“Like Puah and Shiphrah”: Jewish Midwives in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Abstract

Using the memorbikher literature, which has received only little scholarly attention so far, this article explores the position of the Jewish midwife in eighteenth-century Germany. The memorbikher genre allows us to decipher the activity of many Jewish women who were involved in midwifery and did not leave any trace in other sources from the period. It shows that boundaries between “official” and “unofficial,” “professional” and “unprofessional” midwives were fuzzy, and that a significant number of deliveries in the Jewish community were performed by midwives who were not connected to any formal authority.