ABSTRACT
The main expectations for a Jewish woman of the Middle Ages were domestic: “May she sew, spin, weave, and be brought up to a life of good deeds” is the prayer with which one set of parents in medieval Northern Europe recorded their daughter's birth. By adding the desire, expressed in another milieu of the Jewish Middle Ages, Muslim Egypt, that a newborn daughter “might come into a blessed and auspicious home,” that is, marry well, the essential hopes for medieval Jewish women can be expressed. Yet the evidence shows, particularly in Christian Europe, that women were also active in economic endeavors, sometimes supporting their husbands and families, and fulfilled religious leadership roles such as teaching other women and leading them in prayer.
