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Gender Roles In Medieval Ashkenaz

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The aftermath of the forced conversions of Jews in the medieval sparked a concern on the implications of interfaith sex and focused on how this affected women. With the conversion of many Jews to Christianity, clergy realized that practicing a different religion did not change a person’s physical attributes, specifically their blood. Women were particularly targeted because as the gender that determines the religion of a baby, women were most susceptible to becoming impregnated by a man considered to be Christian only by faith and not by blood, calling into question the child’s true religion. Initially, it seemed that the goal was to convert the Jews, until it was realized and understood that a person who was once a Jew will always be a Jew and forced conversions only blurred the lines and caused confusion. Both Nirenberg and Furst examine two situations, the Iberian scenario and medieval Ashkenaz respectively, in which the role of women and sex generated anxieties.
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Blood had become an important historical factor in this issue because the concept of pure Christian blood being mixed with Jewish blood was a sign of impurity. Women at the time were thought of less as human beings and more like vehicles of religious transportation. There were stricter laws placed on them in an attempt to control who was able to have sex with whom, and maintain a pure Christian future. The government enforced rules such as that if a “respectable Christian women was found in the Jewish quarter, she would be fined and if a Christian prostitute was caught there she would receive a hundred lashes.” Once it appeared to the government that there was only so much they could control with Jews and Christians freely living in the same areas, immediate action needed to be taken. Total segregation seemed to be the only way to prevent interfaith sex from

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