Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8r8nv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-08T08:01:52.325Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“To Immerse their Wives”: Communal Identity and the “Kahalishe” Mikveh of Altona

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2012

Debra Kaplan
Debra Kaplan*
Affiliation:
Yeshiva University, New York, New York
*
debrakap@gmail.com

Extract

On Sunday, the twelfth of Adar, March 2, 1681, the parnasim, the lay leaders of Altona, recorded an enactment in their communal logbook, the pinkas kehillah, regulating women's use of the local mikva'ot. Designating two privately-owned ritual baths as the only approved immersion locations for most of the women in the community, they decreed that defiance of this decree was to be punished with some of the most severe weapons in the arsenal of the communal leaders. Four years later, the parnasim reversed their policy and, with the permission of the community's rabbinic leadership, required the women to use only the newly built kahalishe, or community, mikveh, banning the use of the two previously approved mikva'ot. This article examines the construction and reconstruction of these policies regulating women's use of mikva'ot, offering insight into how designated communal institutions were developed in the early modern period as well as how these institutions were used both to finance the community and to forge communal identity. Moreover, consideration of the mikveh as a locus for building communal institutions and, in particular, communal identity, offers insight into how the growing bureaucratization of Jewish communal life in the early modern period affected women's lives.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , November 2012 , pp. 257 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2012

On Sunday, the twelfth of Adar, March 2, 1681, the parnasim, the lay leaders of Altona, recorded an enactment in their communal logbook, the pinkas kehillah, regulating women's use of the local mikva'ot.Footnote 1 Designating two privately-owned ritual baths as the only approved immersion locations for most of the women in the community, they decreed that defiance of this decree was to be punished with some of the most severe weapons in the arsenal of the communal leaders.Footnote 2 Four years later, the parnasim reversed their policy and, with the permission of the community's rabbinic leadership, required the women to use only the newly built kahalishe, or community, mikveh, banning the use of the two previously approved mikva'ot.Footnote 3 This article examines the construction and reconstruction of these policies regulating women's use of mikva'ot, offering insight into how designated communal institutions were developed in the early modern period as well as how these institutions were used both to finance the community and to forge communal identity.Footnote 4 Moreover, consideration of the mikveh as a locus for building communal institutions and, in particular, communal identity, offers insight into how the growing bureaucratization of Jewish communal life in the early modern period affected women's lives.Footnote 5

The Triple Community of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck

The pinkas of Altona, which records the decisions by the local parnasim, is one of the rich communal sources extant from Kehillat AHW, an acronym for the triple community of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck.Footnote 6 Jewish life in these three locations began in the late sixteenth century. Sephardic Jews of converso background, the first to settle in Hamburg in the late sixteenth century, were permitted to reside in the port city due to their mercantile skills. Ashkenazim followed soon after, initially securing admission as the house servants of their Sephardic brethren, but eventually outnumbering the Sephardim by the mid-to-late seventeenth century.Footnote 7 In the late sixteenth century an officially sanctioned Jewish presence grew in nearby Altona, a village on the outskirts of Hamburg under Danish rule, and soon after, in nearby Wandsbeck. Some of the Jews who were granted permission to reside in Altona actually resided and worked in Hamburg without official permission; the expulsions that they sometimes endured are described in Glückel of Hameln's memoirs.Footnote 8 In 1671, the Ashkenazic communities in these three locales united into one triple community, sharing resources such as a cemetery, a communal rabbi, and a rabbinical court.Footnote 9

The Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck Jewish community, first formed in the early modern period when communal records began to be kept and collected, provides rich documentation of the process through which Jewish communities and their institutions grew and developed. Although this type of triple community was unique, its communal records offer insight beyond the specifics of its own functioning, shedding light on the expansion of Jewish communal institutions in Europe more generally during this period.

The Mikveh Decree of 1681

The first piece of communal legislation regarding women's use of mikveh in Altona was recorded in 1681. The decree, or takkanah, begins by outlining very specific rules governing the finances and functioning of two mikva'ot, one in the house of Jacob, son of Moses Joseph, and the other in the house of the widow Pessim, daughter of Abraham Lubke.Footnote 10 Although the decree makes no mention of where and how women had observed the precept of mikveh prior to this enactment, the fact that the decree's innovations involved instituting rules and regulations governing mikva'ot finances suggests that these two mikva'ot were likely already the primary ones in use in Altona. After designating Jacob's wife and widow Pessim as the respective attendants for the mikva'ot located in their homes, the decree enumerated rates for mikveh use and provides specific procedures for collecting and recording fees:

The community, may it be protected by God, should make a sealed coffer for each mikveh. And the woman who is immersing should give eight Schilling to the aforementioned appointee [Pessim or Jacob's wife], under penalty of excommunication, and the aforementioned appointed woman should put eight Schilling, in the presence of the woman who is immersing, those same eight Schilling, immediately into the coffer, under penalty of excommunication. And a poor woman, whose husband has no official worth, should give four Schilling, as is discussed above, into the hand of the aforementioned appointee, and the aforementioned appointee should place those four Schilling into the coffer immediately, in the presence of the woman who is immersing, under penalty of excommunication.Footnote 11

The decree mandated two levels of payment for mikveh use: eight Schilling as the standard rate and four Schilling for poor women, defined here as those whose husbands' income was too low to contribute to communal taxes. Unlike other locations, even poor women were expected to pay to use the mikveh. However by omitting excommunication as a punishment for the failure of a poor woman to pay, it is possible that the text was creating a loophole, thereby enabling those who could not afford four Schilling per month to fulfill the commandment.Footnote 12

Mikveh fees are somewhat difficult to trace, even in those places that had had medieval Jewish communities. Payment for mikveh use was not a completely new phenomenon, although it is unclear what the exact custom in Altona had been prior to 1681. Although there are no references to mikveh fees in medieval responsa, Sefer Ḥasidim incidentally records fees paid by women at the time of their immersion. The author of Sefer Ḥasidim contended that some of the women who accompanied immersing women to the mikveh bewitched those who immersed to prevent pregnancy. He claimed that they did so to ensure that the accompanying women could collect their fees more frequently, since during pregnancy, women did not immerse on a monthly basis.Footnote 13 These fees, however, were payments to the accompanying women (often midwives), and, unlike the fees in early modern Altona, they were not deposited into communal coffers.

The system designed by Altona's parnasim also ensured that the funds for the mikveh would be transferred in a precise manner. Not only were immersing women required to pay at the time of their immersion, but the mikveh attendants were instructed to deposit such funds immediately and in the presence of the immersing woman. This procedure, enforced by the threat of excommunication, created a set of controls ensuring that all monies were properly collected. At the end of each month, the two appointed female attendants were instructed to bring the funds to a designated communal official:

And the two aforementioned appointees, each one should bring the coffer with the money every month to the parnas ha-ḥodesh [the designated monthly lay leader], under penalty of excommunication. And the parnas ha-ḥodesh will buy a new pinkas to write in it each month what they bring.Footnote 14

The sums collected in the two mikva'ot were then recorded in a separate communal ledger, and twice a year the funds were divided up between the community and the ba‘alei mikva'ot, the “owners” of the mikva'ot:

And when half a year has passed, the parnas ha-ḥodesh will give to the aforementioned Jacob ten Reichstahler from the coffer, and to the widow, seven and a half Reichstahler. And he shall divide the remainder [of the amount from the coffer] equally, half distributed to our community of Altona and half to the aforementioned owners of the mikva'ot on behalf of their expenses and their efforts. Each one [of the mikveh owners] will take half of what she brings to the community. And if, after a full year has passed, the aforementioned Jacob has not amassed eighty Mark, and the aforementioned widow has not amassed sixty-five Mark, then the parnas ha-ḥodesh should give to them, from the coffer, before the division [of the funds], the amount necessary to meet the aforementioned amount [of eighty or sixty-five Mark.] And everything that remains [after the eighty or sixty-five Mark has been paid] they should divide, half to the community, and half to that mikveh owner.Footnote 15

This portion of the enactment dictated how the proceeds were to be divvied up between the community and the ba‘alei mikv'aot, for whom a minimum annual payment was ensured by the parnasim. If the funds collected over the year did not equal at least 170 Mark in Jacob's mikveh or 137.5 Mark in Pessim's mikveh, the owners were nevertheless guaranteed a certain level of income in exchange for their services and their expenses.

