Women and Jewish Marriage Negotiations in Early Modern Italy 9781351168069, 9781351168052, 9780815348092, 9781351168083

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Women and Jewish Marriage Negotiations in Early Modern Italy

This book examines the role of women in Jewish family negotiations, using the setting of Italy from the end of the Renaissance to the Baroque. In ghettos at night and under the scrutiny of inquisitions, Jews flourished. Life and learning were enriched by Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, the Ottoman Empire, transalpine Europe, west and east, and Catholic neighbors. Rabbinic discourse represented conflicting customs in family formation and dissolution, especially at moments of crisis for women: forced betrothal; physical, mental and financial abuse; polygamy, and abandonment. In this book, case studies illustrate the ambiguity, drama, and danger to which women were exposed, as well as opportunities to make their voices heard and to extricate themselves from situations by forcing a divorce, collecting or seizing assets, and going to Catholic notaries to bequeath their assets outside traditional inheritance, often to other women. Despite intrusion by rabbis, their ability for coercion was limited, and their threats of punishments reflected the rhetoric of weakness rather than realistic options for implementation. The focus of this text is not what the law says, but rather how it enabled individual Jews, especially women, to speak and to act. Howard Tzvi Adelman is the Director of the Jewish Studies Program and an Associate Professor of History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Routledge Research in Early Modern History For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

In the same series: London, Londoners and the Great Fire of 1666 Disaster and Recovery Jacob F. Field The Turks and Islam in Reformation Germany Gregory J. Miller Church and Censorship in Eighteenth-Century Italy Governing Reading in the Age of Enlightenment Patrizia Delpiano Individuality in Early Modern Japan Thinking for Oneself Peter Nosco Guilds, Labour and the Urban Body Politic Fabricating Community in the Southern Netherlands, 1300–1800 Bert De Munck An Unproclaimed Empire The Grand Duchy of Lithuania: From the Viewpoint of Comparative Historical Sociology of Empires Zenonas Norkus The Discourse of Exile in Early Modern English Literature J. Seth Lee Women and Jewish Marriage Negotiations in Early Modern Italy For Love and Money Howard Tzvi Adelman

Women and Jewish Marriage Negotiations in Early Modern Italy For Love and Money Howard Tzvi Adelman

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Howard Tzvi Adelman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-4809-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-16808-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Karin, with love, after 36, lamed-vav, years.

Contents

Preface: “Unwilling to Allow His Wife a Divorce, He Marries Another”viii Acknowledgmentsxv 1 Introduction: Jews, Women, and Rabbis in Italy

1

2 Negotiating Engagement: Anticipating Danger

36

3 Breaking Betrothals: Fleeing Danger

71

4 Negotiating In and Out of Marriage

102

5 Anticipating Death: Negotiating Assets

132

6 Remarriage: Negotiations Between Families

159

7 Conclusion

183

Index202

Preface “Unwilling to Allow His Wife a Divorce, He Marries Another”

The New York Times ran a homepage story about a contemporary case of Jewish family negotiations that caught my immediate interest. “Unwilling to Allow His Wife a Divorce, He Marries Another,” the headline declared. The article described how a religious Jewish man granted his wife a civil divorce in California, and he subsequently married a second wife in a civilly and religiously recognized Jewish ceremony. However, the man refused to grant his first wife a Jewish divorce, a get, and, consequently, she could never remarry under Jewish law, for until she received a Jewish religious divorce, she was an agunah, a chained or literally an anchored woman. According to the Times, the man had stated that he would only issue a divorce if his first wife paid him $500,000 and granted him full custody of their son. This made him a recalcitrant husband, a get-refuser, a sarban. My post-secondary education coincided with the rise of the women’s movement, which had a profound impact in the Jewish community; women struggled for religious equality, and also for the removal of the legal impediments that made women like his first wife victims of abuse. I spent many years of my early teaching career at Smith College and there turned my attention to research on Jewish women’s history, especially in early modern Italy, about which I had written my doctorate on the seventeenth-century Venetian rabbi Leon Modena under Professor Benjamin Ravid. And now, on my screen, in the New York Times, 500 years later, was evidence of the deep and enduring connections between Jewish women’s lives in early modern Italy and in twenty-first century North America. According to the Times, his first wife had defenders in the Jewish community. At the man’s wedding with his second wife, a crowd of Orthodox Jews gathered outside the hall and then in front of the man’s house to protest his leaving his wife an agunah. These protesters were affiliated with the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA), a movement to support agunot (plural) in their struggle. One of the rabbis present described the man’s behavior as “cruel domestic abuse.”1

Preface ix Some readers of the Times wrote that his first wife should not have to change her religious beliefs to get justice and that the leaders of her community had failed her. Other readers blamed his first wife, decrying these events as medieval and accusing her of being “a prisoner of her own mind only and has yet to release herself from her own self imposed prison.” The man’s supporters launched an attack against his first wife. They used traditional posters on the walls of synagogues and rabbinic decisions as well as Internet sites and blogs. The central premise of the attacks against his first wife was that the man had submitted a bill of divorce that she had refused to accept because she wanted to extort more money from him as well as visitation rights with their son. She was thus making the man an anchored man (agun). The man’s supporters challenged the authority, integrity, and sanity of those rabbis who supported his first wife. In addition, they claimed that she had a previous marriage that had not yet been settled, and they accused her of being a gold digger involved in extorting both her previous husbands. The man’s supporters went further, attacking her sexual propriety, which they characterized as lewd (mezanah), denouncing her appeal to secular courts, which cost both parties hundreds of thousands of dollars, and decrying her lack of obedience to her husband, which made her a rebellious wife (moredet)—grounds that they claimed allowed him to marry another woman while still married to his first wife. The controversy turned from the man and his first wife to impassioned discussions of women’s rights and feminism in Judaism. Some bloggers accused rabbis who supported his first wife of conducting feminist courts in a feminist police state and pandering to the feminist movement, which was destroying Judaism. “Feminism KILLED marriage. A man wants his wife to look up to him, and then he loves her. Today, everything you say gets challenged.”2 Other bloggers responded by protesting the religious limitations on Jewish women: “Strictly speaking adultery is death for a woman, not so much for a man. Women have no right to divorce. Men have total power over divorce even though they can be coerced if enough men (and only men) think they’re just a little too stubborn. Agunot can’t remarry. Men are completely free to leave their exes hanging and get married again.” One writer expressed concern that Orthodox rabbis opposed prenuptial agreements that might enhance a woman’s freedom to get out of a bad marriage. These statements of popular opinion against feminism in favor of male privilege were echoed in rabbinic decisions against his first wife and her rabbinic supporters: “the wife would only want a get in a way that deprives her husband of his rights, it is only the wife that is chaining herself rather than the husband chaining her.” The rabbis who supported the man also attacked attempts in the Orthodox Jewish community, like

x  Preface those such as the ORA, that organized protests against men who chained their wives by refusing to grant them Jewish bills of divorce. These rabbis accused his first wife of being a fake agunah and compared her claims to those of women who filed false abuse charges. Because she took her case to the secular courts, they accused her of informing to the government (mesirah) and putting the man in a position of being pursued (nirdaf), two charges for which a Jew may be summarily executed by any Jew. In addition, they accused her of sinning, thieving, plundering her husband, and hating him. Supporters of his first wife kept up a volley of attacks against the man and his supporters, claiming that he was a vicious, phony, cowardly, sniveling, wretched, putrid soul, the lowest form of slime that crawled on this planet, and garbage. This terminology continued the longstanding pattern of highly exaggerated abusive terms, characteristic of Jewish communal discourse and public interpersonal conflicts. The common theme in all these attacks on both sides was nostalgia for a time of total rabbinic authority. The partisans of both sides longed for the supposedly simpler days when Jews obeyed rabbinic rulings, and when, on rare occasions of disobedience, rabbis were authorized by secular rulers to punish recalcitrant Jews who informed to the rulers about other Jews might have been sanctioned by the same Jewish authorities. However, even when the rulers are Jewish and the courts are rabbinic in the State of Israel, women remain subject to extortion under rabbinic supervision. A headline read: “Man’s refusal to divorce wife unless she pays $131K ‘not extortion,’ Israeli court says.” According to the newspaper, for six years, a man refused to grant his wife a divorce unless, after defying the Supreme Rabbinic Court in Jerusalem, he was sentenced to five years in prison. On appeal in Haifa, the man offered to release her for 800,000 shekels, then dropped it to 500,000, and her father claimed he could only pay 50,000 shekels. Because the man agreed to an amount to free his wife, although her father could not pay the whole amount, the rabbinic court saw this as a sign of his willingness to free her and declared that he was no longer a get-refuser, a sarban, and she was no longer an agunah, but she was still not free to marry.3 Such cases show that before, during, and after marriage, rabbinic tradition still puts women at a disadvantage in family negotiations. Jewish tradition, especially in the hands of malicious men, has long been used to limit the personal, emotional, and financial security of women. Historically, at the root of the imbalance in many issues facing women was a Jewish structural tolerance for polygyny. Married men could, according to Jewish law, have another woman as a concubine (pilegesh) or as a wife (tzarah)—although there is little evidence that men did so on a regular basis—and all his children would still be legitimate in the Jewish community. For Jewish men, sexual relations left no enduring connection with a woman or her family, nor did they carry with them any

Preface xi long-term consequences for him. A woman, however, did not have such freedom. Each sexual encounter a woman had with a man, whether or not it resulted in a pregnancy, carried long term repercussions. Unlike a man, a woman’s loss of virginity changed her status forever. Adultery could end her marriage, delegitimize her children, and subject her to great financial and possibly physical punishments. As a divorcee or widow, she might still have had obligations to nurse her children and limitations on her ability to remarry. Women who were betrothed under questionable circumstances, abandoned, or childless widows obligated to join a union with their late husbands’ brother—a levirate connection (from the Latin word for brother-in-law)—could not marry, remarry, or produce legitimate children until they were released from these ties. Any children they had during that time would be mamzerim, often translated as “bastards,” but they were actually offspring who would be excluded from the community of Jews, a fate significantly more debilitating than illegitimacy. On the other hand, remarkably, the offspring of unmarried women with married men were legitimate. The burden of imbalance was harder on women because in each of these instances, Jewish law, especially in the hands of male rabbis, tried to maintain the principle that men cannot be forced to release women, but must release them of their own free will, leaving a woman trapped and subject to extortion while the man was free to marry another. Moreover, in Catholic Europe, where divorce did not exist until the modern period, a change that was accompanied by the principle of the separation of church and state, rabbis were hesitant to force a Jewish man to give his wife a religious bill of divorce. Without one she was still religiously married to her husband, and according to Jewish law, she could never marry another Jewish man. Nevertheless, although barely mentioned in these controversies involving a man and his first wife, rabbinic tradition does offer ways to negotiate for the benefit of women. These will be the subject of this book. Prior to betrothal and marriage, a woman could negotiate terms of engagement in a prenuptial agreement that limited her husband’s ability to abuse her financially, emotionally, and physically, a method of protecting women that is now becoming a more commonly employed legal procedure to protect the rights of Jewish women. The next stage after the engagement and prenuptial contract is a religiously binding betrothal, which a woman could attempt to have annulled if it had been made against her wishes or she discovered serious flaws in her husband-to-be. During the marriage itself, she had still further options. She could strategize to force her husband to divorce her, she could abscond with his assets, or she could write a last will and testament that diverted her assets away from him and his family. These strategies represented some of the ways in which a woman could force a man to negotiate with her, and they often involved the cooperation of her family and support from some rabbis

xii  Preface and communal leaders, if not also the secular authorities. Divorce was also an option available to women in Jewish tradition, certainly when Jews lived among Muslims. Catholic authorities, however, did not allow complete divorce for Catholics—only separation from bed and board, and Jewish authorities in Catholic countries often had to conform to such limitations, which made divorce more difficult, but not impossible, and Jewish women negotiated for divorce in Catholic countries. Yet despite limitations on women’s freedom to enter and to leave a marriage, when a woman wanted to act on her own volition and establish a relationship with whomever she wished, she could sometimes do so by circumventing the involvement of the very people, family members, community authorities, and rabbis, who could protect her and help her get out of the relationship if it became abusive. In this book, I will explore the obstacles to women’s empowerment and their options to work around them. Historical research about women’s history can include, to varying degrees, either a depiction of their oppression or a description of their accomplishments. These approaches can be polemical or apologetic. Often based on random anecdotes or quotations taken out of context, these approaches are mixed together in a binary depiction of some sort of status of women, which of course is never the same as that of men. I am interested in the structures of Jewish life, the mechanisms of Jewish law, and the dynamics of family negotiations. This framework provides a way to observe how women and others acted on their behalf. Indeed, it also shows some of the remedies available to women in Jewish law. My interest here lies not so much in the specific conclusions reached by rabbis but rather primarily in aspects of their discourse. I will follow changes and controversies, the ways in which the participants expressed themselves, and the patterns of their negotiations in facing crises. Despite the seeming intrusive supervision by rabbis, families, and other authorities, the actual coercion of individuals was often limited, and threats of dire punishments might have reflected the rhetoric of weakness rather than realistic options for implementation. In this text, I will treat rabbinic literature as a collection of fragmented conversations, rather than as a systematic corpus of law that was capable of guiding the outcome of any situation or as a body of evidence that could document a complete factual record of what had happened. Furthermore, in order to understand these conversations, it is necessary to listen for omissions, additions, or other changes as texts quote and build on earlier texts. In these documents, it is possible to meet individuals and hear the voices of women, to extricate them from the theoretical textual matrix, and to learn about their activities and feelings at a historical moment in the life of a person, a family, a Jewish community, or Italian history.4 Rabbinic Judaism remains central to Jewish life and practice today, especially among traditional Jews everywhere and certainly in Israel

Preface xiii where it determines all matters of personal status for Jews. Hence, the conflicting opinions and differing practices of rabbinic literature have standing today and contributions by early modern Italian rabbis are still relevant today.5

Notes Medina, “Unwilling to Allow His Wife a Divorce,”; Spence, “Protesters Rally.” 1 2 Anonymous, “Is This the Most Shocking Story of a Woman ‘Chained’ in Her Orthodox Marriage?”; further unsigned quotations are from, “theunorthodoxjew.blogspot,” “The Phony Agunah,” “rabbiniccorruptionatrcc,” see also, Potelnik, “Excommunication of Insane ‘Rabbi’ ”; Geshtetner, “’Annulment,’ ” all were accessed on March 22, 2014; for a comprehensive discussion of the relevant Jewish legal principles, how they are misrepresented in cases like this, and the possibility of coordinating them with Western legal principles, see Bleich, “Jewish Divorce: Judicial Misconceptions,” 201–289. 3 Ettinger, “Man’s Refusal to Divorce Wife,” Haaretz, October 14, 2016. This theme is developed in the Israeli-French film, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, 2014. 4 On micro-history, see Cohen, “No Longer Virgins,” 169–171; for an overview of the Catholic process, which she likens to a triptych, see Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, 178–121. 5 Greenberg-Kobrin, “Civil Enforceability of Religious Prenuptial Agreements,” 359–400.

Works Cited Anonymous. “Is This the Most Shocking Story of a Woman ‘Chained’ in Her Orthodox Marriage?” http://frumstaire.net/2014/03/20/is-this-the-most-shock ing-story-of-a-woman-chaimed-in-her-orthodox-marriage/ (Accessed March 14, 2014). Anonymous. http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.ca/2009/05group-of-fifty-parentsfrom-ten-schools.html/ (Accessed March 14, 2014). Anonymous. “The Phony Agunah,” http://lonnakin.blogspot.ca/2009/06/lonnakin-ralbag-is-phony-agunah.html/; http://frumfollies.wordpress.com/2010/12/ 28/talk-about-going-off-the-derech-bracha-goetz/ (Accessed March 14, 2014). Anonymous. http://rabbiniccorruptionatrcc.blogspot.ca/2020/08/truth-will-standforever.html; http://mamzeralert.blogspot.ca/2009/12/lonn-kin-ralbag.html Bleich, J. David. “Jewish Divorce: Judicial Misconceptions and Possible Means of Civil Enforcement,” Connecticut Law Review 16:2 (1984): 201–289. Cohen, Elizabeth S. “No Longer Virgins: Self Preservation by Young Women in Late Renaissance Rome,” in Refiguring Women: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. Edited by Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, 169–191. Ettinger, Yair. “Man’s Refusal to Divorce Wife Unless She Pays $131K ‘Not Extortion,’ Israeli Court Rules,” Haaretz, October 14, 2016, www.haaretz. com/israel-news/.premium-1.747399/ (Accessed August 14, 2017). Geshtetner, Avrohom Shmuel Yhuddah.’Annulment’ of Falsified, Invalid ‘Ksav Siruv.’ Monsey, NY: Rabbinical Court, Shar Hamishpot, April 12, 2007, www. google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDgQFj

xiv  Preface AC&url=http%3A%2F%2Flukeford.net%2FImages%2Fphotos%2Fgestetne renglish0412071.pdf&ei=ll8wU9-tOe242QXn6IDoAw&usg=AFQjCNGbt XiGMe2hGl-UW55TurwlAfzEwA&sig2=txRaW4FpWV8WT4Xbq2M3nw& bvm=bv.62922401,d.b2I/ (Accessed March 14, 2014). Greenberg-Kobrin, Michelle. “Civil Enforceability of Religious Prenuptial Agreements,” Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems 32 (1999): 359–400. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Medina, Jennifer. “Unwilling to Allow His Wife a Divorce, He Marries Another,” New York Times, March 21, 2014, and accompanying comments section. www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/us/a-wedding-amid-cries-of-unfinished-busi ness-from-a-marriage.html/ (Accessed March 21, 2014). Potelnik, Yomin. “Excommunication of Insane ‘Rabbi’ Herschel Schachter,” http:// mythdebunker.blogspot.ca/ (Accessed March 24, 2014).

Acknowledgments

Book acknowledgements, as a sort of victory lap, combine the elements of autobiography, imprimatur, and awards night speech. Like a guest list, there is always the chance of leaving somebody out or including too many. I have worked on and avoided this project so long that elaborating specific contributions would only diminish them because of the sheer volume of them—and my failure to keep accurate records. So with this humble offering, I invite all who have felt a connection with my work to join the celebration of the completion of this book and to accept my deepest and sincerest gratitude for your engagement. I must, however, mention several people whose extended contribution to my life provided the respite to turn to other matters and the inspiration to continue with this. My family has been loving and supportive: my mother, Fannette Adelman; my brother and sister-in-law, Edward and Michele Adelman; my wife, Karin Ehrlich Adelman, and our amazing children, Yonah, Eliahu, and Natan, each of whom strives to make the world a better place; and, lehavdil bein hahayim levein hametim, my father, Arnold, and my brother, Leonard, and my in-laws Leonard and Edith Ehrlich, yehi zikhronam livrakha. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the support of two long-term colleagues, collaborators, and friends, Benjamin Ravid and Muhammad Abu Samra.

1 Introduction Jews, Women, and Rabbis in Italy

Introduction: Jewish Life on the Italian Peninsula After the break-up of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE, the Italian peninsula and islands fragmented into many political jurisdictions, some of which, especially in the south, came to be occupied by foreign powers, including Muslims, Byzantines, Normans, and Spaniards. In the north, the peninsula was consolidated into four main areas that were at war with each other and with the Hapsburgs, the French, and the Ottomans. These areas consisted of the territory captured by “the warrior popes,” which came to gradually include the major centers of Rome and Bologna, the duchies of Urbino, Piacenza, eventually Ferrara and Modena, and also the significant port of Ancona; Tuscany, with its capital in Florence, extending to the major centers of Sienna and Pisa; Lombardy, with its capital in Milan; and, finally, the Venetian republic, with its center in Venice, and including such cities as Padua and Verona. Still remaining independent were Lucca and Genoa. Jews settled on the Italian peninsula, especially in Rome and the south, during the later days of the Roman Republic, and remained there during the advent of Christianity. Especially significant were the southern Adriatic Jewish communities of Bari and Otranto and the island of Sicily. In the north, gradually during the Middle Ages, both attracted by opportunity and pushed by increased anti-Jewish measures and incidents, German (Ashkenazi or in Italian, Tedeschi) and French (Tzarfati) Jews migrated from across the Alps into northern Italy, where they met Jews from Rome (Italiani) who were expanding northward. Many of the immigrants were moneylenders, or more accurately increasingly smallerscale pawnbrokers, who were welcomed by the local authorities because the church officially did not permit Christians to openly lend money on pawns at fixed rates of interest. In addition, after 1391, Iberian Jews (Sephardim) were persecuted, some were converted either by force or voluntarily (New Christians or Conversos), and some of these continued to maintain loyalty to Judaism in secret (crypto-Jews or Marranos). Some Iberian Jews and converts found refuge in northern Italy where they became known in the later

2  Introduction sixteenth century as Ponentine, or western, Jews. Others fled further east to the Ottoman Empire where they joined Jewish natives of the Middle East, called Levantine, Mizrahi, or Oriental Jews, all of whom had developed Jewish practice under Islam, and from there some of these Jews would travel to northern Italy, including Ferrara, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Livorno, and the Papal States. The flight of Iberian Jews and crypto-Jews accelerated after the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, increased in 1492 when Spain expelled all unconverted Jews, and further continued after the 1497 forced conversion of all Jews in Portugal. Then, following the establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1536 and especially after its full operation in 1540, converted Jews intensified their steady trickle-out of Portugal and settled throughout the Mediterranean world, including the Italian peninsula. Very often, Italian rulers granted Jews charters that spelled out their rights and privileges, including granting permission for them, their families, and other co-religionists to settle in the area for a stipulated length of time. Christian rulers and Church leaders remained committed to separating Jews and Christians, especially in matters of sexual relations, marriages, and religious influence, but were never able to do so completely. Because the Italian peninsula was on the boundary between various empires, Italian Jewry reflected many different cultures, traditions, and practices. Sixteenth and seventeenth century northern Italian Jewry, from Rome to the Alps, constituted a specific yet fluid grouping of religious, social, economic, and cultural practices. Jews in that region spoke mainly the local Italian dialects with the addition of Hebrew and Aramaic words drawn from Jewish religious life and culture. Recent immigrants mixed local Italian with Judeo-German, Judeo-Spanish, or Judeo-French. If they wrote in Italian rather than in Hebrew, they adopted the Tuscan dialect. Like other members of the Italian elite at this time, some Jews adopted aspects of Renaissance and Baroque culture. Despite a division of the peninsula into separate states, each with its own government, economy, foreign policy, and army, two unifying factors served to promote a certain sense of Italianitá (Italianness) among those living on the peninsula. One was their struggle to prevent further foreign occupation of the peninsula, and the other was a common loyalty to the religious doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church (although not necessarily to the political claims and aspirations of the papacy). This meant that during the period—known as the Counter or Catholic ­Reformation—adherents had to accept the Church’s assertions that Protestant views, that Catholics following Jewish rites and ideas, and that even most innovative Catholic reformist trends constituted heresy. To implement this theology, the Church and local rulers adopted three major policies that were also to have an impact on Jewish life: inquisitions, ghettos, and the deliberations of the Council of Trent.

Introduction 3

Inquisitions The word inquisition evokes images of secret Jewish practices, torture chambers, and people being burned at the stake. There is certainly some truth behind these images, especially in Spain and Portugal, but three clarifications add to the complexity of the workings of the inquisitions on the Italian peninsula, which began to operate in the 1520s. Firstly, there was not one central Italian Catholic inquisition as in Spain or Portugal, but rather at least fifty local inquisitions of the various jurisdictions, functioning with little coordination. Most famously the Roman Inquisition, established in stages between 1532 and 1542, was in the hands of the papacy and had influence throughout Italy. The Venetian Inquisition, established between 1533 and 1540, impacted on all Venetian territories. Its work is the most well known because of the amount of surviving documentation and the fact that most of the cases involving Christians following Jewish practices, known as judaizing, have been published. Despite the fact that Venice was often in conflict with the Papal States over territory, appointment of clerics within the Venetian state, taxes on Church property, and legal jurisdiction over clerics (which became heated enough to lead to the Church’s excommunicating Venice in 1509 and again in 1606–1607), Venice’s concern for supervising the Catholic faith remained strong. The second clarification is that the primary target of inquisitions was not Jews, who had the right to practice Judaism as long as they did not try to convert Christians to Judaism or disseminate material against Christianity; rather, the inquisitions’ main focus was Christians accused of heresy, such as judaizing, blasphemy, witchcraft, magic, homosexuality, conversion to Islam, and sympathies for Protestants and Church reform. Of particular interest to our study is the concern that the Italian inquisitions showed for Catholic men making and breaking clandestine marriages under false pretenses and practicing polygamy, practices that the Church wanted to eliminate, at the same time that Jews openly maintained a system that allowed for polygamy. The third clarification is that on the Italian peninsula, unlike on the Iberian, relatively few people were burned alive or otherwise put to death, but rather received lesser punishments and usually were reconciled with the Church. In Italy, everybody lived under the supervision of an inquisition, but as long as Jews lived as Jews, the inquisitions did not jeopardize their right to live as Jews in Italy.1 On the Iberian Peninsula and in the Iberian diaspora in Catholic Europe, under extensive surveillance by the inquisitions, the practice of crypto-Judaism was difficult. The public realm of male-run synagogues, schools, and rabbinic courts could no longer function. Instead, much of crypto-Jewish practice involved the private domestic space of home and family supervised by women, especially attenuated forms of dietary, Sabbath, and holiday practices.

4  Introduction The main aspect of the life of crypto-Jews was an individual sense that they were not fully Jewish, nor were they fully Catholic, and that every crypto-Jew was his or her own rabbi. At great personal risk, New Christians chose to practice Judaism on a voluntary basis, without the traditional framework, guidance, and coercion of rabbis and the Jewish community. As former crypto-Jews eschewed Catholicism and resettled as Jews in permissive locations, especially in the port cities of Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, Ancona, and Leghorn, as well as North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and the Americas, not only did they not possess traditional rabbinic knowledge but some also brought dissenting traditions that could undermine rabbinic authority in Jewish communities. As these refugees joined established Jewish communities, free of the inquisitions and of rabbinic authority, they produced significant changes. This change in Jewish life allowed for new kinds of leadership no longer based on an aristocracy of rabbinic learning but rather one based on risk taking, financial prowess, and individual initiatives, which also opened leadership opportunities for some women.2

Ghettos The ghetto, understood in its original sense as a compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish area of residence, was an early modern Italian invention. During the Middle Ages, Jews did not live in such ghettos. They often lived together in Jewish quarters, but their choice to do so was voluntary. Before the thirteenth century, a few authorities attempted to compel Jews to live in segregated quarters surrounded by walls and gates, but there is little evidence that they were successful until the fifteenth century, and then primarily on the Iberian Peninsula and, most notably, in the free city of Frankfurt beginning in 1462. It was only in Venice in 1516 that the term ghetto was first applied to the innovation of a systematically compulsory, segregated, and enforced physically enclosed area for Jews, especially at night when gates were locked and guards posted. The establishment of the ghetto was the result of a series of negotiations and compromises that involved Jews, government officials, and clergy. However, the existence of the ghetto did not guarantee a permanent right to live there, for in Venice as in most places on the Italian peninsula, residency was dependent on charters of limited duration granted to Jewish communities. Thus, during the period of sanctioned residence in a ghetto, Jews had contractual rights; but whether or not the charters were renewed was another matter. A look at the establishment of the ghettos of Venice is instructive about Jewish life in Italy. In 1509, when, as part of the Italian Wars, the armies of the League of Cambrai (1508–1516) invaded Venice’s mainland, Venice allowed Jews to take refuge in the city. Later, in 1513, in exchange for an annual payment from the Jews, the government issued a charter

Introduction 5 authorizing the Jewish pawnbrokers to stay in the city and to lend small sums of money to the poor because it realized that the new arrangement was beneficial for the state, the Catholic poor, and the Jews. This new arrangement, however, disturbed the religious equilibrium for churchmen because now Jews were living all over the city among Catholics. The crisis produced by Venice’s military losses to the League of Cambrai compelled Venetians, especially the clergy, to want to restore the religious equilibrium by expelling the Jews. The crisis was resolved by a compromise that allowed the Jewish pawnbrokers, the city’s poor, and the government to continue the current convenient arrangement of Jews living in the city while appeasing those who demanded expulsion. Hence, in 1516, the Venetians internally expelled the Ashkenazi pawnbrokers by segregating them at night in a closed area surrounded by walls, gates, and guards. The district that the government chose for the Jewish pawnbrokers was on the site of a former foundry (getto) known already as the Ghetto Nuovo, the New Ghetto. As the Venetian government saw the need to strengthen Venetian overseas commerce, beginning in 1541, Venice allowed Jewish merchants active in the Adriatic to stay in the city for two years in a second ghetto on land already known as the Ghetto Vecchio, the Old Ghetto. In 1633, the Ghetto Nuovissimo, the Newest Ghetto, was established on land that was never previously referred to as a ghetto. Thus, the term went from being the name of two specific spaces in Venice, to the place where Jews were required to live, to the name for all places to which they were required to live in Venice. The major turning point in the implementation of ghettos in Italy came in 1555 when Pope Paul IV (r. 1555–1559) issued his bull, Cum Nimis Absurdum, that, among other restrictive measures, required all Jews in the Papal States live separately from Catholics in an area with only one entrance and exit supervised by guards who were paid for by the Jews. In 1562, the pope first referred to this kind of area as a ghetto. Then, in 1569, the Church declared that all Jews in the Papal States were either to move into the ghettos of Rome and Ancona or leave, although this measure was not fully implemented. Subsequently, many other Italian jurisdictions required Jews to move into ghettos, often after extensive delays due to negotiations between governments and the Jews who attempted to resist ghettoization. Ghettos, which housed anywhere from several thousand to only a few Jews, were established in most Italian cities and towns, and rulers in Italy continued to establish ghettos through to the eighteenth century. Some localities, however, chose expulsion over ghettoization, including, Trent, the Republic of Lucca, the duchy of Milan, and the Italian peninsula south of Rome that was in Spanish hands. Early modern Italian ghettos had some attractive qualities. They were safe spaces for Jews not only physically but also culturally and religiously. And they were not totally closed off. Jews could leave and non-Jews could

6  Introduction enter, at least during daylight hours.3 In some cases, Jews were also permitted freedom of movement after dark: the Venetian government issued a general exemption from the ghetto curfew to Jewish physicians to go into Christian homes; Jewish musicians and dancers were also given ad hoc permissions to perform music or dance or to give music lessons—the very kinds of “dangerous” intimate activities that the authorities hoped to prevent when they instituted the ghetto. For example, in the early seventeenth century, Rachel, a Jewish singer (hebrea cantarina), received permission, along with her father Jacob and her brother Marco, to go out at night and perform in the homes of Christian nobles. Yet in 1609 and again in 1613, the authorities accused them of engaging in forbidden social relations with Christians at night, including carousing among commoners, as well as eating, drinking, and in other ways behaving dishonestly. The authorities were particularly irked because Rachel went around the city in a gondola, a major sign of status, which Catholics tended to regard as their sole right. The Cattaveri, one of the government magistracies with authority over Jews, condemned this as “a great scandal offensive to God and a bad example to all” and tried to stop her and other Jews from going out of the ghetto at night.4 The term ghetto has since taken on many different meanings in popular culture, most of which have little to do with Italian ghettos. During the Enlightenment of the nineteenth century, Jews outside Italy began to use the term ghetto both as an area of non-mandatory concentrated Jewish settlement, sometimes with some nostalgic associations, but usually as an epithet to cast aspersions on unenlightened Jews as having a “ghetto mentality.” As it emerged during the later nineteenth century, Zionism was highly ambivalent about the idea of the ghetto. On the one hand, especially in reference to Eastern European Jewry, the myth of the ghetto represented an authentic center of Jewish culture and nationalism, and on the other hand, it represented an embodiment of the Diaspora, the exile (Galut), that Zionism was trying to uproot. A careful study of the Nazi use of the term ghetto shows that Nazis used the term without having a clear sense of what it meant and implemented it in different ways in different places. Despite its Nazi associations, the term ghetto persists today to describe concentrated areas of residence by minorities, students, and Jews, especially prosperous ones—thereby further confusing the meaning of the term.5

The Council of Trent Catholic historiography has generally held the view that the Church had been monolithic and unified for much of its history. However, as among Jews, within the Church there were always competing sources of authority. Members of the hierarchy—including popes (sometimes more than one) cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, and monastics, as

Introduction 7 well as university theologians—competed for power. Additionally, major branches of Christian orthodoxy in the East were not under the authority of the pope. The Church had never been in agreement on many issues and had been wracked by schisms. To resolve internal Church controversies, representatives from around the world would gather in General or Ecumenical Councils to decide matters of dogma and practice. Beginning with Nicaea in the fourth century and continuing until Vatican II in the twentieth century, about twenty such councils have been convened. Especially relevant for understanding Catholic life in Italy and the development of ideas about marriage is the Council of Trent, held in part in a Hapsburg ecclesiastic principality north of Venice, from 1545–1563. The Council of Trent, convened to resolve issues raised by Protestantism, formulated the beliefs and the structures of the Counter Reformation Catholic Church. The majority of representatives were from the Italian peninsula, with sizable representation also from France and Spain, and a few from the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal, Ireland, Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands, as well as Greek, Czech, and Croat representatives. These included bishops, archbishops, representatives of monarchs, papal nuncios, and theologians, and all their entourages. The ongoing results of the Council included clarifications in matters of dogma, laws, and ceremonies, expressed both positively in the form of decrees and negatively in canons condemning Protestant views.6 The issues that the Council of Trent took major steps to clarify, and indeed to change, included the procedures of Catholic marriage. After much debate over the longstanding dispute over clandestine marriage, the Council promulgated its edicts, called Tametsi, in 1563. Following previous Catholic practice, the Council concluded that clandestine marriage was illicit, but valid. It added that any marriage, after expressions of consent by the couple, must be performed by the parish priest before witnesses in the local church where it would be registered. A valid marriage ceremony did not necessarily have to include family members, nor was a valid marriage created by a private commitment or sexual intercourse. Hence, the Council of Trent attempted to define clandestine marriage not as a violation of parental authority, but rather an evasion of the Church’s supervision.7 Although the edicts of the Council concerning marriage did not become binding for all Catholics, they set out the issues that Catholics had to address and the possible resolutions that also provided a context and vocabulary for the development of Jewish practices.8 Rabbinic and Jewish communal boards, sometimes in consultation with the local Christian rulers, also struggled with clandestine betrothal or marriage. These provisions were designed to stop the “many wild men who with guile deceitfully betroth women,” whether the women were “willing or not,” by bribing witnesses. The purpose of the Jewish enactments was to ensure involvement by all relevant parties: consent of the bride, supervision by her family, and, finally, a public record preserved in the community.9

8  Introduction Although often associated with the stagnation of post-Renaissance Catholicism, it can also be argued that Trent created a sense of a panItalian Church and Italianitá. Tridentine reform infused the Church with a vitality that also included a new appreciation for art and music.10 Once the Council of Trent adjourned, the work continued in commissions and produced many of the results of the council: the Tridentine Index of forbidden books appeared in 1564, the catechism in 1566, the revised Roman breviary in 1568, the revised missal in 1570, and the revised vulgate in 1590–1592.

A Renaissance for Women? The idea of the Renaissance, the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, was an invention of nineteenth century historians, such as Jacob Burkhardt (1818–1897). It suggests a time of elite cultural rebirth that was enjoyed in the courts of Italy as well as in other major European centers. Characterizations of the period of Renaissance Humanism dwell on discoveries of the classics of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; developments of new styles in painting, sculpture, architecture, and music; innovations in philosophy, literature, and poetry; and advancements in science and medicine. Of primary significance for us is Burkhardt’s claim that this period was a renaissance for women, a time that adumbrated aspects of what would later be called feminism, “women stood on a footing of perfect equality with men.”11 This view, with minor reservations, was also accepted by Jewish historians. Cecil Roth, the pioneering scholar of the history of the Jews in the Renaissance, guardedly repeated these views: The Renaissance period in Italy was from certain points of view an age of feminine emancipation, in life if not in law . . . The Renaissance may thus be said to have witnessed in some measure in the Jewish community, too, an anticipation of the movement for the emancipation of women, at least in the social sense, which is associated with the nineteenth century.12 More recent scholars of Renaissance history have increasingly challenged Burckhardt’s position on the equality of women of the period. Samuel Cohen, for example, offered a statistical exposition showing that during the Renaissance women in Florence possessed less access to the courts of law and less ability to be active in public than in the past.13 Other studies criticize Burckhardt for having based his generalizations on the literary and political experiences of a few upper class, famous, “manly,” women. In “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” Joan Kelly-Gadol asserts that “there was no renaissance for women—at least, not during the Renaissance.”14 Margaret L. King describes fifteenth-century humanism as “a

Introduction 9 society hostile to creativity in women.”15 And, although writing about England, but specifically referring to Burckhardt, Janis Butler Holm refers to “the myth of a feminist humanism.”16 Following those historians who rejected Burkhart’s emphasis on the innovative nature of the Renaissance and who in general do not see it as a major turning point, Robert Bonfil diminishes the significance of the Renaissance for Jews and for Jewish women.17 The evidence for a Renaissance for Jewish women is based on the activities and achievements of a few well-known, powerful women. One of these was the influential Benvenida Abravanel. During the sixteenth century, Benvenida used her family’s wealth to serve the interests of herself, her family, and her people. Married to Samuel Abravanel (1473–1547), one of the most powerful Jews of the period, her dowry provided the source of much of his wealth. Tribute flowed to her, most of it motivated by the desire for financial support from her or her heirs. In Naples, Benvenida taught Eleonora (Leonora) de Toledo (1522–1562), the second daughter of Don Pedro de Toledo, the Viceroy of the Spanish rulers of Naples. Later in life, Eleonora, who became the Duchess of Tuscany and wife of Cosimo De’Medici, honored Benvenida and called her “mother.” While she was still in Naples, Benvenida became an enthusiastic supporter of the messianic pretender David Hareuveni (d. c. 1538). Like so many other powerful women, later as a widow in Ferrara she acquired extensive assets and had the freedom to distribute them according to her wishes.18 Doña Gracia Nasi (c. 1510–1569) and her sister Reina (d. 1556) were born as Beatrice and Brianda de Luna into a prominent, wealthy, Spanish New Christian family. After their husbands died, with much quarreling between them, they joined in running the family business and charitable enterprises, which involved relations with most of the rulers of European and Ottoman empires as well as the popes. As inquisitions increasingly investigated the religious activities of New Christians, the sisters gradually brought much of the family from Portugal to Constantinople, including a stay in Venice and Ferrara from 1545–1555. Later, in Constantinople, the family contributed assets and efforts to rebuilding Jewish life for former New Christians. Doña Gracia supported Jewish scholarship and publication. In August, 1555, the new pope, Paul IV, arrested a group of New Christians in Ancona, and burned about twenty-five of them. Doña Gracia organized a famous but ultimately unsuccessful boycott by Ottoman Jewish merchants of the port of Ancona in retaliation. She also attempted to establish Jewish settlements in Palestine. Doña Gracia and her sister Reina have been the subject of many historical and literary works, which highlight Doña Gracia’s powerful and righteous role as a heroine, while depicting her younger sister Reina as a greedy informer disloyal to her family, her people, and her religion, a picture that requires radical revision.19

10  Introduction Contrary to the narratives of a women’s Renaissance, these women do not represent a change in any societal notion of the status of women, but rather they highlight the exceptional ability of a few talented women to seize upon opportunities available to them through their wealthy and well-connected families. Even though “great,” these women still functioned within the limited parameters available to women, even queens, who lived, conducted business, and ruled under the aegis of men and for the benefit of men. Their authority over assets was based on marriage or widowhood. Even then, they were limited by their husbands’ bequests, the rules of inheritance, and the control of guardians. The social and religious practices of Italian society clearly specified that women were to act privately and modestly. The activities of these few “great” women raise questions about how gender, power, and wealth played a role in their achievements. Particularly, what can the study of “great” women teach us about the history of most women? Do “great” women reflect most women in the community, do they occupy a completely different realm, or do they represent a token in compensatory history because they are perceived to have made accomplishments that later historians identified with those of men? As the Hebrew scholar Simon Bernfeld (1860–1940) wrote in this spirit in 1923, “Only one man could be found among the Jews of that generation, and that was Doña Gracia Mendes.”20 Beyond the realm of these few “great” women, other women, usually not known by name, were certainly engaged in more modest educational, spiritual, and cultural activities. These limited accomplishments, often not supported by tradition, community, and family, provide a more realistic sense of the possibilities for Jewish women in Italy. Their accomplishments represent personal perseverance, family encouragement and assets, and community opportunities.21 In terms of education, a few upper-class Jewish girls had the opportunity to undertake high-level Jewish and secular studies, possibly surpassing many men due to the fact that women were not also required to pursue traditional rabbinic studies, and many men were illiterate.22 For example, an advanced curriculum for Jewish girls described how they studied Greek, a subject allowed to them by the Palestinian Talmud. However, this subject was not taught for the purpose of learning philosophy because, as the Talmud put it, “women are simple-minded,” but rather, only in order to enhance the girls’ ability to speak wittily, an attractive ornament for them and their families. Other Jewish girls studied humanistic subjects such as poetry and rhetoric, including both classical authors such as Terence, Cicero, and Ovid, as well as Renaissance authors such as Dante and Petrarch, along with as unspecified histories of Carthage and Troy.23 Hence, education for girls was encouraged as part of their domestic duties rather than for intellectual fulfillment, which

Introduction 11 some rabbis felt might lead to independence and sexual promiscuity,24 a concern shared by some Catholic writers. An example of an Italian Jewish woman educated in rabbinic subjects was Fioretta (Batsheva) of Mantua, the wife of Solomon Modena (1522 or 1524–1580) of Siena, Bologna, and Ferrara. She attained proficiency in Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, Jewish law, especially Maimonides, and kabbalistic literature, including the Zohar.25 The very short list of known Jewish women writers includes Patientia Pontremola (Pazienza Pontremoli) from early sixteenth-century Mantua.26 She corresponded with Isabella Gonzaga d’Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, who tried to convert her and arrange a marriage for her with a Christian. In their letters, in the spirit of Renaissance humanism, these women drew on both rabbinic literature and classical mythology.27 Devorá Ascarelli of sixteenth century Rome might have been the first Jewish woman author to publish a book, a thirty-one-page collection of rhymed Italian translations of Yom Kippur liturgical selections. It also included two sonnets that she had written and one that had been dedicated to her by another author.28 Sarra Copia Sullam (1592–1641) is well known as a woman poet, polemicist, and patron of culture. She gathered around her a group of men of letters, many of whom were involved with the Venetian literary salon known as L’Accademia degli Incogniti, who gave her lessons and intellectual camaraderie in exchange for her financial backing. However, gradually, many of them betrayed and humiliated her in the way that men of letters often treated talented women, including accusing her of plagiarism and heresy, and they withheld her work from publication.29 In spiritual matters, some women earned the title of “rabit” or “rabbanit,” which included single women and not simply the wives of rabbis.30 At least a few women were known to have worn tephilin, the traditional ritual leather straps worn by men during daily morning worship.31 Some women engaged in extensive praying and fasting as well as related ascetic activities such as placing ashes on their heads, wearing sackcloth, and denying themselves enjoyment of even the smallest earthly matters.32 Jewish women also had limited roles with religious confraternities or consororities (scuole; Hebrew: havarot), voluntary benevolent societies, which constituted a major aspect of early modern religious, social, educational, and charitable activity, especially dowering poor brides.33 As part of their regular spiritual activities, some Jewish women owned manuscript collections of personal Hebrew supplications (tehinot).34 The booklets contained prayers correlated with aspects of synagogue services and home rituals, especially for baking the Sabbath loaves, for lighting candles for the Sabbath and holidays, and for childbirth.35 The main contents of these booklets were prayers for a woman to recite on the trip to the ritual bath at the end of her menstrual period (before she returned

12  Introduction to bed with her husband after a two-week period of abstinence). Each prayer book divided the events and locations differently, with the overall total usually being about sixteen events spread across twelve locations, a number similar to the number of Stations of the Cross in Catholic Books of Hours. In addition to private prayers, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, translations of the complete synagogue service appeared in Judeo-Italian manuscripts dedicated to women. However, all such vernacular works, Catholic and Jewish alike, were prohibited by the Pope in 1596 as part of a general attempt to limit popular access to biblical and religious texts, a measure directed at Catholics, but which Catholic censors also applied also to Jewish books.36 Three known fifteenth-century manuscript prayer books for women (two are in Hebrew from Mantua and the other is a Judeo-Provencal translation of an Italian prototype)37 contain radical modifications of the controversial traditional Hebrew prayer that a man recites each morning to thank God that He did not create him a slave, a non-Jew, or a woman, (“shelo asani ishah.”) Instead, in these prayer books, the woman proudly thanks God who “made me a woman and not a man” (“she asitani ishah velo ish”).38 Specific women in Italy, almost exclusively in Mantua, after demonstrating religious training and physical skills, received written licenses to ritually slaughter and porge animals—the latter being the delicate kosher process of removing fat and sinews from a ritually slaughtered animal.39 Such public acts, which required religious training, literacy, and physical stamina, required the acceptance of the woman slaughterer’s skills by the entire community, or at least by her own family. In cultural activities, some Italian Jewish women received acclaim as musicians and a few enjoyed professional status.40 In Venice during the 1560s, a Jewish woman musician referred to as una Madonna Bellina ebrea, and as “Colonna de la Musica,” a pillar of music, was active as a popular instrumentalist, singer, and composer.41 In the first half of the seventeenth century, Judith Trabotto (Trabot), wife of Rabbi Nathaniel Trabotto (1576–1658) of Modena, displayed virtuosity singing and playing the lute (kinor) and the viol or pipe (ugav). She sang liturgical art music, including prayers and Psalms.42 The most famous Jewish woman musician of the era was Madam Europa di Rossi of Mantua in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. She came from a musical family dominated by her brother, Salomone Rossi, an instrumentalist, a singer, and a distinguished composer of Jewish and secular choral and orchestral art music.43 As professionals, Madam Europa and her brother, along with several other Jewish men and women, appeared on the salary rolls as musicians at the court of Mantua—although it must be added that their rate of pay was not very high.44

Introduction 13 As part of their cultural pursuits, Jewish women, like Jewish men, studied dance and sometimes caused a stir by dancing together or with Christians. This produced protests on the part of Jewish and Christian authorities, especially concerning a dance called the pesta (festa or pista).45 Unable to ban mixed dancing entirely, Jewish and Christian leaders tried to limit it to holidays and weddings, and they wanted women to wear an additional garment (zifon) over their clothing so that at least their genitals would be further shielded when dancing with men. The cultural activities of women also included making the ark curtains (parokhet), Torah covers (mapot/mikhsa-ot), and Torah binders (mapot/wimpeln) that used intricate designs and elegant cloth to ornament and protect the holiness of the Torah scroll. They embroidered elaborate Hebrew inscriptions on these ritual objects, dedicating them to the synagogue, and leaving a record of their names, years, and sentiments. In their inscriptions, the women expressed love for the Torah, hope and thanksgiving for children, and commemoration of marriage. In them, they always identified themselves in relation to a man, whether husband, father, or even grandfather. Although women prayed separately from men and might not have been able to see the Torah ark, these covers provided an opportunity for women to give expression to educational, religious, and artistic interests.46 A richer picture of the lives of early modern Jewish women generally emerges from observing the daily matters of specific unnamed women and by asking how they faced critical events, especially in matters of family as they went through the stages of engagement, betrothal, marriage, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage. As we shall see, their activities were not a function of Renaissance values, a new status, or the liberation of women, but rather reflections of the negotiations between competing Jewish traditions and the ongoing needs of the individuals, family, and community, which women could serve, or defy.47

Rabbinic Writings as a Source for Jewish Social History There is a paucity of primary sources written by pre-modern Jewish women or written about them. Moreover, sorely lacking is any systematic documentation of key events in Jewish life, such as births, marriages, and deaths, or court records that could be used for quantitative analysis, especially for establishing demographic and financial statistics. Instead, for an understanding of the lives of Jewish women, it is necessary to rely on documents by men, particularly rabbinic documents. Rabbinic Judaism is paradoxical because it claims to be rooted both in the legitimacy of traditions going back to the Bible and simultaneously also in the ongoing development of new interpretations. While the Bible serves as a major point of departure for Jewish practice, it offers

14  Introduction only vague statements about many major aspects of Jewish life, including especially some activities in the processes of marriage and divorce, without delineating the stages in their entirety. Early in the Common Era in Palestine and Babylonia, rabbinic works modified and amplified the biblical texts in light of Greek, Persian, and Roman legal principles. These texts included the Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrash, and the later Palestinian and especially the Babylonian Talmuds.48 Rabbinic discourse, known as halakhah, is a term often translated as “law,” but means more accurately procedure or process. It is based on a system of commandments (mitzvot), not on concepts of rights or equality,49 and it remained a dynamic and malleable process rather than a unified and static legal code.50 Rather than requiring set practices, it offered options.51 At a time of need, rabbis and communal leaders could individually or collectively at a synod bypass the process of discourse by issuing enactments (takanot) or decrees (gezerot). As Jews moved from Palestine and Babylonia to North Africa and then to Christian Europe, post-talmudic rabbinic authorities (geonim) issued statements in which they expressed their opinions (responsa, teshuvot; singular, responsum, teshuvah) in answer to questions (she-elot, singular, she-elah) raised by Jews around the world. An early seminal figure in the development of rabbinic literature in Medieval Germanic lands was Rabenu Gershom of Mainz, “The Light of the Exile,” (“Meor Hagolah,” 960–1028/1040). Some of the edicts attributed to him include a ban (takanah) against polygamy (which included so many exceptions that it was almost meaningless), a similarly limited ban against a man divorcing his wife without her consent, and a policy that allowed any disgruntled member of the community, including women, to interrupt a synagogue service in order to present their grievances.52 The major figure in rabbinic discourse in medieval French and German lands was Rashi (Rabbi Solomon Itzhaki, 1040–1105). In conjunction with his school, he compiled commentaries on almost the entire Bible and Babylonian Talmud and wrote individual opinions. Rashi’s descendants (through his daughters, whose own accomplishments in Jewish scholarship have been the subject of much discussion) and their colleagues in the Ashkenazic lands are known as the tosafists, those who added additional material to clarify the text or to offer an innovation.53 Their extensive commentaries attempted to reconcile differences between Rashi, the text of the Talmud, and contemporaneous Jewish practices in French and Germanic lands. Their discourse formed the basis of subsequent discussion of Jewish practice. Indeed, on every page of the Talmud, the commentaries of Rashi face those of the tosafists, where they remain positioned for an eternal dialogue with each other and subsequent readers of the text. At the same time, parallel developments took place in the Mediterranean world of Iberian and Oriental Jews. The leading Jewish figure under Islam was Rabbi Moses ben Maimon or Maimonides (also known by

Introduction 15 the acronym Rambam, 1135–1204). Born and raised in Islamic Spain, he fled in 1148, traveled to North Africa and Palestine, and settled in 1166 in Cairo, where he served as the leader of the Egyptian Jewish community and as physician to the sultan. His major contribution to Jewish legal development was the Mishneh Torah, which tended to reflect Jewish practice under Islam rather than under Christianity. To rectify the imbalance, Ashkenazi rabbis created commentaries on the Mishneh Torah in which they added conflicting opinions, especially those from European countries, and their work appears in published editions alongside that of Maimonides. A significant change in the structuring of Jewish legal discourse came with the Arba-ah Turim (Tur for short, “the four pillars”) of Jacob ben Asher (Ba-al Haturim, 1269–1343). Reflecting his own migration from Ashkenazic Cologne to Sephardic Toledo, he rooted his compilation in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic opinions and practices. He quoted conflicting authorities without always citing them by name and without favoring any particular one. First published in Piove di Sacco (between Venice and Padua) in July, 1475, the Tur was the second Hebrew book to be printed, the first having been Rashi’s commentary on the Torah that appeared in February of the same year in Calabria (at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula), both publications preceded the printing of the Torah and Talmud themselves, highlighting the preeminence of rabbinic opinions, compilations, and commentaries over the fundamental biblical and rabbinic texts. About a century later, Joseph Caro (1488–1575), a Spanish Jew who moved through the Ottoman Empire and settled in Safed, prepared a major commentary on the Tur called Beit Yosef, in which he compiled the sources of opinions cited in the Tur, beginning with their talmudic origins, proceeding through every stage of halakhic development, mentioning almost every divergent view, and finally trying to establish definitive practice. Based on his Beit Yosef, Caro then prepared a brief compilation of opinions, the Shulhan Arukh, meaning “a set table.” It became the focal point for subsequent rounds of commentary and compilation in Jewish legal discourse. First published in 1567 in Venice, the text of the Shulhan Arukh itself contains the Mapah, “the tablecloth” for the “set table,” compiled by the Polish Moses Isserles (Rama, 1525–1572), a supplementary commentary based on Ashkenazic practices integrated into the text of Caro. Additionally, the margins of most editions of the Shulhan Arukh contain compilations from conflicting commentators whose work radically challenges the binding authority of Caro’s “set table.” Most significantly, some rabbis also drew on mystical interpretations of biblical and rabbinic texts to derive new legal practices and religious customs. The mystical approach is generally called Kabbalah, meaning tradition. The major work of Kabbalah, a commentary on the Bible called the Zohar (“The Book of Splendor”), is traditionally ascribed to the

16  Introduction first-century rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, which gives it an ancient pedigree. However, some critical early modern Italian rabbis (and subsequently followed by modern scholarship) have identified it as a medieval compilation by Moses de Leon (c. 1250–1305), an attribution that they hoped would undermine its antiquity and minimize its challenge to rabbinic traditions. Based on this background, the rabbis of early modern Italy continued to advance the development of Jewish legal tradition on the basis of Italian practices. A few of them, including Joseph Colon (c. 1420–1480) and Meir Katzenellenbogen (Maharam Padova, 1482–1565), preceded the editing of the Shulhan Arukh, and make cameo appearances in it.54 One of the major contributions of Italian rabbis was their mobilization of the invention of printing in the late fifteenth century for the dissemination of the major works of rabbinic Judaism. Jews had more access than ever to the Talmud, compendia of Jewish law, and collections of commentaries. The availability of Hebrew publishing, at first almost exclusively in Italy, made the works of Italian rabbis available throughout the world—to Jews as well as Christians. The Catholic Church, however, placed severe restrictions on Jewish books. Inquisitorial and governmental bodies supervised censorship, which included requirements for prepublication approval and subsequent redaction, confiscation, and incineration, especially of the Talmud.55 Catholic authorities as well as Jewish lay leaders, for differing reasons, also limited the means of coercive enforcement available to rabbis, such as the imposition of fines, corporal punishment, incarceration, and excommunication. Consequently, rabbis served as functionaries in the Jewish community, working as teachers, preachers, communal scribes, letter writers, occasional poets, and even in other capacities such as businessmen or musicians, with opinion-writing being a side-line at best. For a fee, they rendered their opinions that presented halakhic possibilities to meet the needs of their clients, whose opponents in turn procured the services of other rabbis to write opposing opinions on their behalf. Each side could search among rabbis to find the one who would issue an opinion best suited to its needs.56 Rabbinic opinions were not prepared for formal courts of law, but rather for arbitration in which each side picked an arbitrator and then collectively selected a third. Hence, their opinions were not part of a formal judicial process and did not record the final results, but rather served as arguments in a process of mediation with the hope that the two sides would reach a compromise, similar to the way in which Catholics handled many cases.57 Nevertheless, the competing reconstructions of events, the differences among the opinions, and the variety of textual supports illustrate the range of changing possibilities, interrelationships, configurations, and above all, the flexibility in the application of principles.58 Italian rabbinic discourse left its mark in writings by men often related to each other by blood or by marriage who were in regular contact.59 In

Introduction 17 formulating opinions, Italian rabbis created thorough discussions of the major literature on a given topic, and their writings remain classics in Hebrew style and rabbinic discourse, as well as serving as important historical records. These writings, well preserved in manuscript and in print, provide extensive repositories of information about not only community deliberations but also about family negotiations.60 However, rabbinic texts, like all legal sources, are problematic for the reconstruction of social history.61 In rabbinic literature, there is no correlation between the amount of documentation and the frequency of a phenomenon, nor is there a way to distinguish between general social trends and controversial individual incidents. Those who are satisfied in their relationships do not seek arbitration and consequently case records preserve only the paper trails of relationships gone awry. Like many other aspects of social and family life, the surviving textual discourse relevant to these questions is richest surrounding uncommon events and difficult cases, usually those involving individuals in life-cycle event conflicts.62 Given the situation, rabbis rarely preserved or published their writings to document the activities, feelings, and desires of Jews, that is to say, Jewish men, and certainly not Jewish women. Rather, the rabbis’ concern was to contribute to genres of rabbinic literature and to demonstrate their own dialectical virtuosity. Not only were rabbinic opinions not truly representative of events, but they disproportionately reflect the concerns of those Jews who had the assets to engage rabbis to write on their behalf. Rabbinic opinions present further difficulties as historical sources because the texts usually do not provide specific details such as when and where they were written, to whom they were sent, and above all, they do not always include the original question. The language—literary, if not flowery, Hebrew and Aramaic—does not reflect ordinary exchanges in the vernacular, and was not comprehensible to most Jews. Where the questions are included, most of the names are obscured by pseudonyms; often used were those of biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, such as Reuben, Simon, Levy, Sarah, Rachel, and Leah, and sometimes also, especially for women, Italian names, such as Rosa, Brunetta, or Fioretta. Indeed, most often the names of women are not given at all. Citations from earlier opinions, whose authors were not always named, often did not provide full or accurate texts, and sometimes they relied on documents that had disappeared, with only vague memories of them still circulating. It is also impossible to learn the exact amount of money involved because families regularly obscured the sums of money in order to maintain the honor of the parties engaged in the transaction, to reduce the taxes on marriage amounts, and to avoid sumptuary limitations that curtailed extravagant financial arrangements. A further major problem lay in the fact that Jewish financial arrangements,63 like those of Catholics, often remained fluid, vague, and

18  Introduction contradictory.64 Jews stipulated amounts using a mixture of standardized terms of various currencies and amounts. These included either ancient (shekel), traditional (zuzim, dinarim, or zekukim), contemporaneous (Venetian ducats, Verona troni, Mantua coins, Spanish dubloons, Ancona scudo, lire), Hebrew translations (zehuvim—gold pieces, kefulot-dubloons, or perahim—florins), or contemporaneous coinage expressed in relationship to each other (for example, 6 lire 4 soldi to the ducat, 10 pauli to the scudo), but these values fluctuated. Moreover, Jews did not use these currencies consistently, even in the same document, especially when traditional currencies (zuzim) were mixed with contemporaneous ones (ducats). Rabbinic discussions—continued by later historians—attempted to base tenuous currency conversions on a combination of traditional references,65 sometimes going back to biblical currency, and arbitrary correlations between disparate currencies. In this respect, rabbinic documents obfuscated more than they revealed. Even worse, the given sums in documents do not always add up to the stated total. Some matters remained unspecified because, as the contesting parties subsequently claimed, they relied on law and custom accepted by everybody—except the other side when a relationship was unraveling.66 With so many variables involved in documentation and in currency, it was, and still is, impossible to calculate the financial aspects of marriage with any degree of precision. Yet, although ambiguities and outright inventions impede the search for grains of historical truth that constitute positivistic data about the past, these obstacles are not insurmountable.67 Drama does not rule out plausibility or a verisimilitude of truth, especially when it captures incidental detail, attitudes, and practices. To learn about the history of gender relations, the specifics such as names are not as important as the details of the options that were available, the stratagems employed, the tactics taken, and the discourse about them. In fact, these disguised cases might be more revealing because, without the names, rabbis could disclose more details. The extant reports of legal cases, therefore, do offer insight into the attitudes, values, and fears of those involved, and into the structure of their lives at a particular moment as well as over time. Hence, rabbinic Judaism offers a map of possibilities in Jewish life but not a clear route through it.

