Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Joheved

by Maggie Anton

  Salomon invited Samson to stay in the attic with the students, who were thrilled with the opportunity to hear some of his more exciting stories out of the women’s hearing. Several of the older ones, including Benjamin, encouraged him to give them some lessons in self-defense, the better to protect themselves in future days of traveling.

  By the end of the Cold Fair, Samson had contracts with several wine dealers to transport their casks, including much of Salomon’s wine, to Paris. He was barely gone a week when a series of snowstorms swept through Troyes, forcing everyone indoors. Joheved fretted that they wouldn’t be able to finish the pruning in time, but there was nothing she could do about the weather.

  It was two weeks before a clear day dawned. The students took deep breaths as they climbed down from the attic; air outdoors smelled so fresh and crisp compared to the stuffy, smoky atmosphere inside Salomon’s salon. When Benjamin saw Baruch assembling the pruning knives, he suggested to Salomon that, with nobody able to work on the vines recently, perhaps the man could use some assistance.

  Then Salomon couldn’t help but observe the remaining students’ envy as they watched the pair put on their cloaks and gloves. He was torn. He really shouldn’t allow the class to take an afternoon off from Talmud study, yet they wouldn’t learn much if their hearts were yearning to be outdoors. Besides, Benjamin was right. They were weeks behind on pruning the vineyard.

  It wasn’t only because of bad weather. During the previous fortnight, Joheved had started bleeding, and Sarah had confined her niece to bed in hopes that the pregnancy might be saved. Privately, Sarah confided in Miriam that she didn’t have much faith in the bed rest cure. While it might be useful in late pregnancy, there was little a midwife could do with bleeding this early. The outcome was in the Merciful One’s hands.

  So far, all was well. Joheved spent most of her day in bed, spinning wool, helping Rachel with her studies, or going over each day’s Talmud lesson with Miriam. Salomon sorely missed her in the vineyard. Leah had taught her granddaughter well; Joheved knew exactly where and how much to trim each vine. But Joheved was bedridden and likely to remain so for some time.

  Salomon finally gave in to the reality that sometimes his livelihood must take precedence. When he announced that he too would be going to work in the vineyard, and that any student who wished to labor with him was welcome, the entire student body swiftly made for their warm clothes. Even Rachel demanded to go out, which prompted Rivka to insist that Miriam accompany the group in order to watch her little sister.

  Rivka took advantage of the break in bad weather to go shopping with the new maidservant, Claire, leaving Anna and Joheved to work their way through a pile of clothes that needed mending. Periodically they sipped from cups of hot liquid, sage tea for Joheved to prevent a miscarriage, and elder leaf tea for Anna as a precaution against curses. The charcoal brazier provided warmth, but it also served another purpose. Sarah burned some foul-smelling herbs on it, hoping to discourage either fetus from leaving its present lodging too soon, and Joheved tried to tolerate the stink for her baby’s sake.

  All morning Joheved had been feeling uncomfortable with what she hoped was indigestion, but now the ache in her belly was too strong to ignore. The previous day she had been in pain too, but then the cramps had gone away, allowing her a few hours of sleep. It was Anna, looking up from her sewing in time to see Joheved grimace, who decided to go next door for Aunt Sarah.

  “Mon Dieu, please don’t let me lose the baby,” Joheved prayed, at the same time fearing that it was already too late. She could hear Aunt Sarah on the stairs, asking Anna if the bleeding had increased and when was the last time they changed the cloths in Joheved’s sinar.

  Every married Jewish woman owned a sinar, a special article of clothing worn when she was niddah. Shaped like an apron, it served the dual purpose of holding absorbent rags in place to catch the menstrual flow and letting her husband know that she was forbidden to him while she wore it. Joheved disliked wearing a sinar so continually; the material rubbed annoyingly against the inside of her thighs, chafing her skin.

  “Let’s pull these covers off and get a look at you.” Aunt Sarah’s voice was cheerful, yet professional. “I need to know how much blood you’ve lost.”

