On Campus & Online | Bodies of Knowledge: Jewish Women, Healthcare, and Community in Early Modern Europe

This talk explores the diverse roles that Jewish women played as healthcare practitioners in early modern Europe, challenging older models of medical culture by demonstrating that female medical work operated along a spectrum rather than a rigid professional hierarchy. Drawing on evidence from rabbinic responsa, communal registers (pinkassim), personal manuscripts, and municipal medical college records, this presentation traces the range of practitioners involved in healthcare—from neighborhood women who assisted in childbirth without formal training, to expert women who served as interlocutors in matters of halakha, to licensed midwives regulated by civic institutions. It argues that female healers offer an important lens for examining the nexus between Jewish community, gender, medicine knowledge, and early modern administrative developments.

 

Jordan Katz is an assistant professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A historian of early modern Jewry, her work emphasizes the interplay between healthcare, civic life, Jewish communities, and gender in early modern Europe. Katz's book, Delivering Knowledge: Jewish Midwives and Hidden Healing in Early Modern Europe, is forthcoming with Stanford University Press in April 2026. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.