Rabbinic Negotiating Tactics In approaching cases, rabbis negotiated with each other over the specifics of the case and competing texts. They applied a wide range of semantic devices, including expanding or limiting the application of a term, removing a word entirely from context, comparing how a word was used in a different situation, or even resorting to the traditional Jewish religious technique of calculating the numerical value of a word (the letter

Introduction 19 aleph represented one, bet two and so on) to stress its relationship with another word (gematria, notrikon). Rabbis who took opposing positions on a specific case would fault their opponents on their use of these methods, and then offer their own applications of them.68 One of the foremost strategies used by rabbis in circumventing inconvenient precedents was to present competing opinions from any period in history. The abundance of contradictory rabbinic opinions on a given issue sometimes presented a seemingly insurmountable challenge. For example, the Ferrarese rabbi Isaac Lampronti (1679–1756) wrote about the multiplicity of views among rabbis on the subject of the remarriage of nursing mothers: If I tried to record all the different views and the various reasons that have been raised in this matter, this page would not be able to contain them all. The opinions and explanations have multiplied greatly, with some forbidding and some allowing.69 To resolve competing opinions, in some instances, when convenient, rabbis asserted that early authorities (rishonim) were more determinative than later ones (aharonim): “If the early rabbis were as angels, we are as men, and if the early rabbis were as men, we are as donkeys.”70 On the other hand, at other times rabbis supported the principle that halakhah followed the later authorities (hilkhata kebatra or mahadurah batra).71 More remarkably, after Azriel Diena (d. 1536), a rabbi from Sabbioneta near Mantua, summarized the talmudic arguments in a case, he dismissed them because: All this is not proof at all because these proofs are according to the system of the Talmud . . . But now the sages have issued an enactment . . . even though it is not the law according to the Talmud.72 Rabbis also made their points by showing contradictions in the writings of a single rabbi in order to undermine those rabbinic authorities who based themselves on him. For example, in one opinion Moses ben Abraham Provencal (1503–1575), a rabbi in Mantua,73 explained that the medieval Spanish rabbi Rabenu Asher ben Yehiel (Rosh, 1250–1327) had presented contradictory views in his opinions (teshuvot) and in his legal decisions (pesakim), but Provencal went on to state that according to Rabenu Asher’s son Judah, the legal decisions took precedence because they were later; this view was shared by other Italian rabbis.74 However, Hezakiah Finzi of Ferrara wrote that while he agreed that Rabenu Asher’s legal decisions were definitive because they were later, he noted that Judah Weil of Erfurt (d. c. 1456) had taken the opposite view, stating that when dealing with these contradictions it was proper to abide by his opinions, not his decisions. Yet Finzi concluded that it was not necessary

20  Introduction to follow one or the other method because, in the words of the Talmud, “These and those are the words of the living God.” Clearly, there was much room for subjectivity and yielding to outside pressures. Furthermore, to reach a desired resolution among the many choices in rabbinic tradition, some rabbis turned from the authority of tradition and instead invoked longstanding local custom (minhag) or actual popular practice (nohag). For example, Joseph Colon regularly invoked the ancient rabbinic principles: “Everything is according to the custom of the state,” “Custom cancels halakhah,” and “Custom takes precedence over halakhah.” Also, Colon wrote that it was not necessarily the rabbis and the lay leaders who determined practice in matters in which they were not competent, but rather the common people. For example, he stated that Jews abided by the customs that donkey drivers and sail makers followed among themselves in their work, even if it went against halakhah.75 In a similar vein, Hezekiah Finzi asserted that Jews must follow the custom of the Jews in the city in which they live, even if it was not according to the law of the Torah and even if the sages of the town had not approved of it.76 On occasion, rabbis selectively invoked the principle of custom. For example, in one opinion, Leon Modena relied on the Ottoman rabbi Samuel di Medina (1505–1589) who had elaborated the criteria by which custom was determinative, such as its being widespread and permanent, while elsewhere, Modena easily dismissed a widespread and permanent practice as “nothing but a custom.”77 Thus, every basis for authority in Jewish law was inconsistently respected to maintain the malleability of Jewish practice. Rabbis could also base their opinions on family connections, factional alignments, community pressures, and the needs of individuals. For example, in a situation involving orphaned children, Leon Modena carefully discussed the merits of the case with apparent objectivity, but he concluded with the hope that because the orphans involved were his relatives, those treating the case would act in the children’s interest. Rabbis could also invoke meta-halakhic considerations to ameliorate the severity of traditional requirements to aid those in distress, including women. For example, rabbinic tradition usually required two witnesses to verify any testimony, but in the case of a woman whose husband had disappeared, rabbis, including those in Italy, affirmed that only one witness was necessary to verify that he was dead. This facilitated the woman’s remarriage and ensured that she would not remain bound to her erstwhile husband forever as an agunah.78 In another example of rabbis’ taking into consideration aspects of a case other than halakhic ones, Judah Minz (Mahari Minz, c. 1405–1508) of Padua wrote that individual rabbis could issue opinions that included considerations of the economic needs of the petitioner. Thus, determining matters that might violate the Sabbath: Sometimes you will find an authority who for one reason or another forbids something contrary to his usual opinion that completely

Introduction 21 permits it, especially when a question is sent to him [the rabbi] and the person asking it is poor or if it is Friday close to the Sabbath.79 Hence, Rabbis could change their halakhic opinions based on metahalakhic principles. Yet another factor complicating the use of rabbinic sources to reconstruct social history lay in the fact that the participants in controversies could creatively construct their narratives according to categories of tradition and local practice that would support the desired outcome or at least produce a negotiated compromise that would enable them to save face, protect assets, and uphold honor. In order to achieve a desired outcome, the participants and their rabbis might attempt to obfuscate events in order to redefine them so that their narrative would conform to rabbinic positions favorable to their situation. These tactics did not represent the voice of the law but rather the voices of the women and men speaking through it. Indeed, scholars of both Christian and Jewish history have described such legal presentations as theatrical productions that often involved the creation of “fictive reality,” “theatrum mundi,” or “halakhic drama.”80 Contemporaries were well aware of the limitations of the authority of rabbis, if not their integrity. In fact, the drama of rabbinic negotiations was the theme of the first Hebrew play, Tzahot bedihuta dekidushin (A Comedy of Betrothal), written around 1550 by Judah Sommo Portaleone of Mantua (1527–1592). The play highlights the methods of negotiations employed by rabbis in treating cases of engagement, betrothal, and marriage. It presents a critique of rabbinic Judaism and offers Wisdom instead of rabbinic authority as a meta-halakhic guide for Jews. In the prologue, Wisdom speaks and introduces the idea that Wisdom transcends halakhah, especially as the corrupt rabbis of Italy embody it: Truly I saw after I looked at many who fight against me in the world and pretend that Wisdom is not according to halakhah in order to boast about what is not worthy to bear my name, and many who dwell in the house of (legal) severity are despised and lowly in the eyes of the masses, but they are cunning sages.81 The play’s juxtaposition of the approaches of two rabbis, the manipulations of Rav Hamdan (Greedy) and the serene judgment of Rabbi Amitai (Truth), provides a parody of the malleability of rabbinic procedure in the hands of clever rabbis. Rav Hamdan declares: “although there are many ways for me to reverse myself, like sealing wax, to give support for the words of later sages, the opposite of the early ones.”82 Later in the play, Deborah, the mother of one of the characters, highlights the theme of the malleability of Jewish law by reporting that her husband Amon told her that many honored rabbis could find ways to

22  Introduction release vows as if they were nothing at all. She praised Rav Hamdan for his ability to “allow the forbidden.”83 Conversely, one character in the play claims that he respects Rabbi Amitai so much that he would never seek the rabbi’s opinion, being too awed by the man to bring trivial matters to him. This character’s true motivation is a desire not to be bound by the rabbi’s rulings should they not be in accord with his desires. The rabbi of “truth” is revealed to be less popular than the “greedy” rabbi who could be led to do anything a Jew wanted.84 Yet ultimately, no matter what rabbis quoted, said, or did, Catholic practices exerted a major impact on Italian Jewish behavior. Often the practices of Italian Jews associated with marriage and divorce reflected Catholic practices, which, like those of Jews, were also rooted in a contradictory texts and local customs.85 Most significantly, Catholic authorities, unlike Muslim leaders, did not allow complete divorce, and Jewish authorities in Catholic countries often had to conform, which made divorce difficult for Jewish women. Nonetheless, the records show that it was still possible for Jewish women to negotiate for one. Hence, for example, it would be unlikely that a rabbi could force an abusive man to divorce his wife, especially because rabbis did not possess this degree of coercive power or religious authority. According to Jewish tradition, only men can divorce their wives, and they must do so of their own free will. In Catholic countries, where divorce was not allowed, attempts by Jews to divorce, let alone force a divorce by coercive means, would be considered an offense to the Church. Hence, rabbis served as arbitrators, and to do so, they developed flexible approaches to help both men and women negotiate to solve their problems. This way, rabbis were engaged, while protecting the honor of those involved (including themselves), but refrained from issuing opinions they could not enforce.86

Conclusion The Jewish community, like its Catholic counterpart, did not foster individual rights, but rather obligations to tradition, community, and family. It did not support maintaining equality, but rather achieving balance between competing interests, including those of assets, honor, lineage, and purity. However, the delicate balance between interests involved concessions, and at all stages, these were often made at the expense of women entering and leaving relationships. These transitions included making engagements, betrothals, and marriages; bequeathing assets; maintaining financial and emotional independence before, during, and after marriage; and collecting funds while married or soon afterwards. The processes that led to the success and failure of women to find imaginative solutions reflect these women’s ability to navigate the system of Jewish law with the support of some rabbis and the opposition

Introduction 23 of others. Jewish law was not a static description of the way that Jewish life should be lived or was lived, but rather a field for negotiation. Records show that women were most successful when their needs were expressed in financial terms rather than religious ones, so this was the approach used in most negotiations. The discussions that we will follow rarely expressed the issues in terms of rights, roles, or status but rather in terms of ducats. There was much less room for flexibility in negotiations when divine legislation was at stake as opposed to rabbinic innovation or contractual financial obligations. Because marriage could be a source of great honor and financial stability for the families involved, any failure could produce shame, financial loss, and personal distress. Therefore, each family tried to enhance its honor, protect its assets, and limit its possible losses. To do so, in negotiations Jewish families drew on aspects of tradition and borrowed from surrounding non-Jewish practices, and some of these have remained with Jews to the present. Although it might seem that Jewish women lived their lives confined by legal restrictions, a picture of women’s history based exclusively on prohibitions presents an incomplete exploration of what women’s lives were really like. We must consider the absence of a monolithic status for all women, the sporadic enforcement of restrictions against women (as well as so many others), and the ability of Jews to negotiate around the provisions of Jewish law. Yet ultimately, these tactics could not change the system; they could only provide relief in specific situations.87 As will be seen, in the course of their relationships, couples traversed stages that, like those of Catholics, were often not clearly defined.88 They moved at different speeds with varying levels of consent, received different types of approval from their families, experienced different levels of satisfaction, benefited in different ways from the role played by rabbis (if any), and entered into sexual relationships at different points in the process, and each person might have ascribed different meanings to what had happened. Complicating matters, marriage involved negotiations between two families, each protecting its authority, assets, lineage, and honor. Women were not as much in families as caught between them. Families did not always merge but rather often collided, a situation of danger that set off many aftershocks among relatives, especially at times of marital stress, death, inheritance, and remarriage, even in future generations. Although women did not enjoy full autonomy, and rarely had formal authority, through negotiations they were, nevertheless, able to assert agency, perhaps even power, and they could potentially circumvent obstacles placed in their way by communities, families, and rabbis.89 The history of Jewish women in northern Italy in the early modern period, therefore, is the story of these negotiations.

24  Introduction

Notes 1 Based on Ioly Zorattini, Pier Cesare, “Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the Inquisition,” in The Jews of Early Modern Venice. Edited by Robert Davis and Benjamin Ravid. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 97–116; Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 25–62, 201–224; Pullan, Jews of Europe, 1–30; Monter and Tedeschi, “Towards a Statistical Profile,” 89–129. 2 Levine Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel; Pullan, Jews of Europe, 225–228, 240, 275. 3 For the definitive studies on the origins and development of the Venetian ghettos, with comparisons to others, see the works of Benjamin Ravid, many collected in Studies on the Jews of Venice; idem, “On the Diffusion of the Word Ghetto,” 15–38; idem, “Curfew Time,” 246; idem, “All Ghettos Were Jewish Quarters, but Not Jewish Quarters Were Ghettos,” 5–24; Finlay, “The Foundation of the Ghetto,” 140–154, 248; Luzzati, Il ghetto ebraico, 18–25; on life in the ghetto, see, Siegmund, “La vita nei ghetto,” 845–892. 4 Romano, “The Gondola as a Marker,” 359–374. 5 Michman, The Emergence of Ghettos. 6 O’Malley, Trent, 1–22. 7 Shroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 183–184; O’Malley, Trent, 223–228. 8 Lombardi, Martimoni di antico, 214; Quaglioni, “Sacramenti detestabili,” 61–79; for a good discussion of the methodological issues studying women’s lives in Catholic Italy, see Meek, “Women between the Law and Social Reality,” 182–193. 9 Bonfil, “Kavim ledemutam,” 68–96; on clandestine marriages, see Adelman, “Law and Love,” 285–287. 10 Cohcrane, Italy, 145–153. 11 Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 292. 12 Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance, 49. 13 Cohn, “Donne in piazza e donne in tribunal,” 515–533. 14 Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” 139. 15 King, “The Religious Retreat of Isotta Nagarola,” 807. 16 Holm, “The Myth of a Feminist Humanism,” 443–452. 17 Bonfil, “The Historian’s Perception of the Jews in the Italian Renaissance,” 59–82. 18 Adelman, “Benvenida Abravanel,” EJ (Encyclopedia Judaica) 1: 275–276; idem, “Benvenida Abravanel,” Jewish Women, s. v. 19 Adelman, “The Venetian Identities of Beatrice and Brianda de Luna,” 10–19. 20 Bernfeld, Sefer hadema-ot 1, 325. 21 Adelman, “Rabbis and Reality,” 27–40; idem, “Italian Jewish Women,” 150–168; Foa, “Le donne nella storia degli ebrei in Italia,” 11–29; on the accomplishments of Jewish men, see Ruderman, “The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought,” 382–433 and Tirosh-Rothschild, “In Defense of Jewish Humanism,” 31–34. 22 Assaf, Mekorot 2, 171, 174, 197, 198, 199, 209, 210, 222, 237; Stow and Stow, “Donne ebree,” 94; Adelman, “The Literacy of Jewish Women,” 133– 158; idem, “The Educational Program,” 89–107. 23 Parma 3546, fol. 128. 24 M. (Mishnah) Sota 3:4.Rabbinic citations in regular font are from the Responsa Project 18+. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2010; those in italics are from printed works, accompanied by the name of the author or editor when necessary for clarity.

Introduction 25 25 Modena, Ma-avar yabok, fol. 7a; idem, Seder ashmeret haboker mehevrat me-irei shahar, in Rivkind, “Ha-ishah hayisraelit,” 28; Modena, Hayei, fol. 5b; Cohen, 79; Carpi, 34; Pesaro, “Donne celebri,” 33–34; Adelman, “Fioretta (Batsheva) Modena,” EJ (Encylcopedia Judaica) 14: 408. 26 For a complete list of Italian women writers, see the website of the University of Chicago. Italian Women Writers, www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/, Costa-Zalessow, Scrittici italiane; Robin, Publishing Women. 27 Their correspondence appears in Pardo Roques, “Isabella Gonzaga e Pacientia Pontremola,” 323–325, translated in part by Egan in Park, The Secret Book, 565–567. 28 Adelman, “Debora Ascarelli,” EJ 2: 545; idem, “Deborah Ascarelli,” Jewish Women, s. v. 29 See the many articles by Boccato, as well as the work of Harran, da FonsecaWollheim, “Faith and Fame”; Westwater, “The Disquiet Voice”; and Fortis, La bella ebrea; cf. Adelman, “Sara Coppia Sullam,” Jewish Women, s. v. 30 Hareuveni, Sipur, 39; Assaf, Mekorot 2, 112. 31 TB (Talmud Bavli) Eruvin 96a; Adelman, “Italian Jewish Women at Prayer,” 52–60. 32 Yagel, Eshet hayil, fols. 18b–19a. 33 Strocchia, “Gender and Rites of Honour,” 50; ASV (Archivio di Stato Venez ia) Scuole Piccole e Suffragi, busta, 729, 11a; ASV Scuole Piccole, busta, 733, 36; Horowitz, “Hakhnasat kalah,” 359–360; JTSA (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) 8468, fol. 9a, 12a; NYPL (New York Public Library), Jewish Items, 34/12, 20a, 25a–27a; transcribed by Rivlin, “Takanot ‘hevrat nizharim’ bebologna,” 357–396; idem, “Arevim zeh lezeh bageto ha-italki,” 104–122. 34 HUC (Hebrew Union College) 247, fols. 60ff; HUC 245, 350. 35 HUC 816, fol. 25a; HUC 262, 2a, 3a, 4a; JNUL (Jewish National and University Library, now called NLI, National Library of Israel) 180/70, fol. 5a; HUC 210, fol. 5b; HUC 248, fols. 36a, 58a, 60a; HUC 264, fol. 15b; Cardin raised some of the questions in the introduction to her Out of the Depths, XII, XIV, 59, 67, 71, 73, 79, 87. 36 Cassuto, “Les traductions judeo-italiennes du Rituel,” 260–280. 37 Riegler and Baskin, “May the Writer Be Strong,” 16–22. 38 Adelman, “Italian Jewish Women at Prayer,” 52–60; for a medieval appearance of the issue, see Schirmann, “Hashirah Ha-ivrit bisfarad,” 2:2: 503– 505; These manuscripts were both copied by Abraham Farisol; in 1478, JTSA 8255, no. 13 and in 1480, JNUL 8* 5492, fol. 7a; Sabar, “Bride, Heroine and Courtesan,” 63–70; Kahn, “Three Morning Blessings,” and on the Judeo-Provencal (Leeds, Roth Manuscript 32) Jochnowitz, “Who Made Me a Woman,” 63–64. 39 Adelman, “Shehitah, Women,” EJ 18: 436–437. 40 Boksenboim, Carmi, no. 73; cf. Modena, Hayei, fol. 8a Cohen, 86; Carpi, 41; Adler, “Art Music,” 327–332. 41 Harran, “Madonna Bellina,” 1–24; Roth, Renaissance, 301. 42 Adler, “Art Music,” 347; Harran, “Madama Europa,” 204; also, Frances, “Ohev meshabeah et hanashim velo-eg le-imanuel haromi,” in Kol shirei, 354–364; cf. Green, “Rabbi Natanel Trabot,” 91–156. 43 Harran, Salamone Rossi. 44 Harran, “Madam Europa,” 197–231; Birnbaum, Jewish Musicians at the Court of the Mantuan Dukes; Segre, Piedmont, nos. 1811 and 1867. 45 Bonfil, “Kavim,” 68–96; Kinkeldy, “A Jewish Dancing Master,” 329–374; Simonsohn, Milan, no. 3663; Carpi, Padua 1, no. 61, 117; Friedhaber, “Hamahol,” 67–77.

26  Introduction 46 Grossman, “Womanly Arts,” 35–43; Sabar, “The Harmony of the Cosmos,” l97; Kleeblatt and Mann, Treasures of the Jewish Museum, 56–57; Makover, The Jewish Patrons, nos. 3, 4, 10, 12, 16, 23, 35. 47 For accessible surveys of women in early modern Europe, see Rogers and Tinagli, Women in Italy, 1350–1650 and Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. 48 On ancient Jewish marriage, see for example, Ilan, Jewish Marriage in GrecoRoman Palestine and Setlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity. 49 Glenn, “A Talmudic Legal Tradition,” 109. 50 Compare: Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, 458, 460, 462. 51 For similar distinctions in the study of European sexuality, see Crawford, “Privilege, Possibility, and Prestige,” 412–433, especially 413–415; for a similar approach to the use of Christian legal documents to write social history, see Benadusi, “Investing the Riches of the Poor,” 812. 52 Finkelstein, Self Government, 20–35, 92–95, 139–147; Grossman, “Ordinances,” 3–23; Assis, “Herem,” 251–277; Havlin, “Takanot,” 200–257; Adelman, “Rabbis and Reality,” 31–32. 53 On the education of the women in Rashi’s family, see Ashkenazi, Dor dor, 211–215; concerning whether Rashi summoned his daughter or grandson to write an opinion for him when he was ill, see notes 1 and 4, which summarize the contested readings: lekhen biti karati . . . vehu or leven biti karati . . . vehu. 54 Woolf, “Joseph Colon Trabatto,” 151–180. 55 Stow, “The Burning of the Talmud in 1553,” 435–459; Ya-ari, “Serifat hatalmud,” 198–234; Grendler, “The Destruction of Hebrew Books in Venice, 1568,” 103–130; Marshdam HM (Hoshen Hamishpat) no. 303. 56 For an example of shopping for rabbinic opinions, see Maharam Padova, no. 30. 57 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 153–158. 58 Levi, “On Microhistory,” 95–119. 59 See Siegmund, The Medici State, 336 on north-central Italian states as a “regional” Italian Jewish community. 60 For collections of Hebrew letters and communal documents, see the many works edited by Yacov Boksenboim. 61 On the use of what she calls the incoherence of legal texts for writing social history, see Benadusi, “Investing the Riches of the Poor,” 805; Hardwick, “Domestic Violence,” 8. 62 On methodological issues in writing social history, see Safley, Let No Man Put Asunder, 5–8; Stone, “The Revival of Narrative,” 3–24; for attempts to establish trends and rates based on limited data, see Toaff, Love, Work, and Death, 11, 14, 30; on generalizing from sufficient but unsystematic records, see Siegmund, The Medici State, 355. 63 Tchernowitz, “Torat hanedunya,” 304–328, especially 319. 64 Kirshner, “Materials for a Gilded Cage,” 184–207; Labalme, White, and Carroll, “How to (and How Not to) Get Married,” 43–72. 65 For discussion about the money clause in Italian ketubot, see S. Schwarzfuches, “La valeur de la kethubah,” 116–123; for Germanic lands see the discussion of the articles by Irving Agus, all referred to in “The Standard Ketuba of the German Jew,” 225–232, and Friemann, “Shi-uri haketubah be-ashkenaz vetzart,” 371–385; Modena, Ziknei, no. 120; on attempts to monetize the ketubah, see Bleich, “Divorce,” 253, 267–268. 66 Chojnacki, Women and Men, 95–111. 67 Weissman, “The Importance of Being Ambiguous,” 269–280.

Introduction 27 68 Provencal, no. 100: lehotzi mipeshutah, dikdek, teretz, mishtamea letrei apim; Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 185–182. 69 PY, “Ishah eynah mitkadeshet,” 1:103b, 1: c. 584. 70 TB Shabbat 112b. 71 Seder tana-im ve-amora-im, no. 25. 72 Diena, no. 118; Modena, Ziknei, no. 80; Colon, no. 102 73 Kupfer, “Haramat ‘keter torah,’ ” 137–160. 74 Provencal, no. 100. 75 Colon, no. 102:2. 76 Hezekiah Finzi, Jer. 2007, no. 27. 77 Modena, Ziknei, nos. 68, cf. 47; on Modena, see Adelman, “Leon Modena,” EJ 14: 409–410. 78 Diena, no. 132. 79 Mahari Minz, no. 15; see Sperber, Darkah, 18, 140–141. 80 Stow, “Marriages,” 470, 483; Massimo Vallerani, cited by Lansing, “Girls in Trouble,” 296; Ferraro, Marriage Wars, 6; Davis, Fiction in the Archives. 81 Sommo, “ ‘Tzahot,’ ‘Hakdamah’,” in Hamahazeh, 29. 82 Sommo, “Tzahot,” in Hamahazeh, 1: 5, 39. 83 Sommo, “Tzahot,” in Hamahazeh, 2: 2, 42–43. 84 Sommo, “Tzahot,” in Hamahazeh, 2: 8, 54. 85 On the structure of Catholic discourse, see Sheehan, “Choice of Marriage Partner,” 3–33. 86 On the judicial and arbitration functions of rabbis in Italy, see Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities, 207–269; idem, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, 210–211; Weinstein, “Mevudadim,” 93–132. 87 For a survey of women in Jewish law and life, see Grossman, Pious and Rebellious; for Christian society, see Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe; for a contrasting description of the passivity of Jewish women, see Toaff, Love, Work, and Death, 30. 88 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico, 10–13. 89 Kuehn, “Person and Gender in the Laws,” 87–106; Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women, 1–16; Chojnacka, Working Women, XVI.

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30  Introduction Foa, Anna. “Le donne nella storia degli ebrei in Italia,” in Le Donne delle Minoranze. Edited by Claire E. Honess and Verina R. Jones. Torino: Claudiana, 1999, 11–29. Fortis, Umberto. La bella ebrea: Sara Copio Sullam poetessa nel ghetto di Venezia del ’600. Torino: S. Zamorani, 2003. Frances, Jacob. Kol shirei ya-akov frances. Edited by Peninah Naveh. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1969. Friedhaber, Tzvi. “Hamahol bikhilot yehudei dukhasut mantova bemeah ha17 veha18.” Pa-amim 37 (1988): 67–77. Friemann, A. H.”Shi-urei haketubah be-ashkenaz vetzarfat bimei habaynayim,” in Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume. Edited by Saul Lieberman. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1950, Hebrew Section, 371–385. Ginzberg, Louis. Legends of the Jews 1–7. Translated by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909–1938. Glenn, H. Patrick. “A Talmudic Legal Tradition: The Perfect Author,” in Legal Traditions of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 94–124. Green, Yosef. “Netanel trabot mi-modena: toldotav ufsakim meshlo.” Assufot 2 (1988): 91–156. Grendler, Paul. “The Destruction of Hebrew Books in Venice, 1568.” Proceedings, American Academy of Jewish Research 45 (1978): 103–130. ———. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Grossman, Avraham. Hasidot umordot: nashim yehudiot be-eropah biymei habenayim. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2001. Translated by Jonathan Chipman as Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004. ———. “The Historical Background to the Ordinances on Family Affairs Attributed to Rabbenu Gershom Me’or ha-Golah (‘The Light of the Exile’),” in Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky. Edited by Ada ­Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein. London: Halban, 1988, 3–23. Grossman, Cissy. “Womanly Arts: A Study of Italian Torah Binders in the New York Jewish Museum Collection.” Journal of Jewish Art 7 (1980): 35–43. Hardwick, Julie. “Early Modern Perspectives on the Long History of Domestic Violence: The Case of Seventeenth-Century France.” The Journal of Modern History 78 (2006): 1–36. Hareuveni, David. Sipur david hareuveni. Edited by David A. Z. Aescoli. Jerusalem: Hahevrah ha-eretz yisraelit lehistoriyah ve-etnographiah, 1940. Harran, Don. “Madam Europa, Jewish Singer in Late Renaissance Mantua,” in Festa Musicologica: Essays in Honor of George J. Buelow. Edited by Thomas J. Mathiesen and Benito V. Rivera. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1995, 198–204. ———. “Madonna Bellina, Astounding Jewish Musician in Mid-sixteenth Century Venetice.” Renaissance Studies 22:1 (2008): 16–40. ———. Salamone Rossi: Jewish Musician in Late Renaissance Mantua. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Havlin, Shlomo Zalman. “Takanot rabenu gershom me-or hagolah beinyanei ishut bithumei sefarad ufrovans.” Shenaton hamishpat ha-ivri shel hamakhon leheker hashipat haivri 2 (1975): 200–257. Holm, Janis Butler. “The Myth of a Feminist Humanism: Thomas Salter’s The Mirrhor of Modestie.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 67 (1984): 443–452.

Introduction 31 Horowitz, Elimelekh (Elliott). “’Hakhnasat kalah’ begeto venetziah: beyn masoret lehidush uveyn ideal limtziut.” Tarbitz 56 (1987): 347–371. Ilan, Tal. Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996. Ioly Zorattini, Pier Cesare. “Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the Inquisition,” in The Jews of Early Modern Venice. Edited by Robert Davis and Benjamin Ravid. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 97–116. Jochnowitz, George. “. . . Who Made Me a Woman.” Commentary (April 1981): 63–64. Kahn, Yoel. “The Three Morning Blessings: ‘. . . Who Did Not Make Me . . .’: A Historical Study of a Jewish Liturgical Text.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, 1999. Kelly-Gadol, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977, 175–201. King, Margaret L. “The Religious Retreat of Isotta Nagarola (1418–1466): Sexism and Its Consequences in the Fifteenth Century.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3 (1978): 807–822. Kinkeldy, Otto. “A Jewish Dancing Master of the Renaissance,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography and Related Subjects in Memory of Abraham Solomon Freidus. Edited by Louis Ginzberg and Joshua Block. New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 329–374. Kirshner, Julius. “Materials for a Gilded Cage: Non-Dotal Assets in Florence, 1300–1500,” in The Family in Italy: from Antiquity to the Present. Edited by David I. Kertzer and Richard P. Saller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, 184–207. Kleeblatt, Norman L. and Vivian B. Mann. Treasures of the Jewish Museum. New York: Universe Books, 1986. Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family, and Women: Towards a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. ———. “Person and Gender in the Laws,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis. London: Longman, 1998, 87–106. Kupfer, Ephraim. “Haramt ‘keter torah me-al rosho’ shel r. moshe provencalo venusah havdalah.” Sinai 63 (1968): 137–160. Labalme, Patricia. “Women’s Roles in Early Modern Venice: An Exceptional Case,” in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past. Edited by Patricia H. Labalme. New York: New York University Press, 129–152. Labalme, Patrica, Laura Sanguineti White, and Linda Carroll. “How to (and How Not to) Get Married in Sixteenth- century Venice (Selections from the Diaries of Marin Sanudo.” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 43–72. Lansing, Carol. “Girls in Trouble,” in The Pre-Modern Teenager. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2002, 293–309. Levi, Giovanni. “On Microhistory,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Edited by Peter Burke. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, 95–119. Lombardi, Daniela. Matrimoni di antico regime. Bologna: Societa’ editrice il Mulino, 2001.

32  Introduction Luzzati, Michele, ed. Il Ghetto Ebraico: storia di un popolo rinchiuso. Florence: Giunti, 1987. Makover, Sharon. The Jewish Patrons of Venice: March 15-September 29, 1985. New York: Jewish Museum, 1992. Malkiel, David. “Jews and Wills in Renaissance Italy: A Case Study in the JewishChristian Cultural Encounter.” Italia 12 (1996): 7–69. Marx, Alexander. “R. yosef ish arli betor moreh verosh yeshivah besiena,” in Sefer hayovel likhvod levi ginzberg lemle-at lo shivim shanah. Edited by Aron Freimann. New York: American Academy of Jewish Research, 1945, 271–304. Meek, Christine. “Women between the Law and Social Reality in Early Renaissance Lucca,” in Women in Italian Renaissance, Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society. Edited by Letizia Panizza. Oxford: Legenda, 2000, 182–193. Melammed, Renee Levine. Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto Jewish Women of Castile. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Michman, Dan. The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos During the Holocaust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Modena, Aaron Berekhiah. Ma-avar yabok. Vilna: Yosef Reuben bar Menahem min Ram, 1860; Jerusalem: no publisher, 1989. Modena, Leon (Yehudah). The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah. Edited and translated by Mark R. Cohen. Additional introductions and Notes by Theodor Rabb, Natalie Zemon Davis, Howard E. Adelman, and Benjamin Ravid. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. ———. Hayei yehudah. Edited by Daniele Carpi. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1985. ______. She-elot utshuvot ziknei yehudah. Edited by Shlomo Simononsohn. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1956. Monter, E. William and John Tedeschi. “Towards a Statistical Profile of the Italian Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy. Edited by John Tedeschi. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991, 89–126. Neubauer, Adolf. “Zur Frauenliteratur.” Israelietische Letterbode 10 (1884– 1885): 97–105, 139–147; 11 (1885–1886): 62–68, 88–92. O’Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. Pardo Roques, G. “Isabella Gonzaga e Pacientia Pontremola Ebrea Montovana.” Vessilo IsraeliticoI 67 (1919): 323–325. Translated in part by Kathleen Crozier Egan, in Jacqueline Park, The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, 565–567. Pesaro, Abramo. “Le donne celebri Israelite.” Vessilo Israelitico 29 (1881): 33–34. Provencal, Moses. She-elot utshuvot. Edited by Avraham Yosef Yani. Jerusaelm: Mekhon Or Ha-mizrah and Mekhon Yerushalayim, 1988. Pullan, Brian. The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. Quaglioni, Diego. “’Sacramenti destestabili’: La forma del matrimonio prima e dopo Trento,” in Matrimonio in dubbio: unioni controverse e nozze clandestine

Introduction 33 in Italia dal XIV al XVII secolo. Edited by Silvana Seidel-Menchi and Diego Quaglioni. Bologna: Societa’ editrice il Mulino, 2001, 61–79. Ravid, Benjamin. “All Ghettos Were Jewish Quarteres, but Not All Jewish Quarters Were Ghettos.” Jewish Culture and History 10:2–3 (2008): 5–24. ———. “Curfew Time in the Ghetto of Venice,” in Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Edited by Ellen E. Kittell and Thomas F. Madden. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999, 237–275. ———. “On the Diffusion of the Word ‘Ghetto’ and Its Ambiguous Usages, and a Suggested Definition,” in Frühneuzeitliche Ghettos in Europa im Vergleich. Edited by Fritz Backhaus, Gislea Engel, Gundula Grebner and Robert Liberles. Trafo: Berlin, 2012, 15–38. ———. Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382–1797. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Reinitz Yakob. “Minui ishah le-apitropa.” Mehkarei mishpat 4 (1983): 167–200. Riegler, Michael and Judith R. Baskin. “’May the Writer Be Strong’: Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts Copied by and for Women.” Nashim 16 (2008): 9–28. Rivkind, Yitzhak. “Ha-isha ha-yisraelit vehasefer ha-ivri.” Hahed 9 (1934): 27–28. Rivlin, Bracha. Arevim zeh lezeh?? bageto ha-italki: havarot gemilut hasadim, 1516–1798. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991. ———. “Takanot ‘hevrat nizharim’ bebologna mishnat 307.” Asufot 3 (1989): 357–396. Robin, Diana. Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Rogers, Mary and Paola Tingagli. Women in Italy, 1350–1650: A Sourcebook. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. Romano, Dennis. “The Gondola as a Marker of Station in Venetian Society.” Renaissance Studies 8 (1994): 359–374. Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1959. ———. “The Memoirs of a Siennese Jew (1625–1633).” Hebrew Union College Annual 5 (1928): 353–402. Ruderman, David. “The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy 1: Humanism in Italy. Edited by Albert Rabil, Jr. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1988, 382–433. Sabar, Shalom. “Bride, Heroine and Courtesan: Images of the Jewish Woman in Hebrew Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italy.” Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division D2 (1990): 63–70. ———. “The Harmony of the Cosmos: The Image of the Ideal Jewish World According to Venetian Ketubbah Illustrations,” in I beni culturali ebraici in Italia. Edited by Mauro Perani. Ravenna: Longo, 2001, l95–215. Safley, Thomas Max. Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest: A Comparative Study, 1550–1600. Kirsville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1984. Schirmann, Hayim. Hashirah ha-ivrit bisfarad uveprofence 2. Jerusaelm and Tel Aviv: Mosad Bialik and Devir, 1956. Schroeder, H. J. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. London: Herder, 1941. Schwarzfuchs, Simon. “La valeur de la Kethubah en Italie au XVIe sie’cle.” Revue des Études Juives 117 (1958): 116–123.

34  Introduction Segre, Renata. The Jews in Piedmont 1–3. Tel Aviv: The Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1986–1990. Setlow, Michael L. Jewish Marriage in Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Sheehan, Michael M. “Choice of Marriage Partner in the Middle Ages: Development and Mode of Application of a Theory of Marriage.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 1 (1978): 3–33. Siegmund, Stefanie B. “La vita nei ghetto,” in Storia d’Italia: Annali 11: Gli ebrei in Italia. Edited by Corrado Vivanti. Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2011, 845–892. ———. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early-Modern Jewish Community. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Simonsohn, Shlomo. The Jews in the Duchy of Milan 1–4. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982–1986. Sommi, Leon de’ (Judah). “ ‘Magen nashim,’ ‘Tzahot bedihuta dekidushin’,” in Hamahazeh in Hamahazeh ha-ivri harishon. Edited by Hayyim Schirmann. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Tarshish-Devir, 1965, 121–145, 5–119. Sperber, Daniel. Darkah shel Halakhah: keriat nashim batorah perakim bemidiniut psikah. Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 2006. Stone, Lawrence. “The Revival of Narrative: Reflections of a New Old History.” Past and Present 85 (1979): 3–24. Stow, Kenneth. “The Burning of the Talmud in 1553, in Light of Sixteenth Century Catholic Attitudes Toward the Talmud.” Biblioté que d’Humanism et Renaissance 34 (1972): 435–459. ———. “Marriages Are Made in Heaven.” Renaissance Quarterly 48:3 (1995): 445–491. Stow, Kenneth B. and Sandra Debenedetti Stow. “Donne ebre‚ a Roma nell’eta del ghetto: affetto, dipendenza, autonomia.” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 52 (1986): 63–116. Strocchia, Sharon T. “Gender and the Rites of Honour in Italian Renaissance Cities,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis. London: Longman, 1998, 39–60. Tchernowitz, Hayim. “Torat hanedunya bedinei yisrael be-yihusah ledinei haamim,” in Sefer Hayovel huval shai likhvod mofet hador nahum sokolow. Warsaw: Shuldberg and Partner, 1904, 304–328. Tirosh-Rosthchild, Hava. Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. ———. “In Defense of Jewish Humanism.” Jewish History 3:2 (1988): 31–57. Toaff, Ariel. Love, Work, and Death: Jews in Medieval Umbria. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996. University of Chicago. Italian Women Writers, www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/ (accessed August 6, 2017). Weinstein, Roni. Marriage Rituals Italian Style. Leiden: Brill, 2004. ———. “’Mevudadim akh lo dehuyim’: hayehudim behevrah ha-italkit bitkufat hareformatziah hakatolit,” in Miutim, zarim veshonim: kevutzot shuliim behistoriah. Edited by Shlomit Volkov. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2011, 93–132. Weissman, Ronald F. E. “The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence,” in Urban Life in the

Introduction 35 Renaissance. Edited by Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989, 269–280. Westwater, Lynn Lara. “The Disquieting Voice: Women’s Writing and AntiFeminism in Seventeenth Century Venice.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 2003. Wiesner, Merry. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Woolf, Jeffrey R. “New Light on the Life and Times of Rabbi Joseph Colon Trabatto (Maharik).” Italia 13–15 (2001): 151–180. Yaari, Abraham. “Serifat hatalmud,” in Mehkarei sefer: perakim betoldot hasefer ha-ivri. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1958, 198–234. Yagel, Abraham. Eshet hayyil. Venice: Daniel Zaneti, 1605–1606.

2 Negotiating Engagement Anticipating Danger

All daughters are satisfied with whomever their father or their relatives choose. (Rabbi Azriel Diena)1

Parents were notorious for seeking out matches according to the wealth of the family rather than the merits of the people involved. (Rabbi Aaron Berekhiah Modena)2

Introduction The process of Jewish marriage fell into three vague stages: engagement, a contract for a future marriage; betrothal, a binding religious commitment; and marriage, a solemn union. Each stage was accompanied by negotiations between the families involved and sometimes the couple as well. Negotiations involved not only financial matters, which were the primary purpose of the engagements, but also defining and redefining the nature of each stage in order for the couple to move the process along or to slow it down.3 As a couple went through the three stages, the negotiations were recorded in many different kinds of documents. The initial document was “the terms of the engagement” (called variously tenaim, shidukh[in], hitun, shi-abudim, or findanzamento). It might have been accompanied by Italian, Latin, or Hebrew agreements.4 Negotiations might have included rabbinic arbitrators who issued opinions on behalf of one side or the other. The conditions of engagement were negotiated prior to the preparation of the marriage instrument, the ketubah (plural, ketubot, also called sefer ketubah, shtar ketubah, istrumento/contratto di nozze), which the man presented to his wife at the wedding. Although the ketubah was the central goal of engagement negotiations, it was a source of great confusion. The Bible does not mention the ketubah or marriage contract—only the bill of divorce—a fact which did not hinder the attempts of later rabbis to seek biblical precedents for

Negotiating Engagement 37 the ketubah in the Bible.5 Early references to Jewish marriage contracts appear in fourth-century BCE Aramaic documents from Elephantine in Egypt, the second-century BCE Apocryphal Book of Tobit, and secondcentury CE Aramaic documents from Palestine. Early rabbinic texts devoted much attention to the specifics of writing a ketubah, and subsequent ketubah documents reflect new traditions, local circumstances, and historical developments.6 In using ketubah documents to reconstruct the stages of marital negotiations it is necessary to keep in mind their limitations. The most basic issue was that the ketubot were written in Aramaic, very few people could understand them, and all versions were not the same. Further, the ketubah was more than a document; it was a collection of documents. The available ketubah documents are often formulaic and do not show the entire financial picture of each marriage. Supplementary letters could lower the amounts of money required by creating rebate schemes between the families or reporting fictional amounts in order to protect the assets and honor of each side. Prenuptial agreements are rarely available for specific extant ketubot, and as in the case of accords made by Catholic couples, much financial information is lacking.7 Yet ketubah texts themselves recognized that a couple may have prepared other documents, but declared these other texts null and void, claiming that ketubot were not simply a standardized document or a mere formality (asmakhta or tofsei shetarot), but rather an actual mortgage on the man’s possessions. Ketubot required that a quarreling couple seek adjudication before a court, either Christian or Jewish, further increasing the options for conflicting resolution in different jurisdictions. Most significantly, because documents did not specify precise amounts, when a woman collected assets at that end of a marriage either through death or divorce, this process could be mired in controversy as each side negotiated aggressively, as it had done before the engagement. The key to understanding the terms of marriage, therefore, is in the engagement conditions (tena-im) made prior to the ketubah. During the engagement process was when most of the terms of a marriage were established. Engagement was a contractual commitment between men from two families for the future betrothal and marriage of a couple. It was neither a solemn ceremony nor a necessary stage on the way to betrothal or marriage, which were binding relationships and which were often combined together;8 in fact, the couple might not have been present for the negotiations. But the financial provisions of the engagement agreement helped those who wanted to protect the assets of their family and the freedom of each spouse, especially if the relationship ended. Like any contract, engagements could be broken, and negotiations might have included a penalty (knas) for the side that broke the engagement. From extant records of engagement negotiations, it is possible to locate important moments in the process, even for couples with fewer assets,

38  Negotiating Engagement who had less need for a formal agreement and who perhaps enjoyed a bit more spontaneity. The engagement of a Jewish couple in early modern Italy combined traditional Jewish patterns of negotiations between individuals, families, and matchmakers (shadkhan, mursheh, sarsur) as well as the influence of the surrounding local Catholic environment.9 As each side drafted agreements for the future, it tried to make itself attractive to the other while maintaining its own assets.10 Each side negotiated to support the couple and to establish procedures to protect them when the marriage ended through death or divorce, or if it became abusive. Engagement negotiations reflected agreements based on competing laws, traditions, and customs as well as complex financial instruments. The results of the engagement negotiations, constituted the prenuptial conditions of the future marriage (shtar tenaim). Engagement documents contain three basic provisions: 1) financial instruments that articulated the expected contributions of each side, 2) premarital arrangements for the post-mortem division of property, and 3) pre-marital agreements to protect women from abuses.

Financial Support from the Groom’s Family The man’s family was supposed to contribute what was usually, but not always, called the “main ketubah,” ikar, which, contrary to its name, was actually not the “main” element. In some ketubah documents the ikar was called mohar, the biblical term for bride-price, which was the amount that a man or his father paid to the father of the bride at the time of the wedding to acquire her and guarantee sexual access to her.11 The Bible specified an amount for the mohar only twice, the first being when King Saul asked David for 100 Philistine foreskins in order to marry his daughter Michal, but David brought him 200 instead, and the second being an instruction in Deuteronomy for cases in which a man had intercourse with a virgin and consequently had to pay her father 50 silver pieces in addition to marrying her.12 In changing the basis of the marriage from the biblical bride price to the main ketubah amount, rabbinic tradition elevated the legitimacy of its innovation of the ketubah by providing it with an ostensible biblical pedigree. The main ketubah amount, usually stated as 200 zuz for a virgin or 100 zuz (also referred to as one maneh) for a widow or divorcee, furthered the association with the amount of the bride price mentioned in the Bible.13 The use of unspecified amounts of vague currency at the heart of the ketubah reflects its shaky pedigree and its limited ability to protect women, although it is still lauded for the putative protection it offers women.14 The origins of the main ketubah amount were still being discussed in 1556 when Yehiel Nissim of Pisa noted that rabbinic traditions tried to present the main ketubah amount as biblical (mide-orita) rather than rabbinic

Negotiating Engagement 39 (me-derabanan) in order to upgrade the level of protection it afforded women. Yet, he reported that some Italian rabbis did not accept imposing this biblical pedigree on the main ketubah amount. Indeed, actual Italian ketubah documents show signs of this controversy because some contain the phrase for biblical origins (mide-orita), and others do not. The groom’s side often also contributed a counter-dowry (tosefet; controdote or donatio propter nuptias, aumento, indirect dowry, or dower). Unlike the bride-price, which was considered an essential, but often symbolic, component in the formal establishment of a relationship, the counter-dowry was not an essential aspect of a marriage, and was negotiated as a specific sum or as a percentage of the dowry. The amount ranged anywhere from a tenth, a fifth, a third, or half of the dowry to an amount equal to it, although in some records there is no clear mention of an amount. Theoretically, as with Catholic practice, the counter-dowry provided an opportunity for some proportionality between the two sides, and it relieved some of the financial burden on the woman’s family.15 The counter-dowry served as a credit against the dowry so the bride’s family could display generosity that exceeded its means, which raised its standing and also enhanced the prestige of the groom’s family because it was seen to have attained such a high dowry. The generosity of each side, even without an actual exchange of assets, reflected well on the other and accrued honor to both. Some agreements masked the actual value of the transactions by recording the counter-dowry in standardized amounts (20 or 50 lire, hearkening back to the biblical bride price), leaving it to stand as symbolic, or recording the actual amount in an accompanying letter that was not publicly disclosed.16 A man might have also given his bride gifts, clothing, and jewelry (matanah, matanah lahud, matanah gemurah; donation inter vivos) beyond what was required by the prenuptial agreement. In the short term, these gifts enabled both families to display generosity because even without sufficient assets a man could use a dowry down-payment to buy his bride gifts—a strategy used by Jews and Catholics alike.17 The question remained in both Jewish and Catholic communities whether the bride owned these gifts outright or if she had to return them to her husband or his family after the nuptials were completed. Also at issue was whether the gifts were a symbolic gesture or an actual exchange of assets between the couple.18

Financial Support from the Bride’s Family The woman’s family—her father, mother, brother, uncle, or even the bride herself—provided a dowry, nedunya. The Aramaic term appears in the second-millennium BCE Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (nudunnu) and in biblical and medieval Hebrew rabbinic literature (neden).19 Aspects of the dowry migrated through Roman practice to rabbinic culture, but

40  Negotiating Engagement vanished from medieval Catholic practice until the eleventh or twelfth centuries on the Italian peninsula and around the Mediterranean.20 The dowry included cash, gold and silver, the rights to property (hazakah), receivables, inheritance, and gifts, which Catholics called “dinari e donari.”21 A dowry enabled a woman to receive part of her family’s assets and to establish her own household while her parents were still alive, thus giving her an advantage in matters of access to family assets, as sons only received their shares upon the death of their fathers. In addition to the finances listed above, the dowry included the woman’s trousseau (corredo) of clothing (linen, wool, and silk), jewelry, veils, and bedding. Italian ketubot could include either the amount of the trousseau in the sum of the dowry, record it separately, ascribe an amount to each category, or give no value at all, while Christian trousseaus also contained a combination of assessed and unassessed items.22 Among both Jews and Catholics, the dowry belonged to the woman, although it was administered by her husband during the marriage, and he was responsible for using the interest to support the household and the business. To guarantee the dowry’s return to his wife or to her heirs when the marriage ended, the husband was required to place a lien on his estate payable before debts to any other creditors.23 Although the dowry was not a required component of Catholic marriage, by the Renaissance, it was popularly considered essential for a legitimate union.24 In Jewish practice, the dowry played a very important, but not religiously required, role. Yet it was difficult for a woman to get married without a dowry, and Jewish leaders made it more difficult by imposing a minimum dowry.25 The need for a woman to contribute a dowry forced a couple to rely on their families and communities for help in raising dowries, which diminished the possibility of a couple’s making secret marriage arrangements without involving family.26 In many cities, such as Venice, Jewish communal leaders and prominent women supported dowry societies that provided small amounts for poor young women. Although Jewish women joined these male-dominated societies, they were not allowed to take part in any of the activities of the society aside from contributing funds and recruiting new women members, which included their canvassing from door to door.27 Records show the kinds of support poor brides received. In Venice around 1594, two women from one of the dowry societies regularly accompanied impoverished Jewish couples from synagogue to synagogue to beg for scarves and jewelry before they married.28 In Verona, Jewish community leaders (parnasim) contributed to the dowries of poor young women known to them (habetulah hayedu-ah). To provide these funds, the community adopted many means, including drawing on communal charity funds, collecting a fee from every groom, taking up a general collection,29 or circulating solicitation letters (kibutz).30 Italian Catholics, in addition to running dowry societies to help young Catholic women, also

Negotiating Engagement 41 raised dowries for poor Jewish women to entice them to convert—lured, the Catholics hoped, by the prospect of receiving a better dowry from Catholics than from Jews.31 Poor young Jewish women, like so many Catholics, sometimes bided their time before marriage by working as servants. As what contemporary historians call life-cycle servants, they worked for periods ranging from a year to their entire teenage years in the homes of others, usually Jews, to earn a dowry and to learn skills.32 One contract for a Jewish domestic in a Jewish home explains that she had to learn to do these tasks with efficiency, with a minimum of discussion, and with purity of heart. She had to learn the virtues of silence, modesty, and humility; proper cleanliness, comportment, and care of her head, body, and clothing; thriftiness with money; and the appropriate respect for all people.33 These educational goals and virtues echo those of the third order convents or secular houses where Catholic families sent their daughters to be educated without necessarily taking religious vows. However, Catholic parents who could not afford a full dowry could force their daughters to remain in the convent permanently and perhaps to take vows. Although they had to pay a dowry to the convent, it was lower than what they would have had to pay for marriage.34 Jewish women, especially widows, did not have this option, but some settled in Palestine, usually Jerusalem or Safed, which by the sixteenth century functioned almost like a convent, serving as a place where pious Jewish widows could remain unmarried. Family members competed against each other for dowries with a legalistic sense of entitlement that sometimes led daughters to sue their fathers for what they thought was a proper dowry.35 Rabbi Mahalalel Hallelyah of Civitanova in seventeenth-century Ancona related two such cases.36 In one, after a father provided one of his daughters with a dowry of 1,000 gold pieces (zehuvim) and then his other daughter with 3,000, the first daughter sued him. He responded that he made the allotments based on his affection for each daughter. In the other case, a father gave one daughter a fixed amount of 400 gold pieces but gave his other two daughters each a tenth of his assets. In discussing the cases, Hallelyah stressed that if a father had the right to leave a son as much or as little as he wanted, he could do so for his daughters, and they had no right to protest. Rabbi Moses Provencal of Mantua (1503–1576) expressed a similar position when he ruled that daughters who receive dowries lower than their sisters may not sue their fathers. Parental preferences and economic fluctuations made an equal distribution of dowries between all of a man’s daughters the exception rather than the rule.37 During the engagement period, both Jewish and Catholic families raised the money for the dowry and invested it.38 For example, to increase the dowry before a Jewish wedding, a mother of the groom held the dowry and paid him interest.39 In a case discussed by Judah Minz of Padua (c. 1450–1508), two fathers agreed to a three-year engagement period

42  Negotiating Engagement that included yearly payments towards the dowry sum, after which their children would marry. The additional interest from these investments enabled each side to provide some of the amounts that they originally pledged.40 Despite gaps in documentation and lack of consistency in currency values, figures that appear in various kinds of documents give an approximate range of dowry amounts, at least in terms of raw numbers that show some order of magnitude. The stated combination of dinari e donari for many Jews was around 500–1,000 ducats. Rich Jews paid from 4,300–7,500 ducats, with some as high as 37,000 ducats and at the upper extreme 100,000 ducats for the wealthy Mendes-de Luna family. Poor Jews needed between 3 and 30 ducats. By comparison, at the low end among Catholics, the poor required 5–20 ducats. Women workers, who earned 5 ducats a year, needed help to raise about 100 ducats for a dowry. Catholic merchants raised around 2,000 ducats, and the nobility paid in the range of 20,000 to 60,000 ducats—although a 1644 law tried to limit them to 20,000. Royalty certainly paid much higher amounts. Catholic charitable societies provided dowry assistance on the basis of competitions to establish the worthiness of each applicant, and they recognized that some women from all classes—nobility, citizens, and poor—needed support, but the Senate limited the maximum amount of support to each class to 50, 40, and 20 ducats, respectively.41 The gap between annual income and dowry amounts demonstrates the pressure on families to raise dowries beyond their means. For example, Leon Modena described in his autobiography his role raising dowries for his own daughters and for the daughters of colleagues and relatives. His letters show that, despite his annual income of around 200 ducats, he engaged in high-risk attempts to maintain his honor in the Venetian Jewish community and among Catholics by promising dowries in dinari e donari of around 1,000 ducats—an amount well beyond his means, but still in the lower range of stated Jewish dowries. For his first daughter, Dinah, he wrote in 1611 that he was “relying on heaven’s mercy,” which he tried to test by gambling, but he lost. For his second daughter, Esther, he repudiated gambling and wrote: “I would change my way of life and my behavior and would retire to a life of solitude.” In lieu of a miracle, he turned to the Ashkenazic Society for the Dowering of Brides, Fraterna di Maritar Donzelle della Natione degli Hebrei Tedesca di Venezia, the first Jewish dowry society in Europe, and one of many Jewish and Catholic societies in Venice. In addition, because he helped relatives and friends raise dowries, they may have contributed to those of his daughters. Records do not provide all of the details of his fundraising efforts, but in following Italian practices,42 he may have actually raised the required amount by using the counter-dowry or the gifts from the other side as a rebate to reduce the dowry he had to pay, thereby reducing the stickerprice of the marriage.43

Negotiating Engagement 43 The way in which an engagement agreement shifted the actual financial arrangements for the benefit of both sides is seen in a 1511 marriage document from Cremona. It presents a conventional arrangement between Hananel, the son of Moses, and Daichen, the daughter of Simhah Halevi. She provided a dowry of gold, silver, jewelry, and bedding worth the notional 50 lire, and he added to it a formulaic counter-dowry of 50 lire. On the same day, according to a note at the bottom of the document, Hananel gave Daichen an outright gift (matanah gemurah) of 400 ducats as a counter-dowry, which the document stated now made the ketubah and counter-dowry worth 400 ducats. He also added clothing and jewelry that would belong to her. Hence, the total value of the ketubah document as initially stated did not actually take into consideration the main ketubah amount or the two formulaic sums of 50 lire for the dowry and counter-dowry. Hananel’s gift, therefore, contributed the funds of the dowry, which was usually provided by the woman’s family. Seven years later, in September 1518, a municipal notary recorded these documents. These supplementary documents report information not contained in the actual ketubah document and mask the lack of contribution made by Daichen’s family. This practice allowed the marriage to proceed, and its symbolic amounts protected the honor of both sides.44 Rabbinic discussions recognized the fluidity of the documents when they employed the statement “whether the dowry is true or not.”45

Dotal and Non-Dotal Assets Following discussions among contemporaneous Christians and precedents in Greek and rabbinic practices, Jews described the bride’s property using two basic, but not totally distinct categories, and negotiations hinged on drawing a line between them. On the one hand, nikhsei tzon barzel (“property of iron sheep”), a rabbinic term with roots in Akkadian, and phrene in Greek, the equivalent of the idea of dotal (dowryrelated), was property maintained by a husband for his wife until the marriage ended. During the marriage, he enjoyed all the earnings from this category of property and was responsible for any losses. Depending on the results of negotiations, nikhsei tzon barzel could include the main ketubah, dowry, or counter-dowry. On the other hand nikhsei mulug (also malog or malug, meaning plucked), non-dotal or extra-dotal assets (parapherna and paraphernalia in Greek; bona non dotalia and res extra dotem in Latin), included property that a woman owned that was not part of the marital agreements. They comprised any property she acquired, such as inheritance or gifts. Rabbinic enactments, however, limited her control over her own property during her husband’s lifetime. In circles outside of rabbinic Judaism, women had historically exercised more control. For example, papyri from Elephantine in Egypt from the fourth century BCE showed that married women had complete freedom

44  Negotiating Engagement to convey their property as they wished, whereas the second-century CE rabbinic synod of Usha in northern Palestine decreed that if a woman sold her mulug without her husband’s knowledge while he was alive, he was allowed to take it from those who had bought it.46 The counterdowry straddled the cusp between dotal and non-dotal assets, either as part of the dowry or as a gift that was property of the bride. Although the principal of nikhsei mulug belonged to the woman, during the marriage she entrusted it to her husband. He invested it and enjoyed the interest from the investment, and he was not responsible for any losses, nor was he entitled to any appreciation in value.47 The dowry played real and symbolic roles in negotiating marriage. When it functioned as a financial instrument, it offered a woman advantages: she received her share of her inheritance while her parents were still alive and before her brothers did, and she possessed prior claim to her husband’s assets over his creditors. The dowry sustained her marriage and provided her with support when it ended. However, when the dowry only provided a vehicle for status, it could no longer serve its role as a financial instrument to support her family and protect her at the end of the marriage. Dowries provoked rivalries among siblings, and also created opportunities for misrepresentation and manipulation. Dowry negotiations, therefore, do not offer an accurate balance sheet of financial exchanges, but rather they present a partial glimpse into the mentality of those involved in negotiating an engagement.

Prenuptial Post-Mortem Distribution of Assets In financial negotiations, each family tried to reach an understanding about the support of the couple while protecting its own investment from crossing over to the in-laws if the marriage ended in death, especially if the couple was childless. In particular, the principle that a man inherits from his wife (haba-al yoresh et ishto) was a source of concern for her natal family. In prenuptial negotiations, each family, depending on its interests, tried either to limit or to expand the application of this principle of a husband inheriting from his wife based on precedents available in Jewish tradition. Some rabbinic traditions tried to root the principle in the Bible, giving it not only an ancient—albeit dubious—pedigree but also the luster of a divine commandment. This rabbinic discourse based the principle on the biblical story about the daughters of Zelophehad. Their father died, and they had no brothers but were still not entitled to his property. They protested to Moses and claimed that they should receive a portion of their father’s property. Moses brought their case before the Lord, who ruled that Zelophehad’s daughters were right and that in the absence of sons, Moses should transfer their father’s portion (nahalah) to them.48 The heads of the tribe then complained to Moses that if a daughter received

Negotiating Engagement 45 a portion of land, they feared that ownership of it would transfer from tribe to tribe. After consulting with the Lord, Moses issued a clarification of the previous policy to limit succession of land to daughters only if they married men in their own tribe.49 The Lord then dealt with cases in which there were no daughters and assigned the portion (nahalah, a grammatically feminine noun) to the deceased man’s brothers or to “his closest kin” (she-ero hakarov) “who would inherit it” (veyarash otah), which is a grammatically feminine pronoun that means it or her. However, to establish the principle that a man inherits from his wife, these rabbinic traditions removed the biblical expression “who would inherit it” from its context in which the antecedent of the feminine pronoun was the portion (it), and instead they read the passage as “he will inherit her,” changing the meaning of the pronoun from it (the portion) to her (the wife) to justify the husband’s inheriting his wife’s assets.50 As with most matters of rabbinic discourse, other rabbis rejected this principle using various approaches.51 One early rabbinic authority drew on the biblical curse “Your strength will be spent in vain” (vetam larik kohakhem)52 and explained that it referred to a man who had lavishly dowered and married off his daughter, who then died during the seven days of the wedding festivities. Hence, he lost his daughter and his money, as her new husband was entitled to inherit her fortune. In response, some rabbis followed Roman law (according to which husbands were not the exclusive heirs of their wives) in an attempt to challenge the principle of husbands’ inheriting their wives’ property. They tried to protect the assets of women’s families in order to encourage generosity in familial support of the marriage of daughters.53 To ameliorate the possibility of extreme financial loss to the family of a bride who died soon after the wedding, rabbinic discourse introduced the stipulation that if a woman died without viable offspring (banim, velad shel kayama, bar/ben kayama, zera shel kayama, or zera), her possessions had to be returned to her father’s family. Viable offspring had to survive for at least thirty days after birth, or according to some, after the death of their mother.54 The ability to produce offspring represented a criterion for determining the viability of both Jewish and Catholic marriages; it was a biological measure that was free from the ambiguities of consummation, impotence, and sterility and that defined reproduction in terms that transcended theological speculation.55 Having created a viable child together, the couple left their natal families and legitimized the transfer of assets between them. Additionally, the knowledge that the inheritance of his wife’s property was linked to viable offspring provided a husband with a compelling incentive not to beat his wife (a phenomenon that has been shown to increase during pregnancy),56 because if such violence resulted in the child dying, he would lose assets. Another way in which the Talmud attempted to limit the husband’s sole right to inherit from his wife was the introduction of the ketubah of

46  Negotiating Engagement the male children (ketubat benin dikhrin).57 If a wife died leaving sons, then after their father died, they would inherit their part of his estate in addition to their mother’s ketubah and dowry amounts. This provision, which kept assets among the woman’s heirs, encouraged the families of brides to invest enthusiastically in their daughters’ dowries.58 Following early rabbinic precedents, medieval Jews continued to negotiate prenuptial agreements, balancing the right of the husband to inherit his wife’s possessions with the right of the wife’s family to reclaim them. The variable regional results of these negotiations were attributed to the decisions of different councils, although their original versions were not preserved, and medieval authorities questioned whether such originals ever existed. As Jews negotiated over the distribution of marital assets, rabbis edited, altered, and selectively quoted many different recensions of enactments. Subsequent rabbis, including in early modern Italy, whether quoting them by name or not, relied on collective memory of enactments about which nobody was—or is—certain. At one extreme, the French authority Rashi ruled that if a wife died soon after the marriage or the betrothal, her husband inherited “his” dowry, even if it was still in the possession of her father.59 At the other extreme, Rashi’s grandson, Rabenu Tam, wanted to remove the burden of the curse of lost assets from fathers whose daughters died childless soon after marriage. He devised a formula that linked the length of time the couple had been married with the percentage of assets that had to be returned, depending on whether the wife died during the first, second, or third year of marriage and whether her husband had to return all or half of what remained of her clothing and jewelry—not half of what her family contributed to the marriage. According to this ruling, the widower could not spend any of her assets or claim to have used them up. If the woman’s father had not yet transmitted all the dowry, his son-inlaw could not make a claim for unpaid dowry because, Rabenu Tam explained, after a year, everybody would have forgotten who gave what, and any discussion would add to the sorrow of the woman’s death.60 Rabenu Tam’s enactments spread in French lands, and served as the basis for provisions in the major Rhineland German communities (Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, or Shum). The Rhineland edicts stated that if the wife died during the first year without viable offspring, then her family got back everything that it had given to the groom, but if her death occurred during the second year, only half; and during the third year and beyond, “the law returned to how it was given at Sinai,” which meant that the man inherited everything from his wife and returned nothing to her family.61 At the other extreme, in Spain, the basic prenuptial post-mortem pattern of disposition of property was referred to as the Enactment of Toledo and Molina. While acknowledging the right of a husband to inherit his wife’s property, it nevertheless strove to undermine it. Unlike the French

Negotiating Engagement 47 and German formulations, the Spanish enactments, explicitly referring to Arabic language and Sharia law,62 attempted to divide assets equally between both sides, irrespective of whether there were offspring or not; and the Spanish edict did not consider a time-frame based on how long after the wedding a spouse died.63 The engagement negotiations made by individual Italian Jews included combinations of talmudic, medieval French, German, and Spanish patterns64 as well as those attributed specially to Rome.65 Other options derived from practices associated with Algiers,66 Damascus,67 and Safed.68 These Jewish Middle Eastern patterns, like those of Muslims, who had developed a science of calculating minute fractions of inheritances, involved more specific divisions of property than those employed in Europe. The engagement agreements over the division of assets made by individual Italian Jews show many combinations of earlier enactments that reflect a mixture of widespread cultural patterns and personal engagement tactics.69 A formulary for a prenuptial dowry agreement (nedunya) from the early seventeenth century shows the influences of different customs in Italian prenuptial post-mortem agreements. It states that the agreement had been written according to the customs of Terra Montagnana. There are several locations in Italy with that name, none of which was a major center of Jewish life. Following Spanish practice, it does not specify a timeframe, but it requires that if the wife died before her husband and the couple did not have any viable offspring, her relatives would collect the entire dowry, and her husband would inherit the other components of the marital settlement, although it does not go into details about these components. Thus each family would receive approximately the assets that it had provided, which ensured that neither family would be subjected to excessive financial hardship. If the husband died first and they had viable offspring, then all their property, including the wife’s main ketubah, dowry, and whatever they had acquired together, would be divided into thirds between their children, the heirs from the husband’s family, and his widow. Thus, by preparing a contract rather than arranging for a bequest that one side might contest, the man was able to guarantee that his family’s investment in his marriage would be safe, that his children’s interests would be shielded from his other heirs, and that his widow’s portion would be protected from his family.70 The negotiating process for prenuptial post-mortem arrangements appears in a contested sixteenth-century Italian prenuptial agreement. Doña Sarah and Raphael Blanco had married as Christians in Portugal. In 1572, they resettled in Ferrara where they prepared a ketubah according to Jewish law. In their prenuptial negotiations, they resolved that each would be the other’s heir. In order to save their souls and to atone for their sins, they agreed that the surviving spouse would contribute to the poor, the academies, the burial societies, and the charitable funds of

48  Negotiating Engagement Safed in Palestine and provide a dowry for a servant named Flor. Specifically, the agreement stipulated that if Sarah predeceased Raphael without their having viable offspring, she would leave him all of the assets of her ketubah, her dowry, and her counter-dowry as a complete irrevocable gift, and if he then had children with another woman, they would inherit the other components of Sarah’s ketubah. If Raphael died first and they had no viable offspring, Sarah would control (yishlot—in the masculine) all his current and future assets, which she would receive as a complete gift. These negotiations did not follow the patterns of most enactments. The couple showed no concern for assets crossing between them—perhaps because the rest of their families were still Catholic in Portugal. They expressly dismissed future claims of any heirs by allotting them the token amount of a mere quarter of a coin. They also declared that no authority in the Jewish community had the right to challenge their agreement. After Sarah died, Raphael appeared before the court of the Portuguese Jewish community of Venice to fulfill their prenuptial agreement. Despite it, he proposed instead to leave his possessions to the poor as a gift one hour before he died, which he said was a much more effective way of transmitting the assets. However, his new proposal did not include fulfilling Sarah’s promise to leave contributions for the poor of Safed and for the servant Flor’s dowry. With this arrangement, he was able to enjoy Sarah’s assets for the rest of his life, and the charities would eventually benefit, but Flor would not have been able to marry. In 1590, he brought a new plan before the court, using the Hebrew mehamat mitah for the standard Latin in causis mortem, meaning in anticipation of death. This time he further betrayed Sarah’s will, and he asked that Gracia, his niece, receive half his property as a gift (matanah gemurah). However, instead, Gracia declared that she was Raphael’s general heir (yoreshet kelalit) and entitled to all his property. At the same time, relatives of Sarah claimed that according to tradition, by which they meant the Spanish custom, the man’s family had to return half of the dowry to the woman’s family, and in addition the representatives of the institutions in Palestine complained that they had not yet received the bequest. The Portuguese rabbinic court in Venice dealt with the question of whether the conditions negotiated by Sarah and Raphael were binding. Given that the conditions stipulated that no authority in the Jewish community had the right to challenge their agreement, it is not surprising that the rabbinic court concluded that for this reason the prenuptial agreement was not valid.71 This case shows the possible consequences of a couple making prenuptial agreements outside the traditional patterns of devolution and limiting the authority of the Jewish community to intervene. As Portuguese Jews from New Christian backgrounds, the couple did not accept rabbinic authority. Yet Raphael turned to a rabbinic court in spite of the terms of his agreement with Sarah.