The disparity between the wages paid to Jacob and to Pessim likely reflects neither the sizes of the mikva'ot in their respective homes nor the expected percentage of the community that would use each mikveh, but rather the gender of the mikveh owner. Other communal sources in Altona attest to a similar discrepancy in rates of payment for men and for widows; for example, communal tax rates imposed in 1682, just ten months after this decree, mandated different rates for men and widows that are proportionally similar to the differences in the salaries designated here.Footnote 16 Gender affected wages and income in the Jewish community just as it did in early modern Christian communities in Europe.Footnote 17

The payment structures established by this communal decree mandated that in a good year approximately half the income collected in each of the mikva'ot was to be handed over to the community. Thus, even though they were located in private homes and run by the residents of those homes on a daily basis, the mikva'ot themselves were considered to be communal spaces. Communal leaders could count on the revenue generated by the mikveh to help offset the considerable expenses of the Jewish community, including paying taxes to the Christian authorities, paying the salaries of communal officials, providing burial space and rites to both official residents and to the local poor, and providing modest dowries for certain poor brides.Footnote 18 The mikva'ot, along with taxes and some charitable donations required of residents, constituted a reliable and regular source of the funding necessary to ensure the functioning of the growing number of services and institutions provided by the community to its members.Footnote 19

Revenue generation was indeed a key motivator for the parnasim in issuing this decree, as an entry in another Altona pinkas from overlapping years makes clear. Dated 1684, this entry explains that Jacob had been the ba‘al mikveh for the past three years and that he was expected to generate a sum of 55 Reichstahler per year to be delivered to the community.Footnote 20 Unlike this entry, the original 1681 decree had not specified a set amount to be delivered to the kehillah. The sum of 55 Reichstahler is approximately the same as the intake of 170 Mark that, according to the 1681 decree, Jacob would receive before the remaining sum was divided up, indicating that the parnasim expected to receive at least as much as Jacob did.Footnote 21 This entry also differs from the 1681 decree in mandating a quarterly rather than a semiannual payment to the community, suggesting that obtaining this revenue was of increasing urgency to the community. Moreover, Meir, Jacob's son, agreed to guarantee the 55 Reichstahler personally. Although these terms were not outlined in the 1681 enactment, the significance of which will be discussed below, the regular, fixed obligation of the ba‘al mikveh to the community and the establishment of a guarantee both underscore the importance of that revenue to the parnasim.

In addition to the fixing of rates and guarantees of payment, the parnasim dictated the logistics and timing of these payments and fund transfers with highly specific language. They did not merely enact a list of fees and a strategy for collecting and disseminating the funds. Rather, they devised a series of actions set to occur at specific times, thereby creating an expected and prescribed set of steps. The decree insisted on the transfer of money from the immersing woman to the mikveh attendant, and from the mikveh attendant to the communal coffer, at designated times. A monthly accounting and recording of the funds were the next step in this process.Footnote 22 By superimposing additional ritualized behavior upon the women's existing ritual of mikveh immersion, the parnasim created a form of social control such that the women using and running the mikva'ot were bound to adhere to the system.Footnote 23

The parnasim also exerted control over the mikveh by specifying excommunication as the punishment for any deviation from the decree.Footnote 24 Because the legal status, social ties, and economic survival of individual Jews were tied to their communal membership, excommunication was among the most powerful tools that parnasim in the seventeenth century could apply.Footnote 25

The public notoriety of the excommunicative ban is highlighted by the parnasim's insistence that if Jacob (and presumably Pessim, although she is not explicitly named in this section of the text) did not enforce the regulation, the mikveh in his home would be forbidden to “women, men, and male youths” under penalty of excommunication; the ban would be announced “in all the synagogues in Altona and Hamburg within three days.”Footnote 26 Furthermore, the decree mandated that if anyone were to immerse after such an announcement had been made, the parnas-ha-ḥodesh was to

immediately call the community to a council on the following Sunday, and it shall be made known to the community who transgressed, and the community, may it be preserved by God, is obligated to penalize that person with all the penalties and disgraces applicable to one who transgresses an excommunicative ban.Footnote 27

By announcing the violation of the decree in the communal synagogues and informing the community at large of any transgressions, the parnasim used shame and alienation as a deterrent to any breaching their new regulations.

The parnasim also listed further penalties to exclude those who violated this decree from the Jewish community. These punishments served to enforce a critical section of the decree that mandated the sole use of the two mikva'ot located in the homes of Jacob and Pessim, to the exclusion of any others.Footnote 28 This applied not only to those Jews who had ḥezkat kahal, official communal standing, in Altona, but to most of the Jews residing in other parts of the triple community as well. The Jews of Wandsbeck and all residents of the three communities who did not have ḥezkat kahal in any of the three locations were bound to immerse themselves only in these two mikva'ot, with dire consequences for infraction:

For all eternity, they shall not benefit from any of the benefits of our community, whether [they be] wealthy or poor, whether there is a reason that arises or an accusation, be it as it may, in life and in death, and we shall not give to them a burial place, and similarly, what is required for burial, to them and to their children, for all eternity.Footnote 29

These three penalties were among the community's most potent weapons: denying burial places and rites for the residents themselves and for their children; withholding protection against any accusation of libel; and, more broadly, refusing them the benefit of any of the general rights one had from living in a community.

The clauses cited above suggest that, in addition to revenue, communal membership was another key motivation for the 1681 decree. With this formulation, the parnasim were declaring for all intents and purposes that belonging to the Jewish community meant participating in a ritual in specific and designated spaces. Conversely, going elsewhere to immerse was tantamount to removing oneself from the community and thus led to the forfeiture of the rights associated with being a part of the community.

The importance of space in determining communal identity has been discussed in numerous contexts, particularly regarding the establishment of an ‘eruv, the boundary erected to form a communal space within which the carrying of objects on the Sabbath is permissible.Footnote 30 The use of space to reinforce communal identity also characterizes rituals in other religious traditions, for example, processions that used a city's parameters to create a sense of religious community and identity.Footnote 31 Other early modern Jewish communities used the space of the synagogue in this way. Parnasim in Frankfurt am Main, for instance, insisted that members of their community pray in officially recognized synagogues rather than in smaller minyanim, or quorums.Footnote 32 By closing down many of the rival prayer meetings and by fining those who prayed elsewhere with extra taxes paid to charity, the parnasim in Frankfurt were able to collect the funds that they needed while controlling communal identity by mandating attendance in one of several designated spaces within the ghetto. The decree from Altona produced similar results using the spaces of the mikva'ot. By insisting that local Jewish women immerse themselves only in these two mikva'ot, the parnasim were not only guaranteed revenue, but they could simultaneously use the space of the mikveh as a locus for communal identity.Footnote 33 Those women who immersed themselves in these mikva'ot were eligible for the rights that came with communal membership, while those who did not forfeited the communal rights that residents held most dear. The space of the mikveh, then, was an institution in which the newly emerging triple community could symbolically capture communal membership.

This link between communal membership and the mikveh is discernible in the language of the 1681 decree, or takkanah. Jews who had ḥezkat kahal in Hamburg were not mandated to immerse in the two designated mikva'ot in Altona. Should they choose to do so, the decree obligated them to follow the framework for payment that had been set up in the decree, under penalty of excommunication:

And if the Jews of Hamburg wish to immerse their wives in the aforementioned mikva'ot, then it is incumbent on the aforementioned mikveh owners not to permit them to immerse unless each woman has given as is described above, under the terms of punishment described above. And the community of Wandsbeck and other residents from among the three communities who do not have official residential rights are required to immerse their wives specifically in the two aforementioned mikva'ot with the aforementioned decrees and punishments. (emphasis mine)Footnote 34

The gendered language in this passage is fascinating, given that the decree's subject is women's use of the mikva'ot.Footnote 35 The male frame, in which men “immerse their wives,” makes little sense in the context of a commandment performed solely by women and only in the presence of women.Footnote 36 The active verb form used here to refer to a male specifying where women would fulfill their religious obligations echoes the idea that the space and its significance transcended the performance of the woman's ritual. The male language reflects the broader significance of the mikveh space as a symbol of communal membership, something that was generally expressed in male terms.Footnote 37 In the case of the mikveh, a man's membership in the community was refracted through the actions of his wife; the desire to “immerse her” in a specific location reflected the “male” desire to belong to this community.

