruments of 5 reproductive futurism theory 185, 186, 188 applied to biblical studies 192, 197–8, 199, 200–1, 202 and homosexuality 200, 204 n. 13 Revelation (New Testament) 240–1 Rich, Adrienne 2, 130–1, 365, 368 rites of passage, of Afghani Jews 61 ritual practices: food-related, of Afghani Jews 61, 62, 67 of mourning 152–3 to protect against demons 67 of women/mothers 9–11, 27–8, 29, 61, 141 Rivka’s First Thanksgiving (Rael and Kovalski) 23–4, 32, 38 n. 1 Roman texts: on breastfeeding 307–8, 323 n. 6 on childbirth 301 nn. 15 & 16 Romaniotes 96 n. 14 Romanos 277 n. 4 Rosen-Zvi, Ishay 301 n. 9, 302 n. 19 Rosenbaum, Limel 142–3, 144 Rosenzweig, Franz 339 n. 2 Rosh Hashanah: celebrations 29 liturgy 230, 258 Rosh Hodesh 234 Roth, Philip 172–3 Rubin, Miri 242, 243, 244, 351

S sabbath: prohibitions 314–16, 320 rituals 27–8 sacrifice: of self: in motherhood 55, 146; by Rachel 229–30, 237 of sons by mothers 15, 259–60, 276; refusal of 262, 267 Sacrifice, The (Wiseman) 174 Safed: kabbalists of 95 n. 8, 247 position of women in 90 Sages 105, 361, 363, 371, 373 n. 15 parents as 17, 359, 371–2 Sagi, Avi 262 Samiga brothers 87–8 Samuel (rabbi, talmudic figure) 302 n. 19 Sarah (biblical figure) 15, 202 n. 1 in Akedah 255–7, 258; and Israeli motherhood 260; Israeli poetry on 256, 258–9, 262–77 death of 256–7, 263–4 ‘Sarai’ (poem, Jacober) 266–7 Sarna, Jonathan 24 Sasson, Jack M. 189, 194, 203 n. 8, 204 n. 9 Sawyer, Deborah F. 190 Schäfer, Peter 226 Schapiro, Beatrice 219 scholars: female 132 of Torah, making of 125 n. 20 scholarship on Jewish motherhood 17–18 on medieval mothers 5, 17, 351–2 stereotypes of 169–70 on talmudic mothers 4, 107 Schwimmer, Rosika 216 Second Temple literature, on dangerous sexual temptation of women 301 n. 9 secular literature: in Hebrew 3, 135, 136–7, 138–41, 143–6

read by women 47, 134 see also under literature secularization: of Hungarian Jews 42–3 mothers/women as bulwark against 11, 43–4 Seder eliyahu rabah (midrashic collection) 231 Seder, see Passover rituals Sefer hama’asim 345 motherhood in 17, 345–9, 350–4 Sefer hayashar 235 Sefer he’arukh (Nathan b. Yehiel) 348 Sefer yosipon 350, 354 Seidman, Naomi 339 nn. 2 & 8 self-sacrifice: in motherhood 55, 146 of Rachel 229–30, 237 Semantics of Biblical Language (Barr) 328 Sendak, Maurice 13–14, 149, 150–1, 163–5 Jewish mothers in writings of 13–14, 149–50, 151–63, 165–6 Sendak, Philip 150 Sendak, Sadie 149, 150, 152, 153, 161 Sennett, Richard 46 Sephardi Jewry, customs of 90, 92, 96 n. 14 Sered, Susan Starr 226, 229, 248 n. 4, 360 sermons, on motherhood 82 servants, household 140, 141 Servites 243 sexuality: and bread-making 72 Jewish, non-Jewish views of 165 in marriage 108 of women, patriarchal concerns over 301 n. 9, 373 n. 10 Shabat (Tosefta) 314–15, 320, 321 Shacham-Rosby, Chana 226, 231 Shahrur, Tsipi 269–70 Shapira, Shalom Yosef 272