Negotiating Engagement 49 In matters of finance, it seems that in engagement negotiations marriages were considered as if they had ended before they began. Key to entering a marriage was an understanding of about how it would end. The ultimate arbiter in premarital discourse about the disposition of assets when a marriage ended early was the birth of a viable child; indeed, the birth of a child in a sense consummated the union physically and financially. Engagement negotiations show a flexibility that allowed Jews to maintain an arena in which the interests of women were represented, if not always met. To alleviate the disadvantages women experienced in marriages, engagement negotiations anticipated common forms of abuse that husbands inflicted on their wives. These involved forms of polygyny or polygamy and physical or emotional abuse. Although wives could not easily get out of marriages, they were to a certain extent protected by these prenuptial agreements that imposed financial penalties on abusive husbands and enabled women to avoid making financial concessions to their husbands.

Prenuptial Negotiations and Polygyny, Polygamy, and Polyandry In Jewish law, men could marry more than one (unmarried) woman at a time, and all of the resulting children would be legitimate, although there is little evidence that polygamy was a regular part of Jewish domestic life.72 Nevertheless, polygamy remained a legal possibility that put Jewish women at a disadvantage in negotiating with their husbands. Jewish men could also practice polygyny, maintaining an intimate relationship with more than one woman at a time.73 There was thus nothing to prevent married men from keeping mistresses and having legitimate children with them, in addition to those born to their wives.74 Polyandry, however, was not an option for Jewish women. Biblical tradition and subsequent Jewish law imposed severe, sometimes capital, punishments on women who had relations outside of marriage. Subsequent Jewish tradition continued to consider wives’ extra-marital sexual relations to be adultery, which was punished with severe social and financial penalties, and all of her offspring were subject to sanctions as mamzerim, including rejection by the Jewish community. The ultimate concern for women and their families in situations involving polygamy and polygyny was that basically women could not initiate divorce. Only a man could divorce a woman, and of his own volition; he could not be coerced to do so. Thus, a woman had no rights to get out of a marriage to a man who treated her abusively, took another woman, or disappeared entirely. To protect wives from becoming entrapped in a polygynous relationship, in which they could be abandoned and never able to marry again,

50  Negotiating Engagement an agunah, or chained woman, women and their families required that engagement agreements include a pledge that the man would not take another woman. According to Italian prenuptial agreements, should the husband take a second wife then his first wife would receive her entire ketubah and dowry, and her relatives would inherit the rest of the assets. Although not a prohibition against polygynous relationships, this provision recognized that they were a possibility and provided a disincentive for entering into one. As an example of how such provisions played out in relationships, in the early seventeenth century, Chiara, the daughter of Abram Salom, made a prenuptial agreement before a Venetian Christian notary with Jacob Bueno from the Ghetto Novissimo. According to the agreement, if Jacob took another wife, he had to pay Chiara 4,200 ducats and grant her a divorce. Subsequently, on a trip to Cairo, Jacob married another woman. As a result, Chiara brought her case before a Venetian secular court, the Giudici del Proprio. They seized her husband’s assets, valued at 2,999 ducats, and turned them over to her. She had full control over them, and when she made her own last will and testament in 1663, she bequeathed them to her daughters and a son.75 Similarly, according to an Italian Jewish prenuptial agreement, if the man took another woman as a wife, as a servant, or as a concubine (pilegesh, ishah meyuhadet), then immediately, without protest, he had to divorce his first wife and pay her entire ketubah. The inclusion of a female servant here highlights the assumption that regularly married men took sexual advantage of servants in their homes.76 During the Middle Ages, several rabbis had attempted to curtail polygamy but not necessarily polygyny. According to traditions, Rabenu Gershom of Mainz tried to impose monogamy in Ashkenazic countries. However, his decree was limited because it contained many exceptions. These involved situations in which, despite rabbinic controversy, a man was considered obligated to fulfill a commandment, even if the result was polygamy. Such situations included his being married for ten years without offspring,77 obligated to produce a child with his late brother’s widow (a levirate bond, see below),78 unable to correct a rebellious wife who would not accept a divorce,79 married to a woman who had lost her rational capabilities,80 betrothed while he was a minor, or even interested in taking a mistress.81 And polygamy persisted: for example, the thirteenth century Ashkenazic Rabbi Isaac of Corbeil stated that during intercourse a man should not think of another woman, “even if they are both his wives.”82 Subsequent Sephardic rabbis tried to undermine the edict against polygamy attributed to Rabenu Gershom. Solomon ibn Adret of Spain (c. 1235-c. 1310) raised the possibility that the edict was not valid in all countries for all times, especially outside the Ashkenazic realm and after the end of the fifth millennium, that is1240.83 Ibn Adret’s attempt to limit the reach of the ban on polygamy persisted in early modern Italy,84 especially because it was endorsed by the influential rabbi Joseph Colon (1420–1480), whose collection of responsa was

Negotiating Engagement 51 published in 1519. The result was that Italian rabbis disagreed about whether or not a man who took another wife due to the infertility of the marriage should have to divorce his first wife.85 In a similar vein, a 1554 synod of Italian Jews ruled that, despite the ban of Rabenu Gershom, a man who had been childless for ten years could marry another wife without the permission of the first.86 Other rabbis, such as the ­seventeenthcentury Venetian Leon Modena, were emphatic that the ban of Rabenu Gershom applied in their day in Italy. Modena mustered the opinions of many authorities who agreed that it was still binding.87 Further, he invoked a later stipulation that in order to abrogate the ban against polygamy in a given case, 100 rabbis from three communities in three countries had to identify a good reason for doing so. Modena therefore concluded that if a woman had not given birth after ten years of marriage, her husband had to divorce her and pay her ketubah before he could take another wife. Paradoxically, Modena’s position supporting Rabenu Gershom also violated Rabenu Gershom’s edict against a man’s divorcing his wife against her will.88 In the end, without enough support against polygamy in tradition, Modena grasped at meta-halakhic, utilitarian considerations against it, stating that Jews in his day were unable to afford to support several wives. Similarly, his colleague Jacob Heilpronn of sixteenth-century Padua also invoked utilitarian arguments against polygamy. Not relying on a religious ban, he wrote that a wife should not have the authority to grant her husband permission to take another wife because the purpose of banning polygamy was to eliminate a source of domestic strife, which would prevail if men could coerce their wives into allowing them to take a second wife.89 Remarkably, although the Catholic Church preferred lives of celibacy and thus only reluctantly accepted the institution of marriage, and was even less enthusiastic about remarriage after the death of a spouse, which it considered a form of serial polygamy (digamy), Jewish men in early modern Italy who wanted to enter into a polygamous marriage sought the approval of the pope—or at least a bishop.90 What is surprising is that for a fee, the Church often granted permission, even without the consent of the first wife.91 Supposedly to limit rivalry between wives, the Church required the women to live in different cities. This was the opposite approach of the Spanish rabbis, who only allowed polygamous marriages if both wives lived in the same city so that their offspring would know each other and not inadvertently marry each other.92 The difference was that Jews wanted such marital arrangements to be known, and Catholics did not.93

Prenuptial Negotiations and the Levirate Connection The levirate union was a feature of many societies. For Jews, it had its roots in the Bible. When two brothers lived together and one of them died childless, the deceased’s widow (yevamah) automatically found herself in

52  Negotiating Engagement a levirate connection with her brother-in-law (yavam, levir in Latin); following this, there were two options. The first option, situations in which the husband’s brother desired his sister-in-law entitled him to engage in three activities: have intercourse with her, take her to be what could mean either his wife or a woman (ishah), and form a levirate union with her (yibum, veyibemah) regardless of his marital status. The offspring of this union, however, would carry the name of the dead brother so that it would not disappear from the people of Israel. The second option was employed if the man did not want to take his sister-in-law. In such cases, the Bible was consulted for its description of a procedure for release (halitzah) from the levirate connection. The process began with the widow going to the elders at the gate and telling them that her brother-in-law refused to establish his brother’s name among the people of Israel. After the elders of the city summoned him and spoke with him, he had to state that he did not want to take her. The woman then would approach him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his shoes, spit in front of him (or in his face, befanav), and declared, “This is what is done to a man who will not build up the house of his brother”—a rare speaking part for a woman in Jewish ritual. From that time on, his name was “the house of the removed shoe.”94 Rabbinic practices made it difficult for a widow to get out of the levirate connection due to the requirement that her brother-in-law could only participate in this ceremony of release of his own free will and could not be coerced. Accordingly, if he desired, he could prevent his widowed sister-in-law from ever marrying again, making her an anchored woman (agunah), or he could blackmail her to pay him off in exchange for her release. In Italy, levirate unions remained controversial. On the one hand, rabbis noted that release was the custom of choice, yet on the other hand, they recognized that some Jews did enter levirate unions. One rabbi extravagantly claimed about the levirate union: “this commandment is pursued in every place and in all times.”95 This phenomenon attracted much attention during the King’s Great Matter, the controversy over the divorce of King Henry VIII of England (c. 1527–1533). In his attempt to divorce Catherine of Aragon, who was the widow of his late brother Arthur, Henry claimed that his marriage with Catherine was incestuous and forbidden by the Bible. The pope, who opposed Henry’s divorce, claimed that the marriage was like a levirate union and therefore valid, although paradoxically the Church had elsewhere expressed its disapproval of levirate unions. In a most unusual move, both Henry and the Pope sought Italian rabbis to support their claims.96 In other contemporaneous discussions, rabbis tried to characterize preference for levirate union or release based on essential differences between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, but such a characterization does not hold up.97 Records show that some Jewish men in Germanic lands

Negotiating Engagement 53 requested rabbinic permission for levirate unions.98 In fact, the elaborate Jewish release ceremonies of early modern Italy, borrowed from German Jewish traditions, stated: “Even if you have another wife, when Rabenu Gershom decreed that a man should not take two wives, he did not stipulate concerning the levirate union, which is a positive biblical commandment. However, after they perform the levirate act, the edict of Rabenu Gershom is applicable.”99 Conversely, although some Sephardim indicated openness to levirate union, they rarely acted upon it.100 To protect a woman from becoming trapped in a levirate connection with her brother-in-law, in prenuptial agreements, a groom often agreed to have his brothers vow or provide a surety that in case he died childless, they would release his widow “without cost or claim” and that his widow would be named “donna e madonna” of his property. Such a financial contractual agreement, unlike a religious obligation, was enforceable at the behest of a widow and would protect her from her brothers-in-law. Prenuptial agreements, anticipating the possibility that a brother-in-law might convert to Christianity or abscond entirely, leaving the Jewish community with no authority to coerce him to fulfill his agreement to release his widowed sister-in-law, required the future groom to have his brothers prepare a bill of divorce for his future wife even before the wedding took place. Other negotiations required the future groom to agree that if he became seriously ill or set out on a long journey from which he might not return, he would issue his wife a preemptive divorce so that if he died or vanished, he would not leave her abandoned or bound to his brothers.101

Prenuptial Negotiations, Finances, and Abuse Prenuptial negotiations also anticipated several ways that in the future the husband, usually, but sometimes also the wife, might abuse the spirit of these agreements. The provisions of prenuptial agreements took into consideration the possibility that the husband might physically or emotionally abuse his wife beyond the usual limits of acceptable physical correction and discipline (which will be discussed below),102 intimidating her into absolving (limhol, mehilah) him of fulfilling his financial obligations to her. In fact, early rabbinic literature allowed a wife to make such concessions in order for the couple to maintain “peace of mind” (nahat ruah) or “domestic tranquility” (shalom bayit). She could waive her rights to counter-dowry, gifts, and dowry, as well other items in the supplementary documents not recorded in the documents, but she would keep the main ketubah amount—usually only a nominal sum—but of enough symbolic value to sustain the marriage and the man’s right to sexual relations with his wife. Although the term “shalom bayit” is associated in Jewish parlance with domestic tranquility, it is based on coercion, perhaps violent, and acquiescence by the woman to the demands of her husband.103

54  Negotiating Engagement Alternatively, a woman with great affection for her husband might give him more assets than stipulated in the prenuptial agreement.104 This did not necessarily represent the result of abuse, but her affectionate waiving of her entitlement to assets certainly undermined the basic premise of the prenuptial agreement, which was to protect the woman when the marriage ended. Another form of financial abuse entailed a man who, with the collusion of his wife, took advantage of his creditors by claiming that all his assets were part of his financial obligations to his wife as stipulated in their prenuptial agreements, which had priority over his obligations to his creditors.105 If a woman claimed that her husband was holding marital assets for her, then creditors could not pursue them. If she subsequently released her husband from these obligations, the creditors would have lost the money that he hid with her. To prevent these abuses, prenuptial agreements contained provisions that preemptively nullified any concessions that a woman might make to her husband. Like prenuptial post-mortem negotiations over the disposition of assets, these negotiations also balanced the financial interests of both families and drew on the principle of Roman and common law that did not allow gifts between spouses (donatio inter virum et uxorem). Amid the cynical or at least pragmatic tactics devised to protect assets and prevent abuse, a few of the available Italian prenuptial agreements from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries offer a formula of love and equality. Similar to each other and rare among the documents, they sound appealing to modern sensibilities: “They will conduct themselves with love and the two of them shall control all their assets with equality and neither will take it from the other.” Nevertheless, one rabbi affirmed that this sentiment of equality was not against what he saw as the biblical injunction that a man must rule over his wife, which he used as the basis for limiting a wife’s access to assets.106 This sentiment of affection and equality, the rabbi’s attempt to limit it, and the ways in which prenuptial agreements tried to protect women, their families, and their assets point to the contradictory aspects of the engagement process. On the one hand, the families and the couple recognized that they were establishing the basis for an intimate, long-term relationship in which emotions would play a part. On the other hand, they recognized that fortunes and family honor were at stake. The premarital negotiations thus reflect a delicate balance between affection, honor, and finances.

Finalizing an Engagement Once both sides were satisfied with the conditions of the engagement (or thought they were) and if they had sufficient assets for travel and banquets, they might arrange a celebration. Like Christian clergy, rabbis might assume a role in the public engagement ceremony, but usually they

Negotiating Engagement 55 served as witnesses (pirsum hashidukhin) rather than as clerical officiants. The increasing participation of clergy in engagements, once private matters between two families, reflected the growing tendency among both Jews and Catholics for commitments to be made in public. If there was a ceremony and the couple was present, not only the groom but the bride (these appellations were used at this stage, anticipating betrothal and marriage) had speaking parts, unlike at the wedding and betrothal. To assure the couple’s complete public agreement on the conditions of engagement, the terms were read publicly and the couple expressed consent before those present.107 In Jewish engagements, this procedure involved the qualities of a cross-examination about the future spouses’ intentions, also a development in Catholic marriages in the sixteenth century.108 Engagement offered the woman an opportunity to confirm that she wanted to take the man for a husband and to receive from him a promise of betrothal and a ketubah in the future. The couple then sealed the engagement contract with a handshake (teki-at kaf), perhaps also an oath (shevuah), and a symbolic exchange of property (kinyan). After the engagement ceremony, all those present congratulated the couple by saying “mazal tov.” Then, the future groom, by means of another man, such as his father, sent his future bride gifts (sivlonot), and another woman, often her mother, received them on her behalf.109 In early modern Italy, some men sent sivlonot after the betrothal, which caused much confusion over whether sivlonot constituted evidence of engagement or of betrothal, as we will see below. The period between formalizing the engagement and celebrating the betrothal or the combined betrothal and marriage could last a year or two, but sometimes extended up to six or even ten years, until all the arrangements were finalized.110 Engagement negotiations might have involved provisions for the groom to live with his future father-in-law after the engagement. His future father-in-law might support him, perhaps also providing food, drink, tuition, and clothing. In some cases, after the engagement the couple lived at a great distance from each other, or they might never have met, despite the traditional expectation that they had.111 Whenever the couple met, if they did not like what they saw, either one might try to end their relationship. Understandably, couples experienced engagement as a period of financial, emotional, and sexual stress and adjustment. The prospect of sexual relations between an engaged couple raised ambivalent reactions among rabbinic authorities. According to tradition as well as the wishes of members of the family and community, an engaged couple was not to be left alone together, and any time spent in each other’s company required either the future bride’s relatives or other women from the neighborhood to be present to protect her, as the man’s relatives and friends were not considered reliable. Nevertheless, Jews recognized the possibility of premarital intimacy in engaged couples.

56  Negotiating Engagement The potential sexual contact was of particular concern due to the woman’s menstruation. Some rabbis worried more about impurity than immorality and more about sexual relations during menstruation than before marriage.112According to Jewish tradition, menstrual impurity lasted almost two weeks each month, and was considered a source of great danger, including premature death, to men. Hence, married men avoided physical contact with their wives during this period, which ended after the woman’s immersion in a ritual bath. Unmarried women, however, did not usually go to the ritual bath at the end of each menstrual period. Therefore, some rabbis were concerned that an unmarried woman would be in a state of ritual impurity while having intercourse. Some authorities even tried to prevent an engaged couple from even hugging and kissing during the days of the woman’s menstrual period. Other Jewish authorities accepted that engaged couples showed familiarity if not affection and intimacy. The Talmud suggests that they were alone together an hour before the wedding so that the couple could get to know each other better or so that they could preempt the practice attributed to ancient Roman lords of the right of the first night (jus primae noctis) with virgins in their domain.113 There is later discussion that, despite prohibitions to the contrary, grooms freely visited their fiancées at home,114 possibly unchaperoned. In Italy, some Jewish couples indulged in premarital hugging and kissing. Although these activities might lead the young man to ejaculate, some Jewish authorities felt that as long the couple did not have intercourse, this intimacy would foster great love and attachment between the two,115 which could be beneficial in guaranteeing the marriage, as the outcome of the engagement period was not inevitable for Jews or Catholics116 This echoes aspects of the liberalization of Catholic strictures on premarital physical contact and the courtship practice of Christian couples sharing a bed, but separated by a board, blankets, or body sacks, hence the custom was later known as bundling.117

Difficult Engagements As could be anticipated, the desires of all parties were not always taken into consideration when a match was made. For example, in 1549, two fathers in Sienna made a secret engagement agreement for their children. The fathers included the provision that they each would keep the agreement secret until six months before the wedding. Each man took an oath that he would not reveal this engagement to anybody except his wife, but only if she swore that she would not tell anybody. In order to circumvent any supervision by the Jewish community, these men dispensed with Jewish witnesses. They signed the agreement in the presence of a Catholic scribe, agreeing to consider it as if it were a Jewish document executed before Jewish witnesses. In doing so, these fathers usurped the roles of their wives, their children, and the Jewish community.118 Similarly, given

Negotiating Engagement 57 the tendency of tyrannical fathers who betrothed their daughters against their will, it is not surprising that documents engaging the services of matchmakers stated that the man entered the agreement of his own free will, but they do not offer such assurances about the woman.119 Yet some women still broke off engagements and rejected men. In refusing to go through with an engagement, a girl or woman was in a difficult position. Her father had made an agreement, and if she broke it, he might be subjected to financial sanctions or public humiliation. Her rejection also embarrassed the young man and his family.120 Nonetheless, she really might have not wanted the man and could not go through with the engagement.121 When a woman broke off the engagement, the discussion of sanctions (including monetary fines) against her father involved the nature of her consent and the question of whether her father could have anticipated his daughter’s refusal. In other words, in making a match, did fathers consider the possibility that their daughters might reject it? If they did not, then the stipulated fines were not an actual financial penalty that had to be paid, but rather merely a symbolic amount (asmakhta) written as a sign of confidence in the agreement.122 Because Jews assumed that women were satisfied with any man and were dutiful when it came to following the instructions of their fathers, a daughter’s rejection of her father’s match constituted unanticipated duress (o-nes) on him, an impediment to his fulfillment of the contract that was out of his control. Therefore, when a daughter was not satisfied with her father’s choice and she did not conform to this basic expectation of obedience, her father had no obligation to pay the fine. In the words of Rabbi Menahem Azariah mi-Fano of Reggio Emilia (1548–1620), “Any place where there is duress there is no fine.” If, however, the father changed his mind about the engagement or coached his daughter to change hers, then he was liable to pay the fine.123 The principle of unanticipated duress in matters of engagement shows that fathers did not always consider their daughters’ wishes from the start, but that they had to recognize them once those wishes had become clear. One rabbi highlighted the role of a woman’s volition in breaking off an engagement and said that if she really did not want the man, a fine would serve no purpose, but the rabbi imposed one anyway to recompense the man for the shame the woman had caused him by breaking the engagement. Some other tangled aspects of engagement are highlighted in a case about what should occur if the engagement broke up after the families had spent lavishly. The bride’s family had paid for banquets, the engagement ceremony, and transportation of the future groom, his relatives, and his friends, as well as for the matchmaker and the scribe. The future groom’s side had paid for horses, coaches, coachmen, room and board, messengers, clothing, all types of adornments, gifts, and other expenses that were not in kind, required, or customary.124 However, it turned out

58  Negotiating Engagement that the future groom was in jail for debt, his family was destitute, and those who supported him did so for reasons of charity, kinship, or as part of a loan agreement. The groom’s misrepresentation of his assets and his gifting under false pretenses had led his future father-in-law to match his apparent generosity and thus suffer great losses. Rabbi Moses Zacuto (1620–1697), who lived in Venice from 1645–1673, noted that according to the Talmud, local custom usually entailed returning all gifts in kind. However, he had never heard of one side making restitution to the other side for expenses it had incurred. Indeed, he wrote that he had heard from one rabbinic authority that in Mantua a Jewish judge who supported the reimbursement of expenses was fired. His replacement required only returning gifts but not paying back expenses. Zacuto concluded that in such cases the Talmud recognized that the good fortune and happiness of these individuals would come from other partners, and there was no reason to force them to marry. Zacuto did not have much sympathy for this father who took so few precautions when he negotiated the engagement of his daughter and had been bested in a gifting competition. One reason women or their families might have tried to break off an engagement was the sudden loss of assets by the young man or his family. Some rabbis accepted business losses as an unanticipated impediment (ones) that allowed a woman or her family to break an engagement and that exempted them from having to pay a fine. Other rabbis disagreed, seeing such setbacks as part of the normal give and take of business affairs in which people became rich or poor on a regular basis. Instead, these rabbis stated that women or their families had to proffer other acceptable pretexts for breaking off an engagement. These included allegations of the man’s bad health or bad behavior, such as gambling, visiting prostitutes, or even using guns.125 Women and their advocates expanded their right to break an engagement by stretching technical terminology. Women could refuse (lema-en) to go through with a match, using the Hebrew term that originally was a technical term for the right of a minor orphan girl to refuse the betrothal made for her by her mother or brother (mi-un). The use of this term in conjunction with broken engagements represented an expansion of the term, as did its use in cases involving a more mature woman (bogeret). In the next chapter and in the concluding case of Rosa Montalcino, already a mature woman, and Isaac Danuti, women creatively employed this term in their attempts to break their engagements.126 However, although women were making some headway by revising terminology in their favor when breaking an engagement, rabbis were attempting to make things more difficult for women by introducing punitive methods to limit the possibilities of breaking an engagement. For example, when couples wanted to break an engagement, some rabbis tried to force men to give the women a bill of divorce, claiming that this would prevent any future suspicion that the women might have been

Negotiating Engagement 59 betrothed to them, rather than simply engaged. However, although they had not taken part in any solemn ceremony, a divorce punished them both, as will be discussed below. Yet in making an engagement, women let their wishes be known. One particular point of contention was domestic duties, which Jewish women did not always accept graciously, and the issue sometimes became a stumbling block to engagements. In one case, before Dinah married Manasseh, she was anxious about the prospect of keeping house for a large family. Her father, Jacob, made a vow that when she married Menasseh she would do no housework and that he would provide her with a Jewish servant to do the work expected of her. When Menasseh and his father learned about this vow, they refused to let Dinah live in their house under such conditions, and the marriage was called off. To make it clear that finances were not the issue but rather power, they drew on the Bible to present the model for ideal relations between a man and a woman.127 After quoting the Bible, “He will rule over you,” they added, “He and not her father.” Manasseh and his father asserted “words of tradition,” actually from the Bible,128 that “every man will be ruler in his house,” noting that according to rabbinic tradition “house” means his wife. Faced with this dilemma, Dinah expressed the desire to do housework in order to meet the expectations of her future husband and his father. She appealed to the rabbis for help releasing her from her father’s vow that she would not do any housework. She saw that her role was to meet the expectations of her future husband and his family rather than following her own desire not to do housework. Rabbis met with her father, but he refused to release her from his vow and argued that the rabbis had no authority to do so either. They tried to muster his acquaintances to prevail upon him to annul his vow so that his daughter could get married. We do not know what the final outcome was in this case, but we do see a woman decreasing her demands and changing her expectations so that she could get married, her father holding firm in his desire to relieve her of some of the domestic obligations of a married woman, and her future husband invoking tradition to enforce her to perform domestic duties.129 The issues of matchmakers and housework played a role in a midsixteenth-century case. It gives a sense of the ways that men investigated potential wives, to scrutinize their bodies, and to reconsider engagements. In this case, the potential groom, Reuben, asserted that the matchmakers had misled him when they described the woman to him, and he claimed that he owed them nothing. He claimed that during the negotiations, he had heard that the woman was lame, but when he asked the matchmakers about her physical condition, they had assured him that she had no disabilities. They countered that they explicitly told him that she was lame, that he went and saw for himself, and that it was only after he saw her for himself that he completed the formal engagement. Reuben replied that he did not go to see if she was lame, but rather in order to

60  Negotiating Engagement see if she was physically fit and good looking. Moses Provencal, one of the rabbis treating the case, noted that it was the practice of matchmakers to describe a woman’s physical fitness and beauty from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, and once Reuben went to examine her himself he could no longer claim that the matchmakers had misled him about her condition. Moreover, Provencal asserted that even if Reuben himself did not notice that she was lame, he could have asked about her among her neighbors because she could not hide such a condition from them. Provencal rejected Reuben’s claim against the matchmakers and ruled in their favor, asserting that Reuben’s change of heart had nothing to do with his potential wife being lame. Reuben then shifted ground and expressed concern about her willingness to do housework because on his surveillance sortie he did not see her doing any nor did he get the sense that she wanted to. The matchmakers tried to convince him that she knew how to do housework, but because he did not see her do any, he did not believe them. This case highlights the extent to which parties to an engagement might pursue more information or a pretext to back out, and it shows the expectation that men or their agents examined the physical fitness of their potential fiancées. However, the rabbi discussing this case did not address these issues, but rather attributed the change of heart to Reuben’s own fickle-mindedness.130 Significantly, Italian rabbis recognized the gap between engagement and love. One rabbi wrote that engagement was a time for a couple to acquire skills to establish their household on a firm foundation and their relationship on a sound basis.131 Another explained that gifts exchanged after engagement (sivlonot) did not yet reflect the love or affection that a couple would nurture as they approached betrothal and marriage.132

Conclusion The extant fragments of financial negotiations and engagement agreements offer a window into family dynamics. As a woman began the transition from the authority of her family to that of her husband, she was at particular risk emotionally and financially. Her family as well as that of the man shared certain risks as each side negotiated. These negotiations constituted a system of checks and balances for both sides to make the best arrangement. This was not a system based on equality but rather on balance. It neither enslaved the woman, for she was not bought, nor did it necessarily protect her. Competing structural alternatives and the ambiguities of human relationships produced opportunities for manipulation on both sides, but which ultimately left the woman at a disadvantage because she could not exit a betrothal or marriage on her own. Nevertheless, men and women usually entered engagements because they wanted to be married or felt that they had to be. Engagement negotiations, therefore, were the primary opportunity for the woman and her family to make the best deal.

Negotiating Engagement 61 Theoretically, engagement negotiations ensured that the woman received part of her family’s assets ahead of other heirs. The assets formed the principal for her husband to invest and to use to support the family, in addition to being a financial cushion for her or her heirs when the marriage ended. The investment of assets and the possibility of losing them kept each family vigilant and inspired tactics for one side to try to gain control of them at the expense of the other. In reality, to enhance the honor and protect the assets of the families, the arrangements included embellishments and fictions that could come back to haunt those involved and that made marriage difficult to arrange and difficult to end. Those making the arrangements for women did not always take into consideration their volition, passion, and needs, but rather focused on matters of economics, and they assumed that a sympathetic relationship would develop between the couple—or perhaps they did not care. A match, however, did not always succeed because young men and women did not always commit their affection to their parents’ choices. During the engagement, which could go on for many years, the man and the woman had no solemn commitment to each other, yet the bride’s father might have supported the groom, the couple might have lived in the same house, or they may have never met each other. The couple and their families had to make many adjustments in which they balanced suspicion and affection, economics and passion. Indeed, some couples might have acted on a strong attraction to each other and engaged in physical intimacy. Other couples might have learned that they could not tolerate each other and wanted to break the engagement. Like making an engagement, breaking one required negotiation to protect the interests and honor of both families. Face-saving fictions, often masking disdain or financial concerns with more acceptable reasons, allowed a gracious way out. Negotiation was more than a financial exercise and constituted part of the larger issues of family dynamics and tactics of reaching premarital agreements with another family for what might be, due to various causes, a short but costly relationship. Mutuality of interests, love, and sexual attraction were possible, but they were also distractions from the long-term interests of each side and of both individuals as the relationship became permanent through betrothal and then marriage. Although engagement might have culminated in betrothal—which for the woman was a permanent relationship with a man who did not have similar obligations towards her— there were still ways in which women could sometimes break the betrothal to their best advantage.

Notes 1 Diena, no. 134. 2 Aaron Berekhiah of Modena, Ma-avar yabok, Minhat aharon, 2: 14. 3 See also, Francesconi, “Jewish Women in Eighteenth-Century Modena: Individual, Household, and Collective Properties,” 191–206. 4 Boksenboim, Matanot, nos. 156, 157.

62  Negotiating Engagement 5 Deuteronomy 24:1–4. 6 See Tobit 7:19; in addition to dispersed examples, our sample draws on the following collections: Yoel, “Ketubot me-italia,” 266–304; the collections of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Israel Museum, on line at http:// jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/ketubbot/; Sabar, Ketubbah; Davidovitch, The Ketubah. 7 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, 213–246; on “phantom dowries” and “the plastic and polysemic terminology of law,” see Kirshner, “Some Problems,” 625–635; Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations,” 94–95; on Jewish tactics for negotiations in Florence and the problematics of studying them, see Siegmund, The Medici State, 358–385; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 156–158. 8 Imanuel, “Bitul shidukhin,” 164. 9 Hughes, “Il Matrimono nell’italia,” 19, 27–28. 10 On the role of honor, see Strocchia, “Gender and the Rites of Honour,” 39–40. 11 Genesis 34:12; Exodus 22:15–16; 1 Samuel 18:25–27; 2 Samuel 3:14. 12 Deuteronomy 22:29. 13 M. (Mishnah) Ketubot 1:2, 10b. 14 Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 155. 15 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 205–206. 16 Yoel, “Ketubot,” 269; Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, 223; Hughes, “From Brideprice to Dowry,” 262–296; Chojnacki, Women and Men, 76–94. 17 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 204–206; Ferrante, “Gli Sposi contesti,” 358–360. 18 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, 225; for a full theoretical discussion, see Bestor, “Transactions in Renaissance Italy,” 6–46; Chojnacki, Women and Men, 53–75. 19 Ezekiel 16:33; Yam shel shlomo, Ketubot 4:14. 20 On the role of dowry in Christian society, see Labalme, “Women’s Roles,” 131–132; Chojnacki, Women and Men, 115–131. 21 Witthoft, “Riti nuziali e loro iconografia,” 126; Toaff, Love, Work, and Death, 15, 22. 22 Bestor, “Transactions in Renaissance Italy,” 40. 23 Allegra, “Jewish Devolution,” 49; Chajnacki, Women and Men, 95–111. 24 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime di antio regime, 332. 25 Carpi, Padova 2, no. 639, 359; no. 753, 476. 26 Sperling, “Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent,” 67–108; Hughes, “Il Matrimonio nell’italia,” 36–37. 27 Mahari Minz, no. 5; Horowitz, “Hakhnasat kalah,” 362–371; Modena, Hayei, fol. 21a, Cohen, Life, 131, Carpi, 8; JTSA (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) 8468, fols. 9a, 12a; ASV (Archivio di Stato Venezia), Scuole Piccole e Suffragi, busta 729, 11a; 733, 36a. 28 ASV, Scuole Piccole e Suffragi, busta 729, 11a; busta 733, 36a. 29 Boksenboim, Verona 1–2, 142, 153, 209, 265, 267, 270, 406, 442, 500, 518, 520. 30 For examples of kibutzim attributed to Leon Modena, although some in a different hand are dated after his death, see MG (Moscow-Guenzberg) 356.14, fols. 209a‑209b, 211b‑216b, 222a, 228a, 230a. 31 Segre, Piedemont, no. 1869, with an explicit reference to marriage; others mention girls of marital (or cloistered) age, nos. 1436, 1510, 1813, 1869, 1871, 1895; Van Boxel, “Dowry and the Conversion of the Jews,” 116–127. 32 Adelman, “Servants and Sexuality,” 81–97. 33 JNUL (Jewish National and University Library, now called NLI, National Library of Israel), Benayahu 6. 9, fols. 8a‑9b.

Negotiating Engagement 63 34 Grendler, Schooling, 96–100; Horowitz, “Bein adonim lemershartot,” 197; Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums; Klapisch-Zuber, “Women Servants in Florence,” 56–80. 35 Kirshner, “Introduction,” 1–14. 36 On Hallelyah, see Bernstein, “The Letters of Rabbi Mahalalel Hallelujah,” 497–513. 37 Provencal, no. 81, cited in PY (Pahad Yitzhak), “Nedunyah,” 5:12a. 38 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 231. 39 JNUL 8* 3904, no. 11. 40 Mahari Minz, no. 2.; on imaginative solutions for dowry financing, see Carboni, “The Economics of Marriage,” 371–387. 41 The amounts for Jews are based on the sample of ketubot discussed below; Pullan, The Jews of Europe, 196, 238; Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 18; Pullan, Rich and Poor, 189, 208, 272, 314–315, 353; Boccato, “Ebree nella,” 270; Bellavitis, “Family and Society,” 327 and 344; on Umbria, see Toaff, Love, Work, and Death, 22–25; for Florence, see Siegmund, The Medici State, 353–358. 42 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, 222; Hughes, “From Brideprice to Dowry,” 74. 43 Modena, Hayei, 15b‑16a, 18a, 21b; Cohen, Life, 107–108, 114–115, 131; Carpi, 61, 63, 67–68, 81. 44 Yoel, “Ketubot,” 270–271. 45 Tur EH (Even Haezer)118. 46 TB (Talmud Bavli) Ketubot 50a, 78a‑78b Epstein, Contract, 107–112. 47 MT Ishut 17:7, 16:1–2; Tu/BY (Beit yosef)/SA (Shulhan arukh) EH 85. 48 Numbers 27:4–8, 36; Joshua 17; cf. Job 42:15. 49 Numbers 36:1–10. 50 TB Baba Batra 111b; Rivlin, Hayerushah, 85–98. 51 Rabad on MT (Mishneh torah) Nahalot 1:8. 52 Sifra, Behukotai 2:15; cf. Leviticus 26:20. 53 Cohen, “Haba-al et ishto,” 137, 140, 141, 158; Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 81–82, Epstein, Contract, 91. 54 TB Shabbat 135b. 55 Goody, “Inheritance, Property, and Women,” 11; Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, 66. 56 Taylor and Nabors, “Pink or Blue,” 1273–1293; Fisher and Yassour Borochowitz, “Domestic Abuse in Pregnancy,” 35–36; Hardwick, “Domestic Violence,” 29. 57 M. Ketubot 4:10; TP (Talmud of Palestine) Ketubot 4:12; TB Ketubot 52b; MT Ishut 19; Tur/BY/SA EH 111 58 Rivlin, Hayerushah, 52, 98; Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 81, Epstein, Contract, 128–135. 59 About Rashi’s view, see Terumat Hadeshen, no. 321. 60 About Rabenu Tam’s view, see Sefer hayashar, hidushim, no. 788; Maharam Rothenburg 4:934; Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 90–92; Epstein, Contract, 140, 270; Finkelstein, Self-Government, 160–175; Cohen, “Haba-al et ishto,” 142–159; Rivlin, “Halitzah,” 102. 61 On the edicts of Shum, see Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 85, 92; Rivlin, Hayerushah, 53, 60, 96, 102; Finkelstein, Self-Government, 58; Cohen, “Haba-al et ishto,” 148–166; Maharam Rothenburg, 4:934; Masa-at binyamin, no. 11; Yam shel shlomo, Ketubot 4:14. 62 Rosh 55:9. 63 On the edicts of Toledo, see Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 85, 88; Epstein, Contract, 141, 270; Rivlin, Hayerushah, 53, 97; Rosh 55:1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 40:2; Zikhron yehudah, no. 6; Tur/BY (Beit yehudah) EH, no. 118.

64  Negotiating Engagement 64 Italian procedures are described in Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 79–94, 82, 90, and 93; Cohen, “Haba-al et ishto,” 133–175. 65 On Rome, see Stow, “Ethnic Amalgamation,” 107–121. 66 On Algiers, see Tahsbetz 2:292, 4, 5; BY EH 118;Yakhin uvoaz 2:12; Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 86–87. 67 On Damascus, see Rivlin, Hayerushah, 60–65, 86, 99; Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 88–89. 68 On Safed, see Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 89. 69 In addition to Epstein, Assaf, Rivlin, and Finkelstein, see Siegmund, “Division of the Dowry,” 73–102. 70 Parma 3540 (Perreau 42/2), fol. 50a. 71 Maharit Trani 1:39. 72 Goody, “Polygyny,” 175–190. 73 Friedman, “Polygyny in Jewish Tradition,” 33–68. 74 Ellinson, Nissuim, 54, 56–62; Friedman, Ribbui nashim, XIII and XIV; Jerusalem 4* 617:17. 75 Bocatto, “Aspetti,” 118, 126. 76 Adelman, “Servants and Sexuality,” 81–97. 77 M. Yevamot 6:6, cf. Genesis 16:3; Diena, no. 157; Friedman, Ribui nashim, 44. 78 Modena, Riti, 4:2: 2; Heilpron, Nahalat ya-akov, nos. 11–12;. 79 Maharam Padova, no. 13. 80 Maharam Padova, no. 8; Colon, no. 101. 81 Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 161; see also Havlin, “Takkanot rabbenu gershom,” 200–257; Westreich, Temorot bema-amad ha-ishah bamishpat haivri; idem, “Ilot lehatarot herem derabenu gershom,” 239–295; Grossman, “Historical Background,” 3–23. 82 Semak (Sefer mitzvot katan), no. 285. 83 Modena, Ziknei, nos. 3, 7; Colon no. 101. 84 On the complexity of the competing opinions, see Lamdan, “Ribui nashim,” 73–89. 85 Mahari Minz, no. 10; Yehiel Trabot, no. 48, JNUL 8*194; Yehiel Nissim ben Samuel of Pisa, in Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 157, cf. JTSA (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) 7084, nos. 158 and 144; on Trabot, see Zimmer, “Seder haposkim,” 238–252. 86 Finkelstein, Self-Government, 304–305. 87 These included Mordechai, Joseph Caro, Yehiel Ashkenazi, and Shemiah di Medina. 88 Modena, Ziknei, nos. 2–3, 7. 89 Heilpronn, Nahalat ya-akov, no. 39. 90 Malkiel, “Defloration,” 110. 91 Cechetti, “Aneddoti storici e letterari,” 215–217. 92 Assis, “Herem derabenu gershom,” 267. 93 Bruzzone, “Documents sur les juifs des états pontificaux,” 131–133. Stow and Stow, “Donne ebree a Roma,” 75; Milano, “Family of Jewish Bankers at Rome,” 154–155; Modena, Ziknei, no. 80. 94 Deuteronomy 25:5–10. 95 PY, “Halitzah,” 3: 26b, 27b. 96 Adelman, “Custom, Law, and Gender: Levirate Union Among Ashkenazim and Sephardim,” 107–126; Weisberg, Levirate Marriage; for Christian treatments, see Bedouelle, “The Consultations,” 21–36. 97 Katz, “Post-Zoharic Relations,” 283–307. 98 PY, “Halitzah,” 3: 27a; Mahari Minz, no. 10; Colon, no. 102.

Negotiating Engagement 65 99 PY, “Halitzah,” 3: 16b, 18b; JNUL 4*617 fol. 52b; cf. Mahari Minz, “Seder halitzah,” in his responsa collection, fol. 43b; JTSA 5463, “Seder halitzah,” fol. 13a; Dinari, “Haminhag,” 179–181. 100 PY, “Halitzah,” 3:27a. See also Finkelstein, Self-Government, 20–30, 56–63, 74–75, 139–147, 218–256; JNUL 8* 2007, fol. 171a and JTSA 6862, fol. 15a, no. 34; and JTSA 6463, fols. 21a‑22b; PY, “Halitzah,” 3: 25b; Havlin, “Takanot rabenu gershom,” 200–257. 101 Modena, Riti, 6:7: 6; Ziknei, no. 80; JTSA 3305, fol. 1; Provencal, no. 81; Halelyah, “Hillel gamur,” no 34; Colon, Hadashim, no. 29; the Court of the Chief Rabbi in London during World War II authorized soldiers to write bills of divorce for their wives before they went to war or to have their representative write one if they did not come back; see Abramsky, Igeret mi-beit din tsedek. 102 Adelman, “Law and Love,” 291–296. 103 TB Baba kama 59b, Baba batra 49b, Ketubot 95a; Rosh 55:3, 38:7; Rashbash, no. 78; for the coercion by Christian husbands, see Hardwick, “Domestic Violence,” 17, 26, 32. 104 Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 157; JTSA, Ketubah, no. 278, note 95; Yoel, “Ketubot,” 269, 273, 274; Modena, Ziknei, no. 65; Bodleian, Mich. Add. 67, 176a‑179a; JNUL 8*2007, 101b‑102a. 105 MT Ishut 16:10; BY EH 102; Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 156; Rosh 55:8. 106 Sabar, Ketubah, no. 103 (1649); Eliezer Ashkenazi in Provencal, no. 96 (1571); Yoel, “Ketubot,” no. 3 (1703). 107 See Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, 113–153. 108 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 111–132. 109 Provencal, no. 78. 110 JNUL 8* 3904, no. 4. 111 TB Kidushin 41a; JNUL 8* 933. 18. 112 Leviticus 18:19; Sifra, Mot, 9:13; TB Shabbat 13a–13b; Hallelyah, “Halel gamur,” no. 59. 113 TP Ketubot 1:5. 114 Rama SA EH 66:1. 115 Hallelyah, “Halel gamur,” no. 59. 116 Cazzetta, Praesumiter Seducta, 362–369. 117 Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 211–213; Grieco, “The Body, Appearance, and Sexuality,” 66–69. 118 Boksenboim, Rieti, no. 253. 119 For Italian examples, see JNUL 8* 2007, fols 165a‑165b; JTSA 6862, fols. 2a‑2b, 2b‑3a; Gulak, Otzar hashtarot, 12–13; Cambridge, Teicher, no. 1. 120 Fano, no. 81. 121 Diena, no. 134. 122 JNUL 8* 194, no. 74. 123 Fano, no. 81; JNUL 8* 933.18; JNUL 8* 194.74, cf. 6–7. 124 Zacuto, no. 48; that the bride’s family paid for the shadkhan, see also Boksenboim, Rieti, no. 76; for a description of the elaborate banquets, see Rieti, no. 66. 125 Modena, Ziknei, no. 99; Rashba 2:35. 126 See below, Chapter 7, Conclusion; Matanot, no. 115. 127 Genesis 3:16. 128 Esther 1:22. 129 Aboab, Devar shmuel, no. 336. 130 Provencal, no. 208; cf. Crawford, “Privilege, Possibility, and Perversion,” 415. 131 Zacuto, no. 48. 132 Colon, no. 171.

66  Negotiating Engagement

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68  Negotiating Engagement ———. “Polygyny, Economy, and the Role of Women,” in The Character of Kinshi. Edited by Jack Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, 175–190. Grendler, Paul. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. ———. Schooling in Renaissance Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Grieco, Sara F. Matthews. “The Body, Appearance, and Sexuality,” in A History of Women in the West 3: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes. Edited by Georges Duby, Natalie Zemon Davis, et al. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, 46–100. Grossman, Avraham. “The Historical Background to the Ordinances on Family Affairs Attributed to Rabbenu Gershom Me’or ha-Golah (‘The Light of the Exile’),” in Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky. Edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein. London: Halban, 1988, 3–23. Gulak, Asher. Otzar hashetarot hanehugim beyisrael. Jerusalem: Defus hapoalim, 1926. Hardwick, Julie. “Early Modern Perspectives on the Long History of Domestic Violence: The Case of Seventeenth-Century France.” The Journal of Modern History 78 (2006): 1–36. Havlin, Shlomo Zalman. “Takanot rabenu gershom me-or hagolah beinyanei ishut bithumei sefarad ufrovans.” Shenaton hamishpat ha-ivri shel hamakhon leheker hashipat haivri 2 (1975): 200–257. Heilpronn, Jacob. Nahalat yaakov. Padua: Gasparo Crivilari, 1623; Bene Berak: Y.M. Morgenstern, 1969. Horowitz, Elimelekh (Elliott). “Bein adonim lemeshartot bahevrah hayehudit he-eyropa-it bein yamei habeynaim lereshit ha-et hahadashah,” in Eros, erusin ve-isurim: miniyut umishpahah bahistoriah. Edited by Israel Bartal and Isaiah Gafni. Jerusalem: Merkaz zalman shazar, 1998, 193–211. ———. “ ‘Hakhnasat kalah’ begeto venetziah: beyn masoret lehidush uveyn ideal limtziut.” Tarbitz 56 (1987): 347–371. Hughes, Diane Owen. “From Brideprice to Dowry.” Journal of Family History 3 (1978): 262–296. ———. “Il matrimonio nell’italia medieval,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 5–61. ———. “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West. Edited by John Bossy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 69–99. Imanuel, Simhah. “Bitul shidukhin,” in Mehkarim betoldot yehudei ashkenaz: sefer yovel likhvod yitzhak (Eric) zimmer. Edited by Gershon Bacon, Daniel Sperber, and Aharon Gaimani. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2008, 157–202. Katz, Jacob. “Post-Zoharic Relations between Halakhah and Kabbalah,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century. Edited by Bernard Dov Cooperman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 1983, 283–307. Kirshner, Julius. “Introduction.” Jewish History 18 (2002): 1–14.

Negotiating Engagement 69 ———. “Some Problems in the Interpretation of Legal Texts Regarding Italian City-states.” Social Science Information 15:4–5 (1976): 625–635. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Labalme, Patricia. “Women Servants in Florence During the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe. Edited by Barbara A. Hanawalt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, 56–80. ———. “Women’s Roles in Early Modern Venice: An Exceptional Case,” in Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past. Edited by Patricia H. Labalme. New York: New York University Press, 129–152. Lamdan, Ruth. “Ribui nashim behevrah hayehudit be-eretz yisrael uvemitzrayim bedorot hasmukhim legerush sefarad,” in Sefer yovel ledaniel carpi. Edited by Minna Rosen, Anita Shapira, and Dina Porat. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Faculty of Humanities, 1996, 73–89. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. New York: G. Braziller, 1978. Lombardi, Daniela. Matrimoni di antico regime. Bologna: Societa’ editrice il Mulino, 2001. Malkiel, David. “Manipulating Virginity: Digital Defloration in Midrash and History.” JSQ 13:2 (2006): 105–127. Milano, Atilio. “The Private Life of a Family of Jewish Bankers.” JQR 30 (1939): 149–186. Modena, Aaron Berekhiah. Ma-avar yabok. Vilna: Yosef Reuben bar Menahem min Ram, 1860; Jerusalem: no publisher, 1989. Modena, Leon (Yehudah). The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah. Edited and translated by Mark R. Cohen. Additional introductions and Notes by Theodor Rabb, Natalie Zemon Davis, Howard E. Adelman, and Benjamin Ravid. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. ———. Hayei yehudah. Edited by Daniele Carpi. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1985. ———. Historia degli riti hebraici. Paris, 1637; Venice: G. Calleoni, 1638. ———. The History of the Rites, Customes, and Manner of Life of the Present Day Jews. Translated by Edmund Chilmead. London: Jo. Martin and Jo. Ridley, 1650. ———. She-elot utshuvot ziknei yehudah. Edited by Shlomo Simononsohn. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1956. National Library of Israel. Ketubot, http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/col lections/jewish-collection/ketubbot/Pages/default.aspx (accessed August 24, 2017). Provencal, Moses. She-elot utshuvot. Edited by Avraham Yosef Yani. Jerusaelm: Mekhon Or Ha-mizrah and Mekhon Yerushalayim, 1988. Pullan, Brian. The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. ———. Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. Rivlin, Yosef. “Halitzah Stipulations in Engagement Contracts.” Jewish Law Association Studies 10 (1998): 229–251.

70  Negotiating Engagement ———. Hayerushah vehatzeva-ah bamishpat ha-ivri. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1999. Sabar, Shalom. Ketubbah: Jewish Marriage Contracts of the Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum and Klau Library. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990. Segre, Renata. The Jews in Piedmont 1–3. Tel Aviv: Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1986–1990. Siegmund, Stefanie B. “Division of the Dowry on the Death of the Daughter: An Instance in the Negotiation of Laws and Jewish Customs in Early Modern Tuscany.” Jewish History 16 (2002): 73–106. ———. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early-Modern Jewish Community. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Sperling, Jutta. “Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent (1560–70): Clandestine Marriages, Kinship Prohibitions, and Dowry Exchange in European Comparison.” Journal of Early Modern History 8:1–2 (2004): 67–108. Stow, Kenneth B. and Sandra Debenedetti Stow. “Donne ebre‚ a Roma nell’eta del ghetto: affetto, dipendenza, autonomia.” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 52 (1986): 63–116. ———. “Ethnic Amalgamation, Like It or Not, Inheritance in Early Modern Jewish Rome.” Jewish History 16 (2002): 107–121. Strocchia, Sharon T. “Gender and the Rites of Honour in Italian Renaissance Cities,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis. London: Longman, 1998, 39–60. Taylor, Rae and Erin L. Nabors. “ Pink or Blue . . . Black and Blue? Examining Pregnancy as a Predictor of Intimate Partner Violence and Femicide.” Violence against Women 15:11 (2009): 1273–1293. Toaff, Ariel. Love, Work, and Death: Jews in Medieval Umbria. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996. Van Boxel, Pier. “Dowry and the Conversion of the Jews in Sixteenth-century Rome: Competition between the Church and the Jewish Community,” in Marriage in Italy. Edited by Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 116–127. Weinstein, Roni. Marriage Rituals Italian Style. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Weisberg, Dvora E. Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press—University Press of New England, 2009. Westreich, Elimelekh. “Ilot lehatarot herem derabenu gershom bimei habeynayim hameuharim.” Dinei yisrael 16 (1991–1992): 239–295. ———. Temurot bema-amad ha-ishah bamishpat ha-ivri. Jerusalem: Magnes 2002. Witthoft, Brucia. “Riti nuziali e loro iconografia,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 119–148. Yoel, Yissahar. “Ketubot me-italia bignizei beit hasefarim.” Kiryat Sefer 22 (1944–1945): 266–304. Zacuto, Moses. She-elot utshuvot. Venice: Bragadin-Vendramin, 1760. Zimmer, Yitzhak. “Seder haposkim ler. azriel trabot.” Sinai 39 (1975): 238–252.

3 Breaking Betrothals Fleeing Danger

I do not want him, I do not want him, I will not abide with him. (Talmud)1

Introduction: The Ambiguities of Betrothal in Jewish Tradition The second stage leading to a Jewish marriage was betrothal (kiddushin or erusin; sponsali). In English, Italian, and Latin, the terms for engagement (fidanzamento) and betrothal (sponsali) are used interchangeably for an agreement to marry in the future (per verba de future). In Jewish law, they each constitute a different status for the couple that can be closely linked or separated. In actual practice, using the present-tense verb instead of the future could shift an engagement to a religiously binding betrothal for Jews or to marriage for Catholics (per verba de presenti).2 As a result, to end it, Catholics could seek an annulment, or for Jews, the man had to issue the woman, who was not yet his wife, a bill of divorce. Jewish betrothal procedures were rooted in the Bible and in early rabbinic literature. The Bible used the terminology of betrothal (me-orasah, erastikh), but as with marriage, divorce, and inheritance, it did not provide a description of the process. It only indicated its binding nature by declaring that if a betrothed woman willingly engaged in sexual relations with another man, she was to be put to death.3 Rabbinic literature elaborated on minimal biblical information about betrothal by offering three methods to make a betrothal and three methods to end one. Each method of making a betrothal always involved a symbolic act of acquisition (kinyan), a procedure that marked many business transactions: the man presented something to the woman (often a handkerchief, sudar, perhaps from the Latin sudarium), stated his purpose, and she accepted it, all in front of at least two witnesses. The three means of betrothal were a document (shtar), a token in the form of a ring (tabat) or coin, or sexual intercourse.4 The method of writing a document included the statement, “Behold you are consecrated unto me with this deed according to the

72  Breaking Betrothals law of Moses and Israel.”5 For the ring ceremony, the statement consisted of some variant of: “behold you are consecrated unto me” (harei at mekudeshet li), “behold you are betrothed unto me” (harei at meureset li), “behold you are mine” (harei at li; harei at sheli), or “behold you are my woman” (harei at li le-ita).6 An additional expression “with this ring according to the law of Moses and Israel” (betabat zo kedat moshe visrael), was added later.7 Betrothal by means of sexual intercourse required that prior to isolating himself with the woman, the man said to her before witnesses: “by means of this intercourse (bevi-ah zo).”8 This method was less popular as betrothal by sexual intercourse raised concerns over promiscuity.9 Regardless of the method chosen, betrothal ceremonies came to include blessings, candle-lighting, and other forms of celebration.10 Jews could not agree about exactly what point in the procedure betrothal became binding, especially when one side wanted to end it. Circumstances were especially ripe to cast doubt on betrothals when the encounters took place in private without engagement negotiations because each party could report what happened in a manner that suited his or her own needs. The betrothal might become doubtful (kidushei safek) because one side was more enthusiastic, naïve, or treacherous, or simply wanted to end the commitment. Although some doubtful betrothals could be friendly, if not romantic, some amounted to hostage taking, financial extortion, or rape. Women and girls did not have to venture far to stumble into murky and exploitive relationships, which could happen at home with predatory relatives or employers. Doubtful betrothals included clandestine betrothals without proper witnesses (kidushei seter); betrothals made in jest (kidushei tzhok); betrothals made by deceit, abduction, or force (kidushei hatifah); betrothals made by giving gifts under false pretenses (sivlonot); betrothals of minors (kiddushei ketanah); and betrothal by intercourse (kidushei bi-ah). At the heart of most types of doubtful betrothal was a clandestine element, that is, a lack of witnesses and clear expressions of intent. To limit doubtful betrothals, Jewish authorities, like Christian ones, implemented provisions to protect not only individuals from being victimized but also families and communities from having assets, stability, and honor squandered in secret by impulsive or dishonest youth.11 Although over the years some rabbis tried to strengthen requirements for betrothals—such as the presence of witnesses, parents, relatives, and clergy,12 they could not resolve the tensions created by passion, greed, love, or deception between individuals and families. Women and girls were at particular risk of becoming doubtfully betrothed because only men had the authority to make or to break a betrothal; however, this vulnerability was somewhat countered by the fact that women, girls, and their advocates could use the doubtful aspect of the betrothal to construct a narrative of events to invalidate the betrothal.

Breaking Betrothals 73 To end a betrothal, rabbinic literature offered three strategies: divorce, annulment, and refusal. The most basic way to terminate a betrothal, despite the couple not yet being married, was for the man issue a bill of divorce (get). A betrothed woman who wanted a divorce was at a legal disadvantage because she could not initiate it, and to get one she was at the mercy of her betrothed who could extort funds from her. However, a woman could ameliorate her disadvantage by seeking communal sanctions, which included the imposition of fines, excommunication, or physical force on a man reluctant to grant her a divorce. Yet even when divorce ended a betrothal rather than a marriage, it carried with it social, economic, and religious disadvantages and stigmas, especially for the woman but also for the man. For example, a divorced woman (or a widow) could not marry a member of a priestly family (kohen), and when a divorced woman (or widow) did marry, her main ketubah amount would be lower. The man who divorced her might have to support her, lose his status in the marriage market, and postpone the business and household plans that had been dependent on her contributions. The option of divorce for Jews in Catholic countries was limited because the Church did not allow divorce and local authorities were reluctant to allow Jews to divorce when they did not allow Catholics to do so. For a woman, the most beneficial way to end a betrothal was annulment (hafka-ah), the retroactive recognition that a betrothal never really took place—an option that was free from the negative side effects of divorce. In the Talmud, for a limited number of reasons, rabbis claimed that if they had the authority to arrange a betrothal they also had the authority to annul it by invalidating the method used. For example, rabbis claimed the right to confiscate the property used to make a betrothal, or they could rule that the sexual relations that had been the basis of a betrothal were merely lascivious.13 Rabbinic tradition elaborated further ways that women and their families could escape unwanted betrothals by claiming that procedural irregularities rendered the agreements invalid, especially in instances when men trapped girls and women—by force, seduction, or deceit—into betrothals against their will. Betrothals made in secret or without an adequate number of proper witnesses also provided grounds for annulment, but in fact, such claims of secrecy might have been attempts to impose doubt on undesirable situations after the fact. Jewish tradition remained ambivalent about whether rabbis had the authority to annul a betrothal or whether women needed a bill of divorce,14 which would defeat the purpose of annulment. Annulments also played an important role among Italian Catholics because the Church did not usually allow divorce in the strict sense that divorce was a complete dissolution of marriage accompanied by the ability to remarry. However, in a process similar to the purchase of indulgences, Catholics occasionally sought, invented, or bought from Church officials certification of certain irregularities, called diriment impediments,

74  Breaking Betrothals to nullify marriages after the fact.15 This ambiguous category of impediments among Catholics included consanguinity (close blood relationships); sexual affinities created by previous relations between the bride or the groom and each other’s relatives; spiritual affinities (ties created by the participation together in baptism, confirmation, or marriage ceremonies); a prior matrimonial contract to another person; a young age, which was usually twelve for girls and fourteen for boys; a lack of consent; a large gap in status or a sudden loss in property; entrance to religious life; contagious diseases; departure to a distant land; impotence; or a lack of consummation. This final category produced conflicting opinions among Catholic authorities who never reached a consensus concerning the lack of consummation as an impediment. Definitions of consummation varied along a continuum ranging from penetration to ejaculation to impregnation. Canon law maintained two conflicting views about whether the consent required to create a marriage had to be followed by consummation or by simply living together as a married couple.16 Jews began to borrow from Catholic definitions of consummation and impotence to argue their own cases for annulment. The most controversial way to end a betrothal was for the woman or girl to exercise the right of refusal (mi-un). According to the Mishnah a minor girl (ketanah) who had been betrothed—even with her consent— by her mother or brothers could exercise the right of refusal. If they betrothed her without her consent, then she did not need to exercise the right of refusal, presumably because the betrothal had no validity.17 The Talmud offered competing traditions about the right of refusal. In the strident formula for a girl to reject a young man, she says, “I don’t like you, I don’t want you, it’s you whom I do not like, it’s another person whom I like.”18 Elsewhere, Jewish girls are urged not to exercise the right of refusal lest they regret it when they grow up.19 The right of refusal presented several paradoxes. It involved one woman or girl exercising her agency at the expense of another, as the right of a daughter to break a betrothal undermined her mother’s authority to betroth her. Paradoxically, because a girl could only exercise this right before she had reached the age of consent, she had to act while she was at a stage at which the legal actions of a minor girl were considered null. Further, although a father may have betrothed his minor daughter before she reached the age of consent, some said as low as age nine,20 when she reached the age of consent she no longer had the right to refuse the match.21 In Italy, rabbis tried to expand the categories of women and girls eligible to exercise the right of refusal depending on the circumstances and the ­participants— negotiations that included raising the age for exercising the right of refusal and including those who had been betrothed by their fathers.22 When the bride’s side or the groom’s side, whether Jewish or Catholic, sought impediments, they were not necessarily concerned with the proper

Breaking Betrothals 75 implementation of law, but rather they were trying to use its contradictions to ameliorate their situation.