That this decree was authored by men (all the parnasim in Altona being male) is made apparent by the absence of any practical considerations that arise in the functioning of a mikveh. For example, no policy is specified for women who were scheduled to immerse on the Sabbath or on a festival, when making a payment was forbidden.Footnote 38 Certainly women who paid for their immersions at an earlier or later date in order not to violate the Sabbath or festival would not be subject to excommunication, but no provision was made to address this eventuality. This apparent and surprising oversight in an otherwise highly detailed document underscores that for the men who crafted this takkanah what was at stake was not the practical functioning of women's immersion in the mikva'ot—an area of ritual practice where the parnasim were and would remain inexperienced—but rather the creation of a system that would smoothly transfer revenue from a communal institution into communal coffers and at the same time cement communal identity by mandating that community members make use of that institution.

The aforementioned second pinkas from Altona offers some documentation of the use and functioning of the mikva'ot in the wake of this 1681 decree. After noting that Jacob was obligated to pay the community 55 Reichstahler per year, the pinkas provides two scenarios whereby Jacob's mikveh might fail to bring in the requisite sum: the theft of funds from the mikveh's coffer or insufficient use of the mikveh.Footnote 39 In fact the parnasim specifically addressed the possibility that the Jews of Hamburg might choose not to immerse in Jacob's mikveh and included a provision that, were this to happen, Jacob had the right to resign from his position.Footnote 40 The linkage of the guaranteed sums of payment and Jacob's right to resign suggests the following rationale for this clause: if the mikveh were not used by enough women, the profits that Jacob could earn once he had paid the community the requisite 55 Reichstahler would be reduced significantly.

This model whereby the communal leaders demanded a set sum per year while at the same time recognizing that Jacob expected and depended on a certain number of “customers” and hence a minimum revenue suggests that between 1681 and 1685 the mikveh operated like a franchise. The community promised the ba‘alei mikva'ot a specific sum per year and also provided them with a steady stream of customers by mandating that residents of Altona and Wandsbeck use the designated mikva'ot under penalty of fines and excommunication. In 1684, a retroactive agreement guaranteed the community a minimum of 55 Reichstahler per year, generated by the funds collected upon immersion or by enforcement of a guarantee provided by Meir, Jacob's son. Thus, both the community and the ba‘alei mikva'ot were, at least theoretically, guaranteed revenue.Footnote 41

The inclusion of the clause allowing Jacob to resign from his position should the residents of Hamburg fail to use his mikveh suggests that the franchise had not been generating the expected revenue, probably because Hamburg's residents were using their own spaces for ritual immersion rather than the two mikva'ot in Altona. That the mikveh generated less revenue than had been hoped for is also borne out by the fact that the parnasim did not initially ask for a set sum from Jacob, nor for a guarantee. It was only in 1684 that these clauses were added to the agreement; they were retroactively binding on the previous three years in which Jacob had operated his mikveh as a designated communal space. It is highly likely that financial motives also guided the parnasim in overturning the 1681 decree a mere four years after instituting a system of use and payment.

The Decree of 1685

In 1685, the parnasim turned to the head of the local rabbinical court and to the local rabbinic judges, asking whether it was permissible to insist that community members immerse only in a new communal mikveh that had just been constructed rather than in the two mikva'ot that had heretofore been officially sanctioned.Footnote 42 The construction of this new communal mikveh was undoubtedly part of the development of communal institutions in which the kehillah had been engaged since 1680–81 at the latest. In 1680, King Christian V of Denmark granted the community of Altona the right to build a formal synagogue, for which construction began in 1682 and was completed in 1684.Footnote 43 Most of the records in the pinkas kehillah from this period deal with the building of the synagogue and with the dedication and purchase of its seats and holy objects.Footnote 44 During that time, the community built its own mikveh, not located in an individual's house. Although the pinkas does not relate the specific location of the new mikveh, it is likely that it was adjacent to the synagogue.Footnote 45 In the wake of its construction, the parnasim wished to overturn their previous decree that had mandated the use of the mikva'ot in private homes under penalty of losing all communal rights. The parnasim may have turned to the rabbinical leadership at this juncture because the matter at hand involved a religious ritual, a field in which the rabbis were often expected and asked to collaborate:Footnote 46

Being that there are two mikva'ot in our community Altona, two mikva'ot with running water in the houses of some individuals: Now the community, may it be preserved by God, has built a mikveh according to the laws and faith of our holy Torah, without any detriment, in a location [that is] private, modest, and esteemed, does our community have the power to prohibit [use] of the other mikva'ot?Footnote 47

The communal leaders did not argue that the two mikva'ot currently in use posed any halakhic problem and indeed attested that their ritual status was more than sufficient by stating that both ritual baths had fresh and flowing water (mayyim ḥayyim).Footnote 48 The leaders’ request to prohibit the other mikva'ot was rooted rather in their desire to have residents use the new kahalishe mikveh. Although their question suggests that they viewed the new mikveh as an improvement because of the privacy and modesty it provided, the parnasim's actions once the local rabbis had approved their request demonstrate that their main goal was to ensure use of the new communal mikveh, out of both financial and community-building motives.

The rabbinic judges of the triple community “agreed that our community does have the power to prohibit [use of those mikva'ot] and to levy a penalty fine.”Footnote 49 Two days later, on March 1, 1685, the parnasim opted to announce their new policy in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Both the text recording their new policy and the language of the announcement have been preserved in the pinkas.Footnote 50 The parnasim decided to ban the use of the two mikva'ot located in private homes except to the women who lived in those homes. The mikveh was not permitted to any other person, local or foreign. The parnasim went so far as to ban the use of the mikveh to “children and relatives” who did not reside in either house.Footnote 51 Furthermore, no individual was permitted to build a mikveh in his or her home subsequent to this decree. All resident women who had been obligated to follow the 1681 decree, as well as all visitors, were now expected to immerse in the communal mikveh.Footnote 52

That the women who resided in the two homes with mikva'ot were permitted to continue immersing there reinforces the fact that the rabbis and parnasim were not condemning the previously sanctioned mikva'ot for any halakhic reason. Indeed, the day before the synagogue announcement, anyone who used a mikveh other than the two mikva'ot in Jacob's or Pessim's private homes would have been subject to losing all her communal privileges. This was not a halakhic decision, but rather an attempt to complete the process of institution building around the locus of the mikveh, a process that had started with the 1681 takkanah. Now that the community had an official mikveh outside of an individual's home, it was necessary to decree that as the sole space designated for immersion.

By 1685, the triple community had a cemetery, a synagogue, and a mikveh.Footnote 53 The 1685 mikveh policy built upon the growth of communal institutions between 1681 and 1685 by mandating a new, communal space in which immersion was to be performed. Whereas in 1681 being part of the triple community was measured in part by the “immersion of one's wife” in one of the two officially sanctioned mikva'ot, by 1685, when the community boasted its own space, it was only natural for the parnasim to demand that members of the community be required to immerse in the kahalishe mikveh. Immersion in a space that was constructed, financed, and governed by the community was an even more potent symbol of communal membership than immersion in the officially sanctioned, private mikva'ot had been four years before.

