A Custom and its Rationale
While discussing the rites and customs of burial and mourning in his book Tashbeẓ katan,Footnote 1 the early fourteenth-century Rabbi Shimshon ben Ẓadok made the following remark:
And the fact that we spill the water [that was in the presence of the dead man] outside [after the death] is because that when Miriam died the well ceased. For it is written: ‘And there was no water for the congregation [‘eda] since it was for her merit that the well traveled [with the Israelites] and we allude to it that he [the deceased] is a great man and he is worthy that water would cease on his behalf.Footnote 2
R. Shimshon associated the custom of spilling the water in proximity to the deceased with the passing of the biblical prophetess Miriam. In the short quote above, he referred to well-known Jewish homiletic traditions that link the miraculous well that accompanied the Israelites during their travels in the wilderness to the prophetess Miriam (sister of Moses and Aaron), and its eventual disappearance with her demise.
Jewish homilists noticed that the verse, “The community was without water” (Numbers 20:2) directly followed the biblical account of the prophetess’ death—“and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there” (Numbers 20:1)—and thus linked the two issues together. Despite referring to an existing tradition, R. Shimshon suggested a novel, unprecedented parallel. According to some midrashic works a connection exists between Miriam's presence and water, and between her absence and thirst.Footnote 3 R. Shimshon, however, went one step further and suggested that water be spilled symbolically upon a person's death, indicating that the deceased was as worthy and as great as Miriam.
The custom of spilling water in the immediate vicinity of the dead, mentioned by R. Shimshon, was a well-known custom in Franco-German Jewish circles in the Middle Ages. Although it had been mentioned in several sources prior to R. Shimshon's Tashbeẓ, and may even predate the medieval period,Footnote 4 the more common explanation for this custom in the medieval Franco-German realm was of a medico-magical nature, having more to do with dangers to the living than with honoring of the dead. A short exemplum found in the thirteenth-century “Ethical Will of Rabbi Judah the Pious” (Ẓava'at Rabbi Yehudah ha-Ḥasid)Footnote 5 describes this rather clearly:
A man once drank the water in a neighboring house where someone had just died. A sage reprimanded him. Shortly thereafter, the man who drank the water also died. The sage was asked regarding this matter. He answered, “I saw the Angel of Death cleansing his knife in the water after the first man's death.”Footnote 6
Not surprisingly, R. Shimshon was well aware of the tradition voiced in this exemplum and the explanation it offers, as he had included it in his collection only a few paragraphs prior to his discussion of the connection between spilling the water and Miriam's well.Footnote 7 Indeed, the above-mentioned rationalization for the custom of spilling the water and its association with the dangers related to death, dying, and the Angel of Death in particular, can be found in various other Ashkenazi sources as well.Footnote 8
Why, then, would R. Shimshon attempt to offer an alternative explanation for this practice when a perfectly acceptable one already existed? What need did this fulfill? A close reading of the sources shows a rise in the number of references to Miriam in medieval Ashkenaz (especially from the late twelfth century) and their gradual fading and near disappearance by the fourteenth century. I suggest that this rise is linked to the rise in prominence of the figure of the Virgin Mary as well as with the interface between her cult and the Jews. Yet, apart from the direct outright polemics against the cult of the Virgin Mary already discussed in the scholarship, it seems Jews employed other and more subtle ways to contend with the formidable Marian challenge. Acknowledging the appealing and persuasive aspects of the cult of the virgin, the motherly love and the role of charity and compassion it advocated, Jews came up with a variety of tools in their attempt to deflect the power of the virgin and her cult. One such way was the internal empowerment of Jewish female figures, such as the prophetess Miriam and other Jewish female figures, whose empowerment appears to be a response to the rise of the Christian cult of Mary and its perceived threat to Jews.
Miriam and the Marian Challenge
The Virgin Mary and the biblical Miriam share more than their name. Christian theology often closely linked the two figures. “In many respects,” writes Jaroslav Pelikan, “the most obvious prototype of Mary anywhere in the Old Testament had to be Miriam, sister of Moses and Aharon.”Footnote 9 But Miriam was more commonly associated in Christian writing with a different role. In the thirteenth-century genre of the Bible Moralisèe there is an image of biblical Miriam stricken with leprosy (signifying in Christian homiletics her disbelief) in accordance with the biblical description in Numbers 20. The leprous Miriam, the older sister, needs her two younger righteous brothers Moses and Aaron and their redemptive prayers—who stand for the apostles Peter and Paul—to deliver her from the leprosy of sin and disbelief. In other scenes Jews were shown in need of the Virgin Mary's caritas so they may see the truth of Christianity.