Clandestine Betrothals (kidushei seter) Clandestine betrothals offered opportunities for entrapment, but they could also serve as a step towards marriage based on free choice and love, perhaps in the face of financial, familial, legal, or social obstacles. These free and loving betrothals might include cases in which one of the parties would try to betroth someone of his or her choice, who was not the same class, or whose family might not be acceptable to the other. In more insidious cases, a man might betroth a woman in secret in an attempt to gain sexual or financial advantage over her. He could entrap her into betrothal against her will, or assert in jest or with malicious deceit that he had betrothed her when he had not.23 These various situations show opportunities for males and females to be together, unchaperoned, and participating in intimate games, youthful experimentation, or possibly loving relationships, but they also highlight opportunities for abuse, exploitation, and extortion—and indeed perhaps these conflicting dynamics sometimes operated simultaneously.24 The issue of clandestine betrothal in Italy had deep roots in earlier rabbinic tradition, medieval developments, and contemporaneous Catholic controversies that tried to ensure the presence of proper witnesses at betrothals. Some rabbis asserted that if a woman was betrothed without the required number of witnesses, the betrothal could be annulled.25 Usually rabbis required two witnesses for a betrothal, although some settled for only one, especially if the two members of the couple concurred that they had been betrothed. Other rabbis held the paradoxical position that under doubtful circumstances, the betrothal would not be valid and the female not betrothed, yet they still insisted that a woman needed a bill of divorce in order to marry anybody else, again defeating the purpose of annulment.26 Among medieval Jews, as early as the thirteenth century in Christian Spain, because of what was described as the criminal behavior of some Jewish men toward women, certain Jewish communities attempted to raise the number of witnesses at betrothals. Rather than just the two called for by tradition, they required ten, and gradually added the woman’s father and mother, and eventually also a community functionary (shaliah tzibor). These rulings point to communal, but not clerical, involvement, though that would come later. Some communities ruled that, despite rabbinic opposition to annulment, betrothals without sufficient witnesses were not valid. In one instance, after the community jailed a man for violating its ordinance against betrothing a woman without ten witnesses, he agreed to divorce her, showing that annulment was not always an acceptable way to terminate an improper betrothal.

76  Breaking Betrothals Yet rabbis continued to offer conflicting opinions about whether betrothals arranged in the absence of community lay leaders and ten witnesses might be annulled or whether they required divorce.27 Although rooted in these rabbinic precedents, Jewish approaches to clandestine betrothals in early modern Italy also evolved in the context of Catholic developments in dealing with secret marriages that occurred without the knowledge of the families, also called marriages of conscience or clandestine marriages. The Church spent centuries honing its requirements for marriages, and, gradually, it addressed clandestine marriages. Early on, to formalize a union, the Church required only a statement of consent (consensus facit nuptias) in the present tense (verba di presenti) from the couple, but the idea of consent remained murky. Because consent was a mental state, the problem for both Catholics and Jews was how to determine the true intentions of the couple and how to make sure that there were no other impediments.28 As the Church and courts wrestled with many possible criteria, marriage was seen as a sacrament that was a manifestation of consent, which could be granted by the couple itself without witnesses or family approval and which the Church did not have the power to dissolve. Over time, however, as the Church tried to ensure consent, it required witnesses, proclamations, banns, and nuptial blessings, as well as minimum age requirements. Instances of vagueness in these requirements made sanctions for clandestine marriages elusive and enforcement rare.29 Because the Church did not usually allow divorce or accept annulments (except in cases of diriment impediments), clandestine unions were illicit but valid, hence indissoluble and permanent. So although the Church could not stop clandestine marriages, it could threaten participants with financial or spiritual punishments. During the sixteenth century, the debate among Christians over clandestine marriage took various twists and turns. Although Protestant and Catholic reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, and Henry VIII opposed clandestine marriages, they questioned the sacramentalization and indissolubility of marriages, advocated the secularization of marriages, and allowed their annulment, especially if couples entered into them without parental approval.30 After sixteen years on the agenda and six months of fractious debate, the Council of Trent tried to redefine clandestine marriage (although it did not use this term specifically) and in 1563 recorded its decision in the document called Tametsi. At the Council of Trent, there were two conflicting opinions about clandestine marriages. One view, the majority view, particularly strong among French and Spanish delegates, did not recognize clandestine marriages or consider them real marriages. The other view, the minority view, held by many Italians, asserted that clandestine marriages were not allowed, but once they took place they were valid and they had to be recognized. The Tridentine approach to clandestine marriages reflects a compromise between these two positions. It followed the minority in accepting the

Breaking Betrothals 77 validity of a clandestine marriage, but only as long as the Church did not invalidate it. The council also accepted the majority view that a marriage that had not taken place in the presence of witnesses as well as the parish priest who registered it was invalid. Although the Council still allowed the couple to administer the sacrament (under Church supervision), the Church held on to as much power as possible, making itself the ultimate arbiter of legitimate marriage and removing control of marriage from the family.31 Although Trent reasserted the free will of the couple and seemingly diminished parental control of marriages by requiring that marriages be publicized in church and that all women provide a dowry, they shored up parental supervision of marriage and made couples dependent on their families.32 Nevertheless, highlighting the ambiguity produced by the reforms, according to the Council of Trent, if public awareness of the marriage would shame or endanger any of those involved, it did not have to be publicized, held in the local church, involve the local parish priest, or be registered.33 The decrees of Trent were not accepted immediately, universally, or enthusiastically; they left open much room for negotiation by Catholics. Overall, the impact of Trent remained inconclusive as Catholics simultaneously wanted the freedom of informal marriages, the supervision of marriages by families, and the availability of procedural irregularities on which to base claims for annulment, and some churchmen obliged them.34 Catholic rulers, particularly in France, wanted more control over marriages in order to protect dynastic integrity, family estates, and parental authority. The competing opinions leading up to Trent, the debates there, and the lack of unified support for all the decrees echo the kinds of concerns over clandestine marriage shared by Jewish authorities in Italy. Early modern Italian Jewish ordinances against clandestine betrothals involved several basic, but changing, principles, which as we shall see were not always followed. Jewish authorities were required to post decrees against clandestine betrothal periodically on the wall of the synagogue and to fine those who removed them. The underlying principle was that the girl (na-arah) or woman (ishah) had to consent, especially in cases of first marriages for younger women still under the control of their families, though some communities extended the provision to divorced and widowed women. To ensure the bride’s consent, throughout northern Italy, communities gradually raised the requirements of parental involvement: from the suggested presence a bride’s father or consent of her mother, to the actual presence of her father or her mother, and further to the requirement that both her father and mother attend the wedding. Ordinances allowed that two of the bride’s relatives, sometimes specified as one from each side of her family, could take her parents’ place, and then subsequent ordinances required relatives in addition to parents. An additional requirement for ten “kosher” Jews (whose religious behavior was exemplary) changed from being optional to being required.

78  Breaking Betrothals Although enactments stated that betrothals without ten proper witnesses were null, Jewish courts continued to hear cases about betrothals that involved the presence of two witnesses or sometimes only one, and the requirement for ten was rarely mentioned.35 In instances in which a man betrothed a woman without fulfilling the provisions for witnesses, he and those involved were subject to excommunication or to a period of ten years’ banishment from the synagogue. Rabbis also tried to make formulas for excommunication more strident, and procedures to obtain release from excommunication more difficult. For release from such a ban of excommunication, they called for the consent of five rabbis and then raised the number to ten rabbis from ten countries, which was more of a statement of the severity of the problem of clandestine betrothals than a realistic solution. Clandestine betrothal involved defying the wishes of families. In 1617 in Vercelli (a town between Milan and Turin), Justina, the daughter of the late Yekutiel Siegel and the niece of his brother David, refused her family’s wishes that she marry a certain cousin. Instead, she entered into a clandestine betrothal with a man, Odeh Yah, the son of Gabriel Norzi. At Justina’s request, Odeh Yah bought her a box of gifts, including a headcovering and ties for her hair, which constituted usual gifts sent by men to their fiancées. When he presented them to her, nobody else was present. In accepting them, Justina expressed her willingness to betroth Odeh Yah, but then apparently getting cold feet, she wanted her uncle, David Siegel, to approve her betrothal. Odeh Yah rejected these conditions, and she retracted her request to get her uncle’s approval. Odeh Yah enlisted two witnesses for the betrothal, neither of whom in their subsequent testimony could get the story straight nor ascertain Justina’s intentions. Odeh Yah had not showed Justina the ring before the betrothal, and although during the ceremony he recited the customary “Behold you are betrothed unto me,” afterwards, Justina hid the ring and went home by herself. The court found the testimony inconclusive and suspected that one side or the other tried to influence the statements of the witnesses. The court learned that Odeh Yah had originally promised one of the witnesses a “matchmaking fee,” offered him a bribe, and then intimidated him so that he would change his testimony, which he refused to do. In this clandestine betrothal, Justina’s ambivalence was matched by Odeh Yah’s conniving to create a perfect doubtful betrothal.36 When encounters between two people took place in private, they each did not always enter or leave with the same understanding of what had happened, what was happening, or what would happen. In the absence of witnesses, it was easy to make promises, to invent them, or to change them. Betrothals made without family negotiations tested the line between passion and deceit.

Breaking Betrothals 79

Betrothals Made in Jest (kidushei tzhok) Taking place in private without adequate witnesses, jocular interactions between young men and women could lead to situations in which the game (tzhok) became real, and the couple was considered betrothed. The vague aspects of these situations provided grounds for negotiations to end the relationship, saving face and fortune for those involved.37 Cases of doubtful betrothals made in jest, like clandestine betrothals, involved ascertaining the nature of the witnesses and the intentions of those involved. The witnesses, usually one or two friends of the man, supplied vague and garbled statements about how they appeared at the scene unannounced and in darkness, how the woman involved might not have realized their presence, and how they themselves might not have been aware of the significance of their own actions. In cases of jocular betrothals, the testimony of a woman was also accepted. In the subsequent negotiations, each side tried to depict events at the time to support its current purposes. Ultimately, rabbis had to decide whether the woman needed a formal divorce in order to marry another man or whether the betrothal could be annulled. The playful aspects of a betrothal made in jest are seen in a case from 1633. Reuben, who enjoyed the company of many women, was spending time with Leah, and asked her in a joking manner: “Do you want to become betrothed to me, and I will give you this ring.” Solomon, who was also present, told her, “Say yes.” Solomon took Leah’s hand in his hand and said to Reuben, “Place the ring upon her finger and say ‘Behold you are betrothed to me.’ ” Reuben took the ring, placed it on Leah’s finger, and said, “Behold you are betrothed.”38 After they finished their merriment (hitul) and jest (tzhok), Leah returned Reuben’s ring to him. The question later arose whether Leah needed a bill of divorce from Reuben in order to marry another man. The discussion of this case presented two options: the strict opinion stated that a betrothal without a sufficient number of witnesses, in this case only one, nonetheless bound her, and required her to receive a divorce, and the lenient option required two witnesses for a valid betrothal, without which the betrothal would be annulled; according to this option, she did not have to secure a divorce, and she was free to marry. In their own testimony, Reuben and Leah concurred that they had had no intention to betroth and that he always said such things to her. The rabbi, warning that although jest could lead to sexual impropriety, asserted that in this case, there was no suspicion of betrothal. However, he went on to state that because it was difficult for any witness to fathom somebody’s intentions, in order for him to invalidate this betrothal, he had to question it on procedural grounds. Thus, he ruled that because Solomon had not instructed Reuben with the full and proper expression

80  Breaking Betrothals for a valid betrothal, and because Reuben had purportedly left off the final “to me,” it was clear the couple had had no intention of completing an act of betrothal. In addition, because Leah had promptly returned the ring to Reuben and they had each gone their own ways after the ceremony, neither of them had intended to form a lasting union.39 However, in another case of a betrothal seemingly made in jest in which the young woman joined in the fun, rabbis accepted it as valid. In 1614, Nahshon betrothed Riva at night in the presence of two witnesses who confirmed her willingness. She demonstrated her consent in true romantic fashion by dropping a cord from her window—at the time considered a public and thus dangerous place for women—to receive a betrothal gift of jewelry. Later, the witnesses could not establish if it was a necklace or bracelet, shedding suspicion on the validity of their testimony.40 Riva then changed her mind, stressing that she was only joking, and demanded release from the relationship. Nahshon, with the support of witnesses, claimed that he had not been joking. Rabbi Jacob Heilpronn of Padua, who was not sympathetic to Riva’s appeal for annulment, sided with Nahshon and, ruling that the betrothal was valid, declared that before Riva could marry another man she needed a bill of divorce from Nahshon. To support his claim, Heilpronn referred to a medieval tradition that held that although it was forbidden for a man to betroth a woman without an engagement, if he did so, then after the fact (bedi-avad) the betrothal was valid (this tradition also held that despite the validity of the betrothal, the man would nevertheless be beaten for his disobedience [makat mardut]). Heilpronn concluded by attributing Nahshon’s behavior to youthful romantic impetuosity brought on by Riva’s own lack of restraint. Heilpronn urged, “It would be better to advocate on behalf of Nahshon who is but a boy (na-ar) and did not do anything disgraceful (nevelah) among the Jews by betrothing a girl (na-arah) at night in secret because he did not do this out of rebellion or treachery. He did this because love blinded him as the breach beckons the thief. The way of young men is that every lover loves his beloved.” Paradoxically, Nahshon’s very youthfulness and passion, which under most circumstances might cause a betrothal made in jest to be invalid, was the reason that Heilpronn, despite Riva’s regret, considered her to be betrothed to Nahshon. Next, Heilpronn appealed to Riva’s father’s honor and piety, and he asked him to accept the betrothal and not to bring the case before a court. Heilpronn also based his appeal on ideas about the nature of women. He claimed that, due to the challenges of the marriage market for young women, Riva should be happy with whatever man she could get, even if Nahshon was no prize. He went on to state that because she provoked Nahshon to betroth her, she should not challenge rabbinic authority. Drawing on the Talmud, Heilpronn held forth on the needs of women: “It is better to dwell in grief than in widowhood” and “A woman prefers one measure of lechery to nine measures of abstinence (perishut).”41

Breaking Betrothals 81 Offering all sorts of rationalizations of why the betrothal made in jest should be valid, Heilpronn seemed less concerned with the welfare of the young woman than with rabbinic authority, which he did not want to see tested, so he concluded not with an appeal to rabbinic authority, but on the contrary, with an attempt to keep Riva and her family out of court.42 These cases of betrothals made in jest show moments of close contact between young men and women that allowed for the creation of uncertain relationships and thus illustrate some of the reasons why authorities— rabbinic, communal, and familial—wanted to keep men and women segregated.

Forced Betrothals (kidushei hatufin) When betrothals took place in secret without proper witnesses, claims could later be made that the man betrothed the woman without her consent, against her will, or by force. The man could be accused of having been motivated by unreciprocated affection, vengeance, or greed. The accusations could have involved the man conducting a home invasion, forcing a concealed object of value on the body of the woman although she might have promptly rejected it, obscuring the presence of witnesses under the cover of night, or presenting testimony that was false, contradictory, or garbled. Accusations, sometimes made by the woman, highlight the lengths to which a man might go to entrap a woman, and in each of the available cases, the woman found at least one rabbi who would come to her rescue, although others would not, perhaps because they suspected that her version of events was a way to get out of a commitment made in secret. Some cases of forced betrothal involved a man aggressively defying the wishes of a young woman’s parents, if not her own wishes. For example, in 1584, Samson Meshulam promised his daughter Tziporah to his nephew Jacob Meshulam, but her mother, Ricca, objected. Jacob became angry and resolved to abduct Tziporah and betroth her. He concealed a small gold chain in his hat and recruited two friends to join him, although they might not have known why. The three of them went into Tziporah’s house. There, as she sat spinning silk,43 Jacob drew near and extended his hand, and they exchanged a few words. Later, when Jacob contended that he had betrothed Tziporah, she objected, and the rabbinic academy (beit midrash) in Ferrara dealt with the case. The friends whom Jacob enlisted (and about whose presence Tziporah had not been aware) had been out of sight and earshot during the interaction, and hardly ideal witnesses, they were hesitant about what they saw and heard, which the responsum reported in a mixture of local Italian dialect and Hebrew. They accused him of carrying out an abduction and planting testimony; one admitted that Jacob told him that he was going to betroth Tziporah without her consent. On his part, Jacob claimed that he gave Tziporah

82  Breaking Betrothals a gold chain, and said in dialect, “Look and see what you are” (“Te ve que tu che se”), which he claimed had meant that she was now betrothed to him. She countered by reporting that he said, “Ve qui sia Arieto” (“you are from Arieto”). And she had replied, “What do you want to do [in Hebrew]; you are from Argenta [in Italian],” basically gibberish irrelevant to his claim of betrothal. Apparently, at some point during this encounter Jacob had covertly placed the chain on Tziporah’s head. She claimed that as soon as she realized it was there she had immediately removed it, and in the course of this action, it broke and fell to the floor. The report containing Tziporah’s testimony concluded with the phrase “Up to here are the words of the woman.” Tziporah was attempting to defend herself by constructing her testimony in such a way as to discredit anything that Jacob reported and to invalidate the testimony of his witnesses. The rabbis in Ferrara believed that Tziporah had been betrothed against her will, and they could hear that she had no interest in him when she said that for all she cared “let him be killed” (yehareg), and, consequently, they decided that the betrothal should be annulled.44 The case demonstrates three important points: that rabbis realized that a woman was not always safe in her own home with her own family, that a woman could free herself from a betrothal by constructing events to conform to the standards of rabbinic discourse, and that rabbis could accept the versions of events presented by women. Other cases of forced betrothal involved men asserting that they had betrothed women from distinguished families, and being suspected of having done so in order to improve their station or at least to extract a payment to go away. A series of such cases is on record from Casale Monferrato during the 1560s and 1570s. In 1571, Calonymos Favius tried to betroth Allegra, the daughter of Abraham of Bologna, against her will (shelo mida-atah) when she was already engaged to another man. While she was in the company of two other women, Calonymos gave them all gifts, presenting Allegra with a box of precious goods (scatola megadim, a mixture of Italian and Hebrew words), a bouquet of flowers, and perhaps also a pin of gold and coral. At a Jewish court in Castignano, near Ancona, Calonymos testified that he had given these gifts to Allegra to betroth her. She countered at a Jewish court in Castiglioni, also near Ancona, that it did not enter her mind that his giving her gifts had anything at all to do with betrothal, that she accepted them as she would any other gifts, and that she now wanted to marry the man to whom she was engaged. In response, Moses Provencal of Mantua gave two reasons to rule out any possibility that Calonymos had betrothed Allegra. He based his decision on procedural irregularities, such as the lack of specific references to betrothal or marriage between Allegra and Calonymos. He also observed the lack of expressed volition on the part of Allegra, who made this point loud and clear when she said to Calonymos, “I was not betrothed to you,

Breaking Betrothals 83 and you have nothing over me.” Finally, he described the confidence with which Allegra presented her case before different courts, each with different authority, including arbitrators, a fixed court, and a family court. Other rabbis, however, did not accept Provencal’s decision to free Allegra of any obligation to Calonymos.45 As usual, the documentation does not allow us to learn what happened to Allegra in the end, but we can see how the ambiguities of rabbinic procedure had the potential to free her or to bind her for a life with a man for whom she felt great contempt. A clear sense of the potential for deceit, extortion, and violence on the part of men trying to force a betrothal is seen in the case of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, as reported by Leon Modena of Venice in the early seventeenth century. In the course of reporting this case, Modena obscured not only the names of the participants, using the usual biblical names, but also the cities in which events took place, instead referring to them by the names of Jewish settlements in Palestine—Hebron and Sepporis. The case unfolded as follows: three brothers engaged their sister Dinah to Joseph. As part of the engagement agreement, her family agreed to give Dinah a generous dowry. Before the wedding took place, another man, Jonathan, who was from another city, came to town and betrothed Dinah. Her brothers contested his actions, but the local rabbis found no fault with his actions, even when Jonathan sent government agents to seize Dinah from her brothers’ house by force and to bring her to his father’s. After one night there, Dinah became sick and experienced an emotional breakdown. While she was in this condition, Jonathan and his relatives compelled her to make a testament before Christian authorities in which she bequeathed a significant portion of her dowry to Jonathan. When Jonathan’s relatives saw that Dinah’s health had further deteriorated they brought her back to her brothers for treatment, and she died shortly afterwards. Jonathan claimed that, based on Dinah’s last will and on her having entered the authority of his domain in anticipation of marriage, he was entitled to his inheritance from her. Her brothers disputed Jonathan’s claims because they had agreed only to pay the dowry after she had married her fiancé, Joseph. In her prenuptial agreement with Joseph, they agreed that if she died before their marriage, the dowry would revert to her family. Furthermore, her brothers argued, Jonathan did not bring her into his own house, but rather into his father’s house. She had not gone willingly, and he had used the force of the Christian authorities to bring her. Finally, her brothers claimed her bequest was not binding because she had made it after she had lost her faculties.46 In response, Modena repudiated everything that Jonathan and his relatives did to force Dinah to betroth him against her will, accepted her brothers’ arguments against the betrothal, and declared that her brothers were her heirs and that Jonathan had no rights to the property. This was, however, only Modena’s opinion; we do not know the opinions of rabbis who were employed by Jonathan or what other opinions were offered on

84  Breaking Betrothals behalf of Jonathan in this case other than the rabbis in his own city who allowed Jonathan to betroth Dinah against her will and to seize her by force. The discussion surrounding these kinds of cases leaves room for large gaps in understandings about consent, especially between a couple that had some sort of prior relationship. In these cases, men tried to impose their will on women, women and their families fought back by constructing narratives that undermined any claims that the men made, and rabbis heard the testimony of both sides. In the case of Dinah, despite Jonathan’s obvious use of force and Dinah’s major breakdown, the rabbis of her city approved of Jonathan’s violent activities, and to retrieve her assets, her brothers had to resort to legal fine points and not to wider moral principles, which shows how vulnerable women were and how little they could rely on rabbinic protection.

The Contested Meaning of Gifts (sivlonot) Gifts sent by men to women contributed greatly to the uncertainty of the betrothal process, especially when the exchange took place in private without witnesses to help ascertain the intentions of the couple. It was not always clear to whom, by whom, and before whom gifts should be given; whether they were mandatory; whether they constituted part of a betrothal or signaled that a betrothal had already taken place; whether they effected betrothal itself; and whether or not they were a permanent acquisition by the bride. Much of the confusion over practice was rooted in conflicting customs, each based on different traditions.47 The Talmud initially offered three different understandings of sivlonot sent by a man to a woman. In a community where a man usually betrothed a woman and then sent her gifts, there was a presumption that his giving of gifts indicated that betrothal had already taken place. If, however, in a community where a man usually gave gifts and then betrothed a woman, there was no presumption that his giving gifts indicated that the couple had already betrothed. These two options seem simple until the Talmud introduced a third possibility—that in some communities Jews followed both customs. If a minority of men followed the practice of giving gifts first, then to prevent any possibility of misunderstandings, it was necessary to consider this minority when determining whether the giving of gifts presumed betrothal. In other words, the ambiguity of intention became the deciding factor.48 Later rabbinic discussion offered two possible explanations for the competing understandings of gift giving and why men in the same community might have preferred one option over the other. On the one hand, the formation of a couple was a risky matter and women might change their minds, so as a form of insurance, a man might want the full commitment of betrothal before sending gifts. On the other hand, men were

Breaking Betrothals 85 also apt to give gifts prior to the betrothal to make their candidacies more appealing in the eyes of the women whom they were wooing and in those of her family. Although the two explanations point to the insecurity of men, the sending of gifts also provided men with an opportunity, as in betrothals made in jest or deceitfully, to send gifts with the intention of betrothing a woman against her will or without her full consent. Despite the attempts of medieval Jewish communities to limit the impact of gifts, Jewish women still had to remain vigilant when receiving them.49 In northern Italy, Jewish men customarily sent gifts to women after the engagement and before the betrothal. They usually sent gifts with two emissaries, and the gifts were received by a woman, often the bride’s mother, in the presence of two witnesses. In presenting the gifts, the emissary could say something like: “Bride, how does the groom please you?” in a mixture of languages (Kallah, come ti piace di parte dello hatan?).50 Among the wealthy, the gifts were usually gold and silver jewelry for the bride-to-be, and in cases in which the groom took meals with her family, also wine and oil for them.51 Thus, in northern Italy, the presentation of a gift by a suitor (kofetz) did not usually signify that he had betrothed her,52 although among some Jews in that region the acceptance of a gift might have effected betrothal. In general, according to Joseph Colon, native Italian Jews did not consider that gifts given after an engagement presumed betrothal, so a gift was not a reason to require a bill of divorce or release from a possible levirate connection with a woman’s late husband’s brother.53 Colon mentioned that new immigrants to early modern Italy presumed that when a man sent gifts he had effected the betrothal and thus among these Jews if a couple then separated the woman needed to be divorced by the man or if he died then she needed to be released by his brother. Colon cited not only controversy over gifts but also a lack of authority among rabbis to definitively decide cases. Thus, rabbis, including Colon, were reluctant to discuss such controversial matters because a situation in which some rabbis might allow what others had forbidden would diminish rabbinic authority, and without clear instructions, Jews might behave promiscuously.54 An attempt to base a binding betrothal on the presentation of sivlonot took place in Rome in around 1510. Samuel Tzarfati, the papal physician, (a position that Jews often held—despite papal attempts to limit Jewish doctors treating other Catholics)—engaged his daughter Donina to Judah Corbito of Bologna. Tzarfati agreed that he would bring Donina willingly to be married, a provision apparently prompted by the possibility that she might not have been. This, in fact, was the case because at the time of the engagement, she said that she was not pleased with Judah and that “a mountain” had emerged between them, a rabbinic expression referring to her lack of interest in him and possibly an accusation of his impotence. Nevertheless, the engagement continued for at least eight

86  Breaking Betrothals years, during which Donina claimed that Judah had not sent her anything, even a friendly note or a gift. Because this relationship had soured, her father wanted to engage her to another man, and nobody seemed to have objected at the time.55 After Donina’s father Samuel Tzarfati died, however, Judah Corbito produced evidence that he had betrothed Donina by giving her sivlonot of a treasure box, a belt, and a chain in the presence of witnesses and her parents. He also brought the testimony of ten witnesses who claimed that he had betrothed her, but she produced three witnesses who claimed that she had no desire for him. From 1518 to 1519, some rabbis wrote on her behalf and others wrote against her, with each side trying an array of arguments and changing them when useful. The rabbis who supported Donina claimed that her father was a pious expert in Jewish law so that if he had any suspicion that she was betrothed, he would not have been looking for another match for her. Donina’s own claim that Judah had not betrothed her hinged on an edict passed by the Roman Jewish community about fifteen years earlier (c. 1504) at the instigation of the rabbis Judah Minz (Mahari Minz) and Joseph Colon. According to it, a man had to give sivlonot before he betrothed a woman so they could never be a sign that betrothal had already taken place. Consequently, in Rome, when a man wanted to betroth a woman he was asked if he had given her sivlonot yet. If not, he had to do so before the betrothal, changing sivlonot from a voluntary gift to a local procedural requirement. Hence, because she and Judah had not discussed betrothal, and especially because she had not expressed her consent, even if she had accepted the sivlonot, they were not a sign of betrothal. Thus, in Rome, rabbis annulled Donina’s betrothal and denied any claim that there had been one, declared her a single woman, ruled out the necessity for a divorce, and allowed her to marry anybody she wanted, including a man from a priestly family, highlighting that she was considered to have never been betrothed. The case, however, was far from over. Two witnesses, Aaron Parentino (Parotino) and a man named Joseph, brought conflicting testimony before two courts. According to one version, when Judah gave Donina the gifts and treasure box, he spoke in the future tense first in Hebrew, “Take because you will be mine” (Kehi, ki at tehiyeh sheli), and then in Italian, “Take, you will be mine” (Kehi, tu sia mia); the future tense does not constitute a valid betrothal. According to the other version, Judah said, “Take, you are mine,” in the present tense, which, according to the Talmud, is the necessary tense for betrothal. Not only did declarations in the future tense not qualify as betrothal, but Donina’s defenders felt the need to totally discredit Aaron Parentino, claiming that he had blasphemed the name of the Lord, spoken insolently against heaven, mocked the commandments and prayers, denied that the messiah would come, scorned circumcision, talit, and tephilin (the prayer shawl and leather straps worn during prayer), acted lecherously, and was

Breaking Betrothals 87 an ignoramus who did not know the Bible and rabbinic teachings. They also accused Aaron Parentino of being sexually promiscuous, committing most of the sins in the Torah, including having sexual relations with at least three men (mishkav zakhar). These charges, even if falsely attributed to Parentino, reflect both the nature of Jewish religious dissent and the behavior of some Jews at this time as well as the desperate attempt that Donina’s supporters made to discredit this witness. Defenders of Corbito discredited such attacks on Parentino, not by asserting his innocence, but by insisting that he had repented of such behavior, returned to the straight path, despised empty words, wore tephilin, worshipped regularly, observed the dietary laws, and fulfilled his vows and oaths. They claimed that his heart had taken a new turn, which was reflected in the deeds that he did in the service of the Lord. Corbito’s defenders further asserted that Parentino’s intentions to repent transcended any earlier bad behavior, and therefore his testimony about the sivlonot was valid. It turned out that for Donina, things ended happily, although the documents do not say whether it was ever after. To remove all uncertainty about her status, the authorities imposed an edict of excommunication on anybody, man or woman, who cast any aspersions on her or on the unnamed young man who had betrothed her according to Jewish law and who would marry her with her complete approval. “There was no twisted or perverse aspect to him, doubt is not good, and anybody who brings it will die.” The authorities further decreed that the entire Jewish community of Rome would gather for their wedding in order to exalt them and to honor them. Her groom, the documents stated, would be greatly honored, and he would make the primeval Adam his best man. Singing and dancing at the wedding would gladden the bride and the groom. Donina herself would return to the house of her husband, as did the matriarchs Rachel and Leah, who built the house of Israel.56 By using this extravagant description of the kind of marriage Donina would enjoy, the rabbis tried to totally discredit Judah and remove any doubt about Donina’s status as a free woman able to marry any man. For Jews, the giving of sivlonot represented an opportunity for status and affection as well as deceit, and it was not always easy to sort out the difference, even with help from rabbis. Sivlonot were a dangerous practice that could expose women and their families to victimization by unscrupulous men and complicit rabbis, as we will see below in the case of Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti.57

The Betrothal of a Minor Daughter (kidushei ketanah) and the Right of Refusal (mi-un) Early rabbinic tradition measured maturity chronologically, physically, and emotionally. It identified the usual stages for a female as minor

88  Breaking Betrothals (ketanah), pubescent girl (na-arah), and mature (bogeret, ishah). The variable six-month period of puberty when she was called a girl (naarah) was a liminal stage between being a minor and being mature. Its onset was determined by the appearance of observable signs of puberty according to rabbinic teachings, i.e. two pubic hairs, whose presence was presumed by the development of breasts. Although different for every girl, rabbinic discourse often identified puberty as between twelve and twelve and a half years old.58 Early rabbinic tradition was not clear as to whether betrothal of a minor by his or her father was binding. In the Mishnah, some rabbis permitted (zakai) a father to betroth his pubescent daughter (na-arah), but it was forbidden (asur) to betroth his minor daughter (ketanah)59 saying that he could betroth her only when she grew up (ad shetigdal) and she expressed her volition by saying, “I want him.”60 Similarly, if a minor or a pubescent girl betrothed herself while her father was alive, her betrothal was not valid. If she reached the age of majority, she could betroth herself without her father’s consent.61 A minor boy (katan), according to the Mishnah and the Talmud, could not betroth, nor could he be betrothed.62 During the Middle Ages, rabbis grappled with the ambiguous traditions surrounding the betrothal of a minor girl by her father. In Egypt, Maimonides wrote that although a father had the authority (reshut) to betroth his daughter without her consent (shelo leda-atah) when she was a minor or a girl, that “it was not appropriate to do so” (ein ra-u-i—an expression that was not used in the Mishnah), and he further asserted that pious people did not do so.63 In medieval European countries, rabbis tried to justify the betrothal of minor daughters by their fathers. Some expressed concern that if this practice were not followed, daughters might never marry because the severity of exile increased daily, leading to the kind of precarious existence in which one day a father might have the means to provide her with a dowry, later he might not. Other medieval rabbis suggested that because Jews did not live in large communities and there were not enough women to go around, as soon as a man met one, no matter how young she was, he should betroth her before somebody else did.64 Some rabbis also proposed that marriage at a young age was a way to limit the sexual activities of young women outside of marriage (hefker).65 These explanations show the kind of rationalizations employed to justify practices that limited the options for both men and women. This ambiguity about the betrothal of minors continued into the early modern period and can be seen in the way in which rabbis continued to manipulate texts to advance their contradictory opinions. For example, in the Shulhan Arukh, the Sephardi Joseph Caro (1488–1575) cited the words of Maimonides that a father may betroth his minor daughter without her consent, but he eliminated Maimonides’s admonition that it was not appropriate to do so.66 Then, in the Mapah, his commentary on the Shulhan Arukh, the Ashkenazi Moses Isserles (1520–1572) attempted to

Breaking Betrothals 89 diminish Caro’s support of paternal authority to betroth minor girls by reporting that such a view was held only by some (yesh omrim).67 A fifteenth-century edict cancelling the right of refusal elicited much response, including in northern Italy.68 Zulka, a minor daughter from a wealthy Prague Jewish family with court connections, was betrothed to David Zehner of Buda, Hungary, a friend of the Italian rabbi Judah Minz. Zulka rejected Zehner by exercising her right of refusal with the approval of her brother-in-law, the prominent talmudic authority Jacob Pollack (c. 1460–1522),69 who asserted that she should be able to marry another man without a bill of divorce. Some local rabbis opposed her exercising the right of refusal and considered her still betrothed; they thus required her to receive a bill of divorce from David Zehner before she could marry another man. However, preferring stability to female volition, they wanted Zulka to reconcile with Zehner and to betroth him again. Although according to these rabbis, by exercising her right of refusal, Zulka had invalidated her first betrothal with David, they asserted that to marry anybody else, even him, she still needed a bill of divorce—a paradoxical position that accepted the tradition of the right of refusal, but at the same time rendered it meaningless because it had to be followed by a formal divorce. Judah Minz, loyal to his friend David Zehner, supported the rabbis who wanted to cancel the right of refusal, justifying this position with the claim that knowledge of this procedure had diminished, and ignorant Jews without any experience might try to do it themselves without proper rabbinic supervision. Minz then posited that, as a result of this ignorance, a woman might leave her husband without having a proper bill of divorce, betroth another, and thus commit adultery and produce a mamzer, a child impermissible to the Jewish community. Additionally, he suggested that some minors who wanted to get out of a binding betrothal made by their fathers might try to exercise their right of refusal on their own, which also would make any subsequent marriage on their part adulterous. Minz also raised the traditional concern that although rabbis were once granted the authority to ascertain the appearance of the proper signs of puberty on a girl’s body, they might have lost the ability to do so.70 His concerns were not for the dignity of the young woman, but rather the opposite; he was grasping for ways to undermine her right of refusal by ruling that while at one time rabbis had been able to supervise the right of refusal, in the present they no longer had the necessary skills to do so. Minz’s position was representative of the arguments of most opponents of the right of refusal. On the surface they dismissed it on technical grounds, but their discussions revealed attempts to limit women who were exercising too much liberty in breaking betrothals. Minz opposed Zulka’s betrothing another man without a bill of divorce, and he stated that any man who betrothed her would be in violation of the serious prohibition against adultery and subject to

90  Breaking Betrothals excommunication. He was particularly concerned that Zulka’s brotherin-law, the rabbi Jacob Pollack, had coached her to refuse. Through these objections, Minz was expressing a longstanding yet paradoxical concern about women. If they acted on their own, they might violate Jewish law; if they received rabbinic help, they might be exceeding the communal limits placed on women. But Minz, showing his ambivalent and subjective approach to the subject, also thought that in other cases rabbis had gone too far in their strictures against the right of refusal, and he conceded that there were times when the right of refusal was legitimate because certain couples could not be reconciled—but not, of course, in the case that involved his friend. Minz concluded that a female’s right of refusal ended at her reaching the age of nine years and a day or her showing the signs of puberty. In selecting this age, he chose the youngest age of refusal among those proposed by various rabbinic sources. This had the effect of severely limiting the right of refusal. He thus concluded that Zulka’s exercising her right of refusal was meaningless because she was older than nine and that she had improperly betrothed another man without first receiving a bill of divorce from David Zehner. Minz’s name henceforth became associated with those rabbis who opposed the right of refusal.71 Leading rabbis, however, including most importantly Joseph Caro and Moses Isserles, lent varying degrees of support to the right of refusal and affirmed the higher age of twelve years old, but not twelve and a half as endorsed by many.72 Other rabbis extended the right of refusal for women over the age of twelve and a half and for those whose fathers had betrothed them.73 In doing so, they provided opportunities for more women get out of betrothals. Despite the controversies, the right of refusal became part of Italian Jewish practice, and one manuscript formulary includes “A formula of a document of a bill of divorce by the right of refusal.” It specified the date, the location, and the names of the “woman”/“wife” (ishah) and her husband (ba-alah). In it, the woman took the initiative and performed the action: the documents use the verbal constructions “she refused” (meenah) and “she said” (amrah). The formula included a report from the girl that her mother or her brother married her off or betrothed her when she was a minor. She then declared: “I do not want him, I do not want him, I will not abide by him.”74 The document called for the testimony of witnesses who had examined the girl for signs of puberty. Although the text then uses the terms woman or wife rather than minor, it nonetheless states that if it was clear to these witnesses that she was in fact still a minor, they would write their report, sign it, and present it to her as testimony75 of her youthful unsuitability for betrothal.76 The issues of the betrothal of a minor and her right of refusal were at the center of a seventeenth century case involving a girl referred to as Rachel. At the time of his death, Reuben, a Sephardic Jew, commanded that his eleven-and-a-half-year-old daughter Rachel, identified as a minor, marry

Breaking Betrothals 91 Simon the son of Levi, all of whom lived in Reuben’s household. The question as to whether Simon could marry Rachel when she was so young was brought to Leon Modena. Although Modena noted that Reuben did not stipulate when Simon should actually marry Rachel, he made the case that Simon could marry Rachel whether she wanted to or not. He asserted that his basis for this decision was that the sages were perfectly clear that a minor female could be betrothed by her father—even if she was only three years and one day old—by means of sexual intercourse. Modena supported this assertion by invoking the rabbinic interpretation that the biblical patriarch Isaac married the matriarch Rebecca when she was three years and one day old and ready for intercourse (re-uyah levi-ah).77 The assumption in rabbinic literature was that before the age of three, a broken hymen would grow back and thus not provide suitable evidence, but that betrothal by intercourse after that age would be binding. (Despite the theoretical discourse about this practice and the use of it made in Christian and Muslim polemics against Jews, further research is necessary to locate any cases and to analyze the discourse regarding a young girl being betrothed by her father by means of intercourse at such a young age.78) Although Modena invoked these kinds of cases to support a minor being betrothed by her father, he also cited a contrary early rabbinic tradition as support for the view that a minor who did not approve the marriage made for her by her mother and brother (but not her father) could exercise her right of refusal.79 From this, Modena drew the conclusion that if a minor girl was betrothed by her father her marriage was binding, whether she consented to it or not. This discussion shows the paradox that an orphaned minor girl could exercise a legal act, the right of refusal, if she was betrothed by her mother or by her brothers, but a girl with a living father who betrothed her to a man not of her liking had no such option.80 In his writing about the case of Rachel, Modena also discussed the age until which a girl could exercise the right of refusal. He cited medieval texts that identified the age at which a girl had the responsibility to watch over her assets as ranging between five and ten. He rejected these and invoked rabbis who asserted that the age of consent was ten or eleven.81 Thus, although acknowledging the historic acceptance of a very low age of consent, he suggested one for Rachel at the higher end. Although in the case of Rachel, Modena still seemed to place authority into the hands of an eleven-year-old girl, and she still had until the age of twelve to exercise her right of refusal, he suggested that to avoid any controversy this couple should delay marriage until she was twelve years old. Although Modena accepted the possibility of the marriage of an elevenyear-old girl, when it came to the case of his own son, he expressed reservations about looking for a match for him at what he considered a young age. He did not say what age that was, but he felt that the boy should wait, grow up nicely, and establish himself in the eyes of the community, but he said this about a son, not a daughter.82

92  Breaking Betrothals These discussions reflected concerns about family authority. Behind the discourse lurked a tension between the welfare of the daughter and her freedom of choice. Indeed, there was a sense that her family knew best, that rabbis wanted to support the family, and that rabbis sought justification for limiting the kinds of choices girls could make.

Betrothal by Intercourse (kidushei bi-ah) In rabbinic Judaism, sexual intercourse was one of the three approved methods of betrothal, but it was not necessary for a binding betrothal or marriage. Betrothal by intercourse presented a special challenge because intercourse usually took place without witnesses, but to be valid, a betrothal needed to be witnessed, so betrothal by intercourse involved many of the same issues as clandestine betrothals, making it doubtful. Catholic discourse about the role of intercourse in marriage also illuminates the nature of Jewish considerations. Prior to the Council of Trent, the Church also accepted intercourse as a component of entering into marriage. The Church presumed that by having intercourse the couple itself had administered the sacrament of marriage, which involved expressing consent and making a promise in the present tense, thereby constituting a legitimate marriage. However, some Catholic authorities considered that intercourse alone was enough to constitute marriage. Alternatively, premarital intercourse might only have involved a romantic liaison, a promiscuous affair, seduction, entrapment, rape, or, indeed, a combination of some of these. The question was how to discern the intentions of an unmarried couple who had had premarital intercourse. Catholic thinking about premarital intercourse fell into a range of categories, subsumed under four rubrics. At one extreme there was consensual sex (stupro consensuale) and, at the other, violent sex (stupro violente), that is, forced rape. In the middle was non-violent intercourse (stupro non violente). Although the sex might have been consensual, each person might have taken part for a different reason. A man could use false promises of marriage as a way to seduce a woman (stupro con promesse di matrimonio), but then abandon her; a woman could use seduction as a way to enter a relationship with a man—perhaps one of higher status, and out of her reach—hoping that it would lead to marriage. Or, a woman might invent such a claim against a man to accomplish one of these ends or simply to take vengeance against him. Of course, what each person claimed afterwards might not always have been what they considered beforehand or what actually happened. During the Middle Ages, according to some trends in Catholic thought, a woman who had pre-marital intercourse was automatically considered a victim of rape, making consent irrelevant and putting the blame on the man, unless it was preceded by a promise to marry, in which case, it was considered a binding marriage. On the other hand, views in Jewish

Breaking Betrothals 93 tradition presumed that a man’s intentions in having intercourse were always honorable, putting the blame on the woman.83 In the course of the Middle Ages, Jews and Catholics tried with varying degrees of success to move away from marriage by means of sexual relations and instead to ascertain marital consent in public by requiring combinations of witnesses, parents, and relatives, statements of intention and public announcements, and participation by religious functionaries. After the Council of Trent, pre-marital intercourse became a matter for criminal courts. When presented with evidence of consent, courts shied away from automatically considering the man the aggressor and the woman the victim, so women who had been forced had to convince the court of this fact.84 By requiring the publication of banns and the presence of the clergy and witnesses, the Council of Trent further undermined the idea that a private act of intercourse carried the presumption of marriage. Yet for Jews, despite growing rabbinic opposition, betrothal by intercourse persisted. Sixteenth-century records document cases of betrothal by means of intercourse among Italian Jews. One case from 1511 involved Hannah, the daughter of Solomon of Urbino. For many years, she was engaged to Obadiah, but her relatives did not approve, and, claiming that the couple had not yet become betrothed, they went to the court to prevent the betrothal. To counter this claim, Obadiah produced two witnesses who testified that he had brought them to a courtyard of the Duke of Urbino (a surprising place for Jews to consummate a betrothal), taking with him a clean white sheet (tze-if). Hannah walked past them, they saw her, recognized her, and perceived that she entered an adjacent room accompanied by a matron (matronita). The testimony stated that the matron was in the room with the couple to coax Hannah to consummate the act. Before Obadiah had entered that room, he told the two men that they were witnesses, and they should understand that he intended to betroth Hannah by means of sexual intercourse. Shortly afterwards the matron left the room, shutting the door. The witnesses stated that Obadiah and Hannah were by themselves in the room for about a half an hour. Afterwards, Hannah went out, the witnesses recognized her, and they immediately went into the room. There they found Obadiah alone, and he told them that he had betrothed Hannah by means of sexual intercourse. He showed them the sheet, which they identified by its design, now with fresh spots of blood and a white fluid. The witnesses swore that they searched the room and did not find anybody else, nor did they find another sheet. All this testimony was circumstantial evidence pointing to Obadiah and Hannah having engaged in intercourse. Subsequently, Rabbi Yehiel ben Azriel Trabot of Ascoli, a rabbi in Ferrara, reviewed the evidence, and accepting the testimony of the two witnesses, he was apparently unconcerned about edicts that required ten witnesses, a rabbi, or family members. He maintained that betrothal by

94  Breaking Betrothals intercourse was binding, ruled that in order to end this betrothal the couple needed a divorce, and invoking selective excerpts from rabbinic literature, explained why he opposed any objections to the validity of this betrothal. Firstly, the rabbi stated that although at the time of the intercourse, Obadiah was not witnessed saying to Hannah, “Behold you are betrothed to me by means of this intercourse”; he had apparently spoken with her about the aspects of their physical union (korbah), and Trabot claimed that this was enough for her to be considered to have consummated the relationship (be-ulat ba-al).85 Secondly, he cited rabbis in the Talmud, stating that although they called for punishment of men who betrothed by intercourse,86 they nonetheless declared that such betrothals were binding. Thirdly, the rabbi asserted that although Hannah might not have been to the ritual bath prior to the intercourse, the betrothal was valid according to the Talmud.87 Fourthly, he admitted that betrothal by intercourse might usually qualify as licentiousness due to others witnessing it,88 but in this particular case, the witnesses did not actually see the couple having intercourse, thus exempting this situation from such charges. Finally, Trabot stated that although betrothal by intercourse was a proscribed act of sexual intimacy outside the context of marriage, it still formed a binding relationship.89 Trabot concluded that because Hannah was alone with Obadiah, she needed a bill of divorce from him in order to marry another man and that annulment would not suffice. Trabot’s opinion supporting the legitimacy of betrothal by means of sexual intercourse shows the kind of license that couples took to use sex to marry and defy the marital plans made for them by their families.90 Betrothal by intercourse raised all the concerns associated with every other form of clandestine betrothal. Even the couple was not totally sure of the implications of what was going on, let alone the families and the authorities. On the one hand, this could have been an opportunity for a woman to enter a relationship of her own choice without the restrictions of family and community; on the other, it could just as easily have been an opportunity for a man to seduce and ensnare a woman without her having the protection of family and community. As in other betrothal scenarios, participants, with the help of rabbinic supporters, reconstructed a narrative of the events according to their own needs. And as in other scenarios, women were more likely than men to find themselves at a disadvantage.

Conclusion Like engagement, betrothal was a state involving not only a man and a woman, but also their families, their assets, and their honor. Unlike engagement, betrothal was binding, yet the couple was not quite married. It was easy enough to enter a betrothal. The three basic methods included the presentation of a document, an item of minimal value, or

Breaking Betrothals 95 sexual intercourse. The requirement of witnesses, usually two, sometimes more, though it was rarely followed, made it more difficult to enter a clandestine betrothal but did not prevent it. Without witnesses, when events transpired in private, it was much more difficult to ascertain the intentions and the consent of each participant. Jewish traditions offered three methods of release from a doubtful, usually clandestine, betrothal: the right of refusal, divorce, and annulment. Two of these methods had disadvantages: the right of refusal could be limited to young girls, but some rabbis were willing to allow it for older women, and divorce could only be effected by a man, and it bore special burdens for the woman; accordingly, the best way was annulment. Each of these methods involved careful negotiations in which each side constructed an account of what happened, selected laws and texts to support its argument, recruited rabbis to legitimize its narrative, and attempted to impose doubt on the situation after the fact. Ultimately, our only sources about what transpired in cases of controversial betrothals are the narratives constructed by rabbis. In doing so, they exhibited their textual dexterity and gave a sense of the raw materials of the actual cases with which they were working. We will never know about all the scraps of information they discarded, but we can see that in doing their work, rabbis drew creatively from precedents, textual sources, traditions, customs, and current authorities. They looked for procedural irregularities to redefine or to obfuscate events and at the same to invalidate the rulings of others. Because the larger issues often involved religious principles, perhaps going back to Sinai, arguing about divine commandments was out of bounds, but rabbis could still debate procedural technicalities. Their reasoning also transcended texts and invoked utilitarian considerations, rationalizations, and, ultimately, the volition of those involved, although perhaps not expressed in such terms. These negotiations created a paradoxical relationship between the participants and Jewish law: when Jews got into dangerous situations because of aspects of the law of betrothals, they looked towards the law as a vehicle for their liberation from the law. Indeed, behind the apparent legal discourse, rabbis tried to meet the needs of those involved. Given women’s minimal opportunities to speak in the legal system, rabbis might, if they wanted to, even speak for women—or against them. Rabbinic discourse was not about what the law said, but rather how it spoke for Jewish men and women. Betrothal was a permanent step on the way to marriage. It carried all of the obligations but allowed none of the benefits of marriage. The couple was bound by financial, religious, and social commitments, and to dissolve the relationship the couple needed a divorce or an annulment. Yet they could not yet live together, have sexual relations, or start a family. Betrothal was a highly ambiguous relationship, and for this reason many Jewish communities merged it with marriage, although such a reform

96  Breaking Betrothals could not eliminate all the issues involved with doubtful betrothals. Marriage was a time for celebration, further negotiation, or abuse, but unlike Catholic women trapped in indissoluble marriages, Jewish women could extricate themselves from bad marriages and retrieve some of the assets that they had brought with them.

Notes 1 TB (Talmud Bavli) Yevamot 107b. Rabbinic citations in regular font are from the Responsa Project 18+. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2010; those in italics are from printed works, accompanied by the name of the author or editor when necessary for clarity. 2 Mahari Minz, nos. 2–3; for an attempt to coordinate the Jewish and Catholic processes, see Bernhard, “Le Décret Tametsi du Concile de Trente,” 209–233. 3 Deuteronomy 22:23–29. 4 M. (Mishnah) Kiddushin 1:1. 5 Rashi, TB Gitin 40a. 6 T. (Tosefta) Kiddushin 1:1. 7 PY (Pahad yitzhak), “Kiddushin, hilufei leshonot,” 7: 85b; Sefer haminhagim, minhagei nisu-in; Rashba 1:186. 8 Tur/SA (Shulhan arukh) EH (Even haezer) 33. 9 TB Kiddushin 12b. 10 TB Gitin 89a. 11 Donahue, The Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage, 144–158; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 177–178. 12 Friemann, Kidushin venisuin, 16–17, 20–21.Baron, Community 3, 46–47, note 36. 13 TB Baba Batra 48b; TB Gitin 33a; Ribash, no. 399. 14 Rashba 1:1185. 15 Delille, “Strategie di alleanza,” 294–298; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 243. 16 Phillips, Putting Asunder, 1–39; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 90–98, 132–140, 272; Brundage, Laws, Sex and Christian Society, 504–505, 512; Sheehan, “Choice of Marriage Partner,” 8. 17 M. Yevamot 13:2. 18 TB Yevamot 107b. 19 TB Yevamot 109a. 20 TB Kiddushin 81b; Mahari Minz, no. 13. 21 TB Niddah 46a; PY, “Ketanah shehigiah,” 7:184a‑184b. 22 Fano, no. 81; Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 115; Stow, “Marriages Are Made in Heaven,” 458, 471, 479. 23 Pitt-Rivers, The Fate, 92; Lansing, “Girls in Trouble,” 301; Strocchia, “Gender and Rites of Honour,” 55–56. 24 Cristellon, “Marriage and Consent,” 411. 25 SA EH 48:5; PY, “Kiddushin bifnei edim,” 7:82b. 26 Rashba 1:551; repeated in 1:1185, citing Alfasi. 27 Rashba 1:1206; 550. 28 Seidel-Menchi, “Percors variegate,” 24–28. 29 Brundage, Laws, Sex and Christian Society, 48, 187, 239, 276, 362, 364, 564; Bossy, Christianity in the West, 23–24; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 234; Seidel-Menchi, “Percorsi Variegati,” 22–25.

Breaking Betrothals 97 0 Jemolo, “Refroma Tridentina,” 45–50. 3 31 Jedin, Crisis and Closure, 143. 32 Sperling, “Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent,” 67–108; Jedin, Crisis and Closure, 140–145. 33 Cozzi, “Padri, Figli e Matrimoni,” 181. 34 Ferraro, Marriage Wars, 4–5, 10; Cazzetta, Praesumitur Seducta, 375–378; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 90, 158–171, 253–259; Fazio “Percorsi coniugali,” 163–164; Cozzi, “Padri, Figli e Matrimoni,” 169–213. 35 Friemann, Kidushin venisuin, 127, 131–133, 138, 139; Bonfil, “Kavim ledemutam,” 68–96; Carpi, Padova 2, 226–228; JNUL (Jewish National and University Library, now called NLI, National Library of Israel) 4* 1995, nos. 110 and 111; PY, “Takanot,” 10:158b; JNUL 8* 2008, fol. 35oa; JNUL 8* 101; JTSA 7085, no. 210; Finkelstein, Self-Government, 305–306, 308; Diena, nos. 109–110. 36 Joseph Ravena, no. 37, JNUL 8* 933; Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, 169 and 251. 37 Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, 311–314. 38 The word “to me” appears in the manuscript, but it seems to be crossed out. 39 JNUL 4* 617, no. 30; for similar cases, see Weinstein, “Mock and Clandestine Marriages,” 145–157. 40 Cazzetta, Praesumitur Seducta, 367; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antio regime, 183, 306; Seidel-Menchi, “Percorsi variegati,” 19. 41 TB Ketubot 62b. 42 Heilpronn, Nahalat yaakov, no. 57; Freimann, Kidushin venisuin, 183. 43 On the role of spinning, see Cazzetta, Praesumitur Seducta, 373. 44 JNUL 8* 2007, no. 71; Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, 251–255. 45 Provencal, no. 99; JTSA (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) 7085, no. 4; Freimann, Kiddushin venisuin, 140–141; “Ma-arivei nahal,” no. 3, JTSA 7085 (R. 1356). 46 Modena, Ziknei, no. 85. 47 A summary of some of the key texts are found in a manuscript. responsum by Yehiel Trabot, no. 59, JNUL 8* 194; Weinstein, “Gift Exchange During Marriage Rituals,” 485–521. 48 TB Kiddushin 50b. 49 Among Ashkenazim, see Tos. Kiddushin 50b, “hoshashin lesivlonot”; Terumat hadeshen 1:207; 2:74; among Sephardim, see MT Ishut 9:28; Tur, EH 45; Rashba 1: 1223, 136; Rosh on Kiddushin ch. 2, no. 20. 50 Cf. Yehiel Trabot, JNUL 8* 194, no. 55, cited in Freimann, Kidushin venisuin, 128; //see Cassuto, Firenze, 220–222; Colon, nos. 170. 51 Colon, nos. 170–171. 52 Diena, nos. 116; cf. Colon, Hadashim, no. 46. 53 Colon, no. 101. 54 Colon, no. 171. 55 JNUL 8* 194, nos. 62, 86, 106 (102), 185; no. 62 provides a second version of the events that sheds a very different light on the subject and deals with different aspects of the case; cf. Freimann, Kidushin venisu-in, 128–131. 56 Stow, “Marriages,” 478. 57 Concerning the highly documented case of sivlonot involving Isaac Danuti and Rosa, see the Conclusion, ch. 7. 58 Adelman, “Virginity,” 179–213. 59 M. Kiddushin 2:1; TB Kiddushin 41a. 60 TB Kiddushin 41a. 61 TB Kiddushin 79a; T. Yevamot 13:2. 62 M. Kiddushin 2:6; TB Kiddushin 50a–b.

98  Breaking Betrothals 3 MT Ishut, 3:19. 6 64 Mahari Minz, no. 2; Tos. (Tosafot) Kiddushin, 41a 65 BY EH 155. 66 Tur/SA EH 37:1. 67 SA EH 37:2, 7–8; PY, “Kiddushin asur le-adam,” 7:77a; Grossman, “Nisuei boser,” 108–125; Meachem, “Marriage of Minor Girls,” 23–37. 68 Mahari Minz, no. 13; Dinari, “Hishtalshelut takanat hami-un,” 319–345; Brokhason, “Hamesh igerot mehakhmei ashkenaz,” 85–101; Marx, “A Jewish Cause Célèbre,” 126. 69 Graetz, Geschichte 9, 56–59, 501–502; Balaban, “Jakob Polak,” 59–60. 70 See Tos. (Tosafot) Nidah 52b, “halakhah katuv.” 71 Yam Shel Shlomo, Yevamot 13:17; Rama,SA EH, 155:22. 72 Modena, Riti, 4, 4, 1. 73 Fano, no. 81; Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 115; Stow, “Marriages Are Made in Heaven,” 458, 471, 479. 74 TB Yevamot 107b; MT Gerushin 11:11. 75 The word could be edut or zekhut. 76 JTSA 6862, fol. 14a. 77 Rashi, Genesis 25:20. 78 Grossman, “Nisuei boser,” 108–125; M. Nidah 5:4; TB Nidah 44b; Kiddushin 10a; Sanhedrin 55b; MT Ishut 3:11; BY/SA EH 37:1. 79 M. Yevamot 13:2. 80 TP Yevamot 13:2(13c); this citation is in BY EH 43:2, and much of Modena’s information is from there. 81 BY EH 155. 82 Modena, Ziknei, no. 72. 83 Rama SA EH 33:1. 84 Cazzetta, Praesumitur Seducta, 1–84; Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime, 28–35, 214–220, 319–330; Lombardi, “Fidanzamenti e matrimoni,” 240– 241; Cristellon, “Marriage and Consent,” 415. 85 Genesis 20:3 and Deuteronomy 22:22. 86 TB Kiddushin 12b; cf. TB Yevamot 52a. 87 TB Yevamot 49b; TB Kiddushin 68a. 88 Tos. Kiddushin 12b. 89 BY, EH 17:58. 90 Trabot, JNUL 8* 194, no.70; Freimann, Kidushin venisuin, 133–134, identifies this as a forced betrothal, kiddushei hatifah; see Adelman, “Virginity,” 179–213.

Works Cited Balaban, Majer. “Jakob Polk: Der Baal Chillukim in Krakau, und seine Ziet.” MGWJ 21 (1913): 59–73. Baron, Salo. The Jewish Community 1–3. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1942. Bernhard, Jean. “Le Decret Tametsi du Concile de Trente: Triomph du Consensualisme Matrimonial ou Institution de la Forme Solennelle du Marriage?” Revue de Droit Canonique 30 (1980): 209–233. Boksenboim, Yacob, ed. Matanot ba-adam. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983. Bonfil, Robert. “Kavim ledemutam hahevratit veharuhanit shel yehudei ezor venetziah bereshit hameah ha-16.” Zion 41 (1976): 68–96.

Breaking Betrothals 99 Bossy, John. Christianity in the West, 1400–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Brokhason, Tziporah. “Hamesh iggerot mehakhmei ashkenaz bameah ha-15.” Alei sefer 6–7 (1979): 85–101. Brundage, James A. Laws, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Carpi, Daniel. Pinkas vaad k. k. padova 1–2. Jerusalem: Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1973 and 1980. Cassuto, Umberto. Gli Ebrei a Firenze nell’eta’ del Rinascimento. Florence: Galletti e Cocci, 1918. Cazzetta, Giovanni. Praesumitur Seducta: Onesta’ e consenso femminile nella cultura giuridica moderna. Milano: Giuffre Editore, 1999. Cozzi, Gaetano. “Padri, Figli e Matrimoni Clandestini (Meta’ sec. xvi—meta’ sec. xviii). La Cultura: Rivista di Filosophia Letterature e Storia 14:2 (1976): 169–213. Cristellon, Cecilia. “Marriage and Consent in Pre-Tridentine Venice: Between Lay Conception and Ecclesiastical Conception.” Sixteenth Century Journal 39:2 (2008): 389–418. Diena, Azriel. Sheelot utshuvot azriel diena. Edited by Yacob Boksenboim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1977. Delille, Ge’rard. “Strategie di alleanza e demografia del matrimonio,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 283–303. Donahue, Charles Jr. “The Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage and Social Practice in the Later Middle Ages.” Journal of Family History 8 (1983): 144–158. Entsiklopedyah pahad yitzhak. Edited by Isaac Lampronti. Bnei Brak: Yahdut, c. 1980 [cited by folio]. Edited by Barukh Mordecai Cohen. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1961–1986 [cited by column]. Fazio, Ina. “Percorsi coniugali nell’italia moderna,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 329–362. Ferraro, Joanne M. Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Finkelstein, Louis. Jewish Self Government in the Middle Ages. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1924. Freimann, Abraham Hayim. Seder kidushin venisuin ahare hatimat hatalmud. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1944. Graetz, Heinrich. Geschichte der Juden 9. Leipzig: Leiner, 1891. Grossman, Avraham. “Nisu-ei boser behevrah hayehudit biymei- habaynayim ad ha meah hashelosh-esreh.” Pa-amim 43 (1990): 108–125. Heilpronn, Jacob. Nahalat yaakov. Padua: Gasparo Crivilari, 1623; Bene Berak: Y.M. Morgenstern, 1969. Ingram, Martin. “Spousals Litigation in the English Ecclesiastical Courts, c. 1350c.1640,” in Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage. Edited by R. B. Outhwaite. London: Europa, 1981, 35–57. Jedin, Hubert. Crisis and Closure of the Council of Trent: A Retrospective View from the Second Vatican Council. Translated by N. D. Smith. London: Sheed and Ward, 1967.