To enforce the new policy, the parnasim used two different types of penalties. First, anyone who immersed in a different mikveh was subject to a fine of four Reichstahler —an extremely high fee in relation to the monthly cost of immersion. Four Reichstahler were the equivalent of 32 Schilling Flämmisch, four times the amount that a woman with sufficient means was expected to pay upon each immersion.Footnote 54 In addition, the parnasim announced that should a woman (other than those excluded above) immerse in a mikveh other than the communal one, “her immersion is not an immersion.”Footnote 55 With these words, the parnasim ruled that an immersion that took place outside of the communal mikveh was not considered to be halakhically valid; they thereby rendered all sexual relations conducted in the wake of such an immersion as being outside the rubric of the laws of menstrual purity.

By publicly announcing this new policy in the synagogue in Yiddish, the parnasim sought “to notify the women who pass in the synagogue on the holy Sabbath.”Footnote 56 The parnasim expected most women's attendance in the synagogue, perhaps more so because the week in question was Shabbat Mevarkhim, the Sabbath when the new month was announced and prayers for the new month were recited.

The policy had an immediate impact on local women. Whereas the night before the announcement (Friday night) all immersions were to take place only in the mikva'ot in the two designated homes, beginning the night after the announcement (Saturday night), all immersions were to take place only in the new communal mikveh, under threat of severe religious and financial penalties.

Altona was not the only location where a communal mikveh was established and immersion communally regulated during the early modern period. In 1582–83 the community in Padua constructed a new communal mikveh and mandated the sole use of that mikveh. The penalty for immersing elsewhere, like the policy instituted in Altona, was that a woman's immersion would be considered halakhically invalid. Private mikva'ot were only to be used by women in the family who were sufficiently close relatives that their husbands would be forbidden to testify on behalf of the individual whose home housed the mikveh.Footnote 57 Similarly, in eighteenth century Leeuwanden, the establishment of the communal mikveh was tied to “the unity of the community,” and those who defied communal mikveh policies were effectively excommunicated.Footnote 58 Fees for immersion, often adjusted according to income, were established in Leeuwanden, Middelburg, and The Hague during the eighteenth century.Footnote 59 In Schneittach in 1704, some of the funds generated by the mikveh were used by the community to pay the cantor.Footnote 60 The location of these officially designated communal mikva'ot varied. Some were situated in the homes of individuals, and beginning in the seventeenth century, some mikva'ot were constructed adjacent to the synagogue.Footnote 61 The development during the early modern period of communal mikva'ot in various locations that were regulated through similar mechanisms of punishment and control reflects the broader expansion of communal institutions in Jewish communities at this time.Footnote 62 That contemporary Christian communities also witnessed increased institutionalization, regulation, and bureaucracy underscores some of the parallels among European institutions across religious lines.Footnote 63

The Impact of the Mikveh Policies

The establishment of a communal mikveh and the enactment of mikveh regulations in Altona negatively affected the former ba‘alei mikva'ot who had been paid for their governance of and work in the mikva'ot in their homes. This issue is not discussed explicitly in the pinkas, which only records communal policies. However, three different entries in one of the communal pinkasim suggest that Jacob was furious over the community's decision.

On January 20, 1686, less than a year after the new mikveh policy was enacted, the pinkas notes that Jacob had said things publicly that were too “terrible” to be recorded and that he and others had threatened some of the parnasim.Footnote 64 Jacob was fined two Reichstahler and was warned that a future outburst would lead to the recission of his ḥezkat kahal as well as other fines and disgraces. A second record from the same day indicates that Jacob made additional statements, upon which the parnasim determined that he would be lashed.Footnote 65 On June 26, 1689, he again spoke out with “terrible things,” and as a result was banned from being called to the Torah or praying on behalf of the community for a period of one year. He was warned that any additional incident would result in his being disqualified as a witness in a rabbinical court.Footnote 66 It seems likely that the confrontations between Jacob and the parnasim, recorded here through the biased perspective of the communal leadership, centered on the leaders’ decision to ban the use of his mikveh to most of the women in kehillat Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck.

The 1681 and 1685 policies also affected the women of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck. The designation in both policies of mandated communal spaces where they were to fulfill this religious obligation led to greater regulation of what had been a more private ritual. The transformation of the mikveh into a communal institution in which fees, method, timing of payment, and location were standardized and controlled de facto altered the immersion process by creating a more structured experience. Although the specific parameters of how women immersed in the medieval period are often unclear, the references in Sefer Ḥasidim and the responsa literature suggest that women immersed in the presence of friends or midwives rather than formal, community-designated attendants, whose actions and salaries were regulated by the communal leadership. While it is not clear whether the requirement that women pay a specific amount to the community upon immersion was altogether new in 1681, it is likely that any fees in place before the new decree would have been part of a more relaxed payment structure in which women could pay what they could afford, when they could afford it. Only in 1681 did the parnasim first develop a regulated and communally controlled price structure. Although the 1685 decree does not mention any of the details regulating payment that had been established in the 1681 policy, it seems reasonable, given the parnasim's financial interest in the mikveh, that the rates and the procedure for paying the mikveh attendant before immersion remained in place in the new mikveh.

The 1681 policy left women in Altona with two options for immersion, but by 1685, they were required to immerse in one specific space. On the one hand, the centralization of place and structuring of rituals for payment may have created a more uniform experience of ritual immersion than was previously the case, thereby fostering a greater feeling of community among the women who shared the experience.Footnote 67 At the same time, loss of choice may have affected women in ways difficult to trace in historical sources, as a particular woman may have felt more comfortable in a mikveh that was now legally unavailable to her. There is evidence of this in Padua, where, in some exceptional circumstances, certain women were granted exemptions from immersing in the designated communal mikveh due to conflicts between their families and the families running the mikveh.Footnote 68 That disputes over business, family, or other matters could make a woman uncomfortable immersing in a particular location must be considered as a possible ramification of mandating immersion in a given space.

The impact of the geographic location of the new communal mikveh in Altona is difficult to ascertain. Since the location of the old mikva'ot is unknown, it is difficult to assess the benefits their location may have had over the new kahalishe mikveh; presumably some community members benefited from greater proximity to the new mikveh, while for others the reverse was true. As suggested by the parnasim enacting this policy, the new mikveh may also have offered greater privacy. This move to provide greater privacy can also be seen in communal policies elsewhere in early modern Europe that were aimed at affording women privacy in the mikveh. The pinkas of Padua, for example, records the construction of a new communal mikveh in a “more private” location, and communal records from Leeuwanden also mention the notion that the mikveh should be private.Footnote 69 Other early modern rabbis expressed concerns about privacy because they feared that women might be harassed if a mikveh was not situated in a private location.Footnote 70 In another example, Friedburg's parnasim dealt with the question of what to do about the windows on a nearby property that faced the mikveh.Footnote 71 Regarding the new Altona mikveh, greater privacy, if it existed, could have benefited the immersing women.

Designating one official mikveh also created a space in which women's practice could be more easily controlled. Some medieval responsa relate rabbinic attempts to alter certain behaviors practiced by women that rabbis deemed halakhically problematic.Footnote 72 The rabbis' strategies, which included warning women and men that such behaviors invalidated immersion, extended in one case to threatening noncompliant women with divorce, without the compensation owed to them under their marriage contract.Footnote 73 The communal decrees from Altona are, however, of a different genre; they reflect the lay leaders attempts to construct and regulate a communal space, rather than rabbis' efforts to control ritual behavior. Still, a centralized, communally run mikveh would have made it far easier for religious leaders to regulate women's practice, and indeed the decision to centralize women's immersions was done with the approval of the local rabbinical court in Altona. By restricting women's options for immersion, the takkanah essentially made it impossible for a woman who did not immerse at the communal mikveh to imply that she had done so at one of the “other” mikva'ot. The designation of one particular mikveh as the sole immersion location could also call attention to the fact that a woman did not immerse, be it due to illness, early pregnancy, or any other reason.Footnote 74