397

i n d e x Shapiro, Hava 3, 13, 129, 130, 131–2, 133–4, 135, 136–8, 139–41, 142–3, 144–6 pen name (Eim Kol Hai) 137–8, 144, 146 Shapiro, Jacob 132–3 Shapiro, Menunah 13, 129, 131–2, 136, 138, 140–1, 142, 144, 146 n. 2 Shapiro, Pinhas 144, 145–6 Shekhinah 233 divine mother, representations of 225 exile of 246–7 Rachel as symbol of 226, 231–2, 233–5, 236–7 ‘Shema adonai’ (poem, Eliaz Cohen) 279 n. 23 Shevet musar (Hakohen) 78–9, 80–1, 94 n. 2 Shiffman, Smadar 259 Shifman-Shmuelovich, Shifra (Shin Shifra) 268–9 shikse (young non-Jewish woman) stereotypes 173 Shimon bar Yohai (rabbi, talmudic figure) 113, 119, 124 n. 8, 126 n. 24 Sholom’s Treasure (Silverman and Gerstein) 32–3 Shoshany, Ronit 125 n. 22 Sifrei on Deuteronomy (midrashic collection) 361–2 Sigalow, Emily 11, 12, 380–1 Simeon b. Eleazar (rabbi, talmudic figure) 318, 319 Simhat Torah celebrations 30 Simon-Shoshan, Moshe 373 n. 15 Singer, Leó 43, 44–5, 52, 53 sinthomosexuality 200, 204 n. 13 Sisera (biblical figure) 193, 194–7, 204 n. 9 sivlonot (gifts from groom to betrothed) 96 n. 14 ‘snake woman’ folk tale (Afghani Jewish) 69–70, 74 n. 7 Sollors, Werner 173 Solomon, Andrew 373 n. 11

Something for Nothing (Gilman) 35 Song of Songs Rabbah (midrashic collection) 362 sons: absence from family to study Torah 13, 110–12, 115 custody of 89 honouring of mother by 82, 95 n. 8 relationship with father 12–13; of maskilim 129–30; master–disciple relationships viewed as 106, 117, 361–2; in modern literature 143; in talmudic literature 105, 108, 110–12, 115 relationship with mother 14, 53, 144–6, 151; in American stereotypes of Jewish motherhood 172–4, 175, 176–8; in Ottoman Jewish society 83–9; in Sendak 13–14, 149–50, 151, 160, 161 sacrificed by mothers 15, 259–60, 262, 267, 276 see also boys Soranus of Ephesus 286 Spain, expulsion of Jews from, impact 77–8 Spinning Fantasies (Peskowitz) 309 Stabat Mater Dolorosa (hymn, Jacopone da Todi) 248 n. 15 Status Quo Ante Jews, in Hungary 56 n. 1 Steinem, Pauline 209 stepmothers: in children’s literature 32–3 evil/hatred associated with 66 stereotypes: of gender roles: in children’s literature 25, 35–7; in prayer books 53 of Jewish motherhood 8, 11, 14, 151, 269; and Jewish identities 169–70, 176; as metonym for Jewish community 169, 173,

177–8; in United States 6, 151, 169, 170–80 of Jews 216 Stern, Mór 56 n. 2 Stoler-Liss, Sachlav 259 Stone, Ken 187 stories: analysis of 355 n. 2 midrashic 299, 345–54 see also Akedah; folk tales storytelling 34, 354 Strauch Schick, Shana 16, 381 ‘Struggle for Women’s Rights’ (article, Der Fraynd) 211 Stunden der Andacht (prayer book, Neuda) 45, 49 ‘Subjection of Women’ (essay, Mill) 146 n. 4 subjectivity, maternal 16 suffering: of Job 303 n. 25 of mothers: Mary 228, 239, 242–6, 257; Rachel 228, 231, 235, 237, 241–2 similarities between Rachel and Mary 226, 238, 242, 246–7 suffrage movement, in USA 209–14 Sukah (talmudic tractate) 365 Sulak, Marcela 273 Sumerian language 331 Susil (fictional character) 140, 141 Suskin-Ostriker, Alicia 262 Sydney Taylor Jewish Book Award 24, 25–6 symbolic meanings: of manna 370 of milk 160–1, 163, 166 symbols: of mothering 194, 195 of Shekhinah 226, 231–2, 233–5, 236–7 of Tiferet 237–8 Symposium (Plato) 362 synagogues: attendance by mothers 29, 51 women on boards of 213 Szabolcsi, Miksa 43–4