  With the stained sheets exposed, Joheved could see that her sinar cloths were insufficient, and she started to cry. She waited anxiously while Anna brought some fresh rags and Sarah examined the bloody ones. Then, seized with another cramp, she doubled over in pain, and when it passed, they needed to change the cloths again.

  Sarah turned and said sadly, “I’m sorry, Joheved, but your womb is starting to empty. There is nothing I can do to prevent it. I’ll be right back with the birthing stool.”

  Joheved lay back in bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. Two more spasms came and went before Sarah reappeared. Then she and Anna helped Joheved support herself over the birthing stool’s opening. The pain intensified now, and when it abated, Joheved felt a cup in her hand.

  “Drink this,” Aunt Sarah told her. “It’s wine with ragwort and columbine seeds, to quickly empty your womb.”

  Joheved downed the strange-tasting wine, and before Rivka and Claire returned from their errands, the process was complete. Aunt Sarah helped her into bed in her old bedroom while Anna hurried to replace the bloody linens with clean ones.

  Rivka arrived home to find her sister stirring soup in the kitchen, not an auspicious sign. “I’m sorry,” Sarah said, “but Joheved has miscarried.” Rivka crumpled into her sister’s arms as Sarah said softly, “Don’t worry. Joheved is uninjured, and this shouldn’t affect her future pregnancies.”

  Rivka straightened up, took a deep breath and hurried upstairs. Anna, still making Meir and Joheved’s bed, pointed her mistress down the hall. Rivka cautiously opened the door, and when she saw that Joheved was awake, rushed to her side. As she consoled her weeping child, now taller than she was, Rivka couldn’t help but remember how she used to hold Joheved in her lap, years ago, to comfort her when she cried.

  Outside the city walls, those in Salomon’s vineyard were oblivious to the misfortune in his house. The sun shone brightly, the snow-covered fields contrasted dazzlingly with the blue sky, and everyone was full of energy after weeks of forced inactivity. Once Salomon explained that the vines needed to be cut as close as possible to the soil, the boys enthusiastically began hacking off the taller shoots.

  They were a jolly group. Careful to avoid Salomon’s notice, one student made a snowball and pelted another, only to return immediately to his pruning in apparent innocence. The victim then felt that he had no choice but to hurl one back at his suspected attacker, who most likely was not the guilty party. And so the cycle continued until Rachel, aiming to hit Miriam, slipped in the snow just as she threw the snowball. Her missile flew straight up into the air and landed on Salomon, who was concentrating on an exacting cut nearby.

  Splat! The students stood in chastened silence as Salomon dropped his knife and began to curse vigorously. In no uncertain terms, he reminded them all how dangerously sharp the pruning knives were, how the slightest misstep could result in a lost finger or gouged eye. He continued by questioning their maturity, their conscientiousness and their intelligence in general. His voice echoed like thunder across the frozen landscape. Most of the students had never seen their teacher lose his temper before, and it was a sobering sight.

  Rachel was trying not to cry, and the sight of her quivering chin had an immediate calming effect on her father. The boys looked uncertainly from one to another, none of them wanting to indict the frightened little girl, and then Menachem and Ephraim almost simultaneously stepped forward to each admit his culpability. If only one of them had spoken, the subterfuge might have succeeded, but Salomon knew he had been pelted just once and quickly recognized whom the twins were protecting.

  “Rachel, do you know how my father died?” He kneeled down next to her and spoke soothingly, but loud enough for the boys to hear, “He cut hims
elf with a pruning knife, and it never healed. I was not much older than you when it happened.”

  “Papa, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be hurt. I didn’t mean to hit you. I was aiming at Miriam.” Rachel immediately realized that she shouldn’t have said this, but the image of her father, orphaned when he was her age, had clouded her judgment.

  “But surely you didn’t want Miriam to cut herself either,” he asked, and she nodded silently in reply. Salomon had no intention of chastising her in public and returned his attention to his students, who stared at the snowy ground in guilty silence. “Now let’s get back to work. Darkness comes early this time of year.”

  “Belle Assez, why don’t you work over here by me and Miriam?” Benjamin called her by the nickname all the yeshiva students used for her since the wedding.

