Women and Sexual Ambivalence in Sefer Hasidim

Sefer Hasidim (hereafter SH) demonstrates a deep ambivalence toward women. It is emblematic in many ways of its authors' profound alienation from what they perceived as a world of carnal temptations and human hypocrisies in which the pious were scorned and persecuted and martyrdom was more desirable than a quiet death (SH Bologna 222).¹ Afflicted with a sense of crushing guilt, the Hasidei Ashkenaz sought atonement for sins whose commission was certain, even if their actual substance was mysterious. It is not surprising that the authors of a work so absorbed with discerning human failings and demonstrating repentance would look beyond the treasured and irreproachable women of their own families and construct a vision of women in general as amenable potential partners in a range of imagined sexual indiscretions. Nor it is astonishing, given the pervasive influence of Christian imagery and spirituality in their larger environment, that mystical seekers like the Hasidei Ashkenaz would look with occasional envy at Christianity's monastic options of solitude and celibacy.

In the bustling urban society of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Ashkenaz, where women were active within and beyond their homes as economic entrepreneurs and participants in communal religious and social life, possible adulteries appeared to lurk at every turn. SH lists in detail the array of married and unmarried Jewish and non-Jewish women, including relatives, maidservants, and neighbors, who might constitute possible sexual partners or merely sources of sexual temptation. Although it is impossible to determine the basis for this obsession that is so salient a characteristic of this work, it is the case that both the enticement and its expiation are seen purely from a male vantage point. While much verbiage is devoted to how men can show remorse for their various indiscretions, whether real or imagined, no attention is given to female atonement; women are occasions for male sin but are not considered as sinners themselves. In every instance, whether the reported illicit liaisons really occurred or whether such stories simply serve the didactic purposes of their teller, no thought is given to any spiritual concerns women may have had about their participation in forbidden activities. Indeed, women appear in virtually all the passages related to sexual transgressions as wholly susceptible and enthusiastic participants, who sometimes even initiate the activities.² Since specific women of the pietist circle are represented elsewhere in both SH and related documents as surpassing their husbands in righteousness,³ this apparent blindness to the possibility that women as a group are also moral and spiritual beings capable of expressing repentance is striking.

For the Hasidei Ashkenaz, the main remedy against sexual indiscretion was to direct one's sexual energies into relations with one's wife. Eleazar of Worms, a member of this circle, encourages positive marital sexuality in his Sefer ha-Rokeah, where he advises, "One should avoid looking at other women and have sex with one's wife with the greatest passion because she guards him from sin"; and "since she is his intimate partner he should display affection and love toward her."⁴ Similarly, SH counsels that time and effort should be devoted to building a positive and creative sexual relationship within marriage so that the husband's thoughts will not stray to other women.⁵ However, SH recognizes that joyful sexual activity within marriage constitutes only a partial fence against sin. The human inclination to seek sexual encounters with others cannot be ruled out, and this realization is explicit in SH's ambivalence toward women and its fear of their power over men. The following passage, advising the pious man not to look at the faces or bodies of women, while at the same time revealing some of the occasions upon which a man might do so, reflects the tension between rabbinic teachings and medieval social reality:

The main strength of the pious man from beginning to end is that even when scoffed at he does not forsake...