While no evidence exists in the Altona documents of any attempt to control women's immersions, it is present in other early modern sources. One powerful example relates to correspondence between communal and rabbinic leaders from Amsterdam and Safed, discussed by Evelyne Oliel-Grausz. Having heard that some women from Bordeaux were not immersing, some of these leaders demanded a list of who was and was not immersing in the mikveh. Although they promised to protect the list and give it the highest degree of secrecy, the existence of such a list could have had far-reaching consequences if a family were subsequently accused of lax observance of family purity laws, with effects ranging from problems arranging marriages for children to, at worst, excommunication.Footnote 75

The interest of lay leaders in ensuring observance of the laws of ritual purity is not limited to this one episode. Although not a mikveh-related regulation, evidence exists of concerns about menstrual purity in the pinkas of the Lithuanian Council in which communal leaders asked that wealthier women provide thin garments to poor women so that they would be able to tell when their menstrual flow (and hence their period of ritual impurity) commenced.Footnote 76 Fearful that the coarser garments affordable to poor women would be ill suited for such a purpose, the communal leaders sought to create a structure that would enable all women to observe faithfully the laws of ritual purity. This example again highlights the male authorship of communal decrees, for it is doubtful that the fabric of women's garments would significantly affect their awareness of the onset of menstruation. This enactment also provides a window into conceptions about the poor and the levels of knowledge they were assumed to have.Footnote 77 The decree from Lithuania reinforces the notion that during the early modern period communal leaders took concrete steps to ensure strict observance of the laws of menstrual purity. The development and regulation of the communal mikveh also furthered this goal, while simultaneously generating revenue and attempting to forge communal identity.

The impact of these mikveh policies can be further understood by examining the extent of women's actual adherence to them. Several sources indicate that some women continued to use the nonsanctioned mikva'ot in defiance of the parnasim's decrees. A hint of this noncompliance appears in an addendum to the 1684 pinkas entry in which Meir, Jacob's son, agreed to serve as guarantor for his father's mikveh. The addendum, dated September 4, 1685, just six months after the 1685 policy was enacted, explains that because Meir had died, a new guarantor agreed to take his place.Footnote 78 Why the parnasim would witness the signing of a new guarantee when their new policy mandated that Jacob's mikveh no longer be used is puzzling. There is no data to suggest that the parnasim waived Jacob's obligation to pay them fees going back to 1681. Perhaps because he owed the kehillah as much as 165 Reichstahler, a hefty sum, in “back fees,” a few years were granted to him to pay the outstanding amount. Although Jacob could not have generated this revenue from the ongoing fees collected in his mikveh, a new guarantor was required for the outstanding debt.

Other documents indicate that Jacob's mikveh remained open after 1685, a fact that provides an alternative rationale for the appointment of a new guarantor. Women who held ḥezkat kahal in Hamburg retained the right to immerse in Jacob's mikveh after the 1685 decree, since they had never been bound by the 1681 decree. This offered an official context under which Jacob's mikveh could continue operation. With Jacob's mikveh still functioning, other women who were expected to immerse in Altona's communal mikveh—those with ḥezkat kahal in Altona and Wandsbeck, those residing throughout Kehillat Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck without ḥezkat kahal, and visitors from elsewhere—could have risked punishment and immersed in Jacob's mikveh; certainly Jacob had no incentive to report deviations from a policy that had hurt him financially. Either (or both) of these scenarios may help to explain the deep tensions between Jacob and the parnasim that erupted in 1686 and 1689.

Later entries from the pinkas confirm that Jacob's mikveh did remain open, whether with or without official sanction. In 1691, R. Avram, the gabb'ai tzedakah, or collector of charity, took on the position of ba‘al mikveh for the kahalishe mikveh, which seems to have been a rotating position and presumably one that also provided financial benefit to the individual who took on this task.Footnote 79 R. Avram was obligated to ensure that the community would receive a set sum of 25 Reichstahler per year from the fees collected by the community mikveh. The payment of this sum was also backed by a guarantor, listed by name in the pinkas. Furthermore, the entry forbade the use of Jacob's mikveh to residents of Altona for the subsequent two months, under penalty of six Reichtahler. The parnas ha-ḥodesh was to announce this prohibition in the synagogue, reminding residents that use of that mikveh “was prohibited by us [the parnasim] and by God.”Footnote 80

The use of Jacob's mikveh by Altona residents had already been banned in 1685, with hefty religious implications as well as a fine of four Reichstahler. Yet six years later, the fine was increased, and women were reminded (in slightly less inflammatory language) that immersion in the mikveh in Jacob's home was not permitted and that such behavior had halakhic ramifications. That the ban had to be reissued in 1691 and that it was limited to two months indicates that not all women had complied with the 1685 ban. Clearly women from Altona had continued to immerse in the mikveh in Jacob's home.

An additional threat to the “monopoly” of the kahalishe mikveh was the continued use of the mikva'ot in Hamburg, which were officially permitted only to those women with ḥezkat kahal in Hamburg. As mentioned above, in 1684 Jacob was given permission to resign his post should the women of Hamburg fail to immerse in his mikveh, as fewer customers would have made his position financially difficult, particularly in light of his 55 Reichstahler obligation to the community.Footnote 81 This remained an issue in 1691. When R. Avram took on the position of ba‘al mikveh in the kahalishe mikveh, he was expected to pay the kehillah only 25 Reichstahler, less than half of what Jacob had been expected to deliver seven years prior.Footnote 82 The reduced expectation of revenue reflected by this significantly reduced sum is likely connected to the fact that in 1691 the residents of Hamburg were still not using the mikveh in Altona. The same entry also specifically instructed the parnas ha-ḥodesh to halt the use of other mikva'ot in Hamburg. The choice by Hamburg women to immerse in a Hamburg mikveh rather than in the Altona kahalishe mikveh posed a clear financial threat to Altona's parnasim. Perhaps, just as some women were continuing to use Jacob's mikveh in contravention of the ban, women of Altona and Wandsbeck and women without ḥezkat kahal were using the Hamburg mikveh in defiance of the 1685 decree.Footnote 83 Because these immersions occurred only in the presence of women, who may have had no interest in upholding the ban, violations were difficult to catch. As was the case with Jacob, mikveh users and attendants at the Hamburg mikveh had no financial or other incentive to halt women's immersion simply because the parnasim of Altona preferred that they immerse elsewhere. The mikva'ot in Hamburg and the one in Jacob's home continued to challenge the Altona parnasim's attempts to designate the kahalishe mikvah as the sole place in which the women of the triple community could immerse. The ongoing use of these other mikva'ot, despite the ban, constitutes a clear testament to the limited degree of control that the parnasim were able to exert over women's ritual behavior.

Conclusion

Early modern Europe witnessed the expansion and growing regulation of communal institutions. The mikveh, as a central institution in the Jewish community, provides a key locus for understanding many of the issues that arose in this process. Mikva'ot not only increasingly became sources of communal revenue, but were also turned into spaces in which communal membership and rights could be expressed symbolically. The communal leaders’ repeated efforts to regulate them indicate that these endeavors may not have been completely successful. Notwithstanding the construction of a kahalishe mikveh and the development of policies governing its use, which indeed catalyzed important changes in immersion practice, the social controls that the parnasim set in place had clear limits. The gaps between the takkanot, on the one hand, and women's practices, on the other, are manifest in both the failure of the parnasim to address certain practicalities of immersion and in women's continued immersion in mikva'ot that were no longer communally approved. The development of new mikveh policies in Altona and their implementation powerfully reinforce the complex tension between communal policy and daily praxis.

References

1. CAHJP, AHW/14 (50). On the mikveh, see Wasserfall, Rahel R., ed., Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the physical construction of mikva'ot in Germany, see Heuberger, Georg, ed., Mikwe: Geschichte und Architecktur jüdischer Ritualbäder in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, 1992)Google Scholar.

