Mothers, Midwives, and Medicine: Jewish Orthodox Reproductive Culture and Popular Belief

The Jewish religion places emphasis on the mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.” It is important to investigate how this imperative for fertility influences the physical body. Orthodox Judaism provides a particularly unique framework, as many adherents to Haredi Judaism take this mandate very seriously. Orthodox Jewish women exist in a problematic liminal phase in which purity laws and religious considerations become simultaneously important and ambiguous. To investigate how this problematic liminal state plays out, it is first important to understand how pregnancy and child delivery fit into the framework of medicine. This investigation carries into the advent of postmodern midwifery and the introduction of alternative medicine in an age of biomedical technology. It is then significant to consider general behaviors and trends of Orthodox Jewish women within the prenatal period. With this comes popular belief and folk culture that has been transmitted through ages. Evil Eye and Lilith, the demoness known to kill mothers and babies, serve as pertinent examples of the folk culture surrounding childbirth within Orthodox Judaism. Overall, this research investigates the classification and treatment of Jewish women at the cultural and medical intersection of pregnancy and delivery.Bachelor of Art