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  • Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages—A Quiet Revolution
  • Karen Meyer
Simha Goldin, Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages—A Quiet Revolution (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press 2011) 336 pp.

Simha Goldin’s Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages—A Quiet Revolution examines the social status of Jewish women in France, Germany, and England from 1000 to 1350. Goldin argues that the social status of women within the Jewish community was mutable. The improvement of women was propagated both by religious leaders, who believed the halakhah was instrumental for change, and women. Goldin constructs women as active participants who pushed the boundaries originally proposed by men. By using social conflict as a lens to examine Jewish women, Goldin formulates a new understanding of Jewish women in the Middle Ages that is unavailable in current scholarship. Each chapter is organized thematically causing an amelioration of independent studies that represent the many facets of Jewish women. Goldin reconstructs this social conflict from sources written by a relatively small and elite group of men who were leaders of the Jewish community and were interconnected by family or intellectually. Goldin persistently emphasizes the male bias of the sources by scrutinizing and evaluating both the man himself and the attitudes presented towards women regarding the family, economy and religion.

Chapter 1, “Heroines by choice or by chance: martyrs, converts, and anusot (forced converts),” describes the prominent role Jewish women had in the fight against the 1096 campaign of the Christian army’s ultimatum of conversion or death. In reaction to this ultimatum, Jewish women would kill their family and themselves in al kiddush Hashem (in the sanctification of the Name of God) causing Jewish men to glorify women as martyrs. Records of women as Jewish martyrs used masculine terminology and idioms as well as stating that women knew the will of God. Goldin presents these Jewish women as making active choices in the sense that they knew what they had to do without being ordered. Jewish men exalted the piety and fortitude of women, while clearly indicating a preference for a woman’s death al kiddush Hashem rather than conversion.

Chapter 2, “Four differing paradigms of male attitudes to women,” represents the diversity of attitudes present in medieval Jewish society. First, Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac generally portrayed a positive view and belief that a woman was the pillar of the Jewish family and it was her role to restrain the husband’s desires through a strong marital relationship, family, and defense of the home. The second, negative male paradigm appears through the eyes of Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn, who either blatantly ignored women or accused them of causing terrible calamity, and Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (Rosh), who stressed the power imbalance created by placing the woman in a preferential state. Third, the Hasidic paradigm, based on the Sefer Hasidim, advocated a balance and maintenance of a proper marital relationship and a woman’s role in procreating. Finally, the community paradigm championed the belief that the betterment and protection of women directly benefited the community.

Chapter 3, “The family unit and the change in women’s status,” recounts the advancement of Jewish women’s economic power within marital relationships. Jewish women’s acquisition of the ketubah, which standardized marital finances, guaranteed a divorcee’s or widow’s financial rights. Polygamy was outlawed, resulting from Christian influence, causing a monetary advantage to [End Page 202] shift to a single woman. A woman’s consent was mandated in order to marry or divorce. These changes caused a significant power shift towards women.

Chapter 4, “Marital relations, power, and social understanding,” examines how Jewish men resisted the power of women in the family unit. Women exerted their new power by arguing for divorce or a gett on the grounds of impotence, rejecting levirate marriage (yibbum) in favor of halizah, or withholding sexual relations based on the repulsiveness of her husband in order to receive a gett. In each endeavor, men would parry financially by reducing the ketubah, or its supplements, or by extorting money, creating a significant financial loss for the Jewish woman in question.

Chapter 5, “Women and the mitzvot...

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