The idea that the Virgin Mary was indeed the possible bridge over the religious divide may be at the heart of the perceived threat Jews identified in the figure of the Virgin Mary. In the anti-Jewish polemics of the late eleventh-century English churchman Gilbert Crispin, described as based on an actual debate with a Jew that took place in London in 1092, the Virgin Mary and the issues of Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth appear at the heart of the discussion. Anna Sapir-Abulafia has shown through the letters by Odo of Tournai, bishop of Cambrai (1050–1113) that the figure of the Virgin Mary was indeed often cited in anti-Jewish polemics in the twelfth century.Footnote 10
There is also evidence that in the early twelfth-century tractates on the incarnation, the virgin birth and the special caritas of the Virgin Mary, whose circulation was previously limited to monastic circles, were beginning to influence wider Christian circles. Some of this material was used to strengthen and reinforce Jewish converts that had still fostered deliberations regarding their new faith. In his early twelfth-century autobiography, Abbot Guibert of Nogent (c.1055– 1124) mentioned that when he was a monk at the Abby of St. Germer at Fly he had given his Tractatus de incarnatione contra iudaeos to a fellow monk, a recently converted Jew, who had lapsed into doubt on religious matters. Guibert was convinced that meditating on the Virgin, as well as studying the above-mentioned theological concepts in depth, were the right remedy for converts whose fidelity to their new faith seemed endangered.Footnote 11 Israel Yuval pointed out the appearance of the Miracula Sanctae Virginis Mariae in northern France, including miracle tales about those who sing the Ave Maria in the Virgin's honor, as an important milestone in what would in a later period develop into a full-blown attack on Jews and Judaism.Footnote 12 Indeed, in the Virgin Mary miracula collections that circulated in Europe from the twelfth century, and even more so in writings of members of the Mendicant orders from the thirteenth century, the Virgin appears time and again helping Jews who had converted to Christianity, as well as other former “infidels.”Footnote 13 Even as late as the fourteenth century, Jews who converted, especially those with a high social profile, found the auspices of the Virgin Mary most comforting. The best known example for this is probably Solomon ha-Levi of Burgos, the leading rabbi of the town, who chose the auspices of the Virgin Mary for his conversion when he was christened Pablo de Santa Maria.Footnote 14
Jews were apparently not only aware of the rise of the Marian cult but felt specifically challenged by the message delivered through the stories linking the figure of the Virgin Mary and the Jews' conversion. Late twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish sources reveal a high level of awareness to the presence of Mary as an important figure in Christianity, alongside Jesus. The twelfth-century Tosafist Rabbi Jacob ben Meir Tam (d. 1171), from the northern French town of Ramerupt, is reported to have inquired through magical means whether “Jesus and his mother Mary” (Yeshu ve-imo Miryam) are hinted to in the Bible. The answer, typical of Jewish anti-Christian polemics, suggested that they are, but in a pejorative manner. The sage to whom Rabbi Jacob had turned with his question, identified in the text as Ba'al ha-ḥalom (lit. “master of the dream”), refers to the esoteric numerical value of the Hebrew words “Elohei nekhar ha-areẓ” (lit: “the foreign idols of the land,” referring to Deuteronomy 31:16), suggesting that these words share the same numeric value as the names Jesus and Mary when spelled in Hebrew (Yeshu u-Miryam).Footnote 15 The mid-thirteenth century Jewish mystic and self-proclaimed messiah Abraham Abulafia made similar claims with reference to the same gematria.Footnote 16
Scholars have noted the increasing presence of explicit or implicit references to Christian targets of worship. Israel Yuval noted that the changes and adaptations made to the Jewish prayer ‘Alenu le-shabeaḥ (a possible Jewish, Hebrew equivalent of the Christian, Latin Te Deum laudamus), involving harsh language against Jesus and Mary, were prompted by a Jewish response to the potential threat identified by Jews in the Marian cult.Footnote 17 Arthur Green and Peter Schäfer have shown the impact of the Marian cult on the minds and thought of medieval European Jews, both attributing the appearance of the feminine aspect of the Deity, the Shekhinah, to a Jewish response to the cult of the Virgin Mary. Also those in circles of Zoharic literature acknowledged the importance of the Virgin Mary alongside Jesus, as Elliot R. Wolfson emphasized, through the use of the figures of Samael and Lilith that represented “the other god and the foreign kingship” who “stand respectively for Jesus and Mary,” can be seen as “the masculine and feminine forces of impurity.”Footnote 18 A possible inward acculturation of the figure of the Virgin Mary nurturing the baby Jesus was also suggested by Ivan Marcus who linked it to the Ashkenazi rite of initiation that took place when children entered the realm of Torah study. And similar models of acculturation following the possible resonance to the cult of the Virgin Mary were noted by Elisheva Baumgarten in the realm of female customs and life-cycle ceremonies, with a special emphasis on rituals associated with birth and circumcision.Footnote 19 In a different realm, art historians Katrin Kogman-Appel and Sara Offenberg recently discussed Jewish awareness to the most intricate details of Christian and Marian theology and an attempt to create Jewish imagery that averts it.Footnote 20 It is, thus, not surprising that beginning in the late twelfth-century European Jews, and especially Jewish women, came up with a new role for the biblical Miriam, a role designed to counterbalance the cult of the Virgin Mary.