2. The specific details and language are provided below.

3. CAHJP AHW/14 (90–91).

4. The seminal works on Jewish communal life include Baron, Salo Wittmayer, The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1942)Google Scholar; Katz, Jacob, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Cooperman, Bernard Dov (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 65–112Google Scholar. Some of the flaws in Katz's portrait of the Jewish community that are relevant to this case have been described in Carlebach, Elisheva, “Early Modern Ashkenaz in the Writings of Jacob Katz,” in The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work, ed. Harris, Jay M. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 65–84Google Scholar; Hyman, Paula, “Jacob Katz as Social Historian,” in Harris, Pride of Jacob, 85–96Google Scholar. Of particular note is Katz's tendency to draw similarities between communal institutions across time and place. Our understanding of Jewish communal life is currently being enriched with the forthcoming annotated publications of several important communal documents. See Fram, Edward, ed., A Window on their World: The Court Diary of Rabbi Hayyim Gundersheim, (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berkovitz, Jay, ed., Protocols of Justice: The Rabbinic Court of Metz, 1771–1789, (Boston and Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2013)Google Scholar. In addition, the 2010 Early Modern Workshop was dedicated to rethinking the topic of Jewish community and identity. See http://www.earlymodern.org/workshops/2010/texts.php (accessed July 12, 2011).

5. There is little scholarship on early modern Jewish women, aside from the research about more famous individuals, such as Glückel of Hameln, Sara Copia Sullam, and Doña Gracia Nasi. For early modern women in Ashkenaz, see Weissler, Chava, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Rosman, Moshe, “Le-hiyyot 'isha Yehudit be-Polin-Lita be-reshit ha-‘et ha-ḥadasha,” in Kiyyum va-shever: Yehudei Polin le-doroteihem, ed. Bartal, Israel and Gutman, Israel (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1997), 2:415–34Google Scholar; Ulbrich, Claudia, Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Dunlap, Thomas A. (Leiden: Brill, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fram, Edward, My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hovav, Yemimah, ‘Alamot ’ahevukha: ḥayyei ha-dat ve-ha-ruaḥ shel nashim ba-ḥevrah ha-Ashkenazit be-reshit ha-‘et ha-ḥadashah (Jerusalem: Merkaz Dinur, 2009)Google Scholar.

6. On the limits of pinkasim as the sole sources of Jewish history in the triple community, see David H. Horowitz, “Fractures and Fissures in the Hamburg Jewish Community, 1710–1782” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2010). His chapter on the Emden-Eybeschütz controversy highlights the distinct narratives that are preserved in different types of sources. On the use of pinkasim as historical sources, see Litt, Stefan, Pinkas, Kahal and the Mediene: The Records of Dutch Ashkenazi Communities in the Eighteenth Century as Historical Sources (Leiden: Brill, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. On Jewish life in Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck, see Marwedel, Günter, Die Privilegien der Juden in Altona (Hamburg: H. Christians, 1976)Google Scholar; Marwedel, Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg, Altona und Wandsbeck (Hamburg: H. Christians, 1982)Google Scholar; Zürn, Gabriele, Die Altonaer jüdische Gemeinde (1611–1873). Ritus und soziale Institutionen des Todes im Wandel (Münster: Lit, 2001), 27–31Google Scholar; Braden, Jutta, Hamburger Judenpolitik im Zeitalter lutherischer Orthodoxie, 1590–1710 (Hamburg: Christians, 2002)Google Scholar.

8. Glikl: Zikhroynes, 1691–1719, ed. and trans. Turniansky, Chava (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2006), 48–55Google Scholar.

9. The concluding folios of one of the communal pinkasim document the inner workings of the triple community. See CAHJP AHW/15, fol. 148v–150r. The organizational structure of the triple community is explained in detail in Rohrbacher, Stephan, “Die Drei Gemeinden Altona, Hamburg, Wandsbek zur Zeit der Glikl,” Aschkenas 8, no. 1 (1998): 105–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. CAHJP AHW/14 (50).

11. CAHJP AHW/14 (50). The exact punishments meted out in the excommunication ban could vary from case to case. See Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, s.v. “Ḥerem.” Some of the particular punishments associated with a violation of this ban are mentioned below.

12. In other locations, poor women were exempted from mikveh fees. In The Hague, e.g., twenty-five poor women were granted free access to the mikveh in 1734. See Litt, Pinkas, Kahal, and the Mediene, 167.

13. See Sefer Ḥasidim MS Parma H 3280 (Jerusalem: Dinur Center, 1985), no. 380Google Scholar. I thank Elisheva Baumgarten for this reference. On this text, see Baumgarten, Elisheva, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 47Google Scholar.

14. CAHJP AHW/14 (50).

15. CAHJP AHW/14 (50).

16. CAHJP AHW/14 (64). See Kaplan, Debra, “Women and Worth: Female Access to Property in Early Modern Urban Jewish Communities,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 55 (2010): 93–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. For comparative data on gender and wages in the early modern period, see Wiesner, Merry, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 125–34Google Scholar.

18. These expenses can be found in many of the communal records held in the CAHJP. For an example of taxes, see CAHJP AHW/14 (64); charity to local poor, CAHJP AHW/15 (86); dowries, CAHJP AHW/15 (145). On the high costs of burial and the reluctance that communities often had toward paying them for illegitimate children of domestic servants, see Carlebach, Elisheva, “Fallen Women and Fatherless Children: Jewish Domestic Servants in Eighteenth-Century Altona,” Jewish History 24 (2010): 295–308, esp. 304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. For a sense of the growing number of institutions that the triple community provided to its members over the course of the early modern period, one need only compare the references to the hekdesh, the communal hospice, in Glückel's memoirs to the later communal institution. Glückel explains that since the community lacked a formal hekdesh in the seventeenth century, a makeshift one was built in her home when Polish refugees arrived in Hamburg. See Turniansky, Zikhronynes, 77. By the early nineteenth century, rich documentation of the food and services that the hekdesh provided can be found. See CAHJP AHW/25.

20. CAHJP AHW/15 (52).

21. The 170 mark equals 56.6 Reichstahler. See http://www.pierre-marteau.com/currency/converter/ham-hol.html. (accessed June 29, 2011).

22. The amounts and timing of payments for the mikva'ot created a rhythm within the immersion process that was established by the parnasim rather than by the women who were immersing themselves, lending it a ritual character. For the definition of ritual as controlled elements designed by those other than the performers, see Rappaport, Roy, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I thank Shalom Holtz and Ari Mermelstein for their discussions with me about ritual and space.

23. See Seligman, Adam B., Weller, Robert P., Puett, Michael J., and Simon, Bennett, Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where they argue that “ritual creates and recreates a world of social convention and authority beyond the will of any individual.” The application of these principles in the case of the mikveh is useful for understanding why the ritualized aspects of the decree created a structure to which those women who were immersing were bound. Early modern historians have also pointed to the role that ritual played in establishing religious discipline. For one example, see Reinhard, Wolfgang, “Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung: Prologomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 10 (1983): 257–77Google Scholar.

24. On punishment as a form of social control, see Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Edition, 1995), esp. 170–228Google Scholar. The connection between space and Foucault's work, interesting given the important role that space played in the community's concept of the mikveh, has been explored by Rabinow, Paul, “Ordonnance, Discipline, Regulation: Some Reflections on Urbanism,” in The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, ed. Low, Setha M. and Lawrence-Zúñiga, Denise (Malden: Blackwell, 2003), 353–62Google Scholar. Discipline was also key to achieving adherence to religious confessions in the early modern period. See, e.g., Hsia, R. Po-Chia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750 (New York: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar.

25. On excommunication among Sephardim in Hamburg, see Kaplan, Yosef, “The Place of Herem in the Sefardic Community of Hamburg during the Seventeenth Century,” in Die Sefarden in Hamburg, ed. Studemund-Halévy, Michael (Hamburg: Buske, 1994), 1:63–88Google Scholar. For Amsterdam, see Kaplan, “Bans in the Sephardi Community of Amsterdam in the Late Seventeenth Century,” in Galut aḥar Golah: Meḥkarim be-toldot ‘am Yisrael mugashim le-Profesor Ḥayim Beinart li-melot lo shiv‘im shanah, eds. Mirsky, Aharon, Grossman, Avraham, and Kaplan, Yosef, (Jerusalem: Makhon Ben Ẓvi, 1991), 517–40Google Scholar.