398

i n d e x

T Tales in Context (Kushelevsky) 355 n. 1 talmudic literature 107, 123 on breastfeeding 16, 308–9, 312, 313–14, 316–18, 319–20, 321–2, 323 nn. 7 & 13, 364 on childbirth 301 nn. 10 & 15, 302 n. 18 on fathers: relationships with sons 105, 106, 108, 110–12, 115; teaching obligations of 363–5, 372 n. 3, 373 n. 9 on husband–wife relationship 114–15, 120–1, 310, 311, 316–18, 319 on marriage 309–10 on master–disciple relationship 362, 363–5 on menstruation 302 n. 19 on patriarchy 110, 111–12, 125 n. 14 on pregnancy 301 n. 10 on Torah study and ‘married monk’ model 105, 112–13, 115–17, 123, 126 n. 24 on wet nurses 312, 318 on wives as prostitutes 116, 117 on womb 300 n. 7 on women 372 n. 4; exemptions from mitsvot for 373 n. 7 see also Babylonian Talmud; Mishnah; Palestinian Talmud; Tosefta Tamber-Rosenau, Caryn 14, 381 Targum Jonathan 203 n. 5 tashlikh ritual 29 Taylor, Sydney 25 teaching: by fathers 30, 363–5, 372 n. 3, 373 n. 9 maternal childrearing as 360, 365–6, 368–9, 370–1, 372 by rabbis, see master–disciple relationship of wives, by husbands 79 see also education Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp,

Brundibar opera performed at 158 Testament of Reuben 301 n. 9 Thanksgiving holiday 23 Think and Thank (Cooper) 24 Tiferet (divine king), Jacob as symbol of 237–8 tikun rah.el, ceremony (rite for Rachel) 247 Tinkle, Theresa 241 tkhines (women’s prayers) 45, 46, 47, 48 tomb of Rachel 230–1, 235–6, 237, 240, 248 n. 2 Torah: meaning of 350–60 Oral 371 study of 134; absence of fathers and sons because of 4, 13, 106, 108–9, 110–14, 115, 116, 117–19, 120–3; centrality in Judaism of 4, 80, 361; maternal work laying foundation for 17, 80, 82, 366–9; women/girls excluded from 133 teaching of: by fathers 30, 363–5, 370, 372 n. 3, 373 n. 9; maternal childrearing as 360, 365–6, 368–9, 370–1, 372 Torrance, Thomas F. 327–8, 339 n. 1 Tosefta: on breastfeeding 310–13, 314–16, 320, 321, 322 n. 5, 323 n. 7, 323–4 n. 13 on husband–wife relationship 318 on master–disciple relationship 362, 364–5 tradition, Jewish, preservation by mothers of 45–6, 54, 55 Tradition and Crisis (Katz) 353 Trani, Joseph 83, 87, 88 translations: of Bible 189, 336, 339 n. 8, 340 n. 9 of prayers 48 Tree of Knowledge, fruit of 137, 138

Tristan and Isolde story 346 Turgenev, Ivan 143 two-seed reproduction theory 286, 300 n. 3 U United States: Jewish identities in 178, 179, 208 Jewish motherhood in 8, 13–14; in children’s literature 11, 13, 23–5, 26–37, 149–50, 151–63, 165–6; stereotypes of 6, 151, 169, 170–80 Jewish women in 207; maternalism 208, 211, 213–14, 215, 216–17, 221; peace movement 214–21; suffrage movement 209–14 V Valler, Shulamit 116 Venice Haggadah 9–10 vows, annulment of 85–6, 88, 89 W Wald, Lillian 210–11, 216 Walfish, Miriam-Simma 16, 381 waqfs, see under Muslims warrior women, biblical 185–6, 188–202 Waskow, Arthur 178 Wayland, April Halprin 29–30, 38 n. 5 ‘We Carry Torches’ (poem, Ze’ev) 278 n. 15 weaknesses of mothers, emphasis on 80 wealth of women, in Ottoman Jewish society 84 weapons, of motherhood 197 weeping: in Bible and Judaism 228–9 of Rachel: Christian interpretations 240, 241–2; Jewish interpretations 228, 229–30, 231, 234, 235, 238 Weiss, Ruchama 270–1