What medieval Jewish European culture, both scholarly as well as popular, found in the biblical Miriam (and possibly in other powerful female biblical heroines like Eve and the matriarchs—a matter in need of further investigation) was a traditional, towering Jewish female figure that predated the Virgin Mary, and did not fall short in personality, merit, and impact.
Miriam, specifically, was also closely associated with guidance, guardianship, and healing, and with redemption through water and water sources in particular. Miriam was a figure who could be readily linked with miracles for the faithful, and just happened to bear the same name as the mater domini. A careful scrutiny of some medieval European Jewish sources reveals a subtle phenomenon—the gradual empowerment of the figure of the biblical Miriam. Earlier scholars discussed mutual influences between cultures living in close proximity. But recently, a more nuanced model better describing the process that took place at the cultural meeting point has emerged. This model is known as the model of acculturation. According to art historian Katrin Kogman-Appel, “A cultural need can emerge from tastes and fashions, but it can also be determined by the means a minority culture seeks self-definition. Self definition can lead to the adoption of a donor culture's cultural elements to a degree that results in cultural symbiosis. It can however also be guided by the fear of assimilation, the fear of losing self definition. And the anxiety that the adoption of alien features may have a negative effect on ones own cultural repertoire.”Footnote 21
While Israel Yuval in his writings underscored the subtle as well as outright polemical model, Peter Schäfer, Arthur Green, and especially Ivan Marcus adopted the acculturation model in the manner suggested above by Kogman-Appel. But in meeting the external challenge poised by the Virgin Mary Jews also used what I suggest calling “inner self-empowerment.” Drawing upon ideas and notions existing in their own internal sources, but realigning them and giving them a new meaning to meet a contemporary challenge, Jews employed a variety of tools to meet the Marian challenge. According to the suggested model, Miriam was chosen not only because of her biblical-midrashic image and because she was a woman, but also because she resembled the Christian locus of veneration, yet at the same time remained very “Jewish.” In this case Jews were not necessarily influenced or overwhelmed by the external, and had no need to reject it defiantly. They were also not appropriating a new model using a “cultural filter” in an attempt to formulate it for their own use. Rather, they met what they had seen as an external challenge by slightly altering and modifying an existing trope drawn from the depths of their own cultural well, sometimes making subtle and nuanced changes to an existing tradition or figure, reinventing it, and reformulating it so that it was charged with a new, powerful meaning. This model also enabled Jews to feel shielded from external challenge.
But the Jewish interpretative tradition of this period, and particularly Jewish Ashkenazi homiletics, aimed at wider audiences than the circle of Talmudic scholars, engaged with the biblical and homiletic images of Miriam in order to supplant and respond simultaneously to the perceived power and allure of competing Christian traditions that surrounded them. Jewish authors who formulated their views on this apparent allure of competing Christian traditions within a traditional Jewish framework at the same time amplified and constructed new tropes in order to respond to and repel Christian traditions from without. These tropes were designed to deflect the threat of the powerful and suggestive religious tradition that were a formidable challenge for Jews. The image of Miriam arose as a subject because it was common to both religious traditions, precisely because each of them was already invested in the theme, alluding to the same proof texts. However, by applying a different hermeneutical tool kit, the conclusions were different. Indeed, here one can identify the power of the Christian tradition as perceived by the Jews, as well as the close proximity and mutual awareness to the “other” and its suggestive powers.Footnote 22 Jews recognized the Marian rites for what they were, as possessing the potential to lure Jews away from Judaism, and they reacted. Thus, when reading through medieval European Jewish rabbinic texts that mention Miriam, it is at times hard to discern which formulations are traditional and which ones innovative in a traditional guise, aimed at changing and slightly altering an existing homiletic tradition. From its emergence in the twelfth century until its eventual decline toward the fourteenth century, Jewish homilists and rabbinic writers were indeed attempting to revitalize Miriam's figure so that she could meet her match.