26. CAHJP AHW/14 (50). This is the only reference in any of the communal decrees to male use of the mikveh. Whereas the rules for payment were only put in place to regulate women's use of the mikva'ot, this clause demonstrates that should the ba‘al mikveh violate any of the rules, his or her mikveh would be banned for the use of men as well. Since women's use of the mikveh was mandated by Jewish law for all married women who were ritually impure, and men only used the mikveh by choice, it is not illogical that the rules were set up to govern female immersion only, as female immersion was guaranteed to produce revenue. It is noteworthy that men may not have had to pay for their immersions. Moreover, if payment was customary, it was neither regulated nor enforced by threat of excommunication.

27. CAHJP AHW/14 (50).

28. Given that the 1685 decree, which bars the use of these two mikva'ot, relates that there were only two mikva'ot in Altona and refers to these two specific mikva'ot, it is likely that these were the only mikva'ot in use there. The decree was thus probably not designed to limit women's options so much as to formalize what had already been the case and to institute methods for payment and control. See CAHJP AHW/14 (90). However, it is apparent from this text, which did not mandate that Hamburg residents use these mikva'ot, as well as from other texts discussed at length below, that other options for immersion existed in Hamburg proper. Since the 1681 decree mandated the use of these two mikva'ot in Altona for the Jews of Wandsbeck, it suggests that there may not have been an alternative mikveh in Wandsbeck in 1681.

29. CAHJP AHW/14 (50).

30. On the ‘eruv, see Fonrobert, Charlotte, “Neighborhood as Ritual Space: The Case of the Rabbinic Eruv,” Archiv für Religiongeschichte 10 (2008): 239–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fonrobert, “The Political Symbolism of the Eruv,” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 3 (2005): 9–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On recent literature linking space and Jewish studies, see Kümper, Michael, Rösch, Barbara, Schneider, Ulrike, and Thein, Helen, eds., Makom. Orte und Räume im Judentum. Real. Abstract. Imaginär. Essays (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007)Google Scholar; Brauch, Julia, Lipphardt, Anna, and Nocke, Alexandra, eds., Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008)Google Scholar; Baker, Cynthia M., Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, see 15–32 for a theoretical discussion. The issue of Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 3 (2005)Google Scholar is also dedicated to the subject of space and Jewish studies. See also the review essay by Fonrobert, “The New Spatial Turn in Jewish Studies,” AJS Review 33, no. 1 (2009): 155–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. See Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 240–72Google Scholar; Steve Hindle, “Beating the Bounds of the Parish: Order, Memory, and Identity in the English Local Community, c. 1500–1700,” in Halvorson and Spierling, Defining Community, 206–27.

32. See the pinkas of Frankfurt am Main, MS Heb. 48 662 [488], Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.

33. The use of ritual to reinforce community is also highly relevant here. See Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969)Google Scholar; Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar. The use of ritual to create and demarcate early modern religious communities has been explored widely. For an overview, see Spierling, Karen and Halvorson, Michael J., “Introduction: Defining Community in Early Modern Europe,” in Defining Community, 1–23Google Scholar. Various essays in that volume speak to the use of ritual to mark confessional differences between Catholics and Protestants.

34. I have corrected what I perceive to be a scribal error in this quote. The pinkas entry reads, “If the Jews of Hamburg do not wish to immerse their wives in the aforementioned mikva'ot, then it is incumbent on the aforementioned mikveh owners not to permit them to immerse until each woman has given as is described above, under the terms of punishment described above.” [emphasis mine] The ba‘alei mikva'ot were clearly not expected to impose conditions for payment on people who did not use their mikva'ot; the word “not,” was accidentally included, perhaps because it is used two sentences later in the text.

35. On language and gender, see Scott, Joan W., “On Language, Gender, and Working Class History,” International Labor and Working-Class History 31 (1987): 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. The Hebrew phrase used is litbol neshoteihem. I have not found this phrase in other contemporary literature. I have thus interpreted it as gendered language that reflects the focus and aims of the parnasim in enacting these laws: namely to use space, ritual, and social control to construct communal identity and institutions.

37. Although both men and women appear in pinkasei kehillah, references to households generally use the name of the male head of household unless the household was run by a widow.

38. By contrast, in Padua in 1582–83, upon the establishment of a new mikveh, a clause dealing with those women who were scheduled to immerse on the Sabbath or on a festival was included, mandating that those women would send in the required payments after the day of their immersion. See Carpi, Daniel, Pinkas va'ad kehillah kedoshah Padua (Jerusalem: Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1973), vol. 1, no. 118Google Scholar.

39. It is not clear why Pessim was not included in this entry. The 1685 decree did mention a second mikveh in use in Altona, but her name is absent from future records. The cemetery records do not contain information about her death. It is possible that during these years she either remarried and relocated, or died. If the latter were the case, it is possible that her heirs ran the mikveh until 1685. For cemetery records in Altona, see http://www.steinheim-institut.de/cgi-bin/epidat?function=Inf&sel=hha (accessed July 27, 2011).

40. CAHJP AHW/15 (52).

41. In many ways, this system mirrors some of the financial practices in Europe in the early modern period. I thank David Schorr for this suggestion. Such parallels are not surprising, given the Jewish community's exposure to the commercial center in Hamburg. To illustrate the parallels, one may consider the guild system in seventeenth-century France. Membership in the guild and all the rights that such membership conferred were obtained in exchange for a fee paid to the crown. Guilds provided the monarchy with both revenue and a system through which commerce could be regulated and controlled; in exchange, guild members were granted monopolies and guaranteed financial gain. See Kessler, Amalia, A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth-Century France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 20Google Scholar.

42. The specific rabbis included R. Meshullam Zalman Hirsch, the maternal grandfather of Jacob Emden, who was the head of the rabbinical court, as well as the communal judges, R. Tevele, R. Isaac, R. Samuel Oberles, and R. Shlomo Helersom.

43. Marwedel, Die Privilegium, 69–70.

44. Of the twenty-nine entries in the pinkas that appear between these two decrees, fourteen are dedicated to the new synagogue. See CAHJP AHW/14 (51–89).

45. Some of the mikva'ot constructed in the seventeenth century elsewhere in Europe used the new model of a mikveh proximate to the synagogue rather than a mikveh in a cellar in a private home. See Hannelore Künzl, “Mikwen in Deutschland,” in Heuberger, Mikwe, 23–88. For examples, see n. 61 below.

46. See, e.g., Berkovitz, Jay, Rites and Passages: The Beginning of Modern Culture in France, 1650–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 56–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which indicates that the rabbis in Alsace were empowered to make all ritual decisions. In this case, collaboration would have been in the interests of both the rabbis and the parnasim, as stronger communal institutions could buttress communal finances, identity, and the observance of Halakhah. I thank Jay for his insights on this topic.

47. CAHJP AHW/14 (90).

48. Jewish law delineates different types of mikva'ot. Those with fresh and flowing water are considered to be at the highest level. See M. Mikva'ot 1:8.

49. CAHJP AHW/14 (90).

50. CAHJP AHW/14 (90–91).

51. CAHJP AHW/14 (91).

52. CAHJP AHW/14 (90–91). Those women who had ḥezkat kahal in Hamburg and hence were not affected by the 1681 decree, were also not subject to this takkanah. Not all the decrees instituted by the Altona parnasim were applied to the residents of Hamburg. See CAHJP AHW/15, fols. 148v–150r. The immersion practices of women in Hamburg are discussed at length below.