399

i n d e x Weisz, Gábor 54, 56 n. 2 Weitzman, Lenore 36–7 Wengeroff, Pauline 141, 147 nn. 8 & 9 wet nurses: in antiquity 307–8, 318, 323 n. 6 talmudic literature on 312, 318 When Zaydeh Danced (Rael and Priceman) 30 Where the Wild Things Are (book, Sendak) 151–3, 157, 160 Where the Wild Things Are (film, Jonze) 153–6, 157, 166 n. 1 Where’s Poppa? (film, Reiner) 173 ‘white stew’ ritual 61 widows: in children’s literature 31 in Ottoman Jewish society 89 remarriage of 90 Wiesenfield, Hattie 217 Winnicott, Donald 327 Wisdom (biblical figure) 332–3, 334, 336, 340 nn. 9 & 10 Wisdom of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), anti-female bias of 132 Wise, Stephen 218 Wiseman, Adele 14, 169, 173, 174–9, 180 wives 5, 45 deserted 90, 137; release of 87–8 divorce sought by 142–3, 144, 349, 352–3 financial protection of 88, 318 household duties of 32, 309–11 as prostitutes, talmudic literature on 116, 117 see also marriage wolves/werewolves, mothers turning into 153 Woman Suffrage Party (USA) 212 ‘woman of valour’ (eshet h.ayil, Proverbs) 81–2, 131, 132 womb: envy of men of 122

Midrash on 287–8, 301 n. 8 oven metaphor 73, 288 of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau struggling in 294–6, 303 n. 25 talmudic literature on 300 n. 7 women: Afghani Jewish 60–2, 62–73 American Jewish, activism of 207–21 Ashkenazi medieval 352 and assimilation/ secularization of Jews 11, 43–4 barrenness/infertility of 50–1, 81; and Afghani doll bread-making 66–7; biblical accounts of 3–4, 202 n. 1, 227–8, 230; as social death 112 biblical: leadership of 14–15, 190, 191–2, 193, 200, 201; matriarchs 230; motherhood of 3, 14, 192, 202 n. 1; warriors 185–6, 188–202 curses on 80, 95 n. 5 education of 46–7, 79, 136 fertility/reproductive role of 5, 286–7; bread related to 70–1, 72; status related to 61–2, 73, 79–80 Hebrew language use/study 131, 133–4, 136–41, 143–6 idealized views of 77 literacy of 79, 135 and motherhood 31, 50 Muslim, medical knowledge of 299 and nature 5–6 Ottoman Jewish, agency of 89–93, 94 prayer by/prayer books for 41, 45–7, 48–9; motherhood in 11, 41–2, 45, 48, 49–55, 94 n. 2 reading by 47, 134 ritual practices of 9–11, 27–8, 29, 61, 141

sexuality of, patriarchal concerns over 301 n. 9, 373 n. 10 single, in children’s literature 31 in talmudic literature 372 n. 4, 373 n. 7 wealth of 84, 90 writers 129, 135, 138; of secular Hebrew literature 138–41, 143–6 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 215–16, 220 Women’s Peace Union (USA) 218, 220 women’s rights movement, origins of 15, 211 wonder-worker image 137 World Council of Jewish Women 215 World Health Organization, breastfeeding advice 320 writers: books as children of 163, 164–5 female 129, 135, 138; of secular Hebrew literature 138–41, 143–6 of Jewish children’s books 36 male 134, 136, 137; on mother–son relationships 13–14, 172–4, 175, 176–8 Y yam, meanings of 330 Yanai, Rabbi (rabbi, talmudic figure) 110 Yehoshua ben Korha (rabbi, talmudic figure) 119 Yiddish language use 135 in literature 142 in women’s prayers 48 yiddishe mama image 6, 151 yiddishkeit 162 Yom Kippur celebrations 108 Yoma (talmudic tractate) 370 Yosef (rabbi, talmudic figure) 108, 115 You Don’t Have To Be Jewish (comedy album, Booker and Foster) 172

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Z Za–d al-musa–fir wa-qu– t al h.a–d.ir 303 n. 26 Zan-Bar Tsur, Tsila 12, 381 Zaydeh (fictional character) 30 Ze’ev, Aharon 278 n. 15

Zessie (fictional character) 30 Zierler, Wendy I. 13, 382 Zikhroynes fun a yidisher revolutsionerin (Rakovsky) 142 Zipporah (biblical figure) 238

Zohar: on Rachel 233–4, 235–8, 247, 248 n. 11 on Shekhinah 225, 236–7 Zoroastrianism 73 n. 1