Empowering Miriam in Medieval Ashkenaz
Discussing the role of Miriam as leading the Israelite women in song following the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 15) in his Sefer Gematriyot, the author Judah the Pious alluded to a well-known midrashic tradition that appears in Shemot Rabba (23:7):
“Moses said: ‘I shall sing to the Lord,’ I and not an angel, and Miriam said: ‘Let us sing to the Lord,’ for she granted the angels the permission to sing along with her.”Footnote 23
At first sight these quotes appear rather inconspicuous, as they seem to invoke accepted Jewish homiletic traditions. However, a closer look reveals that this is a novel interpretation. According to Midrash Shemot Rabba, Moses and the Israelite men were the first to praise the Lord following the parting of the Red Sea. The midrash explains that when the angels wished to sing the Lord's praise after having witnessed the miraculous deliverance, the parting of the sea and the Israelites' safe crossing, God had silenced them, requesting they wait for the humans to conclude their canticle before erupting in celestial angelic singing. But in the Sefer Gematriyot, Miriam's role in this scene slightly diverges from the traditional homiletic trope. In this thirteenth-century tractate it is Miriam who grants the angels permission to sing along with her and the other women, an act empowering Miriam beyond the mere supporting role attributed to her in both scripture and the standard homiletic tradition. However slight his change may seem, it is transformative regarding the role of Miriam.
A similar representation of Miriam's role that slightly deviates from the midrashic tradition can also be found in another medieval German Jewish source, a commentary on the Pentateuch mistakenly attributed to Rabbi Elazar of Worms, the famous disciple of Rabbi Judah the Pious, but still stylistically within the circles of medieval German Jewish Pietists. Here Miriam's empowered figure commands the angels:
And when the Israelites concluded their canticle the angels wished to sing and praise the Lord as well…the verse says ‘and Miriam took’—she took the song from the angels using her prophetic powers and started singing. The angels said: “isn't it enough that the humans have preceded us in singing the Lord's praise, now the women will do so too?” She heard this claim through her prophecy and granted them permission to sing with her. That is why the verse reads: “Sing unto the Lord!” [in Hebrew shiru is a plural form in the imperative mood].Footnote 24
It seems that either both medieval commentators shared a common homiletic source that discussed the authoritative role of Miriam in organizing the song after the parting of the sea, or that thirteenth-century commentators felt a pressing need to empower Miriam and to attribute to her the power to govern the angels in this situation. Either way, it is clear that some medieval European Jews wished to depict the prophetess Miriam in an empowered fashion.
The role of the “conductor” of the heavenly choir was also assigned to the Virgin Mary. This attribution comes from an interpretative tradition that links Mary with the biblical Miriam, possibly drawing on early midrashic traditions. Jaroslav Pelican notes this identification of Mary, mother of Jesus, with Miriam, sister of Moses, as a constant theme of Christian typology.Footnote 25 When commenting on the words of the Psalm, “…Among them were the damsels playing with timbrels” [in medio iuvenculae tympanistriae] (Psalms 68:27), Augustine identified the Virgin Mary as nostra tympanistriae because, like Miriam leading the children of Israel, she led the people of God and the angels of heaven in the praise of the Almighty (Augustine Exposition on the Book of Psalms 67:26).Footnote 26 It seems that the transformation of Miriam's role found in Jewish sources from the thirteenth century, thus, may have come as a belated, but direct answer to the role assigned by St. Augustine to Mary, fashioned as the biblical Miriam.