100  Breaking Betrothals Jemolo, Arturo C. “Reforma Tridentina nell’ambito Matrimoniale,” in Contributi alla Storia del Concilio di Trento e della Controriforma. Edited by Eugenio Garin. Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1948, 45–50. Lansing, Carol. “Girls in Trouble,” in The Pre-Modern Teenager. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2002, 293–309. Lombardi, Daniela. “Fidanzamenti e matrimony dal Concilio di Trento alle reforme settecentesche,” in Storia del Matrimonio, Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 215–250. ———. Matrimoni di antico regime. Bologna: Societa’ editrice il Mulino, 2001. Marx, Alexander. “A Jewish Cause Celebre in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Pesakim of 1519,” in Abhandlung zur Erinnerung an Hirsch Perez Chajes. Edited by A. Z. Schwarz and Victor Aptowitzer. Vienna: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1933, 149–193. Meachem, Tirzah. “Marriage of Minor Girls in Jewish Law: A Legal and Historical Overview,” in Jewish Legal Writings by Women. Edited by Micah D. Halpern and Chana Safrai. Jerusalem: Urim, 1998, 23–37. Modena, Leon (Yehudah). She-elot utshuvot yiknei yehudah. Edited by Shlomo Simonsohn, Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1956. ____Igrot rabi yehudah aryeh mimodena. Edited by Yacob Boksenboim, Tel Aviv: Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1984 Pesaro, Abramo. “Le donne celebri Israelite.” Vessilo Israelitico 29 (1881): 33–34. Phillips, Roderick. Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pitt-Rivers, Julian. The Fate of Shechem: Or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Provencal, Moses. She-elot utshuvot. Edited by Avraham Yosef Yani. Jerusaelm: Mekhon Or Ha-mizrah and Mekhon Yerushalayim 1988. Seidel Menchi, Silvana. “Percorsi variegate, percorsi obbligati, Elogio del matrimonio pre-tridentino,” in Matrimonio in dubbio: unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVII secolo. Edited by Silvana Seidel-Menchi and Diego Quaglioni. Bologna: Societa’ editrice il Mulino, 2001, 17–60. Sheehan, Michael, M. “Choice of Marriage Partner in the Middle Ages: Development and Mode of Application of a Theory of Marriage.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 1 (1978): 3–33. Sperling, Jutta. “Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent (1560–70): Clandestine Marriages, Kinship Prohibitions, and Dowry Exchange in European Comparison.” Journal of Early Modern History 8:1–2 (2004): 67–108. Stow, Kenneth. “Marriages Are Made in Heaven.” Renaissance Quarterly 48:3 (1995): 445–491. Strocchia, Sharon T. “Gender and the Rites of Honour in Italian Renaissance Cities,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis. London: Longman, 1998, 39–60. Weinstein, Roni. “Gift Exchanges During Marriage Rituals Among the Italian Jews in the Early Modern Period: A Historical Anthropological Reading.” Revue des Études Juives 165:3–4 (2006): 485–521.

Breaking Betrothals 101 ———. Marriage Rituals Italian Style. Leiden: Brill, 2004. ———. “Mock and Clandestine Marriages, Deceits, and Games in Jewish Italian Communities in the Early Modern Period,” in Shell Games: Studies in Scams, Frauds, and Deceits (1300–1650). Edited by Mark Crane, Richard Raiswell, and Margaret Reeves. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004, 145–157.

4 Negotiating In and Out of Marriage

Love is always recognized and when it is, it burns and cannot be quenched. (Leon Modena)1

Because it is proper for a wife to go to live in her husband’s house . . . thank God, she now lives there as befits the wives of honorable Jewish men. (Leon Modena)2

Introduction Marriage (nisu-in, kenisah lehupah, hupah), the wedding, was the third stage for Jews after engagement and betrothal. Jews could separate betrothal and marriage by many years or combine them, but because of the potential of a betrothed woman committing adultery between the time of the betrothal and the wedding, it was common to combine betrothal and the wedding ceremonies.3 The wedding itself had several different components that were combined in varying sequences over several days. Rabbinic opinion was divided over which component actually effected a marriage by completing the act of acquisition and which component simply presumed marriage or only enhanced the ceremony. The Jewish ceremony included presenting the ketubah, entering under the marriage canopy (hupah), reciting seven blessings over a glass of wine (sheva berakhot or birkat hatanim), and spending time together alone after the ceremony or returning to the home of the groom,4 as well as a period of post-coital separation. This abstinence, also found in the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, reflected rabbinic concern over consummation stimulating menstrual blood, which would make the woman impure and require the couple to abstain from intercourse as if she had menstruated. Because hymenal blood might mask menstrual blood, all newly married couples had to abstain from intercourse after the initial penetration.5 Italian Jewish marriage took place in the context of Catholic practice, and shared many elements. In addition to using the term sposare in the

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 103 present tense for marriage, Catholics also used the term matrimonio. For Catholics the wedding procedures included some combination of presenting a ring, joining of hands, blessing, drinking from the same cup, a kiss, and registration of the couple and the names of the witnesses in the parish register, which involved the presence of the parish priest. In addition, the wedding concluded with the traductio/transductio, the bridal procession to the man’s house, which included transfer of the dowry, and consummation. Like Jews, Catholics also observed a period of post-coital spousal separation, called the Nights of Tobias, also based on the book of Tobit.6 Like the other stages in early modern Jewish marriage that we have examined, the wedding itself often also involved complex negotiations. Although Jewish families negotiated agreements prior to the engagement, some reopened negotiations and continued with them up to the wedding. We will examine four matters: first, the balance between families in terms of wedding costs as well as customs; second, bridal adornments and gifts; third, last-minute and Sabbath negotiations; and fourth, last minute contractual provisions for release of the widow from the levirate connection with her brother-in-law in case of the husband’s death without offspring. After the couple was married, if relations between them broke down, including wife beating, they entered into a new stage of negotiations. Divorce became an option for a man but difficult for a woman to obtain, even if she was being abused. To work around this structural imbalance, after a marriage deteriorated, women and their supporters could apply pressure to force a man to divorce her. Some women committed acts of rebellion, tried to collect assets from their husbands or simply seized them and fled. Nevertheless, Jewish women, unlike Catholic women, could get a divorce and leave a bad marriage, free to remarry if they wished.

Negotiating Wedding Customs and Finances The negotiations over wedding customs involved considerations of finances and of honor. Because the father of the bride usually paid for the wedding, there was a tendency for him to determine the nature of the ceremony according to his ethnic religious customs, which would derive from Italian, Askhenazic, Sephardic, or Middle Eastern practices, or some combination of these. Some grooms and their fathers made financial concessions so that they could determine wedding customs. In Ferrara in the early seventeenth century, for example, an Ashkenazic father of the bride claimed, “I will pay for the wedding so I want to do the ceremony according to my custom.” The Italian groom, however, wanted the ceremony conducted according to his customs.7 The two fathers negotiated and reached an agreement that the groom’s side would have more say in the wedding ceremony and the father of the bride would deduct the cost of the wedding from the dowry. Because the father of the bride

104  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage provided less of the agreed upon dowry, during the marriage the groom would have fewer assets for his business and the household, and when the marriage ended his wife would receive a smaller dowry for her needs. Hence, the honor of the father of the bride at the wedding trumped his daughter’s long-term welfare. Leon Modena recognized that in determining wedding customs, families balanced the costs of the wedding against the finances of the marriage in one way or another, but determining the nature of the wedding was a particular matter of honor for the groom’s family. Modena asserted that even if the father of the bride paid for the whole wedding, he still did not have the right to have it conducted according to his customs, but rather, the wedding should follow the practices of the groom’s community because, according to the Bible, each man should rule over his house8 and over his wife.9 Modena asserted that from the moment of her engagement, a woman was bound to follow the ethnic customs of her husband because her father no longer had authority over her.10 A case illustrating the linkage between the financial and ethnic aspects of the wedding ceremony involved Joseph Arli, a teacher who lived with the Rieti family in Siena during the first half of the sixteenth century. Arli’s daughter became engaged to Rabbi Eliezer Cohen of Viterbo. Arli wrote to Cohen’s brother that he was limited in what he could pay for his daughter’s wedding because he also had to provide for his son whose wedding would take place around the same time. His son’s requirements seemed non-negotiable, so for his daughter’s wedding, he could only provide a much smaller amount. Because Cohen was concerned about what people might say about him if the wedding was not sufficiently lavish, Arli proposed that Cohen pay for the entire wedding himself. This proposal offered Cohen a way to preserve his honor while reducing Arli’s costs for the wedding, which Arli wrote would suit him because, he said, the custom of the day was for each side to try to contribute as little as possible for a wedding. Through this correspondence, Arli, who had a long history of difficult dealings with the Jewish community, including in the case of Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti (discussed below), shows that for both of the families involved, wedding negotiations delicately balanced interests such as finances, cultural practices, and honor.11

Borrowed Jewelry at Weddings Negotiations over the lavishness of the gifts that the man’s family bestowed upon the bride also balanced honor and finances. Weddings provided an opportunity to display wealth and thus raise one’s standing in the community. Those who could not afford to enhance their honor with lavish possessions at the wedding still did their best to raise their social capital by displaying borrowed jewelry and short-term gifts. A late sixteenth-century case involved Reuben, who, after engaging his oldest

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 105 son to a woman, sent her gold jewelry in the name of his son. After the couple married, they decided to move away. Reuben, perhaps because of this change of plans, called for an appraisal of the jewelry in order to calculate its value in the costs incurred in establishing the marriage. But his son said that because his father had given them as gifts to his fiancée, it was not appropriate to ask for an account of them. This case raised questions about the nature of the exchange of gifts between father, son, and bride. At first, the gift of the jewelry seemed to be a friendly, affectionate gesture on the part of the father, but he came to see it as part of a larger financial package that his son’s change in plans disrupted. When the case reached Rabbi Aaron Finzi in Ferrara for his opinion, he discussed whether a bride fully acquired such a gift or if it only served to beautify her for the event and to mark her in public as the groom’s, after which she had to return it to those who had loaned it. Finzi did not consider jewelry to be an essential component of the household because it was no great shame for a woman to appear without it. He stated that Reuben was entitled to an appraisal of it in order to keep accounts with his son, and rejected the son’s contention that once the gift had been given as part of the celebration of the engagement, it should be excluded from financial reckonings and not returned to his father. In this case, the value of the jewelry the groom returned to his father was credited to his account with his father. But Finzi expanded: when a widow collected her ketubah amount, her husband’s family deducted the value of all the jewelry that they had given her from what they owed her, even if they had acknowledged in writing that the gifts were absolute.12 The bride’s display of a gift enhanced the status of a man’s family without requiring any loss of assets on its part and without providing the woman with any additional resources. This practice was not unique to Jews. Christians also considered gifts of clothing and jewelry at the time of the wedding to be temporary unless the bride received them as a bequest. Otherwise, she had to return them to her husband, and he returned them to his family or to other lenders.13 The temporary exchange of gifts between the groom’s family and the bride reflected her temporary status in his family. We will see later just how temporary marriage arrangements could be when a woman became a widow.

Weddings on Fridays and on the Sabbath Although many wedding invitations and ketubot highlight the popularity of Friday weddings,14 rabbinic tradition was in fact ambivalent about holding weddings on Fridays or Saturdays. The rabbinic discussion, including in early modern Italy, reflected attempts at achieving a balance between the desire to protect the Sabbath from wedding activities that might desecrate it and the needs of Jews who for social reasons or economic necessity wanted to hold combined Sabbath and wedding festivals

106  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage on the eve of the Sabbath.15 During the Middle Ages and early modern period, Friday became an option,16 even a favorite, day for weddings,17 and some rabbis were willing to allow for weddings on the Sabbath.18 Nevertheless, rabbis continued to offer four basic arguments against betrothal and marriage on Fridays and Saturdays, and each objection elicited counterarguments from other rabbis, which showed that there was no absolute reason why weddings should not take place on these days and that couples negotiated the boundaries of the Sabbath to meet their own needs. The arguments against Sabbath weddings in general included missing the opportunity to go to court the next day if the man suspected his bride of not having been a virgin; desecrating the Sabbath by writing or by signing documents; engaging in a forbidden business transaction on the Sabbath by making the symbolic act of acquisition (kinyan); or consummating the marriage, which might involve actions forbidden on the Sabbath.19 First of all, one of the reasons that rabbinic tradition discouraged marriage on the Sabbath was because weddings of women who had never married should take place the night before the court met so that if a man suspected his bride of not having been a virgin, he could bring her to court the next day. The inauspicious principle guiding this timing of marriage was that before his anger cooled down, a man would have immediate access to the court so that he could make his case against his bride and so that the call could go out immediately for witnesses who could testify about his wife’s previous sexual conduct (although such a drastic step might have been due to the man’s own lack of sexual competence or his desire to continue negotiations over the terms of the marriage, if not end it).20 However, in small towns, the Jewish court usually sat twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. A wedding on Friday or Saturday precluded the opportunity to appear before a court the next day, hence Wednesdays for virgins and Thursdays for previously married women. The Talmud raised the question of why, if courts also met on Mondays, marriages of virgins could not also take place on Sundays. In answer, it suggested that a wedding celebration required three days of preparation, which because of Sabbath observance would make preparing for a Sunday wedding difficult.21 Although the Talmud discouraged marriages on Sundays and Fridays, it raised the possibility that if the court sat every day of the week, weddings could take place on any day.22 Some medieval rabbis also suggested that if a man wanted to make a claim against his bride, he could gather a court of three Jews, even on a Saturday.23 Consummation on Friday evening was not unknown. Rabbis in sixteenthcentury Rome allowed couples to do so because courts (including those of the Greater Communal Council of Sixty in the Scola Tempio) could hold sessions on Saturdays.24 Other rabbis showed less concern for Sabbath weddings because of changes in the ways in which Jews understood virginity, stating that Jews no longer turned to the courts in matters of

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 107 virginity because without a waiting period between betrothal and marriage, there was no opportunity for a betrothed woman to have intercourse with another man.25 Moreover, rabbis recognized other categories of brides who might not have had signs of virginity on their wedding night and whose husbands could not bring charges against them. These included women who suffered a documented accidental rupture of their hymen as a child (mukat etz), those born on a Friday (Italian: Venerdi), under the influence of Venus—the goddess of love,26 and those over thirteen (bogeret).27 The second reason that rabbis were concerned about scheduling a wedding on Friday was that if the preparations were not completed in time and the ceremonies took place on the Sabbath the scribe, the groom, or the witnesses might violate the Sabbath by writing the ketubah, which was not allowed on the Sabbath, but if the ketubah was not written and signed before the wedding, then the marriage might not be valid. Nevertheless, rabbis showed a willingness to negotiate arrangements for betrothals and marriages to take place on Fridays and Saturdays.28 In some places, it was the practice to write the ketubah on Friday immediately before the Sabbath but not to sign it until the Sabbath was over.29 In some instances, if they did not write a ketubah on Friday, the groom might already have set aside possessions equivalent to the value of the ketubah amount, had intercourse with his bride, and later when he had an opportunity, would write her a ketubah. According to the Talmud, a couple might linger without a ketubah for two or three years.30 In early modern Italy, Jews developed ways to conduct betrothals on Friday, including the recitation of the seven blessings by the congregation on Saturday morning, with the transfer of the ketubah on Saturday evening, at which time the guests again recited the seven wedding blessings.31 The conflicting possibilities concerning a wedding held on the Sabbath at which the ketubah was not signed are explored by Rabbi Isaac Burgi in a case from 1679 in Cento that dealt with the marriage of his son Manasseh to Bona, the daughter of Reuben Shaar-Aryeh (Porteleone). The witnesses forgot to sign the ketubah before the onset of the Sabbath. Initially, Burgi said that when there was a delay in signing the ketubah there was no need for stringency in the matter even though the couple would have intercourse on the eve of the Sabbath without a ketubah. His proposed resolution of the problem, perhaps influenced by his own son’s involvement, was to suggest that the act of writing the ketubah prior to the Sabbath presumed an act of acquisition, and that signing it immediately was not necessary. In this spirit, he reported that on one occasion in Ferrara a virgin consummated her marriage on the Sabbath, and the rabbis there did not mind the witnesses signing the ketubah several months after the wedding. In Mantua, however, he noted that the rabbis followed the opposite practice and did not consider it acceptable to have intercourse as long as the ketubah remained unsigned, and they required the

108  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage witnesses to sign the ketubah immediately after the wedding ceremony on the same day, which precluded Sabbath marriages. He also reported that eventually, in Ferrara, too, rabbis abandoned their lenient policy of allowing marriages on the Sabbath and signing the ketubah later. Burgi himself gave an example of a couple; Rabbi Pinhas Zamorano, called Purim, and Gioia Levia, whose ketubah remained unsigned on the day of the wedding. They lived together for several years as husband and wife and had children together without benefit of ketubah. At a time of distress, they repented, and sought to rectify the matter of their unsigned ketubah, but they were not able to find any witness who could recall their wedding. The court, therefore, required the man to write his wife another ketubah, but in the meantime he died, and she had to enter widowhood without her ketubah in hand, which put her at risk of not being able to claim everything to which she was entitled.32 Burgi’s presentation of the competing concerns about holding a wedding on the Sabbath highlights the gendered nature of the issue. His son Manasseh, who might have already collected the dowry from Bona’s family, could marry on the Sabbath without any protections that might be offered by a ketubah, although Bona might have been at risk. In the case of Gioia, however, as a married woman without the possible protection of a ketubah, she remained at risk, especially after Pinhas died. The third reason that rabbis were concerned about Sabbath marriages was that the symbolic act of acquisition (kinyan) at a wedding, akin to a financial transaction, would desecrate the holiness of the day. This became the issue when one unnamed Italian rabbi sought to legitimize late Friday weddings. He noted that sometimes, the parties involved could not reach a settlement concerning the marriage terms on Friday until very close to sunset. In fact, the arrival of the Sabbath was often part of the negotiating strategy—an attempt to finalize the agreement under pressure. Under such circumstances of stress, the bride and the groom could, according to this rabbi, go through with betrothal and marriage on Friday night because the wedding banquet had been prepared, and if it were not held, and it would be a source of shame. To make his case, this rabbi discussed exactly when the Sabbath and concomitant cessation of work began. For women, it was after candle lighting on Friday, but for men, it was later, at the time of the conclusion of the evening service (arvit). The rabbi pointed out that because in betrothal the act of acquisition did not involve any technical work on the woman’s part but only on the part of the man who acquired her, he could acquire her after the Sabbath had begun for her but not yet for him. In making this argument, the rabbi was negotiating the boundaries of the Sabbath in an attempt to align rabbinic definitions with popular behavior.33 The fourth reason that rabbis were concerned about celebrating weddings on the Sabbath was that consummation of a marriage with a virgin might involve acts prohibited on the Sabbath such as inflicting a wound (haburah)34 or causing pain (tza-ar),35 making an opening (pirtzah

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 109 dehukah),36 or destroying (soter).37 Short on specific prohibitions, some rabbis took an interesting route to prove why consummation should not take place on the Sabbath. Using an ancient interpretative tradition of adding up the numerical value of the Hebrew letters in a word (gematria) to find hidden meanings in the word, rabbis showed that the Hebrew word for pregnancy or pregnant, be-herayon, was 271 or 273, which they connected with a gestation period of 271–273 days. Following these calculations, a baby conceived on the Sabbath might be born on the Sabbath nine months later, which might involve inconvenience with the birth itself and with circumcision eight days later, also on the Sabbath. To prevent birth on the Sabbath they noted that pious Jews had intercourse on Wednesdays.38 Nevertheless, some rabbis allowed weddings to take place on the Sabbath, but they stipulated that the couple postpone consummation until afterwards.39 Others, such as Joseph Caro, unequivocally allowed wedding plans that included consummation with a virgin on the Sabbath. A surprising compromise was offered by Isaac Lampronti. He reported that according to the Talmud, Jewish pietists allowed only those men who were experts in having intercourse at an angle (behatyah) to do so on the Sabbath, presumably so that they would not rupture the hymen. It remains a question how pietists, perhaps as yet unmarried, gained such expertise.40

Wedding Day Levirate Negotiations When negotiations between the families continued up to the time of the wedding, they might have jeopardized the event, especially if it were to be held on Friday. Although the families had prepared prenuptial documents as part of the engagement process, sometimes they continued to negotiate as late as the moment the wedding was about to begin, if it did. Many cases dealt with brides and their families seeking last-minute guarantees that she would not be in danger of being trapped in a levirate connection.41 To reach a typical prenuptial agreement on the day before her wedding in 1656, Camilla, the daughter of the prominent Rabbi Joseph Ravenna, negotiated with Solomon Pontremoli, the brother of her fiancé Hananel. On the day of the wedding in the presence of two witnesses, Solomon agreed in writing as recorded by a rabbi that if his brother died without viable offspring and Camilla was then bound to him in a levirate bond he would release her without requiring any payment from her, provided he did not have to travel more than a three-day journey, a caveat that undermined the effectiveness of the agreement because it gave him an easy reason not to fulfill it.42 In a more complex prenuptial agreement from late 1650, a man referred to in documents as Judah engaged his daughter, Leah, to Reuben, the son of Jacob. Reuben had a brother, Simon, who lived 30 miles away—a day’s journey. According to the terms of the engagement agreement, Reuben agreed that his brother Simon would prepare a document promising that

110  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage if Leah ever became bound to him in a levirate connection he would be obligated to release her. Judah and Reuben agreed to hold the wedding in Reuben’s house three months later, on Wednesday, January 4, 1651. Reuben prepared to host a wedding commensurate with his status, arranged for funds to prepare the wedding banquet according to custom, and planned for his brother to come to celebrate the joy of his wedding. The day before the wedding there was a storm so Simon could not come for the wedding or sign the agreement. Although the wedding was scheduled for the next day, Judah still demanded that Reuben be held accountable for his promise to obligate Simon to release Leah if necessary. Reuben suggested postponing the wedding for a month so that he could try to get the document from Simon. Judah rejected the proposal and asserted that in anticipation of the wedding, Leah had already immersed herself in the ritual bath. If Reuben did not marry Leah, her father threatened to betroth her to another man the next day, and he would not return any of the gifts that Reuben had given her. Having put forth this strong opening negotiating position, Judah then proposed a new agreement. This document required that prior to the wedding, Reuben pledged himself in writing that if he died, Simon would release Leah at no cost, and Judah further insisted that the signed agreement from Simon be provided within six months of the wedding. Reuben was also required to leave his entire estate to Leah—everything that he owned at the time of the marriage and that he would acquire in the future. She would have the right to sell it, to give it as a gift, or to bequeath it to whomever she wanted. Further, under the conditions proposed by Judah, nobody, including Simon, his agents, or his heirs had the right to contest any aspects of this arrangement. However, if Simon signed the levirate release document for Leah within six months, then Reuben’s estate would return to the customary lines of inheritance. Judah had proposed a strong arrangement to protect his daughter, and Reuben was under pressure, but he signed. The agreement would be put to the test five months later, as the six-month deadline drew near. When Reuben asked Simon to sign, he refused. Judah now claimed that Reuben owed Leah all his possessions. Judah and Reuben quarreled over whether the agreement became effective at the end of six months, during the marriage, after the marriage ended, or only if Leah became bound to Simon in a levirate connection. Reuben turned to Mahalalel Hallelyah of Civitanova, a rabbi in Ancona, who stated that this was a wicked agreement because Judah pressured Reuben into making it under duress (o-nes), and, therefore, it was unenforceable. Hallelyah argued against all the provisions in the agreement. He wrote that a man could not appoint his wife as heir to all his property, although he could give it to his wife as a gift after they were married, but he emphasized that this option was irrelevant as in this case the couple was not yet married. Hallelyah asserted that Reuben’s intent was only to provide Leah with his assets if he died and she were bound to Simon, but not if Simon released her and she were able to remarry.

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 111 Hallelyah also challenged the agreement because in it Reuben promised not only to give Leah all his property, but also everything that he would acquire in the future. Hallelyah wrote that, according to Jewish law, a person cannot give away something he does not yet own or that does not yet exist. To further undermine Reuben’s agreement with Leah, Hallelyah imposed on her the impossible task of providing proof of how much property Reuben actually had at the time he made the gift to her. Hallelyah concluded that Reuben had been under great duress when he accepted this arrangement: the food was cooked, the meal was ready, and the wine was poured for the wedding, and it was at that point that Judah made his demands. If Reuben had not agreed to them and Judah had married Leah to another man, Reuben would have suffered from pain, injury, and shame. A gift given under such duress was not a gift. Finally, Hallelyah argued that when Reuben finally wrote Leah a ketubah at the time of the wedding, he had not referred to this previous agreement. Hallelyah asserted that as a later agreement, the ketubah took precedence over any earlier agreements, so the agreement was invalid. As Leah entered the marriage, Judah was in a paradoxical position. If he was too lenient in his expectations of the groom, he and his daughter might get taken advantage of. On the other hand, if he negotiated an agreement that imposed strong sanctions to protect his daughter, these demands could be construed, especially by a rabbi who supported the man’s family, as excessive coercion that might release the groom from all obligations. Indeed, Hallelyah ignored the traditional formulaic aspects of ketubot that did not usually express all the terms of prenuptial agreements. Hallelyah thus demonstrated rabbinic dexterity by finding a way to release Reuben from an agreement that might have protected Leah. The case of Reuben and Leah captures aspects of the dramas that could unfold before a wedding. In this case, when the woman’s father attempted to protect her from the possibility of blackmail by the groom’s brother, instead the bride’s father tried to blackmail the groom by imposing an onerous financial penalty on him if he did not meet their terms. After the marriage, the husband then found a rabbi who offered a way to void all the aspects of the agreement meant to protect his wife. In turn, the wife and her father took advantage of the agreement designed to protect her if her husband died, and they tried to collect all her husband’s assets during the first year of marriage while he was still alive. Each side presented adroit negotiating strategies that put financial gain over affection.43

Negotiating During Marriage Affectionate and companionate marriages rarely left documentary evidence. The records instead show the struggles between spouses—struggles often caused by inequalities that enabled the man to hold much of the authority: he controlled the assets, owned the house, earned the income, possessed greater physical strength, and enjoyed privileged standing in

112  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage the legal system, including the authority to unilaterally divorce his wife. Yet, on the other hand, a woman was not without resources. She could withhold or redirect domestic services, including sex and child rearing, and she was entitled to assets when the marriage ended, perhaps sooner if the marriage was not going smoothly, especially if she and her family negotiated well. Because of this, men were afraid that women might defy their husbands and act on their own, pursuing various activities including relationships with other men that resulted in sexual intercourse, pregnancy, or attempts to leave the marriage. Although women had little authority in rabbinic Judaism, they could still use the system to express their wishes, resist the authority of their husbands, extricate themselves from the marriage, or force their husband’s out of the house.44 In the sixteenth century in the Ancona region, a woman staged an elaborate protest against her husband’s demands. One Friday, the ritual slaughterer killed an ox, examined it, declared it kosher, and sold it to many householders for the Sabbath. The woman’s husband bought the intestines, brought them home, and told his wife to cook them for the Sabbath. When she saw what he had brought home, she berated him for his purchase of such unappetizing food and refused to prepare it, saying that it was only fit for dogs. After he left for his work as a day laborer, she brought the meat to the house of a rabbi to have it declared unkosher by telling him, “Know, kind sir, that while I was preparing this maw, in cleaning it I felt with my finger a small piece of a needle in this intestine attached to the maw. After I pressed my hand on the spot where I felt it, out came a small needle.” She showed him the place in the intestine where she claimed to have found it and said, “At this spot in the intestine I felt the needle.” However, she did not bring the needle to show him nor did she claim that she lost it. In his examination of the intestines, the rabbi did not find a needle or any perforation, sore, blood, rust, or anything else amiss that might make the meat unkosher. Nevertheless, basing himself on rabbinic precedent that any animal in which a needle was found was unfit if there were any suspicion the needle might have pierced the intestines,45 he declared the meat unfit for consumption by Jews. In basing his ruling on what the woman told him, not on what she showed him, the rabbi demonstrated that he considered her a reliable witness who was competent to report a matter with serious religious and communal implications. The rabbi sent out word that Jews should not eat any meat from this animal or any other meat that they had prepared (salted) with it. This decree caused financial damage to all the Jews who had bought the meat—about thirty families, some of whom were not able to buy other meat for the Sabbath. As a result, some of the Jews turned to Rabbi Mahalalel Hallelyah, someone who, as we have seen already, had expertise and experience in diminishing the avenues of legal redress open to women. The families hoped he would be more lenient about the meat by being stricter about rejecting the testimony of a woman.

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 113 Hallelyah noted that the previous rabbi had relied on the authority of one witness, a woman, and he suggested that after most of the Jews of the community had bought this meat, they should not depend on her testimony. He explained that as in any matter, the testimony of one witness who did not have competence over a matter was not acceptable. In this case, because the rabbi could not find any blemish on the meat, because the woman did not have the needle, and because she had previously berated her husband about not wanting to prepare the meat, there was good reason to suspect that she might have fabricated the claim that she found a needle. Hallelyah’s argument shifted to the implications of the woman’s testimony itself. He accused her of inventing the story without any consideration for the Jews of the community who had bought the meat. He further criticized the local rabbi for acting improperly by making a judgment based on something that he himself had not seen and about which he did not have suitable evidence, by not considering the inability of the local Jews to honor the Sabbath with proper meat meals, and by ignoring the financial losses of many Jews who had to discard the meat they bought. These considerations, he wrote, were important in determining what was kosher and what was not. Hallelyah’s argument is illustrative of rabbis who were willing to negotiate aspects of fundamental Jewish practices based on extra-legal principles. In this case, he was willing to overlook concerns that involved the dietary laws—especially because a woman raised them in retaliation against her husband—in order to ensure that the Sabbath could be celebrated fully and to avoid financial losses. In this case, a woman used her religious knowledge to undermine her husband, to release herself from disdainful housework, and to protest the food her husband had bought for the family. She took this step publicly, possibly with the collusion of a local rabbi who accepted her testimony in a serious ritual matter. Things got out of hand for the community in the course of Sabbath preparations, but by following these tactics, she tried to send a message to her husband and perhaps to other women (and their husbands) in town about husbands who made unwelcome demands on their wives.46 This scenario shows that despite the advantages that husbands and rabbis had over women, women might try to rebel. We do not know how often this happened in this marriage or in others, but we can see the potential for subversion on the part of women by using Jewish law to resist their husbands’ authority.

Negotiating the Dissolution of a Marriage Jewish tradition always had provisions for a man to unilaterally divorce his wife. Over the centuries, attempts were made, such as by Rabenu

114  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage Gershom in medieval Germany, to limit this practice, but husbandinitiated divorce continued due to strong biblical and rabbinic support for the right of men to possess this authority. According to the Bible, after a man married a woman and had intercourse with her, if she did not find favor in his eyes because he discovered an unspecified “indecent matter” (ervat davar), he wrote her a bill of divorce. From this expression, later Jewish tradition saw two different grounds for divorce. Some rabbis understood it to mean that she lost favor in his eyes in any matter (davar), however trivial—because she spoiled his food, for example—which allowed men significant latitude to divorce their wives. Other rabbis stressed the indecent (i.e. sexual) aspect of the matter (ervat).47 Although those rabbis who put the emphasis on “any” matter lowered the threshold for frivolous divorces, they also relaxed the requirements for divorce generally, which made it easier for women to get out of difficult marriages. Those rabbis who put the emphasis on the word “indecent” raised the threshold for frivolous divorces, and made the requirements for divorce more stringent, which made it more difficult for women to extricate themselves from bad marriages. Although Jewish tradition and practice gave men latitude to divorce their wives and to remarry, there were no provisions for women to divorce their husbands. Yet if a man did not consent to his wife’s request for a divorce, there were ways for her to initiate divorce and to have her husband forced to divorce her. Rabbinic discourse used a combination of terms about forcing divorce without defining what kind of force or what kind of financial settlement the woman was entitled to. Nor did they recognize fully that because of the varying circumstances in which they lived they did not always have the complete authority to enforce their rulings. Early rabbinic tradition, beginning in the Mishnah, allowed Jews to use force (kofin) to compel a man to divorce his wife, which could include having non-Jews beat him. To make sure that the man expressed consent to grant the divorce, the Mishnah allowed forcing him until he said that he consented.48 The Mishnah gave a limited number of obscure reasons for which a man could be forced (although it did not state who did the forcing) to let his wife go (lehotzi)—usually his developing large and offensive defects: his having boils or polyps, or his being a gatherer (a vague term, perhaps of dung), a coppersmith, or a tanner.49 The Mishnah also included instances that say nothing about force, but specify that the wife is entitled to receive her ketubah; in these situations the man “lets [her] go and gives her ketubah” (yotzi veyiten ketubatah). These include the case of a man who vowed that his wife would not derive benefit from him for thirty days, taste a certain kind of fruit, put on one type of jewelry, go to her father’s house, a house of mourning, or a banquet, or situations in which the husband compelled his wife to do humiliating things. Later commentators on the Mishnah, not without opposition,

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 115 interpreted these specific cases as ones in which a man might have been forced to grant his wife a divorce.50 The kind of settlement the wife would receive is not always stipulated in the Mishnah. When rabbis wrote that a husband should give (yiten) his wife her ketubah, they rarely specified what they meant. This becomes particularly obvious in cases where they specifically stated she should take (notelet) the main ketubah amount, the ikar (manah or matayim), or the dowry (nedunya), and they explicitly excluded the counter-dowry (tosefet).51 In light of the range of possible settlements, subsequent interpretations of these passages about divorce involved much room for negotiation on the part of men and women alike. The Mishnah also offers cases in which women who violate the law of Moses are obliged to leave (yotzot) without their ketubot: serving untithed food, having intercourse while menstruating, baking Sabbath loaves without following proper ritual procedures (taking halah), and not fulfilling a vow. Similarly, a woman would have to leave her marriage without a ketubah for violating Jewish customs of modesty such as going out with her hair unpresentable (parua), spinning in the market, speaking freely with men, cursing her husband’s parents, or speaking loudly “like a virago” (kolanit).52 Because early rabbis in the Mishnah restricted divorce to matters of indecency, according to the Talmud, some women cited various forms of sexual or religious impropriety or dysfunction in order to end their marriages (yotzot venotlot) and receive their full ketubah amounts. For example, a woman might admit to infidelity: “I am impure for you.” She might confess to serious religious offenses: “May I be taken from the Jews.” Or she might accuse her husband of impotence: “Heaven is between me and you.” Some rabbis, seeing these statements as fabricated excuses for women to leave their husbands and to take up with other men, tried to eliminate them as reasons for divorce. In the case of a claim of sterility or impotence, some rabbis would not permit a forced divorce and required the couple to remain together for ten years to fully verify any fertility issues, while other rabbis were willing to explore the possibility of forcing the man in a childless couple to divorce his wife.53 In talmudic discussions, rabbis continued to raise the issue of whether the limited early mishnaic list of reasons for forcing a man to divorce his wife could be expanded or not and to clarify whether force meant only social coercion—words—or whether it also included physical violence—whips.54 Perhaps the most complex cases involving forcing a man to divorce his wife were those of a “rebellious” husband or wife. According to early rabbinic tradition, which never defined what the term meant, a rebellious wife (moredet) lost part of her ketubah amount each week of rebelliousness until the funds were exhausted,55 and a rebellious husband had to add to his wife’s ketubah each week. Subsequently, the Talmud discussed

116  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage three vague types of rebellion. In one case, a husband said, “I will not maintain nor support my wife.” Rabbis could not agree whether he could be forced to divorce his wife and pay her ketubah (let her go and give her ketubah) or he had to continue to support her, but in a separate residence, because “No one can live with a serpent in the same basket.”56 In the case of a wife who said, “I like him but wish to torment him,” the Talmud also presented competing views about whether or not to force her to live with him so that the two of them could reconcile.57 In cases in which a wife said, “He is repulsive to me” (ma-is alai), the Talmud offered no ruling about whether to force him to divorce her or not—this is one of the terms that Rosa Montalcino used to break her engagement with Isaac Danuti. Italian Jewish views on divorce in general and divorces initiated by women in particular were based on competing medieval precedents from Islamic and Catholic societies. These influences intensified the traditional Jewish ambivalence towards forcing a man to divorce his wife. Muslim law allowed a court to force a man to divorce his wife at her request, usually in exchange for her waiving rights to her dowry and other property.58 Because of the flexible procedures for divorce in Muslim courts, Jewish women often tried to resolve marital difficulties in these courts rather than Jewish ones. Not only did rabbis in Islamic countries recognize these divorces granted by Islamic authorities, but they were more motivated to meet the needs of Jewish women in rabbinic courts. In subsequent rabbinic literature, including in early modern Italy, rabbinic practices from Islamic countries continued to exert an influence on behalf of Jewish women. For example, although the Talmud did not discuss whether a man whose wife found him repulsive could be forced to divorce her, writing in medieval Islamic Egypt, Maimonides asserted that the Talmud allowed rabbis to force a man in this situation to divorce his wife immediately. However, in order to receive the divorce, she could not collect her ketubah—an example of the kinds of financial concessions women might have had to make to get out of a marriage.59 In Europe, the development of the Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage precluded most divorce in the strict sense, that is to say, a complete termination of the marriage, and instead, it only allowed a religiously sanctioned separation of a married couple, making it difficult for a Catholic woman to end a bad, if not dangerous, marriage with a repulsive husband and to marry another man. Marital separation or an imperfect divorce from bed, board, and cohabitation (separatio or divortium a mensa et thoro) was the Church’s attempt to balance charges of male violence and female infidelity with Church control of marriages. The Church tried to require that all marital separations meet its approval, despite the possibility of great physical or emotional danger to women in case of a delay in receiving permission.60

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 117 Hence, rabbis in Christian Europe, where Jewish women did not have access to the flexible divorce practices of Muslim courts, had little incentive to force divorces at the request of Jewish women, and they did not accept the view that husbands whose wives found them repulsive should be forced to grant divorces. These rabbis, like Catholics, adopted the idea of separation from bed and board instead of divorce, and as this practice came to be adopted by Jews, married Jewish women found a new avenue to gain control over some assets as well as the right to live separately from their husbands. Another reason that European rabbis were against granting a full divorce to a woman who requested one was their fear that Jewish women would become what they considered “arrogant.” These rabbis did not want women acting on their own to dissolve marriages; one went so far as to assert that “If a woman is able to free herself from under her husband by saying that she does not want him, there would not remain a single daughter of Abraham living under her husband; they would set their eyes on other men and rebel against their husbands, thus it is good to get away from compulsion [in divorces].”61 Given their limited options, some Italian Jewish women wishing to extricate themselves from a marriage claimed that they had been unchaste. This could have been a way to obtain a forced divorce, albeit with a potential loss of assets. For example, in mid-sixteenth-century Siena, as part of her negotiating strategy with her husband, a woman referred to as Reuben’s wife, claimed that she had committed adultery. According to rabbinic records, she told Reuben, without offering any specific proof, that she had had sexual relations with a man named Simon several years earlier. Reuben continued to believe that she had been chaste and proper, but thought that she might have taken an interest in another man, so he consulted others who suggested he divorce her. Meir Katzenellenbogen of Padua (Maharam Padova) saw her self-incrimination as possibly a conventional complaint used by women to extricate themselves from marriage. Wives’ common complaints included being revolted by a husband’s “crushed and broken condition,” his poverty, or professional gambling, although wives could also be motivated to seek divorce because they were attracted to other men.62 In general, rabbis were very cautious about whether to pursue accusations of adultery against a woman because in doing so they might undermine the legitimacy of all her children, disrupt the life of the entire family, and bring shame to everybody, with the end result that the woman, her life in shambles, might convert to Christianity. Additionally, because rabbis did not actually have the authority to mete out the traditional punishments for adultery, the potential of having this weakness exposed was distasteful as it would further limit their standing in the eyes of the community.63 In this particular case, Reuben divorced his wife, but he continued to love her, and, convinced of her

118  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage proper conduct, he remarried her, leaving us to imagine what kind of concessions she required of him the second time around. The twists and turns of a woman seeking a divorce from an epileptic husband appear in a mid-fifteenth-century case discussed by the Italian rabbi Joseph Colon (1420–1480). The woman sought divorce, claiming that her husband was repulsive to her (ma-is hu alehah), and had she known about his condition, she would never have married him. She wanted the rabbis to force him to divorce her and to pay her dowry, ketubah, and counter-dowry. He replied that the onset of his epilepsy occurred after he married her, so at the time of the marriage, he did not conceal it from her. Moreover, he stated that it had not bothered her throughout many years of marriage during which they had produced many children together, and it only became an issue after she developed an interest in another man. He charged that she was a rebellious wife and noted that epilepsy was not one of the conditions for which a man could be forced to divorce his wife. Thereupon, she changed her approach and asked for a separation instead of a divorce. She wanted her husband to pay her so she could leave him and live in her father’s house. Her husband replied that she had no right to her dowry while he was alive nor would he provide her with any jewelry or clothing. Rather, he said that she could get a job “because a woman is not so lowly in these times that she does not profit by the work of her hands.” He offered to provide her with an amount that he saw fit, from which he would deduct what she could earn herself. In response, Colon took an ambiguous position towards her case. He accepted that her silence about her husband’s epilepsy in the past did not mean that she accepted his condition. Colon suggested that she might not have known that she could protest, especially in such a complicated matter. Colon asserted that if her claims were true, then her husband was obligated (hayav) to divorce her and make a financial settlement with her. Colon, however, also wrote that it was not in his power as a rabbi to force (lakof) her husband to divorce her, and he made a distinction between her husband’s acting on his own obligation to divorce her and Colon’s ability as a rabbi to force him. Colon’s reply highlights the inability of rabbis, especially in Catholic Europe, to intervene in such situations because of the limitations on their authority and their reluctance to break up families, no matter how dysfunctional. As a result of these impediments to take assertive action in forcing a divorce, Colon raised arguments that undermined this woman’s claims. He quoted a medieval rabbi: “Although epilepsy is a blemish on a woman, there is no reason to consider it a blemish on a man.” Colon went on to ratify the husband’s right, based on local custom, to retain his wife’s possessions and to refuse to support her while she lived in her father’s house, stating that a woman was supported only in exchange for the services she provided to her husband. Colon affirmed, based on the Talmud and Maimonides,

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 119 that a woman was obligated to serve her husband by washing his face and feet, mixing his drink, standing ready for his instructions, and serving his needs. Nevertheless, Colon wrote that eventually she would be able to claim that she could no longer tolerate having intercourse with him. Hence, because epilepsy was not acceptable grounds for a rabbi to force a man to divorce his wife, Colon shifted the discussion to the limitations it imposed on her ability to serve him. If she could no longer tolerate intercourse with him, he could not force her and she could be removed for not fulfilling these marital duties.64 Wife beating tested the boundaries of the right of a man to impose his will on his wife by force as well as her abilities to extricate herself from the marriage. In particular, it raised questions about whether rabbis had the ability to respond to a woman’s protests about the way in which her husband treated her and whether they were able to force a husband to divorce his wife and to ensure a financial settlement for her.65 Rabbis made a distinction between unjustified violence against one’s wife and hitting that served the purpose of teaching obedience to a disobedient wife. “Hitting her in the manner in which women, modest virgins, and those who observe the rules are chastised” was considered to be a husband’s duty and an acceptable part of Jewish family life. In Rome, the community leaders elevated hitting one’s wife to the level of a divine commandment and warned one woman that if she were not obedient to her husband, then he would be able “to do with her as the Torah permits.” One rabbi stated, “It is suitable to whip the woman on account of an evil report about her. Behold her husband promised to give her a great and mighty blow and then throw her out of his house.” In their discussion of this case, rabbis did not protest against this incitement to violence.66 In one mid-seventeenth-century case, a rabbi was consulted concerning a marital conflict that had been triggered by a husband beating his wife. According to the records, a man named Reuben became enraged at his wife Fiammetta because he found her annoying, and he beat her with an almond branch and a broken pot. That evening, when Reuben wanted to sleep with her, she refused, telling him that she was impure because it was her menstrual period, so they slept separately in their own beds. She told her neighbors, however, that she had not been impure, but rather full of anger and hatred for him because he hit her. When the case was put to Mahalalel Hallelyah, the issue was not Reuben’s violence against her but rather the questions of whether Fiammetta’s testimony was reliable, whether she needed ritual immersion, and whether Reuben had to refrain from intercourse with her until she underwent immersion. In this case the question became whether her anger at being beaten was an adequate pretext for having misled him. Hallelyah argued that in such a case, some distance would be advisable until things cooled down and they were at peace with each other; this behavior, Hallelyah continued, was expected of an affluent husband, unlike a peasant who knows no shame, hitting

120  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage his wife and then having intercourse with her—according to the Talmud. Hence, the rabbi suggested that Reuben and Fiammetta should separate until the two of them were at peace, for, he said, a man cannot force his wife to have intercourse with him, which was Colon’s point in the case of the epileptic husband. Yet Hallelyah’s overall argument gives the impression that violence was an expected part of married life that could be resolved by reconciling the couple. Thus, Hallelyah enabled what was likely a cycle of violence, temporary separation, and reconciliation. Fiammetta tried break out of this situation, but as long as rabbis tried to reconcile her with her abusive husband she had little success.67 Highlighting the acceptance of violence in Italian Jewish marriages, almost every Italian rabbinic responsum about wife beating contained variations of the term for “cruelty” (ahzariut), sometimes accompanied by indications of the man’s sexual impotence. This showed the difference in degree between what was considered justified, sanctioned physical chastisement of a woman by her husband, and excessive violence, similar to the Catholic notion of savagery (saevitia), a level of marital cruelty that gradually became grounds among Catholic authorities for a forced separation. Among Jews, if a man regularly and publicly abused his wife physically and emotionally he could be forced to divorce her.68 The contradictions of Italian rabbinic discourse about forcing a violent man to divorce his wife are highlighted by Yehiel ben Azriel Trabot of Ascoli (c. 1512–1590), a rabbi in sixteenth-century Ferrara. A woman, described as enlightened and pious, declared that her husband was repulsive to her (ma-is alai) because he did not treat her properly, and he physically and verbally abused her, squandered his assets, including giving them to charity instead of supporting the family, vowed to give his possessions to the state treasury, and forced her to have intercourse with him during her menstrual period. She asked the rabbis to force him to divorce her, and they based their responses on her presentation. Trabot listed the medieval rabbinic authorities, most of whom were from Muslim lands, in favor of forcing divorce for reasons of repulsion. Against these rabbis, Trabot presented other rabbis, mostly from Catholic Europe, who opposed forcing divorce on the grounds of repulsion. Their main reason, not explicitly stated by him but present in the texts he mentioned, was their fear of women acting on their own and seeking support to dissolve marriages. Trabot stated that “even though her husband abused her and wasted his money, these were not good grounds [to force divorce].” He also ruled out forcing divorce when a woman claimed her husband compelled her to have intercourse with him during menstruation because witnesses could not substantiate her charge. Trabot then cited a common maxim meant to reassure women of the merits of marriage—any marriage: “It is better to dwell in grief with a burden than to dwell in widowhood.”69 Nevertheless, heightening the ambivalence of his response, and

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 121 despite his arguments against forcing a divorce, he eventually ruled in favor of forced divorce in extreme cases.70 On occasion, rabbis were willing to force a man who beat his wife to divorce her. Indeed, sometimes the same rabbi who justified wife beating was prepared to support a forced divorce when he felt that there had not been sufficient provocation for administering blows. Ambivalence towards cases involving men who abused their wives was due to a tension between the desire to protect a man from being forced to do something that he was supposed to do of his own free will, and the desire to protect a woman in an untenable, abusive situation. Male violence could lead to murder,71 but rabbis nevertheless tried to reconcile the couple so the woman would return to live with her husband.72 Three very different factors sustained rabbinic reluctance to force a man to divorce his wife. In matters of family relations, they hoped that the threat of divorce with its possibility of a woman’s collecting assets might have given the man second thoughts that would serve as an incentive for him to maintain the household and treat her with civility and respect. Conversely, the possibility, perhaps stronger, for a woman to lose significant assets and even her basic necessities might have been an incentive for her to continue the marriage by being more obedient and docile. In matters of community relations with both Jews and Catholics, the ability of rabbis to impose their will on the Jewish community was often limited by powerful Jewish lay leaders, who opposed rabbinic authority, or Christian authorities, who opposed divorce and rabbinic authority. Hence, when rabbis reached a decision, they might not have been in a position to implement it, and trying to do so would have tested their authority, thus revealing to the community the impotence that rabbis would have preferred to hide. Finally, families usually wanted to keep couples together and “peaceful” and were afraid that, separated from their families, women might either enjoy independence or find themselves in dangerous situations. Nevertheless, rabbis, Jewish community leaders, and family members were concerned for women who were at risk in their marriages, and they were aware that attempts to keep couples together could have the effect of limiting the safety of women and of encouraging coercion by men. Because they were sometimes sympathetic to the plight of women—­ especially those who made their demands known and who initiated attempts to force their husbands to divorce them or to settle with them financially—rabbis, community leaders, and families might cooperate to extricate women at risk of harm in their marriages. Dysfunctional marriages were a test of rabbinic authority because, although rabbis feared that women might take initiatives in leaving their husbands, they also feared that men might excessively abuse their wives. In other words, there was a level of acceptance of a man treating his wife

122  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage like a servant, rewarding and punishing her as he saw necessary. This situation was created by assumptions that a woman needed to be married, and a man needed a wife as well as guidance on how to treat her. Yet physical violence and emotional torment did not produce any automatic protection of the victim, and the question remained as to the limits of acceptable discipline and how to enforce them. Ultimately, rabbinic authority was put to the test in determining the point at which rabbis would attempt to force a man to divorce his wife.

Collection and Seizure of Assets by Married Women What kinds of redress did a married woman have if she was in a bad marriage and she needed access to her assets? For example, her husband might have been managing her assets poorly, and she was afraid that he would waste them all, or creditors were demanding that her husband pay a debt, which might deplete assets owed to her. In such cases, some married women tried to collect (ligbot, legabot) their assets from their still-living husbands (mehahayyim, mehayim) at a Jewish or a Christian court, and others tried to seize (litpos, lehahzik, lakahat) them before they were legally entitled to do so. The prospect of such assertive moves by a wife was discussed in the Talmud. As usual, at least two opposing points of view emerged, and these served as the basis for subsequent discourse. According to one, “The ketubah amount may not be collected from a living husband,” until he died or divorced his wife. It considered the entire ketubah as a debt that, like other mercantile debts, a creditor could not call in before it was due.73 According to the other, a married woman may seize property at least to cover her sustenance (mezonot), if not her ketubah.74 This view saw the dowry like a debt that could be collected whenever the creditor (in this case, the wife) wanted. Discussions about collection or seizure involved each financial component of the marital agreement. These funds were usually discussed with little terminological precision. Although the documents tried to make a distinction between the various types of assets that each member of the couple brought into the marriage, the texts switched between the specific term for dowry, nedunya, and the general term for the marriage contract, ketubah. In general rabbis were divided over what assets a woman could retrieve from her husband while he was still alive. One tendency was to allow women to collect what their own families had supplied for the marriage, especially if the prenuptial agreement allowed her collection while her husband was alive, if the dowry had been recorded on a document separate from the rest of the marital agreements, or if a woman was at risk and needed the assets to cover her sustenance.75 In around 1524, Paccina, the wife of Reuben of Lucca and daughter of Vidal di Camerino from the La Marche area near Ancona, went off to a

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 123 family wedding, taking with her money, jewelry, clothing, and cosmetics. Her husband accused her of stealing them, but she claimed that he had originally given them to her for her trip. She did not immediately return from the wedding, and after seven months away, she declared that she never wanted to return to Reuben because he was impotent. He denied the charges, asked her to come home, and requested that she return the assets to him. For absconding with “his” property, he turned to Rabbi Azriel Diena and accused her of rebelliousness, licentiousness, and greed. In responding, Diena encouraged the usual approach to situations of impotence, infertility, and non-consummation: she must remain with her husband for ten years, quietly waiting for God to reward her with her husband’s having an erection, and only if nothing happened during that time could she make a claim of impotence. Diena was concerned that if he accepted Paccina’s claim of her husband’s impotence, like other women, she “would learn from the words of the rabbis how to lie.” He cautioned that the more a woman insisted on getting a divorce or collecting her ketubah, the less credible she was about her charges of impotence. Diena reviewed precedents that might support Paccina’s claim to her husband’s assets even after she left him. He cited the Talmud’s permission for a widow to seize assets to cover her maintenance, invoked a talmudic controversy over a woman taking the law into her own hands to protect her interests and to sustain herself,76 and raised the possibility of Paccina using her husband’s assets as a way to pay her dowry and ketubah so she could support herself when she left him. Diena then mentioned a rabbinic source against a wife taking her husband’s assets to cover her ketubah, which could not be collected while her husband was alive. Diena ultimately ruled against Paccina. He wrote that if she had any issue with her husband she had to first return everything that she had taken from him and then bring her complaints against him in person before a Jewish court and not through a representative—it is certainly interesting to see that he had no problem with her appearing in court. She should not take the law into her own hands to protect her interests, wrote Diena, but rather, the court should learn why she rebelled against her husband and left him. Accordingly, to resolve the issue, Diena declared an edict of excommunication against her and her supporters that required her to return all assets to her husband within thirty days, but he allowed her to keep 25 ducats for clothing and jewelry until the court reached a final settlement between her and her husband.77 To conclude his discussion, Diena praised women who were obedient to their husbands and condemned women who rebelled against them. He recited the usual paeans to the domestic role of women that included serving and pleasing their husbands. He applauded women who renounced their past by forgetting their fathers, their mothers, and the land of their birth to devote themselves exclusively to their husbands, avoiding any contact with other men. Finally, invoking the Bible, Diena asserted the

124  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage crux of the matter: “The man can marry many women, but she is imprisoned, ‘and all her glory is inside’ (Psalm 45:13).” On the issue of a wife seizing assets from her husband while he was still alive, rabbis further debated whether this might be permissible after many years of marital strife. In the late sixteenth century, Zalman Katz, a rabbi in Mantua, wanted all women to be able to collect assets from their husbands at a time of strife. Katz justified his assertion based on his interpretation of the principle of equity between a husband and a wife formulated in their Ashkenazic engagement document (sefer tenaim): “they will conduct themselves with love and the two of them shall control all their assets with equality and neither will take it from the other”—principles that he confirmed were not contrary to what he saw as the biblical injunction that a man must rule over his wife.78 Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi ruled otherwise. His basic premise was that if a woman could collect assets whenever she wanted, including against her husband’s wishes, a situation of equality would not exist because she would be ruling over him. Actually, he continued, the Ashkenazic engagement text did not mean that the man and the woman would have equal control, but rather, he explained, each spouse had a different task in controlling property. For now, the man controlled everything by enjoying the profits, and in the future, after he died, the woman would control everything because a lien on it protected the assets for her. If the woman seized any property from her husband and he could not enjoy its profits, then his control over all the property would be incomplete and unequal. If the man concealed any property in order to avoid his wife’s lien on it, then her control would be incomplete.79 Ashkenazi further asserted that if a man wasted any assets, one way to protect both spouses’ interests was for the woman to collect the remaining assets and to buy immoveable property with them. Her husband would enjoy the profits from it but would no longer be able to jeopardize the principal. This would protect his flow of income and assure her of support at the end of the marriage, while maintaining the marriage in the present. Ashkenazi also discussed the tension between a man’s wife and his creditors. If he owed more than he possessed, did his wife or the creditors have first claim on his assets? On the one hand, Jewish law tried to protect the wife’s assets held by her husband, especially those she brought with her into the marriage. On the other hand, if the wife’s assets were privileged over the debts owed to a creditor, men might shelter their assets from their creditors by claiming they were mortgaged to their wives. And if creditors experienced these kinds of losses, then they would be less likely to lend money, if at all—especially to the poor, who were in the most need. This discussion then extended beyond issues connected with marital finances to the question of whether Jewish and Christian creditors should be treated differently. On this matter, Katz’s support of Jewish women’s collecting assets from their husbands was accompanied by a

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 125 willingness to dismiss their husbands’ obligations to Christian creditors. Ashkenazi argued—either out of a sense of good interfaith relations or as part of his attempt to limit women’s access to funds while their husbands were alive—that stealing from Christians was wrong; he went on to claim that when Christian courts learned about the practice, they would not look favorably upon Jews, even if, according to Katz, Christians in fact used courts to steal from Jews. The collection and seizure of assets by a married woman was a way for her to initiate a separation from her husband. In the case of a woman leaving her husband, some rabbis, following the assumption that she was but a temporary member of his family, were willing to allow her to take her family’s contribution to the marriage or her entitlement for when it ended, but other rabbis demanded that she return everything. Ultimately, the issue was one of the woman’s obedience and service to her husband, which raises the question about her sources of support during marital conflict and after the breakup of a marriage.

Conclusion Marriage united a man and a woman, and it also linked families. The discourse about marriage paid little attention to love but rather to the families and to relations between men: fathers, husbands, and brothers. The blurring of boundaries between two families with different, and often competing, interests resulted in attempts to mark the boundaries more clearly, especially around finances and honor. To protect assets and honor, families employed several negotiating strategies and face-saving fictions, sometimes up until the final moments before the wedding. For example, in a marriage involving a couple from two different communities, they balanced one family’s right to determine the customs followed at the wedding against financial trade-offs made by the other side. To obscure inequalities between families or to inflate the appearance of wealth, women displayed borrowed “gifts” from their husbands’ families, which they would later return to them. Marriage on Friday was a widespread event. The timing, however, raised the stakes in the negotiations between families, especially when the bride’s family wanted to prevent her from ending up in a levirate bond in the future. Last-minute negotiations at Friday weddings might have taken place after banquet had been prepared and the guests were assembled; in addition to the social pressure to start the festivities, there was also the fear that any delay might lead to a violation of the Sabbath. Necessary wedding-related formalities, such as signing the ketubah, making the symbolic exchange of property, consummating the union, and then, if the man had doubts about his bride’s virginity, convening a court the next day all involved activities proscribed on the Sabbath. Once the wedding was over, negotiations sometimes continued on the morning after. In

126  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage practice, negotiating sometimes continued throughout a marriage. Central issues were the ability of a woman to act on her own volition to initiate divorce, to have her husband forced to give her a bill of divorce, and to collect assets while she was still married. The ketubah was a potential source of both protection and distress for a woman. Should a marriage end, a woman had access to assets—in theory. Yet the limited liquidity of these assets might have made it necessary for her to negotiate with her husband in order to gain control over them. He could gain an advantage over her by using physical force, threatening abandonment, or charging her with disobedience. She could claim assets as part of a settlement with him or seize them even before the marriage ended. These situations created a power struggle between husbands and wives; and the balance of power could be upset by the involvement of family, community, or religious and secular authorities. Husbands, however, had the advantage because they almost always held the assets, owned the house, and could issue or veto a divorce. Moreover, the lack of clarity about what a ketubah was and how much it was worth, in addition to issues over entitlement to gifts, could impede a woman from receiving all the assets stipulated in the prenuptial agreement. As a result, the ketubah did not necessarily offer her security during the marriage or a settlement when it ended. The greatest danger was for assets to pass from her family to that of her husband’s. This would threaten her family’s assets as well as their honor when deliberations involved determining who was at fault in matters such as violence, rebellion, infertility, impotence, sexual dysfunction, or extra-marital indiscretion. Rabbis accepted corporal punishment as a way to discipline wives, servants, and children. They intervened in such matters only when they considered beatings cruel, unprovoked, or excessive. Similarly, rabbis showed a reluctance to force divorce when a man was impotent, mentally unstable, epileptic, or an apostate to another religion. These constraints on forcing divorce point to the inability of rabbis to impose their will due to limitations by the Jewish community, the secular government, or popular resistance in addition to rabbinic concerns about the remarriage of women, a practice that confounded the boundaries surrounding men, women, families, children, and assets. In short, rabbis wanted to keep marriage intact, and to do so, they stressed the subordinate position of women. Several competing considerations came into play during a marriage. Men had to balance the extent to which they wanted to exercise control over their wives against the possibility that their wives might rebel and attempt to acquire assets from them. Women had to weigh how much they wanted to leave a marriage against the financial concessions they might have had to make. Rabbis and Jewish communities had to weigh their fears of women asserting themselves against the danger posed by

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 127 husbands using violence against their wives. Finally, rabbis and communities had to consider whether they wanted either to make bold assertions of their authority to protect women in danger or to avoid intervening in order not to lose honor, as they did not actually possess the necessary power to enforce their decisions. The mechanisms of engagement, betrothal, and marriage were part of a larger structure that consisted of relationships between rabbis, communities, families, and secular authorities. Individuals used—or c­ ircumvented— the system to meet their needs. In negotiations for marriage and its termination, the site for self-expression was often, especially for women, at the time of death, either of the woman or of her husband.

Notes 1 Modena, Kitvei, no. 1. 2 Modena, Hayei, fol 25a; Cohen, Life, 146. 3 Hallelyah, Mehalalel, “Halel gamur,” no. 27, UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), bx. 7.2. 4 Tos. (Tosafot) Sukah 25b; TB (Talmud bavli) Ketubot 56a; MT (Mishneh torah) Ishut 10:2; Rama, SA (Shulhan arukh) EH (Even ha-ezer) 55:1–2, 6:1.2a. Rabbinic citations in regular font are from the Responsa Project 18+. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2010; those in italics are from printed works, accompanied by the name of the author or editor when necessary for clarity. 5 Adelman, “Virginity,” 194–199; TB Nidah 64b; SA YD (Yoreh deah) 193. 6 Book of Tobit 8:1–4, 6:16–17, 8:4; Lombardi, “Fidanzamenti,” 213; Zarri, Recinti, 203–250; Fazio, “Percorsi,” 161; Klapisch-Zuber, “Introduzione,” VII‑XV. 7 On the nature of the customs, see Weinstein, Marriage Rituals. 8 Esther 1:22. 9 Genesis 3:16. 10 Modena, Ziknei, no. 103. 11 Boksenboim, Rieti, no. 252; on Arli see, Marx, “Al odot ha-avarato she r. yosef ish aril,” 171–184; idem, “Marx, ‘ R. yosef ish aril’,” 271–304. 12 JNUL (Jewish National and University Library, now called NLI, National Library of Israel) 8* 2007, no. 33; see PY (Pahad yitzhak), “Nedunyah,” 5:16a. 13 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, 224–227. 14 MG (Moscow-Guenzberg) 356.14 fols. 207a‑207b, cf. Modena, Igrot, no. 286. 15 Bartinuro on M. (Mishnah) Ketubot 1:1. 16 Tos. Ketubot 3a, 7a; Tos. Gittin 18a MM (Magid mishnah) MT Ishut 10:14. 17 Lacave, Medieval Ketubot, 77–768; Yoel, “Ketubot,” 266–267. 18 TP (Talmud of Palestine) Ketubot 1:1; Tur/BY (Bet yosef)/SA OH 339:4; SA EH 4:5; Sperber, Darkah, 75. 19 TB Ketubot 4b; TP Ketubot 1:1; MT Ishut 10:14 20 M. Ketubot 1:1; Rashi and Ran, TB Ketubot 2a; Adelman, “Virginity,” 179–213. 21 TB Ketubot 2a. 22 TB Ketubot 3a. 23 Rabenu yeroham, toldot adam vehavah 22: 2, folio 184, column 4.