  “My name is Rachel, and I’m not about to get close enough for Miriam to put snow down my chemise.” There was no use complaining when the students called her “Belle Assez.” It only amused them and made them use the vexing name even more.

  “All right, Belle Assez, have it your way,” he said, breaking into a laugh when she stuck her tongue out at him.

  The sun was low on the horizon when they gathered their tools and headed for the road to town. Peasants who’d been plowing nearby joined them, and one man let Rachel ride his horse. The students tumbled noisily into the house, but the somber look on Sarah’s face silenced them even as she put her finger to her lips.

  Rivka was still upstairs with Joheved, leaving Sarah to explain the sad circumstances. Meir’s face fell and he bounded up the stairs to see his wife, while Salomon restrained himself from doing the same. Let the couple have some time to mourn their loss in private.

  He turned to his sister-in-law and asked, “Sarah, you’re the expert in such matters. Is there any reason to think that Joheved might not have another child in the near future?”

  “Not as far as I can tell,” she replied. “Your daughter appears perfectly healthy.”

  “And were you able to determine the baby’s gender?”

  “Yes,” the answer came, “it was a girl.”

  When Rivka saw Meir at the door, she prudently remembered something in the kitchen that needed her attention. By now, Joheved had cried all the tears that were within her, so it was she who consoled her tearful husband the best she could. It was frustrating not being able to hold him, or even touch him, but a miscarriage caused impurity just as the blood of childbirth and menstruation did. Because her child had been female, Joheved would be niddah for fourteen days.

  She tried to reassure him with Sarah’s confident prognosis, but she kept yawning. The day’s exertion had exhausted her, and Aunt Sarah had given her a sleeping draught. So Meir sat silently beside her, and when her breath was soft and regular with sleep, he went gloomily downstairs to be comforted by the others.

  twenty-one

  Spring 4835 (1075 C.E.)

  During the weeks that followed, Joheved found consolation from the women in the congregation. No one had snubbed her for some time now; after all, she was the Rosh Yeshiva’s daughter. There were no more looks of pity either; she and Miriam dressed as well as anyone. She wouldn’t have called these women her friends, but when she returned to lead them in prayer, they overwhelmed her with their sympathy and encouragement. Nearly every mother among them had suffered miscarriages, and after listening to their stories, Joheved’s vague sense of guilt began to lessen.

  One old woman, who admitted to ten pregnancies resulting in four grown children, said it was like shelling peas. “In every pod or two, amongst all the nice solid, plump peas, is a tiny, shriveled pea. Only the Creator knows why these are big and healthy, while that one is not.”

  “And just because you’ve lost this first one,” Johanna reassured her, “doesn’t mean you won’t have any more.”

  The mothers in the group glanced at the few childless ones and quickly looked away. “Don’t worry, Joheved,” they told her. “You’re still young.”

  Joheved tried to remember those words as she was continually confronted with Anna’s new baby boy, born just before Passover. Salomon had just given the slaves their freedom, and because their son would be named during the festival week, Baruch and Anna decided to call the boy Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover.

  Whenever Joheved began to fill with envy, she reminded herself how good her life was compared with Anna’s many sorrows. If fate decreed that one of them suffer a miscarriage, better it should be herself rather than poor Anna. Yet she couldn’t help but wonder what Anna had done right, and she had done wrong, during their respective pregnancies.

  Far more disconsolate was Meir, who, believing that any show of grief on his part would only further distress his wife, kept his own anguish inside. When Salomon tried to offer support by sharing that his own firstborn had been stillborn, Meir felt the need to apologize for failing him.

  “I don’t see how I can possibly conceive sons.” Meir shook his head sadly. “No matter how determined I am that Joheved should emit seed first, I cannot restrain myself. As soon as I feel her emitting her seed, mine comes as well.”

  “At least yours doesn’t come first,” Salomon said, sure he’d never felt Rivka emit seed at all. “Remember what it says in the last chapter of Berachot: When a man and woman emit seed simultaneously, then the child may be of either gender.”

  But no matter how much he wanted to, Salomon wasn’t able to provide Meir with the comfort that Joheved received from the many women who had miscarried before her.