Another example of the empowerment of the figure of Miriam, found in the thirteenth-century Sefer Gematriyot is that representing Miriam's death as parallel to the death of the righteous great men, considered to have sin-cleansing attributes:
“And Miriam died there” [sham, Numbers 20:1]. It is from this that we learn that the death of the righteous has expiatory qualities. We conclude this from the presence of the word sham [=there] both in the death of Miriam [Numbers 20:1] and in the issue of the ‘eglah ‘arufah (Deuteronomy 21:1–10). Thus, just as the ‘eglah ‘arufah has expiatory qualities so does the death of a righteous person. Besides, the word sham in itself has the same numerical value as the word mekhaper [=lit. expiatory—the value of both is 340].Footnote 27
Here too is an innovative interpretation masquerading as a traditional one, with very subtle variation from the traditional exegetical pattern that can almost pass undetected. In most homiletics on this matter (the parallel between the expiatory powers of the death of a righteous and the expiatory powers of the ritual of the red heifer) the proximity between the two texts is invoked. Miriam's death in Numbers 20 and the rituals of the red heifer are in close textual proximity (semikhut) and thus one may draw parallels from one to another. The death of a righteous person (Miriam) has expiatory powers in a similar fashion to the ashes of the red heifer (parah aduma). Sefer Gematriyot, however, makes a subtle change. He draws a parallel between a different she calf and the death of a righteous person (Miriam) and uses a different analogy technique, not the semikhut but the gezerah shava and it is not the ashes of the burnt red heifer that are at the focus but another she calf the ‘egla ‘arufah. A close analysis of the homiletic discussion's formulation reveals several structural, as well as thematic, changes.
The textual proximity (semikhut) between the report on Miriam's death and the biblical discussion of the red heifer called for homiletic attention and led to emphasizing similarities between the two, such as the redemptory qualities of both. The she-calves mentioned (parah adumah and ‘eglah ‘arufah) not only have expiatory powers, especially with reference to death and dying, but they also have very much in common in their special ritual requirements. The red heifer was intended to ritually purify those defiled by impurity of the dead; the removal of the impurity is of a cultic nature, whereby those who attended the dead are restored to a state of ritual purity. This process resonates with the biography of Miriam. The ‘eglah ‘arufah, on the other hand, is understood to restore the moral equilibrium disturbed by the unaccounted-for death and innocent blood that was shed. The author of Sefer Gematriyot deviated from the traditional exegesis and paralleled the death of Miriam to ‘egla ‘arufah using a different analogy technic based on the appearance of the word sham (there) in both the text about ‘egla ‘arufah as well as the text about the death of Miriam. When one takes a closer look at the novel idea expressed in Sefer Gematriyot one cannot escape the associations that both rituals bring to mind. Miriam's death, then, too, came to be seen as not only as expiatory but also as redemptive.
Apart from preferring a she-calf ritual that involves pouring water rather than burning, the most compelling part of all is the ‘egla ‘arufa scene graphically described in Deuteronomy 21. In this biblical practice the town elders are required to cleanse their hands with fresh water over the freshly decapitated she-calf, symbolizing their expiation and ritually proclaiming their innocence and unaccountability for the loss of life in their jurisdiction, “on their watch.” Within the Judeo-Christian homiletic context this emotionally-charged scene was evoked in the Gospel of Matthew's depiction of Pilate washing his hands after condemning Jesus to the cross, washing away his blame for the crucifixion and placing it on the Jews (Matthew 27:24). Thus, the attribution of a redemptory role to the death of the righteous Miriam, paralleling it to the ritual of ‘eglah ‘arufah substituted by the author of Sefer Gematriyot (instead of the traditional prooftext relating to the red heifer), is not accidental. Moreover, it seems that the initial tradition linking the death of Miriam and the redemptory qualities of the red heifer, as it appears in traditional Jewish homiletics, might have had a polemical role as well. The statement emanating from such an affiliation is quite clear. While Christians claim that the death of Jesus is the ultimate act of expiation, Jews, by way of contrast, claim that during the ante-destruction period the red heifer ritual had an expiatory effect and that once the Temple was destroyed (70 C.E.), and the ceremony involving the red heifer's ashes had passed into memory, the death of truly righteous figures (like Miriam) began to bear this burden of expiation—and not the death of Jesus. During the ‘eglah ‘arufah ritual, now associated with the death of Miriam, the Jewish elders were obliged to recite the following: “And they shall declare: ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Accept this atonement for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, Lord, and do not hold your people guilty of the blood of an innocent person.’”Footnote 28 Associating this text with the empowered figure of Miriam seems to suggest that what is at work here is by no means coincidental, but rather intentional. It appears to be a clear Jewish attempt to reinterpret the role of Miriam and portray her as towering and more powerful than the Virgin Mary and even Jesus himself, and attribute to her in a subtle manner the expiatory powers that both redeem the Jews from previous accusations, and meet the external challenge formidably.