128  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 4 Stow, “Knotty Problem,” 142–143. 2 25 Kolbo, no. 75. 26 Adelman, “Virginity,” 179–213. 27 TB Ketubot 11b. 28 SA EH 64:3. 29 Tos. Gitin 18a. 30 TB Ketubot 57a; PY, “Be-ilah beshabbat,” 1:38b, 3: c. 498. 31 Friemann, Kidushin venisuin, 46. 32 PY, (Pahad yitzhak) “Be-ilah beshabat,” 1:38b, 3: c. 496–498, cf. SA EH 64.5, 66.1–2; Malkiel, “The Burden of the Past,” 122–123. 33 JNUL 4* 617, no. 138. 34 TB Ketubot 7a. 35 SA OH 280:2. 36 TB Nidah 64b; PY, “Be-ilah beshabat,” 1:38b, 3: c. 496. 37 BY/SA OH 339:4-5 vs. SA OH 280; ET, (Encylcopedia talmudit, Responsa Project 18+.) “Be-ilat betulah,” 4: 68. 38 TB Nidah 38a-b; based on Ruth 4:13; see Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 42. 39 PY, “Be-ilah beshabat,” 2:38b, 3: c. 496. 40 PY, “Be-ilah beshabat,” 1:38b, 3: c. 496. 41 Hallelyah, “Halel gamur,” no. 27. 42 JNUL 8* 933.70. 43 Hallelyah, “Halel gamur,” no. 32. 44 Fano, no. 55. 45 SA YD 47. 46 Hallelyah, “Halel gamur,” no. 55; cf. Adelman, “Shehita, Women,” 18: 436–437. 47 Deuteronomy 24:1–4; M. Gittim 9:10. 48 M. Gittin 9:8; M. Arakhin 5:6. 49 M. Ketubot 7:9–10. 50 M. Ketubot 5:5, 7:1, 7:5, and M. Sota 6:1; Provencal, no. 103. 51 M. Yevamot 14:1; SA EH 154; see Friedman, “Termination,” 29–55; Shapira, “Gerushin begin me-ishah,” 117–153; Warhaftig, “Kefiat get,” 153–216; Greenberg-Kobrin, “Civil Enforceability of Religious Prenuptials,” section II. 52 M. Ketubot 7:6. 53 M. Nedarim 11:12; TB Nedarim 91a; Shilo, “Impotence as a Grounds for Divorce,” 127–143. 54 TB Ketubot 77a; SA EH 154:1. 55 M. Ketubot 5:7; Ketubot 63a. 56 TB Ketubot 77a. 57 Kafinan lah, TB Ketubot 63b. 58 Qu’ran 2:222. 59 MT Ishut 14:8. 60 Other terms included separatio tori et cohabitationis, divortium imperfectum, divortium semi-plenum, and divortium quoad torum et cohabitationem; see Esmein, Mariage en droit canonique 2, 90; Forbes, Canonical Separation of Consorts, 94–95; Helmholtz, Marriage Litigation, 100–107; Phillips, Putting Asunder, 1–39; Coulton, Medieval Panorama, 636, 643; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 455, 510–511, 559; Brook, “Marriage and Society in the Central Middle Ages,” 17–34. 61 Rosh 43:8. 62 Maharam Padova, no. 34. 63 Adelman, “Law and Love,” 287–291. 64 Colon, Hadashim, no. 24.

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 129 65 Adelman, “Law and Love,” 283–303; idem, review of Graetz, Silence Is Deadly, 144; idem, “A Disgrace for All Jewish Men,” 21–23. 66 JNUL 8* 101, nos. 34–42, especially no. 36. 67 Hallelyah, “Halel gamur,” no. 64, JTSA (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) 7228; on wife-beating in the Talmud, see TB Pesahim, 49b. 68 On forced divorce, for example, see Or zarua 3, Baba kama 3, no. 161; on impotence and violence, see Provencal, nos. 102–103 69 TB Kiddushin 7a. 70 “Ma-arivei nahal,” no. 46,JTSA 7085; Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 188. 71 Simonsohn, Milan, nos. 444, 445, 465, 2666, 2667, 2753, 2758, 2764; PY, “Halitzah,” fol. 29a. 72 Stow and Stow, “Donne ebree a Roma,” 82–87 and 105–106; K. Stow, “Hayim vehevrah,” 60; idem, Jews in Rome 1–2, nos. 93, 128, 129, 137, 292, 394, 451, 562, 1066, 1203, 1210, 1211, 1732, 1899; idem, “Marriages,” 463, 472, 473; Diena, no. 121, where it was the woman who hit the man in his genitals. 73 MT Ishut 16:3; Tur/BY/SA EH 93; Rashba 6:4. 74 TB Ketubot 96a. 75 Tur EH 118. 76 TB Baba Kama 27b. 77 Diena, no. 124. 78 Esther 1:22. 79 Provencal, no. 96–97. This series of responsa in the collection of Provencal includes those written by other rabbis and does not always make it clear when a summary or a quotation of one rabbi ends and his criticism of it begins.

Works Cited Adelman, Howard (Tzvi). “A Disgrace for All Jewish Men.” Medieval Feminist Newsletter 21 (1996): 21–23. ———. “Law and Love: The Jewish Family in Early Modern Italy.” Continuity and Change 16 (2001): 283–303. ———. “Review: ‘Silence Is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating’, Naomi Graetz.” Shofar 19 (2001): 144–147. ———. “Shehitah, Women,” in Encyclopedia Judaica (second edition). Edited by Fred Skolnick. Detroit: Macmillan, 2007, 18:436–437. ———. “Virginity: Women’s Body as a State of Mind: Destiny Becomes Biology,” in The Jewish Body in the Early Modern Period. Edited by Maria Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri. Leiden: Brill, 2008, 179–213. Baumgarten, Elisheva. Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medeival Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Boksenboim, Yacob, ed. Igrot beit rieti. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1987. Brook, Christopher N. L. “Marriage and Society in the Central Middle Ages,” in Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage. Edited by R. B. Outhwaite. New York: St. Martins, 1981, 17–34. Brundage, James A. Laws, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Coulton, G. G. Medieval Panorama. New York: Macmillan, 1938. Diena, Azriel. Sheelot utshuvot azriel diena. Edited by Yacob Boksenboim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1977.

130  Negotiating In and Out of Marriage Esmein, Adhémar. Le Mariage en droit canonique 2. Paris: L. Larose et Forcel, 1891.Fazio, Ina. “Percorsi coniugali nell’italia moderna,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 329–362. Forbes, Eugene A. The Canonical Separation of Consorts: An Historical Synopsis and Commentary on Canons 1128–1132. Ottowa: University of Ottawa, 1948. Freimann, Abraham Hayim. Seder kidushin venisuin ahare hatimat hatalmud. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1944. Friedman, Mordechai A. “Termination of Marriage upon the Wife’s Request: A Palestinian Ketubba Stipulation.” Proceedings, American Academy of Jewish Research 37 (1969): 29–55. Greenberg-Kobrin, Michelle. “Civil Enforceability of Religious Prenuptial Agreements.” Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems 32 (1999): 359–400. Gulak, Asher. Otzar hashetarot hanehugim beyisrael. Jerusalem: Defus hapoalim, 1926. Helmholtz, Richard. Marriage Litigation in Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Hughes, Diane. “Il matrimonio nell’italia medievale,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 5–61. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. —“Introductione,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, VII‑XV. ———. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Lacave, Jose’ Luis. Medieval Ketubot from Sephard. Translated by Eliahu Green. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2002. Lombardi, Daniela. “Fidanzamenti e matrimony dal Concilio di Trento alle reforme settecentesche,” in Storia del Matrimonio, Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 215–250. Malkiel, David. “The Burden of the Past in the Eighteenth Century: Author, Custom, and Innovation in the ‘Pahad Yitzhak.’ ” Jewish Law Annual 12 (2006): 93–132. Marx, Alexander. “Al odot ha-avarato shel r. yosef ish aril min harabanut vehashvato al keno.” Tarbitz 8:1 (1936): 171–184. ———. “R. Yosef ish arli betor moreh verosh yeshivah besiena,” in Sefer hayovel likhvod levi ginzberg lemle-at lo shivim shanah. Edited by Aron Freimann. New York: American Academy of Jewish Research, 1945, 271–304. Phillips, Roderick. Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Provencal, Moses. She-elot utshuvot. Edited by Avraham Yosef Yani. Jerusaelm: Mekhon Or Ha-mizrah and Mekhon Yerushalayim 1988. Rivlin, Yosef. Hayerushah vehatzeva-ah bamishpat ha-ivri. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1999. Shapira, M. “Gerushin begin me-isah.” Dinei yisrael 2 (1971): 117–153. Shilo, Shmuel. “Impotence as a Ground for Divorce: To the End of the Period of the Rishonim.” Jewish Law Annual 4 (1981): 127–143.

Negotiating In and Out of Marriage 131 Simonsohn, Shlomo. The Jews in the Duchy of Milan 1–4. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982–1986. Sperber, Daniel. Darkah shel halakhah: keriat nashim batorah perakim bemidiniut psikah. Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 2006. Stow, Kenneth B. and Sandra Debenedetti Stow. “Donne ebre‚ a Roma nell’eta del ghetto: affetto, dipendenza, autonomia.” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 52 (1986): 63–116. ———. “Hayim vehevrah bikhilat roma beme-ah ha-16.” Pa-amim 38 (1988): 55–66. ———. The Jews in Rome 1–2. Leiden: Brill, 1995–1997. ———. “The Knotty Problem of Shem Tov Soporto: Male Honor, Marital Initiation, and Disciplinary Structures in Mid-Sixteenth Century Jewish Rome.” Italia 13–15 (2001): 137–151. Warhaftig, Z. “Kefiat get lehalakhah ulma-aseh.” Shenaton hamishpat ha-ivri 3–4 (1976–7): 153–216. Wasserstein, Abraham. “A Marriage Contract from the Province of Arabia Nova: Notes on Papyrus Yadin 18.” Jewish Quarterly Review 80 (1989): 93–130. Weinstein, Roni. Marriage Rituals Italian Style. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Yoel, Yissahar. “Ketubot me-italia bignizei beit hasefarim.” Kiryat sefer 22 (1944–1945): 266–304. Zarri, Gabriella. Recenti: Donne, clausurea e matrimonio nella prima eta’ moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000.

5 Anticipating Death Negotiating Assets

They [the people of Montaillou] attach only slight importance to the act of marriage which they seem to regard as an ephemeral union of two perishable creatures, each issued from a different line whose own value lies in its permanence . . . The marriage bed is a piece of furniture, an ephemeral link between one lineage and another, and as such is not highly valued. (Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie)1

These are matters of ancient disputes among the deciders of Jewish law. There is almost no binding decision among them due to the different explanations and choices. Everyone builds for himself. Some are according to the authority of the permanent edicts of a city or a province . . . and others are according to the authority of private arrangements made between a man and his wife and between a father and his daughter. (Samuel Aboab)2

Introduction The succession of property from the dead to the living took one of three routes: first, prior arrangement, the prenuptial agreements made at the time of engagement; second, inheritance, the automatic succession of property; and third, bequests, wills, and testaments. Despite the clarity of these categories, fundamental problems undermine the use of available documents in researching the history of these processes. In the first case, the terms of prenuptial agreements, ketubot, and supplementary letters, most of which are no longer available, might have been changed in letters prior to marriage or in a last will and testament presented after death. In the case of property that devolved along traditional lines of inheritance, it did not usually leave a trace unless it was contested. Above all, available testaments represent a small, haphazard sample, and they do not tell the full story of the distribution of assets. Men or women who desired to have their assets—even if these were only minimal—removed from the automatic process of Jewish inheritance would make a testament before

Anticipating Death 133 either a Jewish or Catholic notary. Hence, although bequests might not necessarily reflect the lives of ordinary Jews, if the presence of the notary and others at the time of death and the nature of notarial documents are taken into consideration, they reflect the words of Jews, especially women, as they contemplated their death.3 Testaments constitute maps of personal ties, both friendly and hostile, that people developed during their lifetimes and wanted to continue after their deaths. These documentary remains are mainly legal and financial, but they can be mined for insight into personal relations between those involved.4 At the time of death, the families of each spouse usually sought simultaneously to retrieve the assets they had invested in the marriage, to increase their share of what they agreed to in the prenuptial agreements, and to prevent assets crossing from one family to the other. As the establishment of a marriage involved delicate negotiations between two families as well as notaries and rabbis around an inconsistent set of principles, the death of one member of the couple involved revisiting these agreements. The families and their representatives negotiated using the usual Jewish tactics: finding conflicting Jewish laws, traditions, and customs; reconciling Jewish practices with those of the surrounding civil and religious communities; and inventing principles of tradition to meet specific needs. Alternatively, the surviving spouse might circumvent all official channels by simply seizing the property.5

Inheritance Inheritance guided the succession of property along predetermined, but not always precise or agreed-upon lines. In the Bible, which provided the original template for Jews, inheritance (nahalah, linhol, lehanhil) was usually determined by blood and patrilineality. Sons inherited first; if a man had no sons, his assets went to his daughters; if he had no daughters, then inheritance moved laterally to his brothers; then moving upwards, to the brothers of his father (not mentioning his father); and, finally, to the nearest relatives in his family.6 The Bible bolstered concern that property remain intact and not move from tribe to tribe through women who would likely marry into different tribes.7 This concern about assets crossing over from family to family remained central to rabbinic deliberations through all stages of marriage. Early rabbinic patterns of inheritance (yerushah, yoresh, lehorish) accepted the basic principles of biblical inheritance, which included the descent of property to all the heirs of each entitled person. Rabbinic tradition explicitly preferred males to females, although left room for some females to transmit property. In rabbinic tradition, male inheritance followed the same vertical biblical descent through each eligible heir from a man to his sons, to his daughters, and then to his paternal brothers. If he did not have children or brothers, his property went up to his father

134  Anticipating Death (inferred by later tradition), to his father’s brothers, and further up to his father’s father. Rabbinic tradition went on to specify that if a man’s father, his father’s brother, and his father’s father were not alive, the inheritance would then go to his father’s sisters (who had been passed over earlier). When these heirs were exhausted then his property went to his father’s father’s father. A woman’s property could go to her mother’s brother, to her own children (banim), or to her husband and his heirs.8 As was the case among Italian Catholics, the assets rarely went to wives and mothers. Women were regarded as vehicles, not vessels, for assets.

Bequests An alternative system of bequests or gifts (tzeva-ah, daitikai, matanah, ultima volonta’) could replace the usual lines of inheritance. Bequests involved overriding the system of inheritance and transferring property based on affection for specific individuals or concern for the common good of the family, community, or the people. There are several biblical precedents for men giving instructions for bequests before they died.9 The Bible did not recount stories of women leaving instructions for their families, but as early as the fourth-century BCE Aramaic papyri from the Jewish community of Elephantine in Egypt allowed married women the freedom to convey their property as they wished. Rabbinic authorities had always been divided about the permissibility of bequests replacing inheritance. Some feared that these opportunities for individuals to act on their own volition would enable them to circumvent the financial structure of the family and to navigate around the control of the community. As a result, some rabbis tried to limit the free transfer of property by excluding those who were not entitled to receive it according to the lines of inheritance.10 One kind of bequest attracted special attention: when a person bequeathed more to a spouse than he or she had agreed to in their prenuptial agreement. When a woman was generous, there were concerns that she had been forced—perhaps physically—by her husband to “forgive” some of his obligations to her. For example, in the early seventeenth century, a woman named Leah went beyond the terms of her prenuptial agreement and bequeathed her dowry to her husband. After she died, several Italian rabbis, among them the Venetian Leon Modena, invalidated her bequest. They claimed that her entire dowry must be returned to her paternal heirs. Modena explained that Leah’s generous bequest had been for purposes of “peace of mind” to appease her husband’s excessive demands. Now that she was dead and no longer subject to any pressure from him, it was safe to cancel her bequest to him and to return to the original terms of the prenuptial agreement.11 When men left their wives “excessive” amounts, especially when they had sons, rabbis suspected some sort of scheming—either she to increase

Anticipating Death 135 her share of her husband’s assets or he to take advantage of creditors. In response, rabbis negated the authority of a man to leave all his property to his wife, and when he did, they considered his generous bequest only as if he had nominated her to be his executrix and not his heir.12 Other rabbis were willing to grant limited latitude in making bequests by allowing changes in the amounts left to each heir who was entitled to receive something according to the laws of inheritance. A few rabbis were even willing to allow bequests made to those completely outside the lines of inheritance. Hence, in allowing bequests, rabbinic authorities provided Jews with a forum in which to negotiate between the wishes of the dead and the entitlements of the living; in the course of engaging in these negotiations, rabbis enhanced their own authority in the Jewish community. Bequests fell into two basic categories of gifts: those given by an ailing or endangered person in anticipation of his or her own death (donation mortis causa in Latin, or mehamat mitah in Hebrew), and those given by a healthy person (matanat bari), not necessarily associated with the anticipation of death. Those who might give gifts in anticipation of death included: healthy individuals who were about to engage in an activity during which they might be killed, such as setting out with a caravan in the desert, boarding a boat to a distant land, and certainly being led out for execution by the government; persons suffering from deteriorating health or becoming bedridden (shkhiv-mra) with serious illnesses (mahamat holi) which might be deadly but from which they still might recover; or persons in the throes of death (goses).13 Although daughters, who received family assets in their dowries, did not usually inherit as well, fathers could leave a bequest to them. One method, according to a fifteenth century German device, was called “half the portion of a male heir” (hatzi zakhar). In order to do this, at the time of a woman’s wedding, her father would record a fictive loan that his daughter had made to him. The inflated loan exceeded the amount of inheritance any son might receive from him. If the father did not repay this fictive debt to her before he died, his male heirs would have to pay the debt in cash with penalties for lateness from their inheritance or, according to the terms of their father’s agreement with their sister, they could settle this debt by giving her or her heirs half the portion that each male son received as an inheritance. This in effect would provide her with part of her father’s estate in addition to the dowry that had been set aside for her.14 The gift given by a healthy person without anticipation of death or any other exigencies established the strictest criteria for a gift, and provided a foundation on which other more flexible gifts associated with death were based. The rigid rules that regulated gifts made by a healthy person required explicit instructions, symbolic exchange of property, witnesses, written documents, and a specific formula, which was available in

136  Anticipating Death prepared templates in scribal handbooks.15 When a healthy person gave a gift, which could involve any amount of property, the recipient received it immediately, and because it was usually irrevocable, the recipient could freely give it away or bequeath it. These gifts were rarely contested. Most discussion about the validity of bequests involved gifts given in anticipation of death while in a state of serious illness (shkhiv-mra). Making accommodations for a sick, but coherent, person to express his or her last wishes instead of relying on traditional inheritance required less formal procedure and did not require things like the symbolic exchange of property. Witnesses and a notary entered the bedchamber, heard the person’s wishes, and either at the time, later, or after the person died, recorded them, also using standard formulas. Because these bequests were made in anticipation of death and outside the traditional lines of inheritance, the testator had to include the distribution of all of his or her assets, and not merely part of them, which meant that making bequests completely replaced the inheritance of the property. Additionally, a person could only bequeath what he or she actually possessed to people who were alive at the time the bequest was made. These gifts were revocable by a subsequent testament or by the healthy recovery of the testator, and the recipients received them only after the person died. To get around the problem of testators not knowing when they would die or what their assets would be at that time, they theoretically recorded the gift as a debt effective immediately against their estates, but only payable an hour before their deaths, a procedure that would allow their bequests to reflect their disposition of their assets while they were still sentient but would include their actual assets at the time of their death.16 Needless to say, there was enough ambiguity about each category of gifts to provide many options to contest gifts and to continue negotiation over them.

Jewish Testaments and Christian Notaries For many reasons, Jews did not always rely on rabbinic authority and did not want the Jewish community involved in their business, so they bypassed many of the limitations of Jewish law and custom by turning to non-Jewish authorities. This was an attractive option in cases involving the transfer of property along unconventional lines of succession that involved wives and daughters. In Venice, for example, testaments, from men and women, Jews and Christians, have been preserved in notarial collections that are now in the state archives, some of which have been published.17 Jews made testaments before Jewish witnesses, Christian witnesses, and Christian notaries, usually the ones who lived near the ghetto. Even when Jews made Hebrew testaments before rabbis, translators in the employ of the government translated them from Hebrew to Italian, and copies of these testaments are also preserved in the Venetian archives.18 Testaments included provisions for burial, even including

Anticipating Death 137 specific plots, and in cases of remarriage, whether the burial was to be with the first or second spouse. Testators described the ways in which they wanted to be memorialized to ensure their spiritual salvation, including candles and prayers, contributions to Jewish charitable, religious, and fraternal organizations, as well as Catholic hospitals in Venice, Jewish welfare organizations in Palestine, and dowries for poor brides. Men and women on occasion imposed conditions that potential beneficiaries had to fulfill in order to receive their bequests, such as their reaching a certain age, getting married, investing the bequest until marriage, adhering to standards of behavior, and staying within the benefactor’s limited range of approved marriage partners. For example, in Venice in 1640, Abram Camis did not want his son Solomon to marry any of his nieces nor did he want his daughters to marry German or Italian Jews. He also ordered that his son Moise and his son’s wife were to leave the family house—apparently anticipating struggles among the family once he was no longer there to supervise. In 1625, unlike Abram Camis, Abram Barukh asked his children to marry his nieces and nephews. In 1623, a third Abram—Abram di Ventura Sachi—commanded that in order to receive an inheritance, his grandsons—because of unspecified bad behavior—had to leave Venice, return to the Levant, and live “good lives” there for ten years.19 As part of their long-term planning, testators had two options. They could divide their estates among as many recipients as they felt were worthy, rewarding those family members, servants, and neighbors whom they liked or who treated them well during their lifetime, and not grant anything to those whom they did not like or whose behavior offended them. Or, conversely, they could try to keep their assets intact, which was considered especially important with regard to the ownership of rights to immovable property (hazakah). Making testaments in front of Christian notaries gave a Jewish testator freedom and confidentiality usually not available in Jewish communities, especially if he or she was not dying and had to continue to live in the community. Jewish use of Christian notaries bespoke a level of trust in Christian authorities, and indeed many of those testaments still extant have been preserved for close to a half a millennium in Italian municipal archives. The safe environment and process of making a will before a Christian notary enabled Jewish men and women to give expression to their private thoughts and provide a sense of themselves as individuals— something usually not visible in the formulaic proceedings that led up to marriage.

Testaments Made by Men When preparing their testaments, men had to maintain a balance between preserving assets for their family and patrilineal heirs and providing for

138  Anticipating Death their wives and children. This involved stipulating the terms by which a wife could maintain property she had brought into the marriage, gain custody of their children—which, as we shall see, was not automatic—or remarry. Instead, however, the terms of a man’s testament often marked the beginning of negotiations between his family and his widow, especially concerning the future of the couple’s children. The easiest solution for his family was for the widow to never marry again—but this was not always in her best interest. Otherwise, when a man died and his wife became a widow, her presence was awkward for his family. As his wife, based on prenuptial agreements, she had been a temporary invited guest in his household, and now his family had to negotiate with her over her continued presence. As an extreme example of the way in which widows could be quickly discarded, in some Catholic communities, widows had to move out of their husband’s house the night of the funeral.20 The 1607 testament of Caliman Belgrado (1532–1612) shows how a wealthy Venetian businessman with no children tried to maintain his family patrimony and provide for his wife and nephews. He bequeathed 8,000 ducats to each of his four nephews, the sons of his two brothers, in addition to leaving one brother the remainder of his estate. He also forgave one of his nephews an additional debt of 2,880 ducats. Belgrado had wanted to cut off two nephews for bad behavior, but his wife, Elana, prevailed upon him to give one nephew 400 ducats for dowries when his two daughters married. Belgrado left nothing to a fifth nephew, his brother Jacob’s son Lazarin, who had converted to Catholicism and taken the name Giovanni Giuseppe Strassoldo (Belgrado’s enmity for Lazarin was such that in 1610, he tried to kill this offending nephew and abduct his daughter).21 To his wife, citing her good qualities and her affectionate behavior towards him, Belgrado left an annuity of 365 ducats—nowhere near what he provided for his nephews. He also wanted Elana to have 450 ducats at the time of his death: 400 from the family and 50 from his estate. The will stated that if Elana wanted to remarry, his heirs had to contribute a dowry of 1,000 ducats—also a small amount in light of his other bequests. Belgrado further insisted that in order to keep the clothing and jewelry she had when she married, to enjoy her trousseau, and to live in his house, Elana had to remain a widow. However, Belgrado specified that he would only allow Elana to continue to live in his house after he died if one of his nephews moved in with her. Because this nephew would be spending 100 ducats a year towards her cost of living and another 100 towards the cost of rent to the owner of the property in the ghetto, he lowered Elana’s annuity to 100 ducats to cover only her personal necessities. He made it clear that if she did not want to live with his nephew, she would bear the costs of moving. His testament seems to explain the gap between the small amount he left his wife and the large amounts he left his nephews by saying that he wanted the patrimony to remain in “casa Belgrado.” Yet he not only

Anticipating Death 139 wanted Elana to remain secure, he also wanted to protect her, adding a clause stipulating that his brother and his nephew would receive nothing if they did not release her from any obligation for a levirate union. Thus, Belgrado carefully balanced his desire to preserve his “casa” with his obligation to support his widow. Belgrado also took care of the needs of two faithful servants and asked his family to continue to employ them. A woman servant, Rosa, would receive her yearly salary of 12 ducats and, if she wanted to marry, would receive a dowry of 150 ducats and be allowed to take her clothing and other possessions with her (a common legacy for servants). However, he stated his hope that, having not married yet, she would not do so. The marriage of a servant was almost as troublesome as the remarriage of a wife. If Rosa did not marry, she could live with them so that Belgrado’s heirs would not have to look for a replacement. If she did marry, then the family would have to come up with any back wages that they still owed her. He did not mention the salary of his other servant, Ottavio Cantoni, but left him 200 ducats for when he married—without expressing any wishes that he not do so.22 The remarriage of men rarely elicited comment.23 Just as when the couple was forming and gifts presented by the groom and by his family to his future bride were considered temporary, now, when the marriage ended, men and their families saw the widow’s place in the family as temporary, even a nuisance.

Testaments Made by Women Women could acquire substantial assets in the course of marriage. They were entitled to components of their dotal and non-dotal assets, which included dowries, counter-dowries, gifts, and inheritances from members of their families. In bequeathing their assets, women expressed both loyalty to the patriarchal line of their husbands and showed devotion to the women in their family as well as to their own natal families. For example, although Rachel Monis, the widow of Raffael Belilios, left significant sums and valuable jewelry to her grandsons and granddaughters and made her daughter Chiara her universal heir for the remainder of her estate, like others, she expressed her desire to devote assets to maintain through the male line: “the house of all those who enjoy the family name of Belilios.”24 Among Jews and Christians, women of all classes made more testaments than men, and often they left assets to women outside their families, including bequests from employers to servants, and even from servants to employers. In their testaments, they not only carefully listed their assets, but also expressed affection or contempt.25 In Verona in 1642, Rosa Romanina, the widow of Moses Guastalla of Rivarolo, dictated her last will and testament before Jews who recorded it in Hebrew with an

140  Anticipating Death admixture of Italian words. An illiterate woman, her extensive property consisted of her own dowry and inheritances that she had received from her father and others, as well as the proceeds from her many business activities, including moneylending, rights to property, and ownership of a ritual bath. She referred to her illness, to a sense of impending death, and to her clarity of mind as she departed from traditional lines of succession and bequeathed property along female lines, especially those of her maternal family and not those of her paternal side. She left her sister’s daughter Bianchina a cash amount, but stipulated that the young woman should not receive it until she married, which, recognizing the ambiguities of the process, she specified as the moment of the ceremony on the day of Bianchina’s wedding. Until then, the executors of Rosa’s estate were to invest the money, and when the time came, give the entire sum and its interest to Bianchina. On the other hand, should Bianchina die before she married, the will stated that the money would instead go to dower poor brides. Rosa also left a gift to Reichle, a woman who had lived in her house and who had served her well during her illness, though Reichle too had to wait until her wedding to receive anything. Finally, Rosa made the usual pious requests that candles be lit in perpetuity in her name in the synagogue, and she left assets to the school (talmud torah), to the poor of Jerusalem, to the redemption of captives, and to the Shomrim Laboker Society, a pietistic group that rose early in the morning to pray. Rosa was concerned that her son Solomon, who did not show her proper obedience, might squander everything she had, so she appointed three guardians to supervise him until he married and turned twenty-five. Until then, she wanted him to board with his teacher. Even if he married at twenty, which she referred to as the age of “bar mitzvah” (evidence of the fluidity of this term in rabbinic literature), she wanted to control his access to her assets. Therefore, she made it clear that she was leaving property to him as a gift, not as an inheritance, and, as such, she attached restrictions to it. Neither he nor his heirs were permitted to sell or to mortgage rights to any property, unless it was for the purpose of marrying her daughters. Rosa did not want her house rented out for five years after she died or her possessions put up for sale, but rather she wanted them to remain in the house until her son married so he would have a fully furnished house—a woman’s attempt to preserve her “casa” intact. The will also included the proviso that should Solomon die without marrying or having a child, then these assets would be divided into three parts, and the interest would be used to establish a school in Rosa’s memory, to provide inheritance for individuals on her father’s side, and to make a gift for Rabbi Moses Rava (one of her son’s guardians). Rosa expressed her distrust of her son by asking that as soon as she died—even before she was buried—a trusted guard be placed in her house to watch over her possessions so that Solomon would not go astray. Finally, Rosa left her son one unpleasant task: a request to continue a

Anticipating Death 141 feud with a neighbor. Because of the great prejudice shown by the community leaders (parnasim) towards her house, her son was never to allow David, the son of Simon Tzoref (Orepick), to open a passageway from his room to the stairs. This was an indication both of the high-rise, multioccupancy dwellings that Jews had to build in the ghetto as well as Rosa’s attempt to maintain her control over her property after she died. Additionally, Rosa included in her testament a list (with exact weights) of valuable possessions: utensils, clothing, and gold, silver, diamond, and ruby jewelry. The testament asserted that it had been prepared according to all the enactments of the rabbis as well as according to the laws of the nations of the world, that it was irrevocable, and that no error in it should render it void. Her concerns about her son notwithstanding, Rosa still provided for him. For her, despite his deficiencies, he was a vital link in keeping her estate in the family as well as maintaining her lineage.26

Husbands Inheriting from Wives Early rabbinic authorities advanced the idea that the lines of inheritance could cross from a deceased woman to her husband, but that a woman could not inherit from her husband or her children.27 At the same time, to protect the assets of the woman’s family, rabbis developed methods to limit the ability of a husband to inherit from his wife. The reason for this, implied but not stated, was that when possessions crossed from one family to another, each family ran the risk of losing the significant assets it had invested in the couple at the time of the engagement with the expectation that in case of death or divorce certain amounts would return to each natal family. Otherwise, families would be hesitant to risk supporting their children in marriages. Rabbinic tradition was never able to resolve the tensions created by property crossing biological lines, including by transmission from the family of one spouse to the other. One well documented, illustrative mid-sixteenth-century case from Italy involves a man referred to as Reuben and his two daughters. The eldest married Simon, with whom she had children, and her family flourished, and Reuben’s younger daughter eventually married Levi, with whom she had a son and two daughters. This younger daughter died after five or six years of marriage, and Levi subsequently abandoned his children, who were raised by their grandmother, Reuben’s wife. Meanwhile, Reuben wrote a testament in which he gave gifts to his older daughter and the daughters of his late younger daughter, and left a bequest for his one grandson. Reuben made his own wife his executrix to disperse these gifts and to have final say in the engagement of his granddaughters. In his anger at Levi for abandoning his family, he stipulated that none of his granddaughters ever marry anybody from Levi’s family. In an attempt to maintain posthumous authority, Reuben declared that should any of his heirs refuse to accept any of these conditions, their property would revert

142  Anticipating Death to the poor of the land of Israel, a regular fallback option for both the pious and the punitive. Soon after Reuben died, Levi heard that he had been denied any authority over the marriages of his daughters or their assets, and he wanted the gifts that Reuben had given to his granddaughters (i.e. Levi’s daughters) to be redirected to the infant son Levi had with his new wife. In other words, Levi was asserting that as a husband he inherited his late wife’s property and was questioning the validity of gifts that circumvented these lines, despite the fact that he had abandoned his children. Levi exemplified every woman’s family’s worst nightmare—if their daughter died, her familial assets might be transferred to her husband’s family. Levi tried several extreme tactics to challenge the validity of the documents prepared by Reuben. First, he claimed that one of the witnesses was invalid because he was the teacher of the scribe of the documents. Then he went further, claiming that this man was a heretic (min ve-apikorus) who scorned the teachings of the rabbis by eating forbidden foods, praying without the leather tephilin straps, and violating the Sabbath in public (a strategy also employed by supporters of Donina Tzarfati against the testimony of Aaron Parento in her case against Judah Corbito). In his response to Levi, Rabbi Moses Provencal of Mantua rejected Levi’s request and validated Reuben’s gifts to his granddaughters (Levi’s daughters). Levi illustrates the lengths to which a man might go to shift assets from his wife’s family to his own—even after abandoning her and their children and remarrying.28 Another drama of a husband trying to inherit from his wife is preserved in a late seventeenth-century Venetian archival holding, which fortuitously contains not only the woman’s last will and testament, but also her prenuptial agreement with her second husband, which she made as an old, childless widow. In 1678, at the age of 73, Rachel, the daughter of Manuel Valenson and widow of David Grespin, made a prenuptial agreement with Isaac the son of Ventura Grassini, a merchant who lived in the Ghetto Vecchio. The marital contract conveyed Rachel’s feelings and intentions in her own voice: she expressed much esteem, affection, and praise for Isaac and his moral and human qualities. She was looking forward to him becoming her husband, in an “indissoluble companionship,” sealed by “verba de presenti”—Catholic terms for marriage. She offered to leave him a sizeable amount of her family patrimony. The marriage contract included a listing of 250 items contained in her dowry, which were worth 9,008 ducats, and descriptions of how they were invested. It also included moveable property and precious objects from around the world, including clothing, linens, furniture, mirrors, pictures, carpets, furnishings, and jewelry, which had been appraised by two experts. Their detailed premarital agreement stipulated that if she predeceased Isaac, he would receive half her dowry as a true, real, and irrevocable possession,

Anticipating Death 143 and he had complete freedom to dispose of it as he wished, including leaving it to his heirs. Isaac’s heirs in turn could do with it whatever they wanted, and they did not have to show any consideration for Rachel or her heirs other than to make a solemn promise to maintain her generously while she was alive and to make provision for her soul after she died with the usual religious and charitable contributions. Isaac was not present when she made this generous marriage contract. Afterwards, however, notaries brought the contract to his house, read it to him word for word, and he approved it. Several weeks later, on September 12, in Isaac’s presence, two codicils to the prenuptial agreement were drafted that dealt with the possibility of his predeceasing Rachel. Isaac imposed the obligation on his son Ventura to house Rachel, treat her with respect, and meet all her needs. If they could not live in the same house, Ventura had to return her entire dowry, which was mortgaged against all Isaac’s property and goods in the ghetto. Further discussion about Isaac’s predeceasing Rachel led to an agreement that for the benefit of his soul she could take from his assets 2,000 ducats, which would be distributed to the poor and to his confraternity. Several days later, on September 16, Rachel made Isaac her sole heir. Some three years later, in Rachel’s testament from 1681, she nullified the prenuptial agreement and marriage contract. With great hostility towards Isaac, she excluded him from any hereditary benefits and denounced his greed, violation of their marriage contract, depletion of her dowry, and extreme mistreatment of her. She claimed that he had compelled her by force to make the prenuptial agreement when she was in a weakened state of old age and that he had extorted assets from her, depleted them, reduced her to extreme need, and caused her to finish her days prematurely. Her testament was a public call for justice against her husband.29 In this testament, Rachel also attempted to reward her friends and family, particularly those from her natal family. She now made her brother David (whose four daughters needed to marry) her universal heir, with no requirement to render account to anybody. She contributed to charities that supported poor Sephardic or Catholic brides, hospitals, and captives. She wanted possessions that she owned outright (extradotali) put in a strong box so that Isaac would not be able to gain access to them. She demanded that her executor (commissario) and heir make an inventory of this box after she died so that her wishes could be fulfilled. Rachel’s change of heart reflected not only a bad marriage with Isaac, but also a bad prenuptial arrangement to begin with, perhaps reflecting his attempt to take advantage of her. As such, the records show her desire to renegotiate a deal that was too generous to Isaac. For reasons such as this, at each stage of couple formation and dissolution, the woman’s family was concerned that their assets might cross over to the man’s family, and thus took measures to prevent this.

144  Anticipating Death

Collection of Assets by Women When a man died, traditionally, his wife did not inherit his possessions.30 However, she was entitled to collect what was stipulated in her marital documents, referred to variously as her dowry or ketubah, and to receive maintenance (mezonot) from her late husband’s family. If she had a generous marriage settlement, if her husband’s family did not impede her collecting it, and if her family helped her, the loss of a husband could indeed be a liberating opportunity. Some widows gained control over assets, including, sometimes, houses. However, if the late husband’s family held the assets and refused to part with them, the widow might have had to turn to Jewish or even Christian authorities, a step that would likely have provoked familial and community ire against her. Indeed, reflecting a desire to limit a woman’s right to present her case to obtain assets before a court, some rabbis ruled that a woman who did so should lose her maintenance. They explained that by appearing before a court she would violate ideals of modesty—a spurious argument as in reality many women appeared in court and in public. Rabbinic tradition gave other reasons for which a widow might lose sustenance—usually activities that were considered to show a lack of sufficient mourning for her late husband and to diminish his honor and that of his family—ranging from putting on eye shadow or dyeing her hair to having sexual relations.31 Widows were under great pressure not to collect assets to which they were entitled. After the death of Daniel da Pisa in the late sixteenth century, his widow, Judita da Pisa, the daughter of Simone da Pisa, a banker in Florence and Prato, and the sister of Yehiel Nissim da Pisa, a distinguished author,32 went to the non-Jewish authorities in Prato to request that the owner of a bank release her dowry of 800 ducats. As a result, her own children, showing a lack of trust in their mother’s handling of their late father’s assets, complained to Rabbi Azriel Diena that she had violated Jewish law because before making a claim for any assets she was supposed to have taken an oath that she had neither collected anything nor appointed an executor over those assets. Diena was particularly concerned that members of such a distinguished family had turned to the secular authorities. He excommunicated Judita, her brother Jehiel Nissim, and their supporters. He ordered that the children and their property be removed from the authority of the non-Jewish court, that Judita take an oath concerning her ketubah, that the Jewish court appoint a guardian over the children, and that Judita and her children go to a Jewish court— and he threatened that if these conditions were not met, she would lose her dowry.33 Speaking in her defense, Judita’s brother, Yehiel Nissim, retold the case from her point of view: a widow, who was living in a place with no Jewish court and who was not receiving enough sustenance from her late husband’s heirs, went before a non-Jewish court to claim what the

Anticipating Death 145 documents called her “ketubah.” Her husband’s heirs had apparently refused to return her ketubah for two reasons. First, they claimed that they were not obligated to provide it to her because of the rabbinic principle that “a woman does not request the payment of her ketubah.” Second, they stated that repayment of the ketubah was irrelevant because the custom of the ketubah was not widespread in early modern Italy. Yehiel Nissim reported that the stated value of her ketubah was the formulaic ikar of 200 without a specified currency, which her husband’s heirs were not willing to take into consideration when they offered to pay her only her dowry amount (nedunya). This discussion used the term “ketubah” in several different ways: as the specific sum of the principal (ikar), as the entire package as agreed upon at the time of the marriage negotiations, and as the dowry. When Daniel da Pisa’s family stated that they wanted to limit what Judita received to only the return of dowry, Yehiel Nissim responded that payment of the ketubah was a matter of custom (minhag) or a communal edict (takanah) in matters of property as implemented by communities in absence of suitable legal principles. Yehiel Nissim further asserted that da Pisa’s family claim that a woman does not request the payment of her ketubah had no basis in an established edict, and he rejected the custom that a woman who claimed her ketubah might not receive maintenance. Yehiel Nissim, following rabbinic precedents, argued that when the heirs of a man refused to provide his widow with maintenance, she is allowed to send an advocate to the non-Jewish authorities for their help collecting her ketubah, and she should not be punished by losing all rights to any maintenance from his family. Moreover, he claimed that because nonJewish tribunals (arka-ot shel goyim) were not called courts, it was not as if Judita had gone before a court, so therefore she should not lose maintenance. He asserted, relying on tradition rather than on text, that because the laws of the Torah stipulated the requirement of a ketubah for marriage, she must therefore be able to collect it from her husband’s heirs. Nissim asserted that Judita could collect the ketubah amount from moveable property and from documents of debt, including from those who bought the property against which it was mortgaged, and that she had twenty-five years to do so. Next, Yehiel Nissim tried to establish the exact financial value of the “ketubah,” that is the ikar, and, in order to do so, he tried the impossible task of working out equivalencies between biblical, medieval, and contemporary coinage. He went so far as to make reference to ancient Davidic shekels (sh”d, shekel david) that had appeared in Jerusalem and Italy during the sixteenth century, as well as literary references to them. (These coins actually dated from the fourth year, shanah dalet, sh”d, of the Great Revolt against Rome by the Jews in Palestine from 66–73 CE, during which Jerusalem and the Second Temple were destroyed.)34 Yehiel Nissim finally concluded that widows and divorcees were entitled to

146  Anticipating Death not only their dowry but also to the main ketubah amount (ikar). This amount, however, was usually symbolic,35 and her entire ketubah package might have been more substantial. Another related issue in the collection of assets by a widow was whether she collected her ketubah amount in the currency of the place in which it had been written or that of the place in which it was being collected,36 and whether it had to be paid back in the original amount or whether it had to be adjusted for fluctuations in exchange rates over time.37 One medieval rabbinic approach provided that at least in the case of a woman who was married in one place and divorced in another, if the documents did not specify the currency, then she received her ketubah amount in the weaker of the two currencies.38 Such a practice diverged from the rabbinic preference of paying back business debts in the currency of the place of the initial transaction. Those who advocated paying back in the weaker currency explained that it made things easier, not mentioning that this was easier for the man or his family who had to pay the ketubah, but more difficult for the woman who received a lower amount. The question of devalued currency was raised in a case from sixteenth-century Ferrara involving Mira, the daughter of the physician Isaac Pinto, who married her relative Jacob Pinto in Ferrara. Her ketubah included the condition, taken from their engagement document (tenaim), that if he predeceased her, regardless whether the couple had any viable offspring or where the couple lived, she would collect from his possessions her entire ketubah amount of 1,200 golden scudi in gold and the so-called main ketubah amount of 200 zuzim. Some time later, the couple traveled to Ishkofia or Uskub (Skoplje in Macedonia), in the Ottoman Balkans. Jacob died, and Mira attempted to claim her ketubah amount of 1,200 golden scudi in actual (mamash) gold as was recorded in her ketubah. But her husband’s heirs claimed that they did not have enough to pay her that amount, but only what the coins were worth in Ferrara at the time of the wedding. She responded that because the engagement document explicitly stated that her ketubah amount would be paid in actual gold scudi anywhere in the world, she was not willing to settle for anything but the exact amount specified in her ketubah in actual gold scudi. As we have seen elsewhere, here too the symbolic main ketubah amount had not entered into consideration in the final payment of this ketubah. For Solomon ben Abraham Hakohen (Maharshakh, 1520–1601), a Turkish rabbi, this case raised several issues about her rights to collect her ketubah in actual gold coins, according to what it was worth when it was written in Ferrara, or what it was currently worth. In the course of writing his responsum about the case, Hakohen, in good rabbinic style, offered several well reasoned contradictory opinions that illustrate the problems women had collecting their ketubah amounts. He observed that even though the 1,200 ducats were worth more than they were at the time of her marriage, Mira still wanted to collect the original number of

Anticipating Death 147 gold coins, and he provided precedents for her receiving the 1,200 scudi in gold even though they were now worth more. He also reviewed the possibility that because the ketubah explicitly obligated her husband’s heir to pay her in gold, they had to pay her the value of the original 1,200 gold scudi coins in some sort of gold dust and in no other instrument of value, but not the specific amount of 1,200 gold scudi. And this option created two possibilities: either paying her this gold dust at the current value of the original coins or at the value of the coins at the time of the marriage. Returning to the nature of a ketubah, the rabbi wrote that when a matter was in doubt the creditor is at the disadvantage, however, because ketubah amounts are not symbolic sums (asmakhta) and ketubah documents are not simply standard forms, the widow as creditor has the advantage. Hence, he concluded that Mira should collect 1,200 scudi according to what they were currently worth in Ferrara without suffering any loss. However, he did not specify whether the amount was to be paid in gold coin or not. Even having clear terms of the engagement agreement repeated in the ketubah document, this widow remained vulnerable, and she had to negotiate with her late husband’s family and rabbis over exactly how much of what she thought was the already agreed upon amounts of her ketubah to which she was entitled.39 A daughter’s ability to collect the additional “half a male portion” (hatzi-zakhar) could be limited by the machinations of her brothers, as illustrated in the mid-sixteenth-century case of Dinah. At the time of her wedding to Jacob, Dinah’s father Joseph gave her a document of debt for a nominal amount of one maneh (most cases actually specified a very high amount beyond the father’s means). The document stated that this debt would (theoretically) become due one hour before Joseph died, thus it technically represented a loan attached to his estate rather than part of his estate subject to the rules of inheritance, which might exclude a woman as an heir. The document elaborated that after his death, (theoretically) to relieve themselves of this debt Joseph’s sons (Dinah’s brothers) could divide his estate and pay her half of the amount of the portion that the brothers received. After Joseph died, Dinah asked her brother Reuben to pay her father’s debt with interest because Reuben had derived profit from the estate while it was in his possession. Reuben replied that he would give Dinah only the half a male portion pledged by her father, but first, he would deduct from that portion the amount of the dowry that he had provided for her after Joseph died. In this way, Reuben tried to prevent the amount of Dinah’s dowry from being calculated as part of the total estate, which would be shared as a debt by all, leaving her instead to shoulder the entire financial burden of her dowry. Reuben also refused to give her interest because he claimed he had invested the inheritance for his own benefit and never considered dividing the profit among the others. In this case, the father had intended to provide more assets for his daughter than simply her dowry, and the formula of “the half male

148  Anticipating Death portion” with its vaguely stated amount of the debt was recognized by all as a legal fiction that entitled Dinah to receive an additional half of a male portion, but her brother conspicuously endeavored to diminish what she received without outright challenging the arrangement made by their father. Dinah received support from Meir Katzenellenbogen (Maharam Padova), a leading rabbi in Padua, who ruled that because she was not an heir but rather a creditor, according to the conventional rabbinic position, the debt of her dowry against the total estate had to be paid first. Generally among Jews, when an estate was being reckoned, dowries and other obligations of the estate were paid first, and then the remainder of an estate was divided up—it was from these remaining assets that the males received their portions and the females, half portions. Katzenellenbogen saw the process of leaving half a male portion as a way to enhance what a daughter received beyond her dowry. He accepted the entitlement of daughters to the half portions as well as to their dowries, even though these amounts would diminish the total inheritance available to be divided up among all the heirs. The rabbi validated the idea that daughters did receive the assets of their fathers, allowing daughters to collect both the dowry as a debt against their fathers’ assets as well as portions of their fathers’ estates as creditors. However, Katzenellenbogen did not accept Dinah’s claim for interest because those who received gifts or payments of debts usually did not receive interest.40 Katzenellenbogen and many other rabbis approved of this system that could give daughters an advantage over their brothers in receiving their fathers’ assets because the females got their dowries and were entitled to the payment of the fictive debt, but the males had to settle for the residue of the estate from which they still had to give their sisters half of what each of them received. Although a female might be entitled to assets, her closest male relatives, including her father and uncles, her husband and his family, her brothers, and her own children, could use all sorts of strategies to take them away from her. When her family considered ease or convenience, it was theirs, not hers.

Seizure of Property by Surviving Spouses In matters of inheritance, all parties wanted to maximize their share. Widows and widowers and their families employed various tactics to augment their portion of the estate, including absconding with property or not returning it in accordance with prenuptial agreements. The complexity of surviving spouses seizing property appears in a case from Siena in 1633. When Dona Stella’s husband Solomon Todesco died, to prevent her late husband’s brothers from inventorying the property and claiming it, she gave Joseph Modena, the husband of her late sister, some possessions to hold for her. These included part of her dowry,

Anticipating Death 149 consisting of household goods, clothing, towels, and bracelets, as well as some receipts for pawned pledges, all worth only 20 scudi. At the same time, Joseph Modena put some of his late wife’s property in his sister-in-law’s possession, including furniture and copper and brassware. It appears that not only did the two of them hide goods from their late spouses’ families, but that the relationship between them was also especially close. She was godmother of Joseph Modena’s son, took care of this nephew in her house, and promised to leave the boy the interest on 100 ducats from her dowry, while her brother-in-law went freely into her house and her room, where she showed him, according to the document, great affection and friendliness. This intimate relationship continued after Stella agreed to marry another man, Salvador Gallichi, a match arranged by a woman, Dona Angela, wife of Moses Rieti. Joseph Modena and Stella had a falling out, and Joseph Modena tried to thwart Stella’s marriage. Modena was afraid that after Stella married Gallichi, her new husband might claim Modena’s property, which would make it difficult for him to recover it. Joseph Modena asked her to return his goods, and he threatened to send Stella’s property to her late husband’s brothers if she did not, thereby undermining their original plan to prevent her possessions from ending up in their hands. Stella and Joseph Modena conducted unsuccessful negotiations through attorneys to reach a property settlement. Joseph Modena’s lawyer suggested he bring the case to a Jewish venue, but Joseph Modena replied, “all Jews wish one another ill.” Stella obtained a Jewish edict of excommunication in Rome against anyone with information about this case who did not make it known and against Joseph Modena if he would not return her property. Joseph Modena responded against her and, joined by others, asked her and her father, Solomon Milano, to take the matter before a local Jewish court of arbitration. Stella rejected the idea of going before a local Jewish court because she had already achieved what she wanted with the ban from Rome, and additionally asserted that because she was a widow her father had no authority over her and that she had the right to manage her own affairs. In response, her father, Solomon Milano, and her future husband, Gallichi, arranged for the intervention of the secular authorities. The governor (vicario) agreed to issue an order to force the reading of the ban of excommunication in support of Stella against Joseph Modena during morning worship services in the synagogue, with the backing of armed police. At the synagogue, some Jews tried to stop the reading of the ban, and most tried to flee from hearing the edict and being obligated to follow it, but the police blocked them from leaving the premises. A dramatic scene followed: with the congregation trapped by the police, the cantor, Gallichi’s uncle, Bonaventura Gallichi, read the edict, while Salvador Gallichi held up a black candle, a traditional feature of a Jewish excommunication ceremony, and the hot wax dripped on his uncle.

150  Anticipating Death In the aftermath of the violent incident at the synagogue, the community became hostile to all parties: Stella, her father Solomon Milano, her former brother-in-law Joseph of Modena, and her future husband’s family. The case, managed by Stella’s relatives, continued, and Joseph Modena struggled to find witnesses to testify on his behalf concerning his disposition of property with Stella. In the end, he was able to retrieve some property, and she obtained a court order to protect her.41 However, as in any case involving rabbinic opinions, despite the lack of support for Joseph in the community, he found at least one rabbi, who was a relative, to write in his favor. That rabbi declared that the edict of excommunication against Joseph Modena was not delivered correctly, that he did not receive proper warnings, that all the congregation did not hear it read, and that many of those who were there were relatives of Salvador Gallichi, which meant that it was a case of the relatives of one side trying to invalidate the involvement of the relatives of the other side. This case involved a widow and a widower scheming together and then betraying each other in order to take control of their late spouses’ assets. The remarriage of either one represented a threat to their arrangement, if not to their affection and honor. To make their cases, each invoked religious, secular, and divine authority. In this way, intricate prenuptial agreements were broken by families who wanted to maximize the opportunities presented by the death of a spouse or family member. Each marriage had an afterlife, and no matter how precise the prenuptial documentation might have been, it provided few guarantees concerning what happened when marriages ended. It is clear that the return of property was not automatic and that those involved had to fight for what they felt that they were entitled to.

Guardianship Jewish law, like most legal systems, developed procedures by which guardians (apotropos [m], apotropa or apotroposit [f], from the Greek) were appointed by various authorities to look after the property of those who were not considered able to do so on their own. These included minors, those with mental challenges, those absent from their property, and sometimes even women. Although rabbinic tradition remained divided about women serving as guardians of property and of children, a man could put his wife in charge of a store or appoint her as a guardian while he was alive, and in order to religiously affirm her diligence in taking good care of the property, he had the right to have her take a sacred oath whenever he wanted. However, some rabbis laid down the limiting principle that courts could not appoint women, slaves, or minors as guardians of orphans before the fact (lekhat-hilah), unless the father of the orphans (defined as children without fathers) had appointed them during his lifetime.42 However, the Talmud also told a

Anticipating Death 151 cautionary tale about guardians who killed a child on the eve of Rosh Hashanah because, as the child’s heirs, they stood to inherit the assets.43 Later Jewish authorities tried to prevent potential heirs from serving as guardians. Without a clear mandate from earlier rabbinic authorities as to whether women could serve as guardians, medieval rabbis looked for solutions not in tradition but rather in qualities that they attributed to women, either collectively or individually.44 Some offered derogatory characterizations of women’s capacity for guardianship. According to Rashi, “It is not in their nature to go and to exert [themselves].”45 Although Solomon ibn Adret (known as Rashba, 1235–1310) recognized the tradition that allowed a man to appoint his wife a guardian, he gave a reason for what he saw as the limited trust placed in women: “Because it is not the nature (setaman) of women to know how to supervise assets appropriately.” He wrote that when a man appointed a woman as guardian he had to certify that she was vigilant and knew how to supervise assets properly. Ibn Adret concluded that if a woman allowed assets to dissipate, even if she had been appointed by the father of the orphans and she was the mother of the orphans, she was to be removed from being guardian. But if a woman was able to protect assets without incurring any losses, she could remain in her position as guardian. There seemed to be no question that men would always fulfill the role of guardian with distinction.46 Developments among medieval rabbis who questioned the permissibility of women serving as guardians set the stage for discourse in early modern Italy. Rabbis debated the ability and the right of a widow to guardianship, and they raised serious concerns about dangers of the family of the father raising the child. There were those rabbis who allowed women the right to serve as guardians of their children after their husbands’ death, “according to Jewish law.”47 Moreover, beyond the legal intricacies, many rabbis recognized the emotional bond between mothers and children as well as the role of mothers in protecting children from predatory relatives. These rabbis insisted that a mother and her family, and not other relatives, must raise the children, especially girls, in the maternal home. Further, these rabbis stated that even if relatives sustained the widow and the orphans, they could not force this woman and her children to live with them. Other rabbis expressed concern over appointing a remarried woman guardian over her own child’s funds because a guardian who was negligent with the funds of an orphan had to make financial restitution; if she remarried and was under the control of a new husband, she did not necessarily have control of funds with which she could make good on any losses. However, Azriel Diena claimed that if the mother did not directly deal with the child’s funds, the issue of her negligence was irrelevant to her serving as a guardian. He even went one step further and asked broadly whether it could be demonstrated that guardians were financially liable

152  Anticipating Death for losses due to their negligence. Additionally, some rabbis required that a mother share the position of guardian with others.48 In giving his opinion on this case, Moses Provencal of Mantua affirmed that traditionally paternal uncles had precedence over maternal ones, so a female orphan technically belonged with her paternal family, especially if they were supporting her. Yet in this case, Provencal also expressed concern that an orphan girl might not be safe living with her paternal uncles. Because her paternal relatives were her heirs, she might be at risk of murder, so for this reason Provencal disagreed with tradition. He asserted that an orphan girl should not live with her paternal uncles, but rather with her maternal relatives, who had nothing to gain. Specifically, in this case, because the orphan girl’s paternal relatives were single boys who had grown up without a father themselves, she might be at risk of becoming a victim of sexual abuse, Provencal explained that this would not be the case if she lived with her maternal uncles, two of whom were upstanding, married men, and the third was a ten-year-old boy, who was being raised by his brothers. Provencal concluded that a girl should not be in a custodial situation with boys who posed a sexual danger. Apparently, he did not consider the possibility that married uncles might be domestic sexual predators. Such concerns about financial matters and physical safety played a role in a custody case in Bologna during the first half of the sixteenth century. After her husband died, the widow wanted to raise her two young daughters, the oldest of whom was eleven. Her older son, who wanted to raise his sisters in his house, opposed his mother’s wishes. The court established that because he was rich, he would have better means to provide them with a good upbringing, suitable for proper ladies and the daughters of kings, which would include an abundance of servants, food, and honor. If they lived with their mother, they would be humble servants of others and unable to have servants of their own. When asked about the case, Meir Katzenellenbogen noted that it was important to consider what was best for the daughters. The rabbi recognized that a very young girl still needed her mother, but he thought that eleven-year-olds (pa-otot) were sufficiently mature and would have enough insight to protect themselves. Thus, he declared that the older of the two girls should go with her brother if she wished; the fact that she was not yet twelve years old should not, in his opinion, prevent her from deciding where she would live. In this case, he was overlooking traditional rabbinic notions of the limited capacities of women as guardians and minors as agents capable of rational decision-making. Katzenellenbogen also suggested that because there were not as many assets at stake with a girl as with a boy, there was less of a reason to prevent a girl from living with those who might benefit from her death. Although Katzenellenbogen went out of his way to argue on behalf of the older brother’s wish to have his sisters live with him, he concluded that

Anticipating Death 153 the matter was in the hands of the court. A mother, therefore, was not automatically entitled to custody of her children, even though heirs were not necessarily safe living with paternal family members. He asserted that rabbis were free to rule as their personal interpretation of the situation guided them, thereby undermining the idea of the definitive nature of rabbinic tradition, which, like Catholic practice, was often based on circumstantial and subjective factors rather than all-encompassing and unchanging laws.49

Conclusion Like all aspects of Jewish family life in early modern Italy, death was even more complicated than rabbinic tradition anticipated, and, as in all other situations, women frequently found themselves at a disadvantage. Inheritance was automatic, and by not interfering in it, a person made a commitment to the traditional order that favored men over women. Bequests provided an opportunity for men and women to articulate their emotions, to express their relations with each other, and to readjust the economic fortunes of some at the expense of others. Through bequests, women stood to receive assets from fathers, husbands, mothers, siblings, and uncles—perhaps even more than their brothers received. Indeed, because their dowries constituted a debt against their fathers’ estates that had to be paid before the inheritance was divided, and because of the possibility of the additional “half a male portion,” women might receive more than males did as heirs. In addition, fathers could act to ensure the provision of assets for their daughters, either by taking full advantage of Jewish laws of gifts or by making testaments before Catholic authorities. The downside of a woman being able to make bequests was that the freedom they offered might be outweighed by the risk of losing the assets that the woman’s family and her husband’s family had invested in their marriage. Families wanted to ensure that their assets remained in their family. Nevertheless, fathers’ or husbands’ worst fears were often fulfilled when women disposed of family assets, especially when they made testaments before local Catholic notaries. As a result, in negotiating marriages, families were very careful in allocating assets and imposing conditions. Nevertheless, many women had assets and the desire to disperse them as they wished, including shifting them from one man to another—an act akin to fiscal adultery. Hence, because women had the ability to transfer property, their actions could jeopardize longstanding financial expectations, especially when women chose to favor their maternal families rather than following the conventional patrilineal inheritance structures. Bequests were an opportunity for women and men to act on feelings of affection, revenge, or control, by rewarding people for kindness, by punishing them for wrongs, or by providing an incentive to fulfill specific

154  Anticipating Death instructions, especially by stipulating the terms by which heirs could marry and sometimes even attempting to control their choice of spouses. For these reasons, more women than men left testaments in order to assert themselves outside the usual channels of inheritance. To receive her own inheritance, in the form of her ketubah amounts or as gifts, was not a simple matter for a woman, especially if the man’s family was in control of the assets and reluctant to part with them. His family could subject the ketubah and associated agreements to self-serving interpretations or they simply could abscond with the assets. A widow claiming her ketubah amount soon after her husband’s death might destabilize his family’s financial position if without much notice they had to remove her portion from their long-term financial arrangements, even though her family had raised these assets at the time of the wedding for such an eventuality. It was generally agreed that a widow who claimed her ketubah amount offended not only the financial stability of her late husband’s family, but also his honor. So even though they were entitled to the ketubah, they were discouraged from asking for it. They might even have been penalized for doing so by being denied maintenance from their husband’s family. If widows did not receive assets that they deemed proper, they could seize them with the help of their families. After all, a woman lived in her husband’s house and had access to his property even if she had no official claim on it. If a widow did receive her ketubah amount, then the death of her husband might be liberating for her, though the difficulties of caring for children, protecting assets, and fending off suitors might have put a damper on any celebration. Rabbinic literature certainly suggested that with their new freedom widows might not adequately mourn the loss of their husbands. Like so many other aspects of Jewish family life, a person might have picked one approach for calculating the ketubah amount, or perhaps acted with spontaneity, naiveté, ignorance, guile, or partial knowledge, and those competing for assets might have justified their claims based on another approach or on ambiguities in the ways in which wishes were expressed and laws were written and followed. These gaps, for Jews and Catholics, left room to negotiate. Even though women did not possess individual freedom of property, independence, or self-determination, and rules of inheritance and bequests might appear to have worked against them, they sometimes acquired—through personal relationships, social position, and family interests—the ability to work with authorities to subvert law and custom.50 As one Italian rabbi summarized the situation women faced in matters of inheritance: “These are matters of ancient disputes among the deciders of Jewish law. There is almost no binding decision among them due to the different explanations and choices. Everyone builds for himself. This is apportioned between the power of the permanent edicts of a city or a province . . . and the power of private

Anticipating Death 155 arrangements made between a man and his wife and between a father and his daughter.”51

Notes 1 Le Roy Ladurie, “Family Structures and Inheritance Customs,” 56–57. 2 Aboab, Devar shmuel, no. 72. Rabbinic citations in regular font are from the Responsa Project 18+, Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2010. Those in italics are from printed works, accompanied by the name of the author or editor when necessary for clarity. 3 For a discussion about the use of the testaments of servant women for writing social history, see Benadusi, “Investing the Riches of the Poor,” 805–826. 4 Goody, “Inheritance, Property, and Women,” 10–36; Chojnacki, Woman and Men, 153–168, 169–184; Malkiel, “Jews and Wills,” 7–69. 5 Cohen, “Haba-al et ishto,” 133–173. 6 Numbers 27:8–11. 7 Numbers 36:7. 8 M. (Mishnah) Baba batra 8:1–2; TB (Talmud bavli) Baba batra 108b- 109a; Goody, “Sideways or Downwards?” 627–638. 9 2 Samuel 17:23; 2 Kings 20:1; Job 42:15. 10 M. Baba batra 8:5. 11 Modena, Ziknei, no. 65; cf. Rafael ben Yohanan Treves, Mich. Add. 67, fols. 176a‑179a; Aaron Finzi, JNUL (Jewish National and University Library, now called NLI, National Library of Israel) 8* 2007, 101b‑102a. 12 Assaf, “Yerushat haba-al,” 79–94; Cohen, “Haba-al et ishto,” 133–175; Matanot, no. 143; Rivlin, Hayerushah, 84, 151–153, 172; Siegmund, The Medici State, 379–383. 13 Tur/SA HM 250. 14 Rama, SA HM 281:7. 15 JTSA (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) 6862, fol. 15a. 16 Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 152; Maharam Padova, no. 51. 17 On Jewish testaments made before Christian notaries, especially those of women, see the many articles of Carla Boccato; see also Adelman, “Jewish Women and Family Life,” 149–156. 18 See for example, Ravid, “Translators of the Hebrew Language,” 188–214. 19 Boccato, “Testamenti di ebrei,” 109–121; Boccato, “Sull’ eredita’,” 53–62. 20 Chabot, “Lineage Strategies,” 127–144. 21 Pullan, Jews of Europe, 270–271; Ioly Zorattini, Leandro Tisanio, 1–31; for a series of letters to him by Leon Modena concerning Maiolino Misaccioni, see Ancona 7. 22 Ioly Zorattini, “Il tesatamento di Caliman Belgrado,” VII‑XXIV. 23 On legacies for servants and their remarriage, see Benadusi, “Investing the Riches of the Poor,” 805–826. 24 Ioly Zorattini, “Raccomondo prima l’anima,” 130–158; on the importance of the “house of,” see Maharshakh 2:135. 25 Boccato made this point in many of her articles about the testaments of Jewish women; for Christian women, see Benadusi, “Investing the Riches of the Poor,” 811. 26 Roth, “Tzevatah,” 125–136. 27 M. Baba Batra 8:1–8; Rivlin, Hayerushah, 84, 151–153, 172; Cohen, “Habaal et ishto,” 133–173. 28 Provencal, no. 192.

