Cut Through the Middle: The Virgin Body and the Body Politic in Medieval Ashkenaz

This paper explores the significance of virginity in medieval Jewish culture, serving as a prism for understanding gender dynamics and a lens for examining Jewish-Christian interreligious tensions. By highlighting virginity as an intersection of diverse sociocultural facets, it offers new perspectives on power dynamics and societal structures in medieval Europe. While extensively studied in Christian contexts, virginity’s role within Jewish tradition has often been overlooked or narrowly understood. To address this gap, the paper offers a close reading of a medieval Hebrew narrative recounting the tragic fate of Sarit, a young bride killed by her father-in-law during the 1096 Crusade massacres. The analysis contends that Sarit’s narrative encapsulates the preservation of communal boundaries through the safeguarding of the virgin female body. This episode sheds light on both internal and external struggles within Jewry and underscores the intricate interplay between Judaism and Christianity. By examining the narrative in the chronicle alongside contemporary Christian exegesis, the study demonstrates how gendered concepts were utilized to define the boundaries of the Jewish faith amid the religious turmoil of twelfth-century Europe.