53. The community's cemetery was procured in 1584. See Marwedel, Die Privilegium, 71. Cemeteries were usually the first spaces that communities sought, since Jews could not be buried in non-Jewish cemeteries. Synagogues could, and usually did, begin in the space of the home; and, in many locations, women could make use of a local river if a mikveh was not available. Rabbis disagreed as to whether rivers were always suitable for immersion. See the discussion in B. Shabbat 65b; Jacob ben Asher, Sefer 'arba‘ah turim, Yoreh de‘ah 210:2. In places in German lands that did not have a mikveh in the fifteenth century, those women who immersed used the river, despite some of the Tosafists’ rulings to the contrary. See Jacob, She'elot u-teshuvot Mahari Weil (Jerusalem: Le-hazig-ezel Y. D. Shṭitsberg, 1959)Google Scholar, no. 70. That some women may not have immersed is discussed in Marienberg, Evyatar, “Le bain des Melunaises: Les juifs médiévaux et l'eau froide des bains rituels,” Médiévales 43 (2002): 109–10Google Scholar; Horowitz, Elliott, “Between Cleanliness and Godliness: Aspects of Jewish Bathing in Medieval and Early Modern Times,” in Tov Elem: Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Societies; Essays in Honor of Robert Bonfil, eds. Baumgarten, Elisheva, Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon, and Weinstein, Roni (Jerusalem: The Bialik Instiute, 2011), 44Google Scholar.

54. Two currency systems were used in Hamburg. If the fees for immersion were given in the alternate currency of Lübisch Schilling, the fine would have been six times higher—4 Reichstahler was the equivalent of 192 Lübische Schilling. For the conversion to Reichstahler, see http://www.pierre-marteau.com/currency/converter/ham-hol.html (accessed June 29, 2011).

55. CAHJP AHW/14 (91).

56. CAHJP AHW/14 (90).

57. Carpi, ed., Pinkas va'ad kehillah kedoshah Padua, vol. 1, nos. 118, 604; vol. 2: te‘udah 17, no. 51.

58. Litt, Pinkas, Kahal, and the Mediene, 79–80. Litt discusses the case of Ẓadok bar Ẓvi, whom the parnasim effectively cut off from the community after he refused to give up his private mikveh. His food and household items were considered to be nonkosher; and members of the community were forbidden to buy food or cook food for him or to enter his home.

59. These cases have all been discussed in Litt, Pinkas, Kahal, and the Mediene; for Leeuwanden, see 79–80; for Mittelburg, see 149; for The Hague, see 134 and 167. In Mittelburg, different rates were established for women who were official members of the community, women who had the status of residents, and guests. In The Hague, as mentioned above (n. 12), twenty-five poor women were permitted to immerse without payment.

60. Hildesheimer, Meir, ed., Pinkas kehillat Schneittach (Jerusalem: Mekiẓei Nirdamim and Leo Baeck Institute, 1992), 202Google Scholar.

61. Synagogue buildings that were proximate to the mikveh were built in Prague, Frankfurt am Main, Bruck, and Amsterdam. See Künzl, “Mikwen in Deutschland,” 23–88; Lenarz, Michael, “Mikwen in Frankfurt-am-Main,” in Heuberger, Mikwe, 93–97Google Scholar. In other locations, mikva'ot remained in private homes. See, e.g., the mikva'ot in private homes mentioned in the communal pinkas from Trier. Haller, Annette, “Die Mikwe der Gemeinde Trier: Neues Quellenmaterial aus dem 18. Jahrhundert,” Menora: Jahrbuch für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte 4 (1993): 203–11Google Scholar.

62. The early modern period saw not only an explosion of communal records, but also a growing number of communal institutions. Medieval institutions such as the hekdesh developed (see n. 19). There was also increasing regulation over synagogue, mikveh, and charity. The development of local confraternities is another example of communal growth in this period. On this topic, see Ruderman, David, “The Founding of a Gemilut Ḥasadim Society in Ferrara 1515,” AJS Review (1976): 233–67Google Scholar; Horowitz, Elliott, “Membership and Its Rewards: The Emergence and Decline of Ferrara's Gemilut Ḥasadim Society (1515–1603),” in The Mediterranean and the Jews, vol. 2, Society, Culture and Economy in Early Modern Times, ed. Horowitz, Elliott and Orfali, Moses (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 27–66Google Scholar; Baader, Maria Benjamin, “When Judaism Turned Bourgeois: Gender in Jewish Associational Life and in the Synagogue, 1750–1850,” in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 46 (2001): 114 n. 3Google ScholarPubMed. For concrete (and published) examples of the different communal offices and confraternities that flourished at this time, one may also read through the minhagbuch of Juspe Schammes of Worms, which contains references to some of the duties and rituals surrounding communal figures and institutions. See Schammes, Juspe, Minhagim de K”K Worms (Jerusalem: Mif‘al Torat Ḥakhmei Ashkenaz, 1988)Google Scholar.

63. The institution building that took place in early modern communities was often a reaction to or outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation. In its wake, many institutions that had been governed by the churches became regulated by the state and, as a result, increasingly bureaucratized. For relief of the poor, see Jütte, Robert, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Thomas Max Safley, ed., Reformation of Charity: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003)Google Scholar; on marriage, see Safley, Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest: A Comparative Study, 1550–1600 (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1984)Google Scholar. Sources on the use of discipline in this context have already been cited above. Perhaps most notable is the Genevan Consistory, which has been written about in a variety of contexts. For an overview of the consistory, see Kingdon, Robert M., “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline in Geneva: The Institution and the Men Who Directed It,” Nederlands Archief voor Kirkgescheedenes 70 (1990): 158–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the introduction in Kingdon, Robert M., ed., Registers of the Consistory of Geneva in the Time of Calvin, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000)Google Scholar.

64. CAHJP AHW/15 (103).

65. CAHJP AHW/15 (104).

66. CAHJP AHW/15 (105).

67. The role of the mikveh rituals in fostering community has been discussed in anthropological analyses of contemporary mikveh use. See, e.g., Wasserfall, Rahel, “Community, Fertility, and Sexuality: Identity Formation among Moroccan Jewish Immigrants,” in Wasserfall, Women and Water, 187–97Google Scholar.

68. Carpi, Pinkas va'ad kehillah kedoshah Padua, vol. 2, nos. 289, 296.

69. Carpi, Pinkas va'ad kehillah kedoshah Padua, vol. 1, no. 118; Litt, Pinkas, Kahal and the Mediene, 79–80.

70. See Horowitz, Elliott, “Toward a Social History of Jewish Popular Religion: Obadiah of Bertinoro on the Jews of Palermo,” Journal of Religious History 17, no. 2 (1992): 145–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more recently, Horowitz, “Between Cleanliness and Godliness,” 45.

71. Gotzmann, Andreas, ed., Kehillat Friedburg (Friedburg: Bindernagel, 2003), 2:92Google Scholar.

72. See the sources cited in Cohen, Shaye, “Purity, Piety and Polemic: Medieval Rabbinic Denunciations of Incorrect Purification Practices,” in Wasserfall, Women and Water, 82–100Google Scholar.

73. Cohen notes that Tosafot only addressed women, but explains that men were implicitly engaged in the rabbinic rebuke since the rabbis' audience consisted only of male readers. This is in contrast with Maimonides, who did not engage with the husbands of women who did not immerse properly. R. Isaiah of Trani reports having gathered men and women in a courtyard and having them swear to uphold the mandated behavior under penalty of excommunication. See Cohen, “Purity, Piety, and Polemic,” 86–87, 89, 93.

74. I thank the anonymous reader for this suggestion.

75. The relevant correspondence has been published and translated by Evelyne Oliel-Grausz as Letter Copybook 3 at http://www.earlymodern.org/citation.php?citKey=164&docKey=e (accessed June 29, 2011).

76. Dubnow, Simon, ed., Pinkas ha-medinah, o pinkas va‘ad ha-kehillot ha-rashiyot be-medinat Lita, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: n.p., 1967–68), nos. 131, 947Google Scholar.

77. I plan to deal with this in a future work.

78. CAHJP AHW/15 (53).

79. CAHJP AHW/15 (143).

80. CAHJP AHW/15 (143).

81. CAHJP AHW/15 (52).

82. CAHJP AHW/15 (143).

83. Eighteenth-century mikveh regulations mention mikva'ot in both Altona and Hamburg, without reference to restrictions on usage. At that time, it cost one Schilling less to immerse in Hamburg. See CAHJP AHW/17b, fol. 41r. I thank Noa Shashar for the reference to mikveh policies in the eighteenth-century pinkas.