156  Anticipating Death 9 Boccato, “Vicende familieri e ambiente sociale,” 391–414. 2 30 M. Baba batra 8:1–2; for an overview on Jewish widows, see Tallen, “Medieval Jewish Widows,” 63–74. 31 TB Ketubot 54a. 32 Sonne, “Letoldot kehilat bologna,” 87; cf. Kaufmann, “La famille de Yehiel de Pise,” 83–97. 33 Diena, no. 199. 34 Dei Rossi, Meor eynayim, ch. 56, 451; cf. Yadin, Masada, 171. 35 JTSA 1556, fols. 104a-107a, published by Schwarzfuchs, “Valeur de la Kethubah,” 116–123; Matanot, nos. 155, 129. 36 MT Malveh veloveh 17:9. 37 Maharshakh 2:150. 38 Tur EH 100, basing himself on Rif, Rambam, and geonim. 39 Maharshakh 2:150; Instead of reading the original in the Hebrew according to both the Bar-Ilan text and the Venice edition of 1592: omnam benedunya shehikhnisah leva-al kehov mamash azlinan batar hamakom shenishtabed bo, I am reading kenedunya, letters that are very similar in Hebrew. 40 Maharam Padova, no. 51; cf. Rivlin, Hayerushah, 157, cf. 49–56; Diena, no. 252. 41 Roth, “Memoirs of a Siennese Jew,” 353–402. 42 Reinarch, “Minui ishah le-apitropa,” 172. 43 TB Ketubot 102b. 44 Reinach, “Minui ishah le-apitropa,” 167–200. 45 Rashi, TB Gitin 52a. 46 Rashba 2: 285. 47 Simonsohn, Milan, nos. 69, 1548, 1550, 1716, 1752, 1763, 1855, 1945, 2230; Stow and Stow, “Donne ebree a Roma,” 77; JNUL 8* 101, no. 2. 48 Diena, no. 257 (a). 49 Maharam Padova, no. 53; cf. Provencal, no. 84, especially note 5. 50 Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women, 241–256; Kuehn, “Understanding Gender Inequality,” 58–80; McGough, “Women, Private Property, and the Limits of State Authority,” 32–52; Sperling, “Dowry or Inheritance?” 197–238; Cavello and Warner, “Introduction,” 3–23. 51 Aboab, Devar shemuel, no. 72.

Works Cited Aboab, Samuel. Devar shemuel. Venice: Vendramina, 1702; Jerusalem: no publisher. Adelman, Howard (Tzvi). “Jewish Women and Family Life: Inside and Outside the Ghetto,” in The Jews of Venice. Edited by Robert Davis and Benjamin Ravid. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 142–165. Assaf, Simhah. “Hatakanot vehaminhagim hashonim birushat haba-al et ishto.” Madaei hayahdut 1 (1925–1926): 79–94. Benadusi, Giovanna. “Investing the Riches of the Poor: Servant Women and Their Last Wills.” American Historical Review 109:3 (2004): 805–826. Boccato, Carla. “Testementi di Ebrei del Ghetto di Venezia (sec. XVII).” Archivio Veneto, Serie 5:170 (1990): 109–121. ———. “Vicende familiari e ambiente sociale nei testament di ebree del ghetto di venezia ne seicento.” Studi veneziani 60 (2010): 391–414. Boksenboim, Yacob. Matanot ba-adam. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983. Carpi, Daniel. Pinkas vaad k. k. padova 1–2. Jerusalem: Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1973 and 1980.

Anticipating Death 157 Cavello, Sandra and Lyndan Warner. “Introduction,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner. Harolow: Longman, 1999, 3–23. Chabot, Isabelle. “Lineage Strategies and the Control of Widows in Renaissance Florence,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner. Harolow: Longman, 1999, 127–144. Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000. Cohen, Yedidiah. “Takanot hakahal birushat habaal et ishto.” Shenaton hamishpat ha-ivri 6–7 (1979–1980): 133–175. Dei Rossi, Azariah. Meor eynayim 1–3. Edited by David Cassel. Vilna: Bidfus Y. R. Rom, 1866; Jerusalem: Makor, 1977. Diena, Azriel. Sheelot utshuvot azriel diena. Edited by Yacob Boksenboim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1977. Goody, Jack. “Inheritance, Property, and Women, Some Comparative Considerations,” in Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe 1200– 1800. Edited by Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, 10–36. ———. “Sideways or Downwards? Lateral and Vertical Succession, Inheritance and Descent in Africa and Eurasia.” Man NS 5:4 (1970): 627–638. Gulak, Asher. Otzar hashetarot hanehugim beyisrael. Jerusalem: Defus hapoalim, 1926. Ioly Zorattini, Pier Cesare. “Il testamento di Caliman Belgrado, East and Maghreb 5 (1986): VII‑XXIV. ———. Leandro Tisanio: Un giudiazzante sanvitese del seicento. Firenze: Olschki, 1984. ‘Raccomondo prima l’anima all’infinito et omnipotent iddio de ———. “  Israel. . . ’ Morete e testatori ebrei a Venezia nell’eta moderna.” Revista di Storia e Letterature Religosa 40 (2004): 130–158. Kaufmann, David. “La famille de Yehiel de Pise.” Revue des Études Juives 26 (1893): 83–97. Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family, and Women: Towards a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. ———. “Understanding Gender Inequality in Renaissance Florence: Personhood and Gifts of Maternal Inheritance by Women.” Journal of Women’s History 8:2 (1996): 58–80. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. New York: G. Braziller, 1978. Malkiel, David. “Jews and Wills in Renaissance Italy: A Case Study in the JewishChristian Cultural Encounter.” Italia 12 (1996): 7–69. McGough, Laura. “Women, Private Property, and the Limits of State Authority.” Journal of Women’s History 14:3 (2002): 32–52. Modena, Leon (Yehudah). Igrot rabi yehudah aryeh mimodena. Edited by Yacob Boksenboim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1985. Provencal, Moses. She-elot utshuvot. Edited by Avraham Yosef Yani. Jerusaelm: Mekhon Or Ha-mizrah and Mekhon Yerushalayim 1988. Pullan, Brian. The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. Ravid, Benjamin.’The Translators of Hebrew Documents’ of the Venetian Republic and the Venetian Government as Preserver of Documents of the Venetian

158  Anticipating Death Jewish Community,” in Tov Elem: Reuven Bonfil Festschrift. Edited by Elisheva Baumgarten Roni Weinstein and Amnon Raz Karkozkin. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2011, 188–214. Reinitz Yakub. “Minui ishah le-apitropa.” Mehkarei Mishpat 4 (1983): 167–200. Rivlin, Yosef. Hayerushah vehatzeva-ah bamishpat ha-ivri. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1999. Roth, Cecil (Betzalel). “The Memoirs of a Siennese Jew (1625–1633).” Hebrew Union College Annual 5 (1928): 353–402. ———. “Tzevatah ve-azvonah shel eshet-hayil mivirona mishnat tav-bet.” Zion 2 (1936–1937): 125–136. Schwarzfuchs, Simon. “La valeur de la Kethubah en Italie au XVIe sie’cle.” Revue des Études Juives 117 (1958): 116–123. Siegmund, Stefanie B. “Division of the Dowry on the Death of the Daughter: An Instance in the Negotiation of Laws and Jewish Customs in Early Modern Tuscany.” Jewish History 16 (2002): 73–106. ———. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early-Modern Jewish Community. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Simonsohn, Shlomo. The Jews in the Duchy of Milan 1–4. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982–1986. Sonne, Isaiah. “Letoldot kehilat bologna.” Hebrew Union College Annual 16 (1941): 35–98. Sperling, Jutta. “Dowry or Inheritance? Kinship, Property, and Women’s Agency in Lisbon, Venice, and Florence (1572).” Journal of Early Modern History 13:1 (2007): 197–238. Stow, Kenneth B. and Sandra Debenedetti Stow. “Donne ebre‚ a Roma nell’eta del ghetto: affetto, dipendenza, autonomia.” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 52 (1986): 63–116. Tallan, Cheryl. “Medieval Jewish Widows: Their Control of Resources.” JH 5 (1991): 63–74. Yadin, Yigal. Masada. New York: Random House, 1966.

6 Remarriage Negotiations Between Families

Behold, every day we see with our own eyes the modesty of the widow to honor her husband who died many years ago, her quiet and her seclusion at home, the great fastidiousness by which she shows her love for her husband. This is not the case among men in their prime; after seven days of mourning have passed they go in the markets and streets with the sound of merriment and rejoicing, looking in windows at women, and comforting themselves with evil and sometimes going to banquets. (Gedaliah ibn Yahyah, c. 1526–1587)1

Most women take compassion on their children and nurse them, even though they are not required to do so, but if she were allowed to remarry, she would not nurse them. (Azriel Diena, d. 1636)2

Introduction Jewish tradition, like that of the societies in which Jews have lived, has not been supportive of the remarriage of widows, widowers, and divorcees. Concerns expressed about remarriage fall into four categories: 1) honor of the dead, 2) pregnancy and nursing, 3) childcare and affection, and 4) the levirate connection. In their discussions of particular cases, rabbis attempted either to increase or lessen the restrictions on remarriage, depending on the case at hand and their personal orientation.3

Honoring the Dead Jews expressed concerns about honor in discussions about the appropriate waiting period before remarrying after the death of a spouse. If a married woman died, tradition dictated that her husband had to wait until three pilgrimage festivals had passed—these being Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, celebrated in the fall, spring, and early summer—meaning that he should wait between six to eleven months, depending on when the death had occurred.4 A woman whose husband died (or divorced her)

160  Remarriage was expected to wait three months before she remarried. Most rabbis considered this enough time for distinguishing (havhanah) whether she was pregnant by her previous husband, a surprising discrepancy in the imbalance of burdens that were usually placed on women. Moreover, rabbis did not believe this was sufficient time for a widow to show honor for her late husband, so many tried to extend the waiting period and impose further limits on remarriage.5 The waiting period was part of a larger attempt to guard personal and group honor from moral blemishes that accompanied post-marital female sexuality. As an example of this concern, the Bible stresses the importance of a priest (kohen) to protect his sexual honor and purity by marrying a virgin bride and not a divorcee, a widow, a prostitute, or a priestly woman with a blemished pedigree (halalah)—an attitude maintained by later Jewish tradition.6 A passage in the Talmud shows a similar concern. As often occurs in discussions of sexual matters, the text uses a culinary metaphor: “Do not cook in a pot that somebody else has already used.” In this case the Talmud suggests that when a divorced man marries a divorced woman it is as if their former spouses were still present during sexual intercourse, and there would be four thoughts (de-ot) in the bed. The Talmud then asks if this would also be the case with a widow: would her late husband be present in the bed? The answer assumes that the woman might be comparing her new husband’s performance in bed with that of her late husband’s, and it is explicitly sexual: “All penises are not the same.” Hence one of the men would not fare well in the comparison, thus potentially suffering dishonor—and there was little the first husband could do to improve.7 Influenced by kabbalistic discourse, the seventeenth-century Italian rabbi Aaron Berekhiah Modena raised concerns about the remarriage of women. Basing his views on the Zohar, he expressed concern that a widow might not find satisfaction with her new husband, especially if she was sexually experienced, and he was not. Modena went so far as to suggest that the remarried woman might even cause the death of her second husband, calling her a katlanit, a woman who had two husbands die. Although Modena provides no details about how his death might come about or how his wife might be culpable, we might suspect either divine displeasure or too much human pleasure. According to Modena, not only was the widow a threat to the life of her second husband, but she also endangered the honor of the first. He wrote that if her first husband had been a scholar, he would continue to live and speak words of Torah from the grave through his writings and thus intrude on her new marriage, as she would intrude on his saintly presence, especially if her second husband was not educated, perhaps having greater prowess than that expected of a scholar. Though Modena expressed concern that second marriages might not succeed, it seems that he was concerned that they might succeed too well, and this would harm the honor of the first

Remarriage 161 husband, making him cuckolded, both intellectually and sexually, as his widow continued to sustain his physical and spiritual presence.8 Modena’s thinking follows Catholic theologians who believed that sexual intercourse created affinities between couples forever, which also affected their kinship networks.9 Modena’s thinking can be summed up in his quoting the rabbinic expression, “A man only finds satisfaction with his first wife,”10 which he applied to women as well. His concern was that if a widow found greater sexual satisfaction with her second husband, the honor of the first would suffer.11 These fears of remarriage led rabbis to try to impose waiting periods on somebody who wanted to remarry. Like most aspects of Jewish practice, waiting periods for remarriage were subject to negotiation. Those who wanted to increase the waiting time for the remarriage of widows beyond that necessary for determining pregnancy insisted on including even women who were not likely to be pregnant, such as young girls, women who were post-menopausal (zekenah), underdeveloped (elonit), or those whose husbands had been abroad or in jail for an extended period of time, as well as those who had remained virgins since their weddings—because consummation is not required for a binding Jewish marriage.12 This longer waiting period for the remarriage of a widow amounted to a period of forced sexual abstinence to preserve the honor of her deceased husband. An extreme version of this attitude appeared in medieval Jewish sources that prohibited a widow’s remarrying if her husband was killed as a religious martyr (al kidush hashem), “because of the honor of the heavens.”13 To protect the honor of deceased husbands, some rabbis attempted to further limit the remarriage of widows. They suggested possible steps along the way to remarriage at which a widow would cease to receive support from her late husband’s estate. These included her claiming or actually collecting her ketubah, becoming engaged, becoming betrothed,14 or ceasing to use her late husband’s name;15 even receiving a proposal to marry was grounds for her loss of support—unless she explicitly declined it on account of her late husband rather than a lack of interest in the new prospect.16 In 1564, Barukh Azriel ben Barukh Hazachetto, a rabbi in Ferrara, ruled that a local widow who had become engaged to another man was no longer entitled to support from her late husband’s estate, effective immediately after the engagement—because she had dishonored the name of her late husband.17 Although rabbis made such concerted efforts to make remarriage difficult for widows, widowers sometimes had their waiting periods reduced by sympathetic rabbis. According to these rabbis, widowers who had not fulfilled their obligation to be fruitful and multiply or who needed somebody to care for their children could betroth immediately, marry at the end of seven days of mourning, and have intercourse at the end of thirty days of mourning—thus reducing the widower’s waiting period for

162  Remarriage remarriage from between six to eleven months to only one month. There was little doubt that second wives would raise the children of their new husbands, though the opposite might not have been true for remarrying widows with children. On the whole, rabbis were more inclined to consider the needs of a man and his children. Remarriage was a cause for community concern. For example, in Padua in 1627 and again in 1630, after some controversy, the Jewish community passed an edict that fined widowers who married widows. The day before a widower’s wedding, he had to pay in cash a fee of a half of a percent of any dowry he received from his second wife: half for the school (midrash) to buy wax for candles and half for the local yeshivah students. In a telling addition, this edict also warned that nobody should use a noisemaker as part of a protest when a widower married a widow, and that anybody caught doing so would be subject to a fine of twenty-five ducats, half for the poor of Padua and half for the supervisors of the communal funds (Camerleghi). The edict further explained that fathers were responsible for the rowdy behavior of their sons, and employers for their employees. Such disturbances were made by charivari, or youth gangs, among Jews or Catholics. In these anonymous protest rites, the charivari, often in costume, exercised a form of popular, informal social control beyond that of the religious and secular authorities. Indeed, they often acted in defiance of the authorities. Charivari used noisy protests to humiliate and to extort payments from offenders involved in controversial marriage practice. The charivari harassed any widower who did not pay the tax, specifically with mattinada, a noisy reception to awaken the couple on the morning after their wedding night. Despite their youth, charivari served to enforce community values and helped to enrich its treasury. At the same time, they could not prevent the marriage so that the protests and the payments served as a ritual to recognize the inevitable marriage, despite any dishonor it might cause to the widow’s late husband.18

Pregnancy and Nursing Jewish tradition held conflicting ideas about a woman’s obligation to nurse her children. In early rabbinic literature, the list of traditional tasks that a wife performed for her husband included the obligation to breastfeed, but if she brought two servants into the marriage, she did not have to cook or nurse, because one would serve as a wet nurse.19 At this early stage, rabbis were divided over what to do if a wife vowed not to nurse her child. One ancient rabbinic school allowed her to stop nursing, but according to another she should be forced to nurse.20 In the Talmud, the concern was expressed that if forced to breastfeed, a mother might kill her child.21 These contradictory opinions about the obligation of a woman to breastfeed continued during the Middle Ages and into early modern Italy.

Remarriage 163 On the one hand, rabbis supported the emotional aspect of mothers’ nursing their babies. For example, in the thirteenth century, Asher ben Yehiel reported that some women nursed as part of an emotional relationship with their babies. Indeed, even after their milk supply ran out, some women continued to nurse out of pleasure and feelings of affection that nursing created (beta-anug libatah).22 Other rabbis highlighted the voluntary aspects of breastfeeding: “Most women take pity on their children and nurse them even if they are not obligated to do so.”23 Yet on the other hand, all women did not nurse voluntarily or out of affection. An unsigned decision from Italy made it clear that nursing was an obligation of a woman to her husband, not to her child, and one that all women were not willing to take upon themselves. It quoted the early modern Turkish rabbi Elijah ben Hayim (Raanah, 1530–1575): “We have never found anywhere any obligation of the mother for the children.”24 The author of this decision then cited a medieval authority: “Any woman who is not bound to her husband to nurse has no obligation to nurse on account that she is [the child’s] mother, but rather the obligation falls on the father or the court [to nurse].”25 Other rabbinic authorities discussed how to force a woman to do her required tasks, including breastfeeding, and the methods included withholding sustenance from her, selling her ketubah and using the proceeds to acquire a slave or servant, and even whipping her, which raised the question whether the husband or the court administered the blows.26 If nursing was an obligation of the woman to her husband, what if he did not want her to nurse? Some men did not want their wives to nurse for fear that it would leave their breasts misshapen, but in an unusual move, some rabbis, including Maimonides, granted women permission to defy their husbands and to nurse their babies because they could not endure the separation from their babies, which could mean physical or emotional discomfort.27 However, some women did not want to breastfeed because of physical pain, but few rabbis were sympathetic to this complaint. One such rabbi was Abraham Yagel (1553–1623). According to his picaresque Hebrew autobiography he vigorously opposed women who did not want to breastfeed, and he stressed that the only purpose of breasts was to nurse children. He further asserted that the nature of the mother and her milk would determine the disposition of the child.28 Finally, the issue of nursing raises the question of whether if it was an obligation of the woman to her husband, what were her obligations to nurse if she had no husband—because he had died or divorced her, or because the father of the child never married her? The discussion about the remarriage of a pregnant or nursing woman who was widowed or divorced or of the first marriage of an unmarried woman highlights the competing emotional, physiological, and familial considerations involving different members of the Jewish community. Rabbinic literature dealt with the conflict between a mother’s obligations

164  Remarriage to herself, the child, the child’s father, and a potential new husband. Indeed, pregnant or nursing women who wanted to marry were known as either “pregnant by another man” (me-uberet havero) or “nursing the child of another man” (meneket havero), categories that emphasize the relationship between the men, rather than between the mother and the child. The dynamics of the relationship between the men played a role in determining the waiting period for a woman who wanted to remarry. The Talmud raised basic issues concerning a waiting period. It required twenty-four months before a pregnant or nursing woman could marry, and this became the basis of subsequent discussions. The text claimed that if a pregnant mother were to have intercourse with her new husband she would expose the fetus to the risk of being crushed like an old sandal. If the mother had already given birth and was nursing, there was concern that if she became pregnant again, according to then-current thinking, her milk would spoil, putting her baby at risk. These expressions of concern about a pregnant or nursing woman’s having intercourse with her new husband raised the obvious question of why rabbis would not worry about any married couple who had intercourse while the woman was pregnant or nursing their own child. In response, rabbis suggested that a father would ameliorate the dangers of intercourse by engaging in gentler forms of intercourse with the woman who was carrying his own child. They also claimed that if a nursing mother became pregnant and her milk became unsuitable for nursing, her husband would protect his own child by providing alternative sources of nourishment for the baby.29 The implication is that a new husband might not provide adequately for a child who was not his own. The Talmud also included rabbis’ fears that this child’s presence might provoke the new husband’s jealousy over reminders of his wife’s previous sexual activity with her former husband, leading to an increased level of physical abuse, perhaps even her murder.30 In addition, the obligation of the second husband to be fruitful and multiply could be hampered by the potential contraceptive effect of nursing. Further, the needs of the first husband included not only his child and the mother of his child but also her milk for his child. The Talmud also raised the concern that remarriage would interrupt the transfer of what we would now call ethnicity and identity from the father to the child, which was thought to occur via nursing (echoing the belief found in the Bible and in other cultures that the mother’s breast milk sustained the child’s physical safety and cultural orientation).31 The twenty-fourmonth waiting period was thus a way to ensure the physical and social safety of the child. Because nursing was an obligation of a woman to her husband, the Talmud exempted divorced women from the twenty-four-month waiting period. Yet because the twenty-four-month waiting period before remarriage was for the safety of the fetus or nursing infant, some talmudic rabbis asked why this requirement did not apply to all women. Some

Remarriage 165 rabbis, concerned that a divorced woman might reject the children of her previous marriage, proposed that although the mother had no legal obligation to nurse, her ex-husband could compel her to do so for the benefit of the child, but he had to pay her to do so, or he could hire a wet nurse, with fewer nutritional and personal benefits. Other rabbis emphatically dismissed any further obligations a divorced woman had to the man who divorced her, including nursing his child. The same exception was also applied to a pregnant or nursing unwed mother, who, because she was associated with no man whose honor needed to be protected, did not have to wait twenty-four months before marrying.32 As with most provisions in Jewish law and custom, some rabbis were prepared to negotiate. Indeed, Rabbis Leon Modena and Simone Luzzatto of Venice stressed that the very reason the waiting period was negotiable was because it was rabbinic and not biblical. Their position aroused controversy, but it shows that some rabbis realized that they had the authority to negotiate and that the principles over which they were negotiating were inherently human and fluid, rather than divine and fixed.33 Showing the fluid nature of rabbinic approaches to the twenty-four month waiting period, in 1540, Moses Provencal issued a widely circulated opinion facilitating early remarriage. In it he examined all the traditional rabbinic sources and paid attention to particular words on which he could base his lenient position. After discussing the usual distinctions in rabbinic literature between the different categories of women who could or could not remarry, Provencal shifted the ban on remarriage from pregnant and nursing women to include only nursing women, which reduced the waiting time. Once the baby was born, as long as the mother did not start nursing and did not intend to nurse at all, she was not considered to be nursing another man’s child, and thus the ban against marrying for twenty-four months did not apply to her. Provencal also minimized the obligations of women with high status to nurse, further reducing the categories of women who had to wait twenty-four months: For example, if she is a very important woman, who certainly would not nurse her children, she is able to bring with her two servants into the marriage, or if she lives in a locality where it is known that they followed the law that she is exempt from the requirement of nursing . . . it is certainly allowed for a pregnant woman to remarry after her pregnancy is recognized, especially because she is not included in the general category of pregnant women who are nursing a viable child. However, on the other hand, Provencal concluded: But, if he [the potential husband] wants to separate until the twentyfour months have passed, how much the better . . . and if not, it

166  Remarriage seems to me that it is not necessary to protest to him . . . especially because now in this hour of need and concern, you have unnecessarily added conditions to the permission.34 The length of the waiting period itself was reduced by Rabbi Nathan Eiger of sixteenth-century Cremona or Padua.35 Relying on conflicting readings of medieval rabbis,36 he made a distinction between whether at the time of her husband’s death the widow was actually nursing: if she was, then she could not remarry; if she had already ceased nursing at the time of his death, she could remarry. Also according to Eiger, if the mother had hired a wet nurse while her husband was alive, even if she herself was able to nurse, she could remarry, because she was not actually nursing and thus there could be no concern that she might stop. In opposition to Eiger, Meir Katzenellenbogen (Maharam Padova) attributed the waiting period to a divine commandment, which, unlike a rabbinic opinion, diminished the options for negotiation. Wanting to further decrease the number of women able to remarry without waiting, Katzenellenbogen shifted the question to whether a widow had the ability to nurse before the father died. If she could not nurse because her milk had stopped naturally as an act of God, then she could remarry without waiting. If this mother had hired a wet nurse at least three months before her husband died due to her own natural inability to nurse, she was entitled to immediate remarriage upon the death of her husband. But, if her milk had stopped after her husband died, she could not remarry without a waiting period. Katzenellenbogen’s critique of attempts to allow remarriage without waiting was informed by his own suspicions about women who claimed that their milk suddenly dried up immediately after the death of their husbands and who wanted to remarry without waiting. Katzenellenbogen mocked Eiger: “If so, you would have to say, ‘the Torah was given to the angels on high and it is possible to abridge it so that immediately after [her husband’s] death her breasts dried out.’ If she was able to nurse [even] one hour [after his death] she is called a nursing woman.” Hence, according to Katzenellenbogen a woman should not be allowed remarry until she had naturally ceased nursing and observed the waiting period. However, he asserted that the truth was that in cases in which a woman’s milk dried up or in which she had never produced milk, tradition dealt leniently with her. Other rabbis took a stricter approach, fearing that some women might commit infanticide in order to remarry without waiting, they required widows and divorcees to wait twenty-four months even though they no longer had to nurse. With such fears in mind, Katzenellenbogen expressed caution about allowing nursing widows to remarry before the end of the waiting period, yet he reached the conclusion that no matter how hard rabbis tried to limit women in this matter, their efforts were in vain because, “Every woman will act as she wishes and violate the edicts of the sages.” Suspecting a

Remarriage 167 high level of resistance to breastfeeding on the part of women, Katzenellenbogen repeated medieval rabbinic views that women would wean their babies early or even never start nursing so that they would be able to remarry without waiting—a line of reasoning that suggests that all women might not have naturally wanted to nurse unless they were forced to do so. Katzenellenbogen made the issue into one of rabbinic authority: rabbis felt that a woman’s body should be subject to rabbinic deliberations rather than to matters of nutrition or affection. Although confident in his strict opposition to the early remarriage of nursing widows, Katzenellenbogen revised his position when he realized that his stringency against remarriage before the end of the twenty-four month waiting period applied not only to the nursing widow but also to the man who wanted to marry her. Katzenellenbogen thought it unfair that a man would have to be bereft of children for more than two years due to the waiting period imposed on a woman. Hence, Katzenellenbogen broke with the principle of a mandatory waiting period and allowed a woman to remarry because of the needs of a man. In a surprising turn of events, other women protested his leniency, so he backed down and again reversed his decision—a case in which women wanted restrictions enforced although a rabbi tried to relax the rules. Rabbis articulated arguments against the remarriage of a pregnant or nursing woman based on concerns for the honor her previous husband. In Verona during the fall of 1540, the widow of Shabbatai of Lodi did not want to wait twenty-four months before marrying Yehiel Foa of Sabbioneta and Reggio. Among the Italian rabbis who responded, Yohanan Treves (c. 1490–1557) of Bologna, writing in Viadana stressed the honor of the first husband when he wrote that the new husband was encroaching on the dead husband’s authority over his former wife’s body. He drew on the rabbinic maxim, “A man shall not marry a woman who is carrying another man’s child,” by reading two verses from Proverbs removed from their biblical contexts: “Do not encroach upon the ancient boundary that your father made,”37 and “Do not encroach upon the ancient boundary or go into the fields of orphans.”38 Instead of reading the word for “ancient” as olam, he substituted ulem (elem), meaning “young,” producing readings along the lines of: “Do not encroach upon the boundary of the young that your father made,” and “Do not encroach upon the boundaries of the young or go into the fields of orphans.” Thus, Treves was able to assert that the presence of the first husband’s child marked that man’s territory, which was the body of his former wife, and it was forbidden for other men to enter it.39 As further evidence against the remarriage of a nursing woman, Treves also presented some medieval textual gymnastics that invoked the biblical commandment: “Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,”40 understanding the word for “seethe” to also mean to “wean” (tevashel). He showed that the numerical value of the letters of the word (gematria) added up to

168  Remarriage 732, which is twice 365, the number of days in a year on the Christian calendar, plus the addition of the day on which the child was born and the day on which the woman’s husband died.41 By linking the waiting period of two years or twenty-four months with a biblical text, however tenuously, rabbis such as Treves attempted to enhance their authority. Other cases involving the waiting period required different approaches to the negotiations on the part of rabbis. The marriage of an unwed pregnant or nursing mother presented fewer concerns to rabbis. There were several reasons for rabbis’ willingness to negotiate and make concessions that allowed such women to marry without waiting twenty-four months. Without the ability to marry and find the support of a husband, single mothers might have had to turn to prostitution for sustenance or convert to Catholicism to receive the financial incentives offered to Jewish converts, or at least threaten to do so in order to acquire basic necessities from the Jewish community. Marriage restored the honor of unwed mothers. In addition, if these women were not allowed to marry when they wished, they might take action to shorten the waiting period by sending their babies to wet nurses, which rabbis feared might have deadly consequences because the child might not receive sufficient care. Worse, the mother might simply kill the baby. Some rabbis did not like the fact that a mother’s threat to do something rash caused rabbis to back down and to negotiate with her. Several cases show the issues involved in the marriage of unwed mothers. In one case, some rabbis proposed that because an unwed mother had been promiscuous and was thus likely to do something rash, they should be sensitive to treat the slightest cause for concern with utmost solicitousness, which meant negotiating with her and limiting restrictions on the waiting period by allowing her to marry while still nursing her baby. Other rabbis, however, were willing to accommodate her by only allowing her to marry after she gave birth as long as she did not start to nurse but immediately turned the baby over to a wet nurse. In the early sixteenth century, a woman who had been divorced for several years gave birth. To remove the shame of her unwed pregnancy, her family wanted to marry her off as quickly as possible. In order that she not be considered a nursing mother, they urged her to turn her baby over to a Christian wet nurse. Then they found a young man who was wandering through the region, and without really knowing where he came from or where he was going, they encouraged him to betroth her within three months of her giving birth. Word got back to the rabbis, and with the usual conflicts of opinion they discussed whether she, as an unwed mother who was not nursing, had to wait twenty-four months before she could marry.42 Although we do not know the final outcome of her situation, we can see that rabbis treated her situation as a single mother differently from that of a widow or divorced woman, and they were not in complete agreement with each other.

Remarriage 169 In another situation involving an unwed nursing mother, a man, not identified as the father, brought her and the child to the area where he lived, and he rented a house for them (in cases such as this among Christians, a man might pay expenses but not accept paternity).43 Many men came and encouraged her to work as a prostitute to support herself and her child, but she refused. Instead, having obtained permission for an accelerated marriage from Rabbi Judah Minz of Padua (Mahari Minz, 1408–1506), the woman was gifted with a basic dowry which the important women of the community had collected in order “to cover her nakedness” (i.e. to protect her honor). She gave it to the man who had rented the house for her, and five months after she gave birth he married her and restored her honor—all while she was nursing. Minz referred to the man as “Mordecai Puffschtiln,” German for “brothel silencer.” As with the above-mentioned case of the divorced unwed mother, the rabbinic compromise of a quick marriage enabled a nursing single mother to restore her honor and protect her child.44 During the summer of 1534, taking advantage of the opportunities for divorced or unwed mothers to remarry without a waiting period, the ailing Rabbi Leon or Judah Montrealo of Cremona (Sabbioneta) divorced his pregnant wife so that she would be able to remarry soon after he died. In taking this step Montrealo showed more concern for the welfare of his wife and child than for his own honor. Subsequently, some rabbis invoked Montrealo’s divorce as a precedent for allowing divorced women to remarry without waiting. Others contested his actions and wanted divorcees, especially if they had already bonded with their babies, to be forced by a court to nurse and to wait twenty-four months before remarrying.45 These negotiations ultimately turned from the issue of the baby’s welfare, to the honor of the father, to the authority of the rabbis. Rabbis realized that if by their rulings they put Jews in untenable situations, Jews might ignore them or even abandon the Jewish community by converting to Christianity for relief from Jewish authority, or at least threaten to do so as part of their negotiating strategy. Thus, rabbis showed unusual flexibility in allowing women to remarry before the end of the twenty-fourmonth waiting period in an attempt to protect their own honor—and authority. Discussions about nursing provide insight into family relations. The major issues were whether mothers were required to nurse their babies and whether they even wanted to. When a marriage ended, the Jewish community had to face larger questions about family relations: what was the relationship of a married, divorced, or single nursing woman to the father of the child and a potential new husband? Discussions about women’s continuing to nurse after their marriages ended highlight the temporary nature of a woman in her husband’s family—a role that hovered between usefulness and inconvenience. The issue of her remarriage

170  Remarriage while pregnant or nursing upset the boundaries between two men and their respective families, and raised questions concerning which family the child belonged to, who was responsible for it, and where the mother’s affections should lie. Her bringing a baby, especially a nursing baby, into a marriage created a link between two men. This blurring of boundaries caused concerns over assets that might cross between families at the time of a spouse’s death, which produced elaborate prenuptial and inheritance agreements; there was also concern about sexual relations that linked a woman with two men and their honor, which reflected prohibitions against adultery and premarital relations.46 The waiting period thus created a neutral space in which to preserve the boundaries between two men—although, as we have seen, there were always exceptions to such rules.47 Nonetheless, these discussions, like so many others after a marriage ended, show that the emotional and physical needs of women and children were subordinate to those of men, even concerning intimate mother-child matters such as breastfeeding.

Childcare Obligations and Parental Affection Widows and divorced Jewish mothers had several options before them, and they had to make some difficult decisions, often being compelled to choose between their affection for their children, the needs of their children, their access to the assets of their late husbands, their connections with their own family, their desire for remarriage, and the demands of all the families involved. Raising children was considered the obligation of the husband’s family. A widow or divorcee might have taken the children with her to her new marriage, but it was not something that she was entitled to do, and she had to negotiate the arrangement with the families involved, which sometimes involved her paying for the privilege of her offspring remaining with her. As part of these negotiations, a mother who remarried had to explicitly stipulate that her children from her previous marriage had the right to live with her and her new husband.48 An engagement document (tenaim) from Casale in 1689 illustrates the dynamics of a widow remarrying and bringing her children with her. Smerelda, a prominent woman (gevirah) and a widow, engaged herself to Jacob Mordechai, and she signed the document in Italian herself. For a dowry, she agreed that, if she could retrieve hers from the estates of her late father-in-law and her late husband, she would contribute everything that she had brought to her first husband—an amount that her new husband would then match with the counter-dowry (tosefet). The wedding would take place in her house, but the couple would live in Jacob Mordechai’s house. The engagement document also records her desire for her children to stay and eat at Jacob Mordechai’s table for the next eight years, but it includes the proviso that she would have to pay her new husband for this privilege.49

Remarriage 171 If this document was accepted, Smerelda’s children came to live with their mother and new step-father. This way, the dowry that Smerelda’s parents raised for her went to the benefit of their grandchildren. Alternatively, widows could send the children to their late husbands’ families. In such a situation, according to some practices, the widow first declared that she “did not want” her child, which then spurred a relative of her late husband to come forward to raise the child, following which the widow would receive her ketubah.50 Rabbinic recognition of the maternal bond was strong enough that they often supported a woman’s claim to raise her child, even if in her desire to remarry she had sent the child to live with her late husband’s family, but subsequently changed her mind. In the 1560s, the widow of a man named Reuben left her daughter in the care of the girl’s paternal uncle, collected her dowry, and remarried. But then after virtually abandoning her daughter for four or five years, the mother decided that she wanted her now ten- or eleven-year-old daughter to return to live with her. In treating her request, Moses Provencal responded that after the age of six, a daughter should be with her mother. Even though she had ignored her child for so many years,51 she did not lose any maternal rights, and she was entitled to raise her daughter, especially at this time of maturation in the girl’s life. In another case, the anticipated remarriage of a widow who served as guardian for her son produced negative reactions against her from the family but support from rabbis. In this early sixteenth-century case discussed by Azriel Diena of Sabbionetta, when the widow became engaged to Isaac Katz of Porto, her brothers and brothers-in-law no longer wanted her to serve as the guardian for her son. Moreover, they wanted to prevent her from having any connection with her son: She should stand outside, and she should no longer be remembered by her orphaned son or have any connection with his assets, whether to enhance them or to diminish them . . . And they [her brothers and brothers-in-law] do not want . . . her any longer to interact with her son or to enjoy taking the infant and bringing him to her breast according to his disposition, as she once knew and understood it better than all other people in the world, until the boy grows up and becomes a man. They only want to feed him and care for him in a place where they will choose, but not in their house. Diena opposed remarriages of widows soon after the deaths of their husbands, but he recognized that some rabbis approved of them. He stated that the brothers-in-law had no right to make this woman send her son to another city. Diena asserted that nobody could have more interest in the child’s welfare than the mother: “in her bosom he will remain and she will care for him according to his temperament and his nature

172  Remarriage that she knows and recognizes better than any other person in the world because the nature of the source is best suitable for what came from it until the boy will turn thirteen years old and no longer will be considered a minor.” Although Diena also understood that some rabbis did not want women, slaves, and minors to serve as guardians, he concluded that this mother could also serve as a guardian over the possessions of her son, though she would not have direct authority except for her yearly audit of his accounts.52 Diena’s comments seem to offer a vocabulary of affection in addition to obligation when speaking about the relationship between a mother and her child. This was an example of a phenomenon now called “affective individualism,” which eschewed authoritarian family and communal structures, economic interests, and fear of childhood mortality, in favor of a sense of freedom, an appreciation of children, interest in the individual, respect for the rights of women and the self, the expression of sexuality without guilt, and a new sense of privacy in relationships. For Jews, these sentiments represent a break from longstanding attitudes towards childhood articulated by medieval rabbis who might have recognized the emotional nature of mother-child relationships, but were still willing to allow the separation of children from their mothers.53

Old Age and the Levirate Union Generally, widows were vulnerable, their assets were at risk, and their bargaining position was not always strong. Their late husbands’ families considered them a burden if they remained and a danger if they left, taking their assets with them and remarrying into another family. Consequently, widows were rewarded economically for not remarrying. A widow who chose not to remarry could enjoy many years of being supported by her late husband’s assets in his house—as long as she did not try to collect her ketubah. But his family did not always graciously accept the widow’s presence in their house.54 For example, in 1605, Jacob Cohen Ascanasi from Venice died at the age of 71, leaving a widow, adult sons, and grandchildren. He stipulated that if his widow, Madona Rena, remarried, then she would receive her dowry and the profit it had accrued over the years of investment—a bonus because usually the husband was entitled to the earnings of the dowry—but she would not be allowed to remain in his house with their children. But if she did not remarry, she was entitled for the rest of her life to live in his house with their children and to retain all the household goods and jewelry she acquired at the time of her marriage.55 Other widows were not as fortunate. In Verona in 1600, as the Jewish community was assigning property rights in the recently established ghetto, part of the negotiations involved allowing a widow, Rachel Colonia, to remain in her husband’s house forever without being evicted. By December, the property owner had succeeded in

Remarriage 173 having the community limit Rachel’s period of occupancy to ten years.56 Hence, the economic enticements of sustaining widowhood were not always guaranteed, and had Rachel collected her ketubah at the time of her husband’s death instead of relying on living in his house forever, she might have been better off financially. The original terms of marriage, often depicted as protecting a woman, did not always last after the marriage ended when a widow needed support in her old age. One way to deal with the economic exigencies of widowhood was the levirate union. It could offer an elderly widow without children to care for her an assured means of support with her brother-in-law and possibly with his family, and it protected their intertwined assets. Her ketubah was part of her husband’s estate to which her brother-in-law was entitled and from which he would otherwise be compelled to pay her the amounts agreed upon in her prenuptial agreement, which might greatly undermine the entire family’s business arrangements. Paradoxically, the original purpose of the levirate union was to produce a child to maintain the dead man’s name, but in these geriatric situations, the couple still joined in such a union when they could no longer reproduce. Instead, as in many societies, a levirate union was a way for the family to care for a widow. In a similar spirit, sometimes at the time of marriage, women made agreements with their future brothers-in-law that, should they become bound to them, they would negotiate to divide the estate with them, except for gifts or legacies that either had received from his or her family. In other cases, both the brother-in-law and the widow agreed that he would receive the entire estate and return her dowry to her or support her.57 Moreover, some childless widows who were in a levirate connection and thus obligated either to enter a levirate union with their ­brothers-in-law or to go through a ceremony of release, negotiated agreements that involved neither option, especially when the widow was beyond childbearing years. For them, remarriage was not a concern, and division of property would disrupt their finances and those of the entire family. For example, a man named Reuben, who died after thirty-two years of childless marriage, stipulated in his will that his sixty-year-old widow, Rachel, should be able to live forever with his brother Simon and Simon’s wife “in love” and “friendship.” Reuben’s will stated that if Rachel did not want to participate in this arrangement with her brother-in-law, she could collect any money owed her and leave, and any brother who challenged this arrangement would receive a reduced inheritance.58 In another case, from the mid-sixteenth-century Veneto, an elderly widow reached an agreement with her brother-in-law. She would not demand that he participate in a ceremony of release from the levirate connection, which would require a division of assets. Instead, she would live in his house and gain control over some property that she would be able to dispose of entirely as she wished. At least one rabbi challenged this arrangement, especially the part

174  Remarriage about their living in the same house. As usual, other rabbis showed more flexibility in the division of the assets, especially because in this case the widow and the brother-in-law agreed to the arrangement.59 These kinds of arrangements assured that if a widow had no children to care for her in her old age she might receive support and protection from one of her brothers-in-law, and the assets would remain in her late husband’s family. More often, the threat of levirate connection, with its implications of a widow’s being unable to ever remarry and becoming a chained woman (agunah), served as leverage for a woman’s late husband’s family to recoup some of the assets they had contributed to the marriage. Men could be strategic in their refusal to grant their widowed sisters-in-law release. In one Venetian case from the first half of the sixteenth century, after a man died, his brother Nathan Ottolenghi, who had made a prenuptial agreement with his future sister-in-law, Minklen, to take part in the release ceremony (halitzah), claimed that he could not do so because he had developed gout in his feet, and the ceremonial shoe would not fit on his foot. A Jewish court in Venice summoned two witnesses who had lived in his house and had cared for him to testify in detail concerning the condition of his feet. Meir Katzenellenbogen ruled that his feet were suitable for him to perform the ceremony, that Jewish tradition had considered many ways for men with special physical needs to perform the ceremony of release, and that there was no reason for a physical disability to prevent a man from fulfilling his obligations.60 Rabbis tried to protect widows trapped in levirate unions with their avaricious brothersin-law, but rabbis did not always have enough authority to adequately help the women. The levirate connection posed challenges to rabbinic authority. In coercing a man to release his brother’s widow, rabbis found themselves confronted with options that were more an indication of their lack of authority than of a particular approach to women who were at risk. Rabbis could have either allowed a woman to remain chained to her brotherin-law, unable to remarry until he released her (“until her head turns white”), or to apply pressure on him until he consented to release her.61 However, by speaking as if they had the power to enforce such coercive measures when not actually able to do so, rabbis might have exposed their weakness and the limited means of coercion at their disposal, and thereby diminished their honor in the community. Instead, rabbis negotiated, resorted to legalisms to redefine the situation, and tried to persuade using personal appeals and community pressure. These tactics allowed them to maintain the appearance of authority even though they did not always have the power to enforce it and to protect their honor, but the reality was that they could rarely act to extricate a woman stranded in a levirate connection. For example, Leon Modena, who regularly asserted rabbinic authority in matters of communal control and sometimes threatened capital punishment, was remarkably timid about forcing men to

Remarriage 175 release their childless widowed sisters-in-law from the levirate connection, even though he acknowledged that brothers-in-law often extorted widows and their families.62 Some couples in a levirate connection formed a levirate union, with potentially complicated results. For example, in 1539, the husband of Simhah died before the couple had any children. She was now bound to his married brother, Isaac ben Moses Sephardi (also called ibn Tarviah) of Ancona, but she wanted to collect her ketubah (which consisted of a dowry and a counter-dowry) and to live with her mother in Ravenna. Isaac, however, wanted to give her only the dowry that she had brought into the marriage but not the counter-dowry that his brother had contributed from their family’s assets. Simhah challenged Isaac in order to recover all the funds, but in a radical about-face, they finally reached an agreement in which Isaac would take her in a levirate union, and by doing so, he would also acquire her possessions. In the words of one of their detractors: “because he was interested in money and she had a large ketubah, and she was attractive to him because she was a good looking woman, he got carried away with his thoughts about her.” Together, they made a secret agreement that would involve her living with Isaac’s wife as a co-wife (tzarah)—polygamy is allowed in Jewish law. When Isaac’s wife of twenty-two years heard about these arrangements, she became extremely upset and sought rabbinic intervention. Rabbi Moses ben Mordechai (also called Tzarfati) Basola of Ancona pleaded with Isaac not to go through with these plans. Isaac, however, claimed that his intentions were for the sake of heaven and that some rabbis supported the view that not only had the ban of Rabenu Gershom against polygamy expired after the fourth millennium (viz. 1240 CE), but it was not valid in Italy and did not apply in matters of procreation. Basola attacked the authority of what he called Isaac’s “so-called rabbi” because he was too permissive and lambasted “ignorant” intermediaries for aiding this couple. In addition to arguing that Jewish law favored release over a levirate union and citing arguments based on law and custom, Basola also tried to create boundaries by invoking categories of impurity. He argued that if a man took his widowed sister-in-law for reasons such as her beauty, it was as if he had incestuous intercourse with her, which would produce a child of an impermissible union (mamzer) whose future status among the Jews would be limited.63 Although Jewish authorities could not force Isaac to agree to a release, Basola offered a negotiating strategy in which they could offer the reluctant brother-in-law a bribe or a threat of excommunication, which would mean that every Jew would have had to sever contact with him until he granted Simhah’s release of his own “free will.”64 This case began with a prenuptial agreement and ended with an attempt by rabbinic authorities to coerce a reluctant married man to release his brother’s widow. Along the way, the brother-in-law, taking advantage of the option of polygamy, initially tried to lower the amount that his family

176  Remarriage would give the widow as a settlement. Then, in secret negotiations, the couple agreed to go through with the levirate union. Their detractors attributed it to a combination of his greed and lust, although he claimed that he was doing so out of great piety. When word of their agreement leaked, his wife was not at all pleased with the idea of her becoming a cowife with her sister-in-law in a polygamous union. Simhah’s agreement with Isaac to enter a levirate union brought the case out into the open for community deliberations. Both sides then engaged in attempts at bribery, following which Simhah and Isaac denounced each other, and in the end Isaac released Simhah. In a wider context, the levirate union offered the small minority of Jews the opportunity to encourage marriage and procreation among family members in order to expand the number of possible relatives who could marry each other. This enabled the strengthening of Jewish lineages and the protection of family unity and inheritance. It was the opposite of trends found in the Catholic Church, which sought to limit endogamy, polygyny, concubinage, and divorce in order to hinder wealthy families from producing heirs, thereby causing unclaimed estates to fall more easily into the hands of the Church.65 For Jews, the levirate union established a connection between the widow and her late husband’s family to protect his honor and assets, as well as those of the entire family, especially when children were not involved. Although relations between a sister-in-law and her brother-inlaw were biblically forbidden, the Bible stated that the goal of the levirate union was to prevent the woman from marrying a foreigner and to preserve the name of her first husband. Some Italian rabbis understood the union as “provided by heaven” in the sense of the fulfillment of a divine commandment. For this reason, the brother-in-law was not a second husband but rather an extension of the first. In other instances, especially if she were old and without children, the option of settling in with her brother-in-law might have offered her support. Yet in practice, the levirate union could develop into a form of leverage against a widow. If she did not make financial concessions to her late husband’s family, one of her brothers-in-law might not release her, thus preventing her from ever marrying again.

Conclusion The prospect of a remarried woman caused confusion in matters of honor, sexuality, affection, and finances between her late husband and her new one. Couples, families, communities, and rabbis negotiated over remarriage, and in the course of doing so, those involved could adjust the waiting time required before remarriage. A widow had a closer connection with her late husband and a greater obligation to protect his honor than a divorcee whose husband had ended his relationship with her.

Remarriage 177 In negotiations, children were contested property and they often constituted an inconvenience, if not a burden. Men did not want to devote assets to raising the children of other men nor have them around as reminders of their wives’ previous sexual intimacy with other men. The needs of women, not the primary considerations of discussions about remarriage, included the need to remarry for companionship, financial support, and social standing, yet their affection for their children and their obligations to them could make it difficult to remarry. Men, especially widowers with children, needed women to care for their children, and it remains a question to what extent they understood the potential difficulty of women leaving the children they had with their first husbands in order to raise those of their second husbands. In negotiations over remarriage, rabbinic authorities were caught between requiring women to breastfeed their babies for the benefit of their fathers and freeing these women to meet the needs of other men. A woman was necessary for bearing and feeding children, but posed a challenge to the man’s family’s possessions. This consideration raised the question of whether a woman could be forced to breastfeed, reflecting tension between a woman’s rights and her obligations—and it was not always clear what constituted these categories. Many of the gaps in documenting the lives of women can best be filled after the death of their husbands. The discussion of remarriage provides specifics about marriage that are not fully documented in the formulaic or often inaccessible prenuptial agreements. Issues discussed at the time of remarriage supply information about affection, sexuality, volition, and honor. Unlike the young brides we encountered in prenuptial negotiations, women who became widows and divorcees might have been older and free from legal ties to men, left with some assets of their own, and protected by their natal families. They were better able to articulate feelings and needs before entering another relationship, if they did enter one. There were, of course, limits on their freedom, but fewer than on single and married women. These limits on their freedom were due to the continued connection between a man and a woman preserved by assets, sexual contact, breast milk, and children that out-lasted their union and continued to govern the life of a woman. The prospect of a woman’s remarriage strained this connection. Negotiations over inheritance, guardianship, nursing, and levirate marriage attempted to maintain the balance in the relationship between a man and a woman who were once married—even though he had divorced her, or he was dead.

Notes 1 Gedaliah ibn Yahyah in Neubauer, “Frauenliteratur,” 10:145. 2 Diena, no. 142. Rabbinic citations in regular font are from the Responsa Project 18+, Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2010; those in italics are from

178  Remarriage printed works, accompanied by the name of the author or editor when necessary for clarity. 3 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, 117–131, 132–165; Chojnacki, Women and Men, 61, 98; Peristiany, Honour and Shame, 118; Cohen, Women’s Asylums, 27; Delille, “Strategie di alleanza e demografia del matrimonio,” 288; Greico, “The Body, Appearance, and Sexuality,” 277; Phillips, Putting Asunder, 367–369; Brundage, Laws, Sex, and Christian Society, 477, 558, 560; for the major Catholic sources, see Exhortation to Chastity 7; Ante-Nicean Fathers 4, 54; Ecclesiastical Canons of the Holy Apostles 17; Ante-Nicean Fathers 7, 501; Constitutions of the Holy Apostles 6, 17; AnteNicean Fathers 7, 457. 4 SA (Shulhan arukh) YD (Yoreh deah) 392; PY, (Pahad yitzhak)“Avel,” 1:7b, 1: c. 75. 5 MT (Mishneh torah) Gerushin 11:18. 6 Leviticus 21. 7 TB (Talmud bavli) Pesahim 112a‑112b; Cohen and Horowitz, “In Search of the Sacred,” 243–247. 8 Aaron Berakhiah Modena, Ma-avar yabok, Sefat Emet, 10. 9 Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 154–156; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 356. 10 TB Yevamot 63b; TB Sanhedrin 22a. 11 Yagel, Valley, no. 31. 12 On consummation and marriage, see Adelman, “Virginity,” 179–213. 13 Sefer Hamiktzo-ot, cited in Hayim (Eliezer) ben Isaac Or Zarua, no. 14. 14 MT Ishut 18:1. 15 BY (Bet yosef) EH (Even ha-ezer) 93:7. 16 TB Ketubot 54a. 17 Boksenboim, Matanot, no. 129. 18 On charivari, see Davis, Society and Culture, 97–123; Hareuveni, Sipur, 53; on remarriage among Catholics in Italy, see Calvi, “Reconstructing the Family,” 275–296. 19 M. (Mishnah) Ketubot 5:5; TB Ketubot 59b; MT Ishut 21:11–18; SA EH 80:6. 20 T. (Tosefta) Nidah 2:1–4. 21 TB Ketubot 60b. 22 Rosh, no. 53:4. 23 Diena, no. 142; Rosh, Yevamot 4:26; Rosh 53:4. 24 PY, “Ishah eynah mitkadeshet,” 1:102a‑107a; 2: c. 588. 25 Maharshak, nos. 2–4; PY, “Ishah eynah mitkadeshet,” 1: 102a‑107a; 2: c. 571. 26 SA EH 80:15. 27 MT Ishut 21:13. 28 Yagel, Valley, no. 88. 29 Yevamot, 42a–42b; MT Gerushin 11:25; Benedictow, “Breast Feeding and Sexual Abstinence,” 167–206; idem, “On the Origin and Spread of the Notion That Breast Feeding Women Should Abstain from Sexual Intercourse,” 65–76; idem, “The Milky Way in History,” 19–53; Winer, “Conscripting the Breast,” 176; Zimmerman, “Duration,” 52–59. 30 Miner and Shckelford, “Risk of Death or Life-Threatening Injury for Women with Children,” 89–97; Brewer and Paulsen, “A Comparison of U.S. and Canadian Findings on Uxorcide Risk,” 317–332. 31 Chapman, “’Oh That You Were Like a Brother to Me,” 1–41. 32 Rama, SA EH 13:11.

Remarriage 179 33 Modena, Ziknei, nos. 123, 110; PY, “Ishah eynah mitkadeshet,” 1: 102a‑107a; 2: c. 571. 34 Provencal, no. 100. 35 Boksenboim, Matanot, nos. 185–187; Maharam Padova, no. 30. 36 Rosh, Ketubot 5:20, 53:4; unlike printed editions, the Bar Ilan edition of Rosh 53:4 leaves out the crucial word “lo” in the expression “whether or not she is nursing her son, she may not marry.” 37 Proverbs 22:28. 38 Proverbs 23:10. 39 TP (Talmud of Palestine) Sota 4:3 (19c); Mordechai nos. 247, 567; Boksenboim, Matanot, nos. 185. 40 Exodus 23:19, 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21. 41 Boksenboim, Matanot, no.187. 42 Provencal, no. 100; PY, “Ishah,” 1:102a‑107a; 256a‑617; Malkiel, “The Burden of the Past,” 107. 43 Cazzetta, “Praesumitur Seducta,” 405. 44 Mahari Minz, no. 5. 45 Diena, no. 141. 46 TB Yevamot 42a. 47 T. Nidah 2:2. 48 Stow and Stow, “Donne ebree a Roma,” 93; Boksenboim, Melamedim 1, no. 189. 49 JTSA (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) 3305, fols. 2–8. 50 Modena, Hayei, fol. 23a; 139; Carpi, 86–87. 51 Provencal, no. 87. 52 Diena, no. 257 (a). 53 Goody, The East in the West, 175–189; Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage, 22–23, 52, 177, 260–263, 270–271, 310–311, 318–319, 324–325; Aries, Centuries of Childhood; Kanarfogel, “Attitudes Toward Childhood and Children,” 1–34. 54 Chojnacki, Women and Men, 98–100; MT Ishut 16:23; Ranah, no. 18; Rema SA EH 102:1. 55 Boccato, “The Testament of Jacob Cohen Ascanasi,” 123. 56 Boksenboim, Verona 2, no. 769, 624 cf. nos. 799, 642. 57 For a Sephardic instance from Portugal, see PY, “Halitzah,” 3:21a; Heilpronn, Nahalat Yaakov, nos. 11–12; for the Ashkenazic formulation, see Finkelstein, Self-Government, 58, 74–75; Katz, Halakhah vekabalah, 161– 162; Rivlin, “Halitzah,” 229–251; Adelman, “Custom, Law, and Gender,” 107–125. 58 PY, “Halitzah,” 3: 21a, 21b, 23a, 26b, 27bff. 59 Maharam Padova, no. 17; PY, “Halitzah,” 27b. 60 Maharam Padova, no. 23. 61 PY, “Halitzah,” 3: 21b, 24b, 23b. 62 Modena, Riti, 4:7: 6. 63 On the mamzer, see Joseph, “Civil Jurisdiction and Religious Accord,” 322. 64 Boksenboim, Matanot, nos. 141; JNUL 8* 101, nos. 4–5; cf. PY, 3, “Halitzah,” 3: 25a, 26b‑27b; on Basola, see Lamdan, “Shnei ketavim,” 171–193. 65 Goody, Development of the Family and Marriage, 68–82; for further discussions of the levirate union in the anthropological literature, see Sapir, “Terms of Relationship and the Levirate,” 327–337; Pans, “Levirate and Sororate,” 343–358; idem, “Bifurcate Merging Terminology,” 365–378; Kirwen, African Widows, especially 162–173.

180  Remarriage

Works Cited Adelman, Howard (Tzvi). “Custom, Law, and Gender: Levirate Union Among Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Italy After the Expulsion from Spain,” in The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After. Edited by Raymond Wadington and Arthur Williamson: New York: Garland, 1994, 107–126. ———. “Virginity: Women’s Body as a State of Mind: Destiny Becomes Biology,” in The Jewish Body in the Early Modern Period. Edited by Maria Diemling and Giuseppe. Veltri. Leiden: Brill, 2008, 179–213. Aries, Philip. Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1962. Benedictow, Ole Jorgen. “Breast Feeding and Sexual Abstinence in Early Modern Europe and the Importance of Protein-Calorie Malnutrition.” Scandinavian Journal of History 13 (1988): 167–206. ———. “The Milky-way in History, Breast Feeding, Antagonism between the Sexes and Infant Mortality in Medieval Norway.” Scandinavian Journal of History 10 (1985): 19–53. ———. “On the Origin and Spread of the Notion that Breast-Feeding Women Should Abstain from Sexual Intercourse.” Scandinavian Journal of History 17 (1992): 65–76. Boccato, Carla. “The Testament of Jacob Cohen Ascanasi: The Family and Commercial Enterprise in the Venetian Ghetto at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century.” Mediterranean Historical Review 8:1 (1993): 105–124. Boksenboim, Yacob, ed. Igrot melamdim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1985. ———. Matanot ba-adam. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983. ———. Pinkas kahal verona 1–3. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1989–1990. Brewer, Victoria E. and Derek J. Paulsen. “A Comparison of U.S. and Canadian Findings on Uxorcide Risk for Women Sired by Previous Partners.” Homocide Studies 3:4 (1999): 317–332. Brundage, James A. Laws, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Calvi, Giulia. “Reconstructing the Family: Widowhood and Remarriage in Tuscany in the Early Modern Period,” in Marriage in Italy. Edited by Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 275–296. Cavello, Sandra and Lyndan Warner. “Introduction,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner. Harolow: Longman, 1999, 3–23. Cazzetta, Giovanni. Praesumitur Seducta: Onesta’ e consenso femminile nella cultura giuridica moderna. Milano: Giuffre Editore, 1999. Chapman, Cynthia R. “’Oh That You Were Like a Brother to Me, One Who Had Nursed at My Mother’s Breasts’: Breast Milk as a Kinship-Forging Substance.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 12 (2012): 1–41. Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000. Cohen, Esther and Elliott Horowitz. “In Search of the Sacred: Jews, Christians, and Rituals of Marriage in the later Middle Ages.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20:2 (1990): 225–249. Cohen, Sherrill. The Evolution of Women’s Asylums Since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Remarriage 181 Davis, Natalie Z. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. Delille, Gérard. “Strategie di alleanza e demografia del matrimonio,” in Storia del Matrimonio. Edited by Michela De Giogio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996, 283–303. Diena, Azriel. Sheelot utshuvot azriel diena. Edited by Yacob Boksenboim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1977. Entziklopediah Pahad Yitzhak. Edited by Isaac Lampronti. Bnei Brak: Yahdut, c. 1980 [cited by folio]. Edited by Barukh Mordecai Cohen. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1961–1986 [cited by column]. Finkelstein, Louis. Jewish Self Government in the Middle Ages. New York: JTSA, 1924. Goody, Jack. The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. ———. The East in the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Hareuveni, David. Sipur david hareuveni. Edited by A. Z. Aescoli. Jerusalem: Hahevrah ha-eretz yisraelit lehistoriyah ve-etnographiah, 1940. Heilpronn, Jacob. Nahalat yaakov. Padua: Gasparo Crivilari, 1623; Bene Berak: Y.M. Morgenstern, 1969. Joseph, Norma Baumel. “Civil Jurisdiction and Religious Accord: Bruker v. Marcovitz in the Supreme Court of Canada.” Studies in Religion 40:3 (2011): 318–336. Kahn, Yoel. “The Three Morning Blessings: ‘. . . Who Did Not Make Me. . . ’: A Historical Study of a Jewish Liturgical Text,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, 1999. Kanarfogel, Ephraim. “Attitudes Toward Childhood and Children in Medieval Jewish Society,” in Approaches to Judaism in Medeival Times 2. Edited by David Blumenthal. Chico: Scholars Press, 1985, 1–34. Katz, Jacob. Halakhah vekabalah. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984. Kirwen, Michael C. African Widows: An Empirical Study of the Problems of Adapting Western Christian Teachings on Marriage to the Leviratic Custom for the Care of Widows in Four Rural African Societies. New York: Maryknoll, 1979. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Lamdan, Ruth. “Shnei ketavi mishel r. moshe basola.” Michael 9 (1985): 171–193. Malkiel, David. “The Burden of the Past in the Eighteenth Century: Author, Custom, and Miner, Emily J., Todd K. Shackelford, et al. “Risk of Death or Life-Threatening Injury for women with Children Not Sired by the Abuser.” Human Nature 23:3 (2012): L 89–97. Matthews Grieco, Sara F. “The Body, Appearance, and Sexuality,” in A History of Women in the West 3: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes. Edited by Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993, 46–100. Modena, Aaron Berekhiah. Ma-avar yabok. Vilna: Yosef Reuben bar Menahem min Ram, 1860; Jerusalem: no publisher, 1989. Modena, Leon (Yehudah). The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah. Edited and translated by Mark R. Cohen. Additional introductions and Notes by Theodor Rabb, Natalie Zemon Davis, Howard E. Adelman, and Benjamin Ravid. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1988.