  When Joheved began using the mikvah, Meir accompanied her and joined the men who spent their evenings at the synagogue. Some, like himself, were waiting for their wives to immerse in the ritual bath below, but others came for the masculine company. They discussed, and occasionally argued, business, politics and Torah. The mood was cheerful; after all, more than a few of them were on their way to an amorous reunion with their wives. These men were glad to find Meir among their number and made sure that their wives encountered him before they went home.

  Meir tried to greet the women, who were often more flustered than he was, with as pleasant a demeanor as he could manage. It embarrassed him to be admired in this fashion, but he understood their motive. What a woman saw before cohabitation made an impression on her, one transmitted to any resulting offspring. If she saw a dog after immersing in the mikvah, her child might have a dog’s ugly face. If she saw a donkey, the child would be simpleminded. Meeting a talmid chacham was a good sign, for then her child would delight in learning Torah.

  Meir was relieved when the Hot Fair arrived and men began introducing their wives to the other scholars at the synagogue, but he was disappointed that Joheved wasn’t pregnant again. One night, while waiting for his wife to ready herself for bed, he decided to consult Tractate Kallah. There was a section on resuming relations after childbirth, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. He was so engrossed in the book that it was only when Joheved began to hang up her clothes that he realized she had entered the room. He abruptly turned to face her, trying to hide the manuscript behind him.

  “What are you reading?” Joheved had thought he was studying one of her father’s kuntres, but his guilty behavior belied that.

  “Oh, nothing that I can’t finish later.” Meir didn’t want to lie to her by naming a scholarly text. So he moved to embrace her, hoping to forestall her curiosity.

  “Let me see.” She tried to get around him, but he put his arms around her waist and drew her to him.

  “I doubt that you’d find it interesting. Why don’t we go to bed now, and you can read it tomorrow if you like.” He tried one last gambit to avoid what he suspected was inevitable.

  “Meir, if you just let me see it, then we can go to bed.”

  Realizing it was hopeless, he stood aside and watched helplessly as his wife began to read.

  The first thing she saw was a commentary on Psalm 128:

  “Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in y
our house, your sons, like olive saplings around your table.”

  What Tractate Kallah said was:

  “Your wife should adorn herself like a fruitful vine, so that your yetzer will be inflamed like a fire and you will shoot semen like an arrow. You should delay your climax until your wife has her climax first, and then she will conceive sons.”

  “Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, cheeks flaming, as she read further. “Where did you get this…” Joheved restrained herself from saying “this obscenity” as she snapped the pages shut.

  “My father gave it to me just before our wedding. It’s called Tractate Kallah.”

  “This is part of the Talmud?” Her disapproval softened with the idea that this was holy text. After all, Song of Songs was bold stuff.

  Meir couldn’t help but appreciate their identical reactions. “That’s exactly what I said when I first saw it. But it’s not Talmud; my father says it’s additional material.”

  Joheved began to leaf through the book again. “So this is where you learned how to do all those things. I assumed that some common woman in Worms must have taught you.”

  Meir put his arms around her and whispered in her ear, “I have never bedded any woman but you, and I hope that I will be blessed to bed only you my whole life.”

  Her husband’s close presence and sweet words, in addition to what she was reading, began to affect her. “Would you show me your favorite part?”

  Meir could hear the desire in her voice. He took the book out of her hands, but instead of leafing through it, he blew out the lamp and kissed her. When she began to protest, he said, “You told me to ‘show’ you my favorite part, not read it to you.”

  Despite his ardent efforts, Meir found himself back at the synagogue later that month, again waiting for Joheved to exit the mikvah. The Hot Fair was well under way, with men attending from nearly every land inhabited by Jews, and Meir heard disturbing news from the east. Pope Gregory had intensified his efforts to free the Church from the authority of King Henry of Germany, much to the consternation of the German bishops, most of whom had been appointed by the king or his father. It was bad enough that Gregory insisted on celibacy for all clergy, not just monks; but the bishops were the king’s vassals. They depended on Henry and his knights for protection.