182  Remarriage ———. Hayei yehudah. Edited by Daniele Carpi. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1985. ———. Historia degli riti hebraici. Paris, 1637; Venice: G. Calleoni, 1638. ———. The History of the Rites, Customes, and Manner of Life of the Present Day Jews. Translated by Edmund Chilmead. London: Jo. Martin and Jo. Ridley, 1650. ———. She-elot utshuvot ziknei yehudah. Edited by Shlomo Simononsohn. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1956. Neubauer, Adolf. “David Messer Leon.” Israelietische Letterbode 10 (1884– 1885): 106–111. ———. “Zur Frauenliteratur.” Israelitische Letterbode 10 (1884–1885): 97–105, 139–147. Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pans, A. E. M. J. “Bifurcate Merging Terminology and Step-Bifurcate Collateral Terminology: A Cross-Cultural Study.” Ethnology 29 (1990): 365–378. ———. “Levirate and Sororate and the Terminological Classification of Uncles, Aunts, and Siblings’ Children.” Ethnology 28 (1989): 343–358. Peristiany, J. C. Honour and Shame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. Phillips, Roderick. Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Provencal, Moses. She-elot utshuvot. Edited by Avraham Yosef Yani. Jerusaelm: Mekhon Or Ha-mizrah and Mekhon Yerushalayim 1988. Rivlin, Yosef. “Halitzah Stipulations in Engagement Contracts.” Jewish Law Association Studies 10 (1998): 229–251. Roberts, Alexander and James Donaldson, eds. Ante-Nicene Fathers 4 and 7. Revised by A. Cleveland Coxe. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1976 (accessed August 24, 2017). Sapir, Edward. “Terms of Relationship and the Levirate.” American Anthropologist, new series, 18 (1916): 327–337. Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1977. Stow, Kenneth B. and Sandra Debenedetti Stow. “Donne ebre‚ a Roma nell’eta del ghetto: affetto, dipendenza, autonomia.” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 52 (1986): 63–116. Winer, Rebecca Lynn. “Conscripting the Breast: Lactation, Slavery, and Salvation in the Realm of Aragon and the Kingdom of Majorca, c. 1250–1300.” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 164–184. Yagel, Abraham. A Valley of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel. Translated and edited by David Ruderman Philadelphia: University of Pensylvania Press, 1990. Zimmerman, Deena Rachel. “Duration of Breastfeeding in Jewish Law,” in Jewish Legal Writings by Women. Edited by Micah D. Halpern and Chana Safrai. Jerusalem: Urim, 1998, 52–59.

7 Conclusion

According to the testimony that these witnesses gave in Ferrara, which was not in my presence, the rabbis there seized my neck, whistled at me, and used me to advance their own authority. Against me they set up traps and great edicts of excommunication full of scorn and anger, which would cause anyone who heard them to cover his ears. (Rosa Montalcino)1

Coda: Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti: Not a Love Story The case of Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti lasted three years, from 1534–1537. In it, we hear the voice of a woman. We hear her negotiating the terms of her second marriage, mustering the reasons to break the engagement, facing the prospect of being forced to marry, and finding herself ensnared in a doubtful betrothal because of a gift—sivlonot—sent to her under dubious circumstances. Rabbis throughout northern and central Italy, from Venice in the north, Chianciano in the south, Sienna in the west, and Ancona in the east, and from beyond, issued conflicting opinions about whether because of the exchange of gifts she was betrothed or free to marry another man, whether they could force her to marry the man to whom she was engaged or excommunicate her if she did not live up to her initial agreement, whether she needed a divorce to get out of the relationship in order to marry another, and whether offspring from another man would be legitimate or a mamzer, excluded from the Jewish people. This highly documented case brings together many aspects of the stages of marital negotiations from the perspective of the woman involved.2 Rosa, the widow of Judah ben Jacob of Modena and the daughter of the late Jacob Montalcino, lived with her widowed mother Brunetta Montalcino, who ran a loan bank in Chianciano, near Siena, with her father and her son Raphael, Rosa’s brother. Rosa had at least one other sister, Consolo, who would marry Menahem mi-Foligno. In May of 1534 in Perugia, an intermediary made a discrete inquiry to Raphael, on behalf

184  Conclusion of Isaac Danuti Ashkenazi of Pesaro, who was interested in the possibility of negotiating a match with her. Rosa was receptive and issued a formal decree empowering Raphael to make a prenuptial contract. She authorized him to negotiate the conditions of the marriage, ketubah, dowry, counter-dowry, expenses, and provisions; to arrange the time, place, and costs of the wedding; to establish penalties for violations of the agreement, including fines and excommunication; to bind her brother as her agent in all matters, according to Jewish and Christian law, “and everything that is customary, possible, and necessary; and everything that it is possible to explain or clarify orally concerning everything, in general and particular.”3 Like most formal documents prepared for men, these documents were presumably penned by notaries, who probably did not preserve Rosa’s exact words but still conveyed her voice: From this moment on I, the above mentioned Ms. Rosa, give to the honorable rabbi Raphael, my brother . . . symbolic exchange (kinyan). I authorize him, I empower him, and I appoint him executor and power of attorney and representative to join me as wife to Mr. Isaac Danuti . . . From now on, his hand shall be as my hand, his mouth as my mouth, his promise as my promise, his doing as my doing. Every agreement reached by adjudication, whether for innocence or guilt, is my responsibility. I am not able to say “I sent you for my benefit and not for my detriment.”4 Raphael and Isaac reached an agreement, in which all monetary terms were expressed in scudi or in ducats. Although worth about the same, this loose use of currency highlights the inconsistent practices found in many documents, which, as will be seen, could lead to misunderstandings and litigation. It was established that Rosa would bring a dowry of 600 ducats payable on a multi-year schedule: 200 at the wedding and then 200 for the next two years, which on a comparative basis did not represent a significant sum. Assessors selected by both sides would valuate the jewelry, woolens, and linens that she would bring with her to the wedding as part of her dowry. For his part, Isaac would provide her with a dowry document in consultation with legal counsel and with her brother, a counter-dowry of 150 scudi, betrothal, and a marriage contract (ketubah), and additionally would pay for the wedding. Isaac also agreed that should Rosa die without issue, he would not be her heir and the dowry would revert to her brother and her cousins. Rosa’s family would pay the costs of her travel to the wedding, which would be at a time agreed upon by Raphael and Isaac. Both sides agreed not to place any further financial burdens on Rosa’s family. If one side broke the agreement, it would have to pay 200 scudi: 100 to the other side and 100 to the court. Raphael and Isaac as well as witnesses signed the document, but it was not signed

Conclusion 185 by Rosa herself.5 According to some accounts, Raphael now called Isaac his brother-in-law. However, Rosa soon expressed her desire to break this engagement. In response, in July 1534, Isaac sent a delegation of three men from Pesaro to Chianciano, headed by Rabbi Moses Novera. On behalf of the prospective groom, Novera brought Rosa an expensive gold chain with a pearl set in it, purportedly to appease her so that she would fulfill her promise to marry Isaac, but the rabbi also brought the threat that if she would not, he would excommunicate her. After Novera spoke with Rosa, he left the gift in the hands of Rosa’s mother, Brunetta. Isaac then claimed that this act changed the nature of the case from one of a broken engagement to one involving a binding religious betrothal by giving a gift (sivlonot). The issue became further confounded because Novera fell very ill upon his return to Ferrara, died the next day, and was never able to report on his mission to Chianciano, leading all the participants to enlist more rabbinic support to use a variety of negotiation strategies to re-create events and determine Rosa’s fate. This case is particularly illustrative of the complexities of the process of engagement, betrothal, marriage, and divorce. When Rosa tried to break the engagement, Isaac enlisted rabbinic support to force her to marry him against her will. As we will see, the case shifted from a broken engagement, to threatened excommunication, to forced marriage, to a doubtful betrothal, to the need for a divorce; it ended up, like so many others, involving the major issues of rabbinic authority and money, which were markers of the dynamics of family negotiations. To break her engagement with Isaac without having to pay the penalties that were stipulated in the engagement agreement, Rosa had to offer a reason for her reconsideration of the arrangement—that is, an acceptable pretext or excuse. In the course of her presentations she gave several: she claimed that her brother Raphael had made the agreement for his own financial benefit as evidenced by his receipt of a generous loan of 150 gold scudi from Isaac.6 She also stated that she had begun to hear rumors about Isaac’s “hidden blemish”—some sort of physical defect. The documents record her chastisement of Raphael: What is this that you did? I relied on you, that you would seek and investigate any defects, hidden or secret, and you would be vigilant concerning all important matters . . . You only set your sights on financial matters . . . You should only be in my position to supervise the essential and true details, and your sister’s body should be as dear to you as your money.7 Later (April 1535), she was more specific in identifying Isaac’s defect as impeding sexual relations8: she mocked Isaac, describing him as initially being presented to her as “manly and divine, proudly soaring through

186  Conclusion the heavens with his woman.” She chided her brother for responding too quickly to the inquiry Isaac had made about her, and for being too eager to make the match for her with Isaac, “holding him with nails so he would never leave.” Indicating that she could have had more say in the matter, she rebuked herself for going along with this plan. Rosa declared that she had not initially known about Isaac’s condition but that she now found him “repulsive” (ma-is alai) and she wanted “to refuse” (lema-en) him. These were the acceptable expressions used for breaking a betrothal, usually when a minor was betrothed by her mother or brother, but here the use of the term was expanded to involve an adult widow trying to get out of an engagement. She denounced Isaac further: I will not come to you, and you will not approach me because you did not betroth me. In addition, if I authorized my brother to arrange the terms of love with you, I did not authorize him to force me before a lion that carries illness and suffers pain from it . . . There is no greater compulsion than to compel me to engage a man possessed by such pains. I fear lest Isaac have sexual relations, I will again become a widow in my father’s house, and they will call me a katlanit (femme fatale)9 Rosa found witnesses and made her complaints widely known. In January 1535 she declared: “Seek and investigate these two men about the matter of the engagement that my brother Raphael made with Isaac Danuti Ashkenazi, and from their mouths you will hear that I did not desire what my brother had done.” The witnesses reported that Rosa regularly told them that she did not want to fulfill the agreement made in Perugia and that she would not agree to live with Isaac as his wife. They heard her give varying reasons for her refusal, and her mother Brunetta always supported her attempts to break the engagement. Isaac and his family were outraged and sent pleading and threatening letters to Rosa’s family concerning her intention to break off the engagement. Each side had important rabbis on its side to do its bidding. Moses Nissim Foligno of Pesaro and Fano, an important banker in Urbino and the father of Menahem, the husband of Rosa’s sister Consolo, managed the case through Rabbi Azriel Diena of Sabbioneta. Meir Katzenellenbogen of Padua (Maharam Padova), a relative of Isaac’s, had to repudiate the declaration attributed to him (and to other rabbis from as far away as Germany) that Rosa should be forced “by means of words,” excommunication, or physical coercion (“by whips”) to consent to marry Isaac.10 Katzenellenbogen asserted that it was a disgrace to gag the mouth of a woman who said that a man was loathsome to her, especially if she had a valid reason for reconsidering her commitment to him. Even if she had betrothed him, she could go free, and even more so if she had not betrothed but only engaged him. Katzenellenbogen went so

Conclusion 187 far as to say that even when the woman was wrong in such matters rabbis should look the other way in order to avoid using force—perhaps as a way to sidestep the fact that rabbis could not use force. Rather, Katzenellenbogen tried to use his clout with Isaac to persuade him not to force Rosa into the marriage. The rabbi suggested that Isaac instead reconsider another woman who “will be submissive under your authority,” highlighting Rosa’s strong personality and the difficulty of forcing her to marry. Among Rosa’s other supporters was rabbi Benedit of Venice (Axelrad ben Eliezer), who also expressed surprise at Isaac’s unorthodox methods, which apparently included whispering and spreading unspecified rumors about Rosa, in an attempt to encourage rabbis to pass the edict of excommunication against her. Rosa and her supporters tried a novel negotiating strategy to end the engagement. To fend off the threat of a forced marriage to Isaac, they reconstructed her original agreement with Raphael on two counts. First, they asserted that her original authorization of Raphael to make the arrangements was conditional on Isaac’s good health, and because he was not healthy, the agreement was no longer binding. Such a condition, however, does not appear in the original document. Similarly, Rosa declared that she had never taken upon herself an edict of excommunication (variously referred to as a ban or separation) or an oath for nonfulfillment, but rather, she had only commissioned a scribe to write a general authorization to her brother; it was the scribe, she claimed, who had inserted a formula for excommunication without her knowledge. Thus, according to Rosa and her supporters, her breaking the agreement was not due to rebelliousness on her part, but rather to a scribal error. To prevent excommunication, Rosa was prepared to appear with Isaac before a Jewish court for adjudication.11 As mentioned above, in July 1534 Rabbi Moses Novera, acting on Isaac’s behalf, brought Rosa a costly gold and pearl necklace, which he left with Brunetta. Isaac later claimed that Brunetta’s acceptance of this sivlonot constituted his betrothal to Rosa. However, Brunetta later countered this by stating that when Novera and his two associates had left the gold chain under her care, she had stated emphatically, “See well and understand that I am not holding on to them except in the capacity of safe-keeping for Isaac Danuti and not for Rosa, in no way.” Thus, Brunetta, a seasoned businesswoman, explicitly rejected the idea that she was accepting the gift on behalf of Rosa because she knew that it might have been construed as a token of betrothal with Isaac. Witnesses confirmed that Rosa was agitated over what Novera and his associates had to say. Moses Nissim Foligno reported that Rosa had been furious and in no way wanted to accept the sivlonot; she was even quoted as protesting strongly: “Not him and not his reward . . . I did not shake any hands, and this witness is a false witness. He answered with a lie, and with events that never took place.”12

188  Conclusion Further supporting Rosa’s claims, two witnesses testified that when Novera came to Chianciano, they heard “with their own ears” the rabbi and his two associates attempt to convince Rosa to fulfill the terms of her agreement to marry Isaac. However, according to the witnesses, Rosa blocked her ears, would not listen to them, and she certainly did not accede to the visitors’ wishes for her to marry Isaac or to accept the gold chain. The witnesses further reported that Novera and his associates were not happy with the outcome of their visit, and as they left they said, “We are taking our leave with great sadness because we did not receive a suitable answer from Brunetta nor from her daughter Rosa.”13 In April 1535, the stakes rose when Jacob Corinaldo, a rabbi in Ferrara, issued an opinion in this case about whether the presentation of sivlonot indicated that betrothal had taken place or not, also changing the issue from engagement to betrothal. He reviewed the case and denigrated Rosa by writing about her folly and her having been enticed by others. Hence, although he acknowledged that this betrothal involved an element of deceit, that the gold chain did not necessarily constitute sivlonot, and that Rosa’s betrothal was not certain, Corinaldo nonetheless asserted that because Novera might have betrothed Rosa to Isaac, she was now forbidden to all other men forever unless Isaac issued her a bill of divorce. Otherwise, any child born to her would be a mamzer. Corinaldo further claimed that because Isaac knew that Rosa was not committed to the engagement and that she was interested in other men, one of whom might betroth her before he did, his gift of the gold chain was an attempt to demonstrate his seriousness about the match and to secure her loyalties. But, Corinaldo reasoned, because Isaac knew that if Rosa betrothed another, then he might not receive the gift back, it was obvious that Isaac would not have sent Rosa a gold chain at that time unless he was sure that it was for purposes of betrothal. Corinaldo also asserted that Rosa had expressed her willingness to marry Isaac: firstly, when she empowered Raphael to negotiate on her behalf, and secondly, without indicating how he knew, the rabbi claimed that on the day that Brunetta received the gold chain Rosa had spoken with Novera about her desire to betroth Isaac, to marry him, and to fulfill all the conditions of her prenuptial agreement with him. According to Corinaldo, there were further (although unspecified) grounds to suspect that they had betrothed, perhaps in secret, before Isaac sent the sivlonot. However, Corinaldo conceded that because there had been no witnesses to these statements they were meaningless. Nonetheless, he insisted that Rosa still needed a bill of divorce from Isaac. Paradoxically, Corinaldo used Rosa’s resistance to the relationship, the lack of witnesses (he never mentioned the ten witnesses that were required), and the possible clandestine nature of the supposed betrothal as proof that it was permanent and that she needed a divorce to end it.14

Conclusion 189 Not satisfied with Corinaldo’s version of what happened in Chianciano, Isaac Danuti called for a Jewish court in Ferrara to hear depositions from the two men who accompanied Novera on his visit to Rosa.15 The court heard their testimony without Rosa being present and without even her knowing that the deliberations were taking place. These witnesses testified that Novera had appeased Rosa, and by her shaking hands with him, she had recommitted herself to marrying Isaac, identified as her fiancé but not as her betrothed. These two associates of Novera’s testified that Rosa had made the arrangements for the wedding, and that those present had even discussed what clothing she would wear when she set out to live in Isaac’s house, particularly her head covering (scopioto). They claimed that Rosa had also sent 15 gold scudi to her sister in Pesaro to pay for arrangements for the wedding. At this rabbinic hearing in Ferrara, the question also arose as to whether Novera had intended to excommunicate Rosa. One of these witnesses had been with Novera upon his return from Chianciano to Ferrara, and he testified that Novera had told him that Rosa did not keep the agreement she had made, and in order to force her to do so, he wanted to set the terms of an edict for her excommunication, which he intended to dictate to his son. But the rabbi’s illness took a turn for the worse, and, according to the witness, he died before he could do so. The hearing in Ferrara turned to the matter of the chain that Novera left with Brunetta. The two witnesses described the gift as sivlonot, which they claimed Rosa’s mother accepted on her behalf as an act of betrothal. During the hearing, Joseph Arli recorded the testimony, but he refused to distribute it, and the vague reports about its contents, including perhaps information about a betrothal, further intensified the struggle.16 Even though the testimony at Ferrara was only known through word of mouth, according to Isaac’s supporters, it meant that Rosa had in fact agreed to go through with her plans to marry him and in doing so acknowledged that she was now aware of any of his hidden physical blemishes and that for her they constituted no impediment to marriage. Rumors of this testimony convinced several rabbis to change their minds concerning the case and to join the call to excommunicate Rosa until she agreed to marry Isaac. The authorities also posted notices of Rosa’s excommunication on the wall of the synagogue in Ancona.17 In Rosa’s defense, however, her supporters asserted that because she was not present and not aware of the hearing, its findings were not valid.18 She reported that Novera had indeed brought gifts, but that she had refused to accept them, and that false witnesses had attempted to entrap her by claiming that the gifts had constituted her betrothal to Isaac. She blamed rabbis for her predicament: According to the testimony that these witnesses gave in Ferrara, which was not in my presence, the rabbis there seized my neck,

190  Conclusion whistled at me, and used me to advance their own authority. Against me they set up traps and great edicts of excommunication full of scorn and anger, which would cause anyone who heard them to cover his ears . . . How the rabbis came to lay siege upon me and caused distress based on the engagement document that was in Isaac’s possession and that, according to rumor, had not been verified in a court. So, Isaac’s words must be examined by the court to see if they are true or idle dreams, as is done with any document among the Jews. Why did they scornfully hit me on the cheek and gather themselves together against me to smite me with the emptiness of their breath? And before me they will not hold back, and they have not yet summoned me to judgment with him.19 In return, rabbis expressed contempt for Rosa, condemning her as a promiscuous woman who chased after men.20 At the same time, Rosa penned a broadside, which her supporters planned to post in the synagogue in Ancona.21 The undated document began: “Whom did you insult and abuse, and against whom did you raise your voice with a burden of shame on me, as if I were an abused servant or one of the children of the ghost [a Christian]. You lifted your eyes against the Holy One of Israel, saying that I left the court guilty; but I was not called to court with you.” In addition, she protested that the rabbis posted the announcements in the synagogue: Is it your way to turn your face to the walls of the synagogues to write bitterness upon them? . . . The stones of the wall call out against you, saying that you did not do well forcibly dragging me behind you. It will not be to your credit along the way to pursue a woman as the partridge gives chase in the mountains . . . Don’t rebuke any more, and don’t run to be a destroyer of walls with your writing carved on tablets as the nations of the earth challenge each other, placing their notices at the gates of the cities, calling to their opponents.22 The case was further complicated when Rosa and her supporters went to the Catholic secular authorities to seize Isaac’s assets in order for her to collect damages from him for her humiliation and suffering. In turn, rabbis expressed great contempt for her having turned to outside authorities. Katzenellenbogen threatened her with a ban if she did not drop all charges against Isaac in the secular courts within fifteen days and take her case to a Jewish court within two months.23 Azriel Diena stated that this was a disgraceful thing for her to have done, yet he continued to defend her and seek an opportunity for her to present her case before a Jewish court.24 As a result of these deliberations and communications, some rabbis started expressing reservations about excommunicating Rosa, often in

Conclusion 191 the form of a clarification of what they had said earlier, especially if they had previously advocated forcing her to marry somebody she did not want. A few cancelled their edicts outright.25 For others, the possibility of a doubtful betrothal remained, and they feared that if she married another man, she might be in an adulterous union, which would produce impermissible offspring. These rabbis were convinced that she and Isaac had reaffirmed their relationship, actively or tacitly. Still, there were three options to help her break her vow: first, Isaac could issue her a bill of divorce. Her supporters did not like this idea because as a divorced woman, she would be unacceptable to some and forbidden to others. She protested against this option vehemently, stating that she knew that she had not been betrothed and, in words borrowed from traditional discourse, would rather “sit until her hair turned white” than to receive a bill of divorce that would only strengthen the lies and allegations that were circulating against her. Second, the rabbis who had ruled that there were suspicions of betrothals could find reasons to reverse their previous opinions and to release her from such a suspicion. This option, Diena noted, would be the most difficult because the rabbis who already ruled against Rosa would not want to admit their error, preferring to hide what they had done. These comments were hardly flattering to rabbis, especially when Diena asserted that: “the rabbis are bound in their robes on their shoulders to lead them in the way that they wish. Woe on that shame and woe on that disgrace.”26 Third, rabbis could make public the testimony gathered by Joseph Arli at the hearing in Ferrara. Then both sides could reach a financial agreement in terms of damages for the broken engagement agreement. Some rabbis did not like this option because the circulation of the full deliberations about the case would be a source of continued controversy.27 A number of rabbis, including Diena, concluded that it would be best to try the second approach. In order to accomplish this, not only would the rabbis who had declared the possibility of a betrothal have to find a reason to reverse their ban, but they also had to nullify all the opinions that they had issued against her, vow that they could not hold onto any of them, and burn all correspondence about this case. Only then Rosa would be free from any suspicions of engagement, betrothal, or binding sivlonot, and thus able to marry any other man. Some rabbis went so far as to declare that anybody who suggested that the couple had ever been betrothed would be excommunicated.28 Diena thus sent emissaries to receive new opinions from the rabbis who originally had excommunicated Rosa to state now that she would be unconditionally free to marry. He was certain that Moses Nissim, who represented Rosa and Raphael, would not mind incurring the extra expenses involved—highlighting the cost of procuring rabbinic opinions.29 After negotiations among rabbis throughout July 1535, in August, a compromise between Isaac and Rosa was reached in Bologna, in the

192  Conclusion garden of the house of Hananel Sforno. According to the compromise, Rosa and Isaac agreed that they had only been engaged, not betrothed, and that they would separate and have no more obligations to each other. Isaac would obtain new opinions from the rabbis who had declared that he and Rosa might be betrothed, now stating that there were no grounds for suspecting a betrothal, including sivlonot. The rabbis could also issue edicts of excommunication against anybody who suggested anything to the contrary. Moses Nissim would return to Isaac the gold chain with the pearl and its container as well as the 150 gold scudi plus interest that Isaac had lent Raphael. In addition, Nissim promised to pay Isaac the cost of any damages caused to him by rabbinic opinions gathered by Rosa, Raphael, or any member of her family or their agents, to return to Isaac all the letters written against him during the controversy, and refund him the 50 gold scudi that he had spent to get the new rabbinic decisions that voided any suspicion that he and Rosa were betrothed— again highlighting the cost of obtaining rabbinic opinions. It was agreed upon that by October 1535, after each side had fulfilled this agreement, they would tear up the original engagement, and it would be as if it had never existed. As in so many cases involving a woman seeking her freedom from a betrothal, bad marriage, or levirate connection, here too Rosa and her family had to make financial concessions. All the previous discussions in which each side made its claims for damages boiled down to Rosa buying her freedom from Isaac and perhaps showing that his purpose all along had been extortion rather than affection.30 In September, to fulfill the terms of the agreement, Isaac issued a new version of events between himself and Rosa in which he showed that he had not betrothed her. Now, Isaac asserted, by means of what he presented as a direct quotation of his earlier statements, that he gave the gold chain to Novera with the stipulation that it be given only to Rosa in her hand, but that if she did not accept it, Novera should take it back and return it to him. Further, Isaac asserted that his instructions to Novera were that when he arrived in Chianchiano, he was to seek lodgings at the inn and not to stay with Rosa’s family (Novera had in fact done the latter); and if there were no further interest in the match, he was to leave town immediately. Isaac stated that he had not referred to Raphael as his brother-in-law, that he had intended to collect the debt of 150 gold scudi from Raphael, and that he never wanted this financial relationship to influence the match. He stated that he did not do anything for the purposes of compelling Rosa, but rather only out of love for her, as long as she felt the same, and when this was no longer the case, he did not want to continue. He concluded by asserting that although this was what he instructed Rabbi Novera to do on his behalf, the rabbi might have had good reasons for doing what he did, but this was not due to his instructions.31 Hence, Isaac offered his reconstruction of the events as a seemingly loving attempt to exonerate himself from any financial or vengeful

Conclusion 193 motives and to blame anything that went wrong on the now deceased Rabbi Novera. The compromise remained controversial among the rabbis of northern Italy throughout September 1535. They were sensitive to the suspicions that Rosa might have been betrothed, and they were reluctant to allow her to remarry. They felt that Rosa’s fate was now in the hands of the rabbis who had written opinions against her (buttressed by the fact that witnesses had testified against her in Ferrara)—and that those rabbis who originally had written against Rosa had to find a reason to reverse what they had written. Finally, after Joseph Arli released some of the documents from the rabbinic deliberations in Ferrara,32 more rabbis recognized that an injustice had been done, and they began to write opinions favorable to Rosa. These included rabbis who had once insisted that, because she might have betrothed Isaac, she could not marry any other man until he divorced her.33 They now retold the details of the case in such a way as to free Rosa and to preserve the honor of everyone involved. According to one rabbi, although Isaac never explicitly expressed the intention to betroth Rosa, he tacitly hoped that she would take the sivlonot as a gift of her own free will. This rabbi expressed concern that Jewish women not be taken captive by accusations of betrothals, especially on the grounds of sivlonot that were given after an engagement, but he still never repudiated the possibility that sivlonot might constitute betrothal.34 According to another, although Brunetta took the gold chain she did so according to her family tradition and local custom, and not for the purpose of betrothal. Hence, although this rabbi undermined the claim that Brunetta had taken the gold chain only for purposes of safekeeping because the roads were dangerous, he nonetheless conceded that the gift of the chain did not constitute a reason to suspect that Isaac had betrothed Rosa. He argued that Rosa was not betrothed because she had not accepted the gold chain herself, and that she had not commissioned her mother to receive it as her agent; in addition, Novera had not followed the instructions he received from Isaac.35 According to yet another rabbi, the giving of sivlonot did not constitute an act of betrothal.36 Still other rabbis challenged Rosa’s original agreement with Raphael because his authority as her brother to engage her would have been valid only while she was still a pubescent girl (na-arah), but not when she was a widowed woman anticipating remarriage. Furthermore, some claimed the symbolic exchange (kinyan) never took place to seal the agreement between the sister and brother (although according to the initial account of the events, Rosa and Raphael did in fact conduct a kinyan37). Ovadia Sforno, a rabbi from Bologna, questioned Rosa’s initial contract with Raphael because it had been made without proper rabbinic authorization, but in doing so he overreached in asserting the role of rabbis when Jews made contracts, thus undermining the ability of women and possibly men as well to make contracts by themselves.38 Ultimately, the original group of rabbis who

194  Conclusion wanted to enforce the betrothal now colluded in order to readjust their testimony, and each of them told a similar story in order to free Rosa.39 Shortly afterwards, sometime in 1536 or 1537, Rosa became the third wife of one of Italy’s richest Jews, Ishmael Rieti, a banker from the Siena region. This illustrious match might have been the reason that Rosa desired a release from her engagement to Isaac—and the prospect of her access to such wealth may well have motivated Isaac and Joseph Arli to maximize their attempts to extort her. Significantly, Arli, who had done so much to harm Rosa by withholding important testimony about the proceedings in Ferrara and spreading rumors about her betrothal, also moved into the house of Ishmael Rieti, working as his son’s teacher and serving as his emissary as well as heading the yeshivah of Siena, a relationship that lasted for fifteen years. This arrangement might have been part of a payment Rieti made to entice Arli’s cooperation in freeing Rosa from Isaac. Arli, who had shown that he was untrustworthy in many matters, later converted to Christianity, at least for a while, and became a censor of Hebrew books, although a sympathetic one, further highlighting that he changed his mind as it suited him.40 In 1549, Arli’s machinations continued, now involving a combination of a business deal, involving Brunetta’s money-lending operation in Chianchiano, and an upcoming wedding. These transactions highlight the role of Rosa’s mother as a businesswoman, the role of her family in finances, and more about the characters involved in the story of Rosa. Arli heard from Moses Sephardi that one of the Cohen-Viterbo brothers wanted to acquire Brunetta’s business because there was great potential for financial profit in the region: “There was gold dust there for Jews who lent money.” Arli took the matter to his employer, Ishmael Rieti, because as Brunetta’s son-in-law he was well aware of the issues involved. Rieti responded that nothing would be done unless his brother-in-law, Menahem Foligno of Pesaro (married to Rosa’s sister Consolo) agreed. Arli shared his own perspective with Cohen-Viterbo: “It is impossible that this store be run any longer by women, and it has to be sold.” Arli proposed that one of the Cohen-Viterbo sons should go to Siena for the wedding of one of Ishmael Rieti’s sons (from a previous marriage), where he could meet with Menahem Foligno, the father of the bride. Because this was a marriage of cousins, Brunetta and Ishmael Rieti would be there. Arli would help negotiate the deal. It would include a payment plan of 400 scudi or less for the value of Brunetta’s house. The assets of Brunetta’s business were now worth 1200 scudi, but Arli wanted to assure Cohen-Viterbo that the bank could be much more profitable, especially if it were not run by women: “You, sir, know the nature of women, they don’t know how to do business.” Arli recalled that in 1543, when Raphael (Rosa’s late brother, whom Arli referred to as a tzadik, or a “saint”) ran the bank, it had 6,000 assets in gold. Arli assured Viterbo-Cohen that if he were interested, he would use his contacts in region to make sure

Conclusion 195 that he would have precedence in the sale; he also offered to persuade Rieti to ignore any other offers.41 The correspondence about the sale of Brunetta’s bank, which does not mention Rosa, creates a mixed impression of the motives of the men mentioned, including Brunetta’s two sons-in-law. They all might have been trying to help her by relieving her of a responsibility she was too old to handle, especially after her father and her son had died. Or, their motives might have been more sinister, something that can be suspected if Arli was involved. It seems that, from the tone of Arli’s letter about the opportunities for additional profits in the region, the brothers-in-law and Arli might have stood to gain by sharing in the sale. If Brunetta died while still owner of the business, it was likely that through lines of succession or a last will and testament, Brunetta’s daughters would be the primary inheritors. Thus, these male relatives by marriage saw that they would stand to profit more from the sale than from Brunetta’s death. It does not seem that Rosa and Consolo, who stood to gain valuable assets, were being consulted in this plan. Hence, the story of Rosa and Isaac was more than a controversy between two people over a contested betrothal, but rather, it was a microcosm not only of the system of Jewish treatment of betrothals but also of the relations among Jews in a small northern Italian town. In the matter of her own engagement and annulment, Rosa played an active role. She had the authority to empower her brother to act on her behalf, she continued to play a role in the negotiations, she expressed her volition, and she was willing and able to appear in court. Rabbis could allow a woman to speak—both against men and against rabbis. There seems to have been little doubt that Rosa had the right to take an oath about engagement and to impose a ban for her own excommunication. The issue in this case was the binding character of her oath rather than the actual promise she had made to marry Isaac. Rosa’s mother likewise acted with autonomy, free from male supervision, being seen as a viable agent for accepting sivlonot on her daughter’s behalf, and she was knowledgeable enough not to do so. During the controversy, Isaac was motivated less by love than by a desire to take vengeance on Rosa or exploit her. This story reveals how men and women with some assets and family connections could manipulate the rabbinic system to their advantage. It also shows the interrelationship among the rabbis in the cities and villages of northern Italy, as well as their connections in distant places like the Germanic lands. Most significantly, the story of Rosa provides examples of many stages in the lives of women. The case shows the legal standing of women to make oaths, to appear in court, and to be excommunicated. It traces the formation and dissolution of households, including matchmaking, marital negotiations, and engagements; it provides a view of family finances,

196  Conclusion as well as the specifics of wedding arrangements, broken engagements, doubtful betrothals, secret betrothals, sivlonot, mamzerim, forced marriages, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage. In the course of negotiations, the participants and the rabbis changed their stories to conform to the needs of the moment, often for a fee. Hence, at issue was not so much the absolute determination of Jewish law and its application to the case of Rosa and Isaac, as it was the creation of narratives that met the needs of the participants and preserved the authority, honor, and income of those involved, including rabbis. In other words, as the rabbis worked through this case, they strove to create a sense of ambiguity at each junction so that from the competing versions of the story, they could build different narratives, support different outcomes, and promote their involvement. Try as they may, rabbis did not always have the authority to issue the edicts they wanted to make, and the parties to the case used many tactics to circumvent them. Despite Rosa’s active involvement in making the match with Isaac, it got off to a bad start. It is not clear what the reasons were—financial, sexual, or emotional—but as Rosa got to know Isaac, she not only liked him less, but she articulated her needs more, and rabbis on both sides of this case presented her views as part of their deliberations.42 What emerged was Rosa’s presence and her ability to create a strategy by which her voice prevailed, and men with authority took action on her behalf.43 Interestingly, the voice of the man to whom she was betrothed is hardly heard throughout the proceedings. Although Rosa was a widow whose father was dead, and whose mother and brother acted on her behalf, she still identified herself as “a widow in my father’s house.” It was still his “casa,” and, as a widow, she returned to it rather than stay in the house of her late husband. The nature of the authority she delegated to her brother indicates that she had the power to do so, that her brother could not have presumed to act on her behalf without her authorization, but that she still needed him to be a stand-in for her father. Yet, like so much of family negotiations, the document with which she commissioned him mentioned that the agreement her brother would make was also based on unwritten and oral arrangements. Paradoxically, a system based on documentation often relied on conflicting reports of oral promises. Such a paradox highlights the deficiency of the documentation for researching the financial negotiations that led to marriage. The financial stakes in this case were surprisingly low, especially given all the attention it received from around northern Italy and beyond. The stated sums involved a 600-ducat dowry spread over three years and a 150-ducat counter-dowry, none of which was in cash. The stipulation that assessors from each side would evaluate these goods shows not only the business aspects of negotiating an engagement, but the use of them when not much seems to have been at stake. Hence, this case seemed to

Conclusion 197 have been as much about honor and rabbinic authority as about a particular small-town betrothal. As in so many other instances in which rabbis tried to impose their authority on Jews, Diena expressed the concern that rabbis were issuing edicts of excommunication that they could not enforce without support from the Catholic secular authorities, which would only undermine rabbinic authority in the eyes of Jews. The rabbis resented Rosa going to the non-Jewish authorities while, at the same time, to enforce their edicts, they had to do the same. Moreover, Diena mocked the rabbis who were pursing greatness by going after one poor widow over whom they thought they could easily triumph.44 This case demonstrates not only the limitations of rabbinic sources, but the fictions on which they could be based. In this case, we know that rabbis, who were hired by the conflicting parties to the dispute, did not agree with each other from the start. As part of subsequent agreements, also reached with cash payments, they invented new narratives to replace their old ones and despite their best efforts (including threats of excommunication) to eliminate any evidence that the original engagement had existed, competing accounts of the events remained in circulation. Diena remained undecided about whether the circulation of information would be beneficial or not. Such information about this case enables us to see the rabbinic process up close, and it also compels us to ask to what extent these kinds of activities took place in cases for which we do not have so much documentation, which also may have contained fictions to facilitate negotiations. Ultimately, the question has to be asked: was Rosa an exceptional woman because of her activities or simply because of the survival of so much documentation about her that may have been lost about other women? When Meir Katzenellenbogen suggested that Isaac pursue another woman who “will be submissive under your authority,” he certainly spoke to the range of possibilities for women to act—­ possibilities that were limited by factors such as personality, assets, and family connections.

Final Observations Italian Jewry, being neither an exceptional nor a typical Jewish community, or rather communities, lived between northern and southern Europe, Europe and the Middle East, Roman and Eastern Christianity, Jews and Christians, Muslims and Christians, and Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Despite rough spots endured by every community, they had freedom and choices. Ghetto walls established another boundary between Jews and Christians, but also created a space of compromise between complete acceptance and wholesale expulsion. In early modern Italy, rabbis might have tried to threaten sanctions or force to coerce Jews, men or women, but Jewish community leaders

198  Conclusion and the Christian authorities rarely granted them the power to do so. As part of their negotiations, rabbis invoked face-saving fictions and participated in legal dramas in which different narrations of events, competing rabbinic opinions, and divergent Jewish practices, often ignoring the context of time or place, were constructed and reconstructed—many of which were on display in the case of Rosa. At moments such as these, the parties involved often distorted or even fictionalized the amounts of money at stake, challenged the meanings of documents, interpreted and reinterpreted statements, manipulated the presentation of gifts, and when possible, involved powerful relatives or friends. Jews shared the marital concerns raised at the Council of Trent as both Catholics and Jews struggled with issues of clandestine unions, the appropriate number of witnesses, and clerical participation in marriage. Catholics and Jews followed many of the same prenuptial negotiating strategies involving dowries, counter-dowries, gifts, rebates, and payment plans, balancing concerns for honor and family finance. Another way of gaining the upper hand in negotiations was for Jews, both individuals and communities, to appeal to Christian practices or authorities, which also happened in the case of Rosa. Catholic authorities, like rabbis, held ambivalent views about certain Jewish practices. For example, although they prohibited divorce and polygyny, they nonetheless would, for a fee, grant licenses to Jews to engage in these activities. Similarly, Jews, especially women, filed engagement, betrothal, marriage, and bequest documents with local Christian authorities in order to circumvent Jewish patrilineal lines of succession. Today, in light of the history of women who were trapped in relationships by recalcitrant and avaricious men and the rabbis who enabled the men, as well as rabbis who tried to help the women, some traditional Jews are now returning to the prenuptial agreement as a structural— albeit not necessarily romantic—way to protect a woman and her assets as she enters marriage. According to Jewish law (still in force today), religious betrothal, marriage, or levirate connection can only be ended by the man willingly in a religious procedure. Because Jewish divorce is a religious rite, the courts of many nations that try to separate church and state will not handle cases of Jewish divorce so that they do not infringe on the religious rights of those involved; this usually refers to the right of the man, perhaps already remarried in a civil ceremony, to still withhold a divorce from his wife. Secular courts are also are not unanimous about accepting a Jewish religious marriage contract, the ketubah, as a binding legal contract subject to the laws of the state. A prenuptial contract, however, is legally enforceable on behalf of a woman in religious and in secular courts because it deals with financial and not religious matters. So although Jewish law might not provide women with equal religious rights, their legal rights can be more secure with the monetization of the

Conclusion 199 marital process by making prenuptial agreements a matter of financial negotiations rather than religious commitment.45 Paradoxically, as we have seen, rabbis resented secular intervention in Jewish affairs, but they turned to the secular authorities to help enforce their own authority. Rabbis also broke the cases down to manageable secular—monetary—issues with which they could negotiate. This monetary discourse, which followed women throughout each stage of their lives, provides glimpses into relationships, emotions, and negotiation strategies, especially at times of conflict. The documents available, however, do not provide enough information for us to truly understand the emotions of those involved. In fact, at each stage of a woman’s life when there might have been the possibility of a faint expression of affection, rabbinic discourse seems to have cast aspersions on it. Some prenuptial agreements referred to love and equality, but in at least one case a rabbi affirmed that such a provision was still in line with what he saw as the biblical injunction that a man rule over his wife.46 If a couple betrothed secretly, had intercourse, or even made physical contact before marriage, it might have been a sign of affection, passion, or love—or, as the documents rightly recognize, a form of seduction, entrapment, or rape. If a woman attempted to leave her husband more assets than the prenuptial agreement or the rules of succession allowed, such a gift was challenged because it upset the balance of accounts between the two families or because it was thought to be the result of coercion. A major site for reckonings of affection or contempt is some of the last wills and testaments that Jews, especially women, made before Christian notaries. Wills could be used as a vehicle for circumventing established lines of inheritance in the Jewish community, and thus as a way to express the emotions and allegiances of the writer, whether the amounts were significant or simply symbolic. However, although this was a tool for empowerment, by the time it took effect after her death it was too late for a woman’s words to have an impact on her relations with her family and friends; in life, women were rarely able to choose their words or actions so freely. Although the traditional assumptions, certainly expressed by Jews, were that a female should be satisfied with whomever her family arranged for her and women had to make financial concessions in negotiations, we have tried to tell a different story.

Notes 1 Rosa Montalcino, in Diena, no. 113. 2 Weinstein, Marriage Rituals, 275; Toaff, Love, Work, and Sex, 27–28. 3 Boksenboim, Rieti, 24 and 37, and no. 244. 4 Rivot besha-arim, in Boksenboim, Parashiyot, no. 1 and quoted in part in no. 15. 5 Rivot, no. 2.

200  Conclusion 6 Rivot, 37, 38, 15; cf. 6 and 9. 7 Rivot, no. 15. 8 Diena, no. 113. 9 Rivot, no. 5. 10 Rivot, nos. 10, 15; Maharam Padova, no. 73. 11 Rivot, nos. 6 and 15. 12 Rivot, no. 15. 13 Rivot, no. 13. 14 Rivot, nos. 22, 23. 15 Rivot, nos. 12, 13. 16 Rivot, nos. 32, 34; Diena, nos. 114, 115. 17 Rivot, nos. 23, 13, 27. 18 Maharam Padova, no. 73. 19 Diena, nos. 113–115. 20 Rivot, no. 28. 21 Rivot, no. 29, 27. 22 Rivot, no. 27. 23 Maharam Padova, no. 73. 24 Diena, no. 115. 25 Rivot, nos. 20, 47, 21. 26 Exodus 12:34. 27 Rivot, nos. 22–25, 35. 28 Rivot, nos. 50–51, 36. 29 Rivot, no. 39. 30 Rivot, no. 37. 31 Rivot, no. 38. 32 Rivot, no. 42; Diena, no. 116. 33 Rivot, nos. 9, 36, 35; Diena, no. 115. 34 Rivot, nos. 41, 47, 48; Maharam Padova, no. 28. 35 Rivot, no. 48; Rivot, no. 49. 36 Diena, no. 116; Rivot, no. 42. 37 Rivot, nos. 6, 9, 15. 38 Rivot, nos. 25, 24. 39 Rivot, no. 28. 40 Boksenboim, Rieti, nos. 24–25, 29–30, nos. 2 and 115; Kupfer, “Yosef ish aril,” 117–132. 41 Boksenboim, Rieti, no. 244. 42 Rivot, no. 5. 43 Rivot, no. 115. 44 Rivot, no. 34. 45 On the legal nature of the ketubah, see Bleich, “Jewish Divorce,” 252; for a discussion of the legal and religious aspects of Jewish prenuptial agreements, see especially the concerns of Weiss, “Sign at Your Own Risk”; see also Greenberg-Cobrin, “Civil Enforceability,” 359–400; Joseph, “Civil Jurisdiction and Religious Accord,” 318–336. 46 Genesis 3:16, but see the commentaries of Rashi and Moses ben Nachmanides of the differing limitations of this injunction

Works Cited Bleich, J. David. “Jewish Divorce: Judicial Misconceptions and Possible Means of Civil Enforcement.” Connecticut Law Review 16:2 (1984): 201–289. Boksenboim, Yacob, ed. Igrot beit rieti. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1987.

Conclusion 201 ———. Parashiyot. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1986. Diena, Azriel. Sheelot utshuvot azriel diena. Edited by Yacob Boksenboim. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1977. Greenberg-Kobrin, Michelle. “Civil Enforceability of Religious Prenuptial Agreements.” Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems 32 (1999): 359–400. Joseph, Norma Baumel. “Civil Jurisdiction and Religious Accord: Bruker v. Marcovitz in the Supreme Court of Canada.” Studies in Religion 40:3 (2011): 318–336. Kupfer, Ephraim. “Al shelilat hahaverut veharabanut min r. yosef ish aril vehashvato al keno.” Kiryat sefer 41 (1966): 117–132. Toaff, Ariel. Love, Work, and Death: Jews in Medieval Umbria. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996. Weinstein, Roni. Marriage Rituals Italian Style. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Weiss, Susan Metzger. “Sign at Your Own Risk: The ‘RCA’ Prenuptial May Prejudice the Fairness of your Future Divorce Settlement.” Cordozo Women’s Law Journal 6:1 (1999): 49–84.

Index

Aboab, Samuel 132 Abraham of Bologna 82 – 83 Abravanel, Benvenida 9 Abravanel, Samuel 9 abuse, spousal 119, 121 – 122 adultery 89 – 90 Allegra (daughter of Abraham of Bologna) 82 – 83 Amitai, Rabbi 21 – 22 annulment 73 – 74 Apocryphal Book of Tobit 102 – 103 Arba-ah Turim 15 Arli, Joseph 104, 193, 194 Ascanasi, Jacob Cohen 172 Ascarelli, Devora 11 Ashkenazi, Eliezer 124 Ashkenazi, Isaac Danuti see Danuti, Isaac Ashkenazic Society for the Dowering of Brides 42 Barukh, Abram 137 bar Yohai, Shimon 16 Beit Yosef 15 Belgrado, Caliman 138 – 139 Belgrado, Elana 138 – 139 Belilios, Raffael 139 ben Asher, Jacob 15 ben Hayim, Elijah 163 bequests upon death 134 – 136 Bernfeld, Simon 10 betrothals 94 – 96; ambiguities of 71 – 75; clandestine 75 – 78; contested meaning of gifts in 84 – 87; forced 81 – 84; by intercourse 92 – 94; made in jest 79 – 81; of minor daughters and right of refusal 87 – 92; between

Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti 185 – 186 Blanco, Raphael 47 – 48 Blanco, Sarah 47 – 48 Bonfil, Robert 9 Book of Tobit 37 borrowing of jewelry for weddings 104 – 105 bride’s family, financial support from 39 – 43, 44 Bueno, Jacob 50 Burkhardt, Jacob 8 – 9 Camis, Abram 137 Caro, Joseph 15, 88 – 89 Catherine of Aragon 52 Catholic Church, the 2; on annulment 74; on clandestine betrothals 76 – 77; Council of Trent and 6 – 8; on divorce 116; dowry practices 40 – 41; influence on Italian Jewish weddings 102 – 103; inheritance in 134; on intercourse as constituting marriage 92 – 93; Jews required to live in ghettos and 5 – 6; practices reflected in marriage and divorce practices of Italian Jews 22; restrictions on Jewish books 16; Stations of the Cross 12 children: guardianship of 150 – 153; parental obligations and affection toward 170 – 172 Christians: notaries 136 – 137; women’s testaments 139 – 140 clandestine betrothals 75 – 78 Code of Hammurabi 39 Cohen, Eliezer 104 Cohen, Samuel 8

Index  203 collection and seizure of assets by married women 122 – 125 Colon, Joseph 16, 20; on divorce 118 – 119; on gifts 85; on polygamy 50 – 51 Colonia, Rachel 172 – 173 contested meaning of gifts 84 – 87 Corbito, Judah 85 – 86, 87 Corinaldo, Jacob 188 – 189 Council of Trent 6 – 8, 76 – 77, 92 – 93 counter-dowries 39 crypto-Jews 3 – 4 Cum Nimis Absurdum 5 Danuti, Isaac 58, 104, 116, 183 – 197 da Pisa, Daniel 144 da Pisa, Judita 144 – 145 da Pisa, Simone 144 da Pisa, Yehiel Nissim 144 – 145 David, King 38 death see inheritance de Leon, Moses 17 de Luna, Beatrice 9 de Luna, Brianda 9 De’Medici, Cosimo 9 de Toledo, Don Pedro 9 de Toledo, Eleonora 9 Diaspora 6 di Camerino, Vidal 122 – 123 “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” 8 Diena, Azriel 19, 36, 123, 144, 151, 159; engagement between Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti and 186, 190 – 191, 197; on remarriage 171 – 172 difficult engagements 56 – 60 di Medina, Samuel 20 di Rossi, Europa 12 di Ventura Sachi, Abram 137 divorce 22, 36 – 37, 58 – 59; betrothal after 89 – 90; ending a betrothal through 73; negotiating 113 – 122; remarriage after 164 – 165 “domestic tranquility” 53 dotal and non-dotal assets 43 – 44 doubtful betrothals 72, 79 – 81 dowries, bride’s 39 – 43, 44 education of Jewish girls 10 – 11 Eiger, Nathan 166 Enactment of Toledo and Molina 46 – 47

engagements 60 – 61; difficult 56 – 60; finalizing of 54 – 56; between Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti 185 – 186; terms of 36 – 38; see also betrothals; prenuptial negotiations Favius, Calonymos 82 – 83 feminism 8 finalizing of engagements 54 – 56 finances and abuse 53 – 54 financial support 53 – 54; from groom’s family 38 – 39; for weddings 103 – 104; from woman’s bride’s family 39 – 43 Finzi, Aron 105 Finzi, Hezakiah 19 – 20 Fioretta of Mantua 11 Foa, Yehiel 167 Foligno, Moses Nissim 187, 191 – 192, 194 forced betrothals 81 – 84 Fraterna di Maritar Donzelle della Natione degli Hebrei Tedesca di Venezia 42 Friday weddings 105 – 109 Gallichi, Bonaventura 149 Gallichi, Salvador 149 Gershom, Rabenu 14, 50 – 51, 53, 113 – 114 Ghetto Nuovissimo 5, 50 Ghetto Nuovo 5 ghettos 4 – 6 Ghetto Vecchio 5 gifts, contested meaning of 84 – 87 Gonzaga d’Este, Isabella 11 Grassini, Ventura 142 Grespin, David 142 Grespin, Rachel 142 – 143 groom’s family, financial support from 38 – 39 guardianship 150 – 153 Guastalla, Moses 139 – 140 Hakohen, Solomon ben Abraham 146 Halakhah 21 Halevi, Simhah 43 Hallelyah, Mahalalel 41, 110 – 111, 112 – 113, 119 – 120 Hareuveni, David 9 Henry VIII, King of England 52, 76 Holm, Janis Butler 9

204 Index honoring the dead before remarriage 159 – 162 humanism 8 – 9 Iberian Jews 1 – 2, 14 ibn Adret, Solomon 50, 151 ibn Yahyah, Gedaliah 159 inheritance 153 – 155; bequests 134 – 136; Christian notaries involvement in Jewish testaments regarding 136 – 137; collection of assets by women 144 – 148; guardianship and 150 – 153; and husbands inheriting from wives 141 – 143; introduction to 132 – 133; rabbinic patterns of 133 – 134; seizure of property by surviving spouses 148 – 150; testaments made by men 137 – 139; testaments made by women 139 – 141 inquisitions 3 – 4 intercourse, betrothal by 92 – 94 Isserles, Moses 15, 88 – 89 Italian Inquisition 3 – 4 Italianitá (Italianness) 2 Italian Jews 197 – 199; education of 10 – 11; ghettos of 4 – 6; individual rights and 22; inquisitions and 3 – 4; introduction to 1 – 2; marriage of (see marriage); Rabbinic writings as source for Jewish social history and 13 – 18; the Renaissance and 8 – 13; women and law 22 – 23 Italian Wars 4 jest, betrothals made in 79 – 81 jewelry, borrowed 104 – 105 Kabbalah 15 Katz, Zalman 124 – 125, 152 – 153 Katzenellenbogen, Meir 16, 117, 148, 152, 166 – 167, 174; engagement between Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti and 186 – 187, 190, 197 Kelly-Gadol, Joan 8 ketubah see engagements kidushei bi-ah 92 – 94 kidushei hatufin 81 – 84 kidushei ketanah 87 – 92 kidushei seter 75 – 78 kidushei tzhok 79 – 81 King, Margaret L. 8 L’Accademia degli Incogniti 11 Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy 132

Lampronti, Isaac 19, 109 League of Cambrai 4 – 5 Levia, Gioia 108 levirate union: old age and 172 – 176; prenuptial negotiations regarding 51 – 53, 109 – 111 Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon) 14 – 15, 88 marriage 125 – 127; annulment 73 – 74; Catholic Church practices reflected in 22; dotal and non-dotal assets in 43 – 44; financial support from brides’ family in 39 – 43; financial support from groom’s family in 38 – 39; levirate connection and 51 – 53; matchmakers 59 – 60; negotiating the dissolution of 113 – 122; negotiations during 111 – 113; polygyny, polygamy, and polyandry in 49 – 51; prenuptial post-mortem distribution of assets and 44 – 49; process stages 36 – 38; of unwed mothers 168 – 169; see also betrothals; prenuptial negotiations; remarriage; wedding ceremonies matchmakers 59 – 60 men: groom’s family, financial support from 38 – 39; inheriting from wives 141 – 143; testaments made by 137 – 139 Meshulam, Jacob 81 – 82 Meshulam, Ricca 81 – 82 Meshulam, Samson 81 – 82 Meshulam, Tziporah 81 – 82 Meta-Halakhic principles 21 Michal (wife of King David) 38 mi-Foligno, Menahem 183 Milano, Solomon 149 – 150 minor daughters and right of refusal 87 – 92 Minz, Judah 20 – 21, 41 – 42, 89 – 90, 169 Mishnah Torah 15, 88, 114 – 115 mi-un see refusal, right of Modena, Aaron Berekhiah 36, 160 – 161 Modena, Joseph 148 – 150 Modena, Leon 20, 51, 83, 91, 102; on bequests 134; on the levirate union 174 – 175; on wedding customs 104 Modena, Solomon 11 Monis, Rachel 139

Index  205 Montalcino, Brunetta 183, 186, 194 – 195 Montalcino, Jacob 183 Montalcino, Rosa 58, 104, 116, 183 – 197 Montrealo, Judah 169 Mordechai, Jacob 170 Moses 44 – 45 Muslims 1, 22; division of assets by 47; divorce practices 117 Nasi, Doña Gracia 9 Nasi, Reina 9 Nazis 6 negotiating tactics, Rabbinic 18 – 22 negotiations, divorce 113 – 122 negotiations, prenuptial 36 – 38, 37, 60 – 61; on finances and abuse 53 – 54; financial support from bride’s family outlined in 39 – 43; financial support from groom’s family outlined in 38 – 39; levirate connection and 51 – 53; on polygyny, polygamy, and polyandry in 49 – 51; on post-mortem distribution of assets 44 – 49; between Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti 183 – 185; wedding customs and finances 103 – 104; wedding day levirate 109 – 111; see also engagements negotiations during marriage 111 – 113 Nissim, Yehiel 38 – 39 Norsi, Odeh Yah 78 Norzi, Gabriel 78 Novera, Moses 185, 187 – 189 old age and the levirate union 172 – 176 Oriental Jews 14 Ottolenghi, Nathan 174 Paccina (wife of Reuben of Lucca) 123 – 124 Parentino, Aaron 86 – 87, 142 Paul IV, Pope 5, 9 Pinto, Isaac 146 Pinto, Jacob 146 Pollack, Jacob 89 polyandry 49 – 51 polygamy 49 – 51, 175 – 176 polygyny 49 – 51 Ponrimoli, Solomon 109 Pontremola, Patientia 11 Portaleone, Judah Sommo 21

pregnant and nursing women 162 – 170 prenuptial negotiations 36 – 38, 37, 60 – 61; on finances and abuse 53 – 54; financial support from bride’s family outlined in 39 – 43; financial support from groom’s family outlined in 38 – 39; levirate connection and 51 – 53; on polygyny, polygamy, and polyandry in 49 – 51; on post-mortem distribution of assets 44 – 49; between Rosa Montalcino and Isaac Danuti 183 – 185; wedding customs and finances 103 – 104; wedding day levirate 109 – 111; see also engagements prenuptial post-mortem distribution of assets 44 – 49 Provencal, Moses ben Abraham 19, 41, 142, 152, 165, 171 Rabbinic Judaism 13 – 18; negotiating tactics 18 – 22 Rashi (Rabbi Solomon Itzhaki) 14, 46, 151 Ravenna, Joseph 109 Reformation, Counter 7 refusal, right of 73, 74 – 75; minor daughters and 87 – 92 remarriage 19, 176 – 177; introduction to 159; old age and the levirate union and 172 – 176; by pregnant and nursing women 162 – 170; waiting period for 159 – 162 Renaissance, the 8 – 13 Rieti, Ishmael 194 Romanina, Rosa 139 – 141 Rossi, Salomone 12 Roth, Cecil 8 Sabbath day weddings 105 – 109 Salom, Abram 50 Salom, Chiara 50 Saturday weddings 105 – 109 Saul, King 38 seizure of property by surviving spouses 148 – 150 Sephardi, Isaac ben Moses 175, 194 sexual activity, pre-marital 56; betrothal by 92 – 94 Sforno, Hananel1 192 Shulhan Arukh 15 Siegel, Justina 78 Siegel, Yekutiel 78

206 Index sivlonot 84 – 87 Solomon of Urbino 93 Spanish Inquisition 2, 3 – 4 stages in Jewish marriage process 36 – 38 succession of property see inheritance Sullam, Sarra Copia 11 Talmud 14, 16, 19 – 20, 56; on betrothals of minors 88; on divorce 115; on gifts in betrothal 84, 86; on guardianship 150 – 151; on right of refusal 74; on Sabbath weddings 109; on waiting period before remarriage 164; on weddings on Sundays and Fridays 106 Tam, Rabenu 46 Tametsi 7 testaments see inheritance Todesco, Solomon 148 – 149 Todesco, Stella 148 – 150 Torah 13, 87, 166 Trabot, Yehiel ben Azriel 93 – 94, 120 Trabotto, Judith 12 Trabotto, Nathaniel 12 Treves, Yohanan 167 – 168 Tridentine Index of forbidden books 8 Tzahot bedihuta dekidushin (A Commedy of Betrothal) 21 Tzarfati, Donina 85 – 86, 142 Tzarfati, Samuel 85 – 86 unwed mothers, marriage by 168 – 169 Valenson, Manuel 142 Venetian Inquisition 3 waiting period for remarriage 159 – 162

wedding ceremonies 125; borrowed jewelry at 104 – 105; on Fridays and on the Sabbath 105 – 109; introduction to 102 – 103; levirate negotiations 109 – 111; negotiating customs and finances of 103 – 104 Weil of Erfurt, Judah 19 widows, parental obligations of 170 – 172 wife beating 119, 121 – 122 women: abuse of 119, 121 – 122; borrowing of jewelry for weddings 104 – 105; breaking of engagements by 57; childcare obligations and parental affection toward children 170 – 172; collection and seizure of assets by married 122 – 125; collection of assets by 144 – 148; dotal and non-dotal assets 43 – 44; education of 10 – 11; financial support from family of 39 – 43; levirate union and 51 – 53; men inheriting from 141 – 143; menstrual impurity and 56; pregnant and nursing, remarriage by 162 – 170; prenuptial post-mortem distribution of assets of 44 – 49; the Renaissance and 8 – 13; rights to divorce 114; testaments made by 139 – 141; as unwed mothers 168 – 169 Yagel, Abraham 163 Yehiel, Joshua ben 19 Yehiel, Rabenu Asher ben 19 Zacuto, Moses 58 Zamorano, Pinhas 108 Zehner, David 89 Zelophehad 44 – 45 Zionism 6