This tradition was apparently well-absorbed by medieval Ashkenazi authors. The empowered role of Miriam is also evident in a quote from the late thirteenth-century Ashkenazi Sefer ha-Kushiyot that refers to the exact same issue. While discussing the custom of washing the hands after interring a body at a cemetery, the anonymous author of the Sefer ha-Kushiyot made the following remark:
The reason we wash our hands (after interring the dead in the cemetery) is because their [the deceased] death has expiating qualities [and we learn this] from ‘eglah ‘arufah for we have a correlation between the two instances in which the word “sham” appears. The issue of ‘eglah ‘arufah that shares that word as well. And in ‘eglah ‘arufah [we also have the ritual of washing the hands with water] it is said: “Wash their hands over the heifer” (Deuteronomy 21:6).Footnote 29
The discussion is formulated in the traditional Jewish homiletic form. The common word in the two remote issues draws the homilist to the text and creates the conceptual meeting point. Once established, the road is open to transferring concepts back and forth between both issues, a method known as gezerah shava. Usually gezerah shava is invoked when it can be substantiated from an existing tradition in this case the author had nit drawn on any existing tradition but rather used the method rather liberally. It seems the author of Sefer ha-Kushiyot has already appropriated the trope from the Sefer Gematriyot and was familiar with the link between the death of the righteous and ‘eglah ‘arufah and the expiating qualities attributed to the death of the righteous (in our case Miriam). The author then goes on to explain the reason for the common custom of washing one's hands upon departure from a funeral at the cemetery.
The novel explanation involving Miriam's merit and presenting her as a towering figure that was provided by the thirteenth-century Ashkenazi Tashbeẓ for the custom of spilling out the water present in the house where a person has just died fits rather neatly into a larger theme prompted by the growing awareness and need to react, if not outright compete, with the Marian cult. The method in this case is a subtle one. It recognizes the challenge and matches it with its almost exact parallel, and by slightly modifying existing tropes, it procures the desired outcome. It perhaps also suggests that a notion that evolved and emerged either in female circles or in order to explain typically female practices (e.g. the drawing of water at the end of the Sabbath) was by the late thirteenth century, when Tashbeẓ was compiled, ascribed to a gender-neutral practice. Nonetheless, it had provided a good platform for promoting a new role for an existing female character.
Yet, later Northern European Jewish custom manuals from the fourteenth century on contain hardly any mention of Miriam in the contexts seen in the thirteenth century. To the best of my knowledge, the sole mention of Miriam later than the fourteenth century is with reference to whether one should mention a patient's name when praying for his or her recovery. Rabbi Shalom of Neustadt, a fifteenth-century Austrian rabbi, refers to the prayer recited by Moses to heal Miriam's leprosy (“Please, God, heal her”—Numbers 12:13) as proof that when friends and kin assemble by the bedside of an ill person and recite prayers for recovery, the patient's name should not be recited, just as Moses had not mentioned his sister Miriam's name explicitly when he prayed for her recovery but rather referred to her using the third-person feminine pronoun lah, meaning “her.”Footnote 30
Apart from this mention, Miriam is not to be referred to, at least not by name. In the same Provençal custom manual mentioned earlier (Orḥot Ḥayim) one can find what appears as a change in the attitude towards the role of Miriam. When discussing the rituals of death and mourning, the author of Orḥot Ḥayim, who was properly conversant with medieval Ashkenazi ideas, cited the custom recorded by the Tashbeẓ of spilling out water which was in proximity to the dead. His explanation of the custom is different from the reason suggested by the Tashbeẓ himself. In his mind, the reason for spilling the water is to spread the word of the death without verbally uttering the news: “And it is customary to spill all drawn water in the neighborhood of the deceased, the reason being to signify to all that a death has occurred. For there is no need to utter it [the news of the death] in the mouth since it is like slander, and it is said: ‘Whoever … spreads slander is a fool’ (Proverbs 10:18).” The spilling of the water signified to the community that a death had occurred, using a language of symbols without actually verbalizing what had happened. Only after giving the reason did the author state the existence of another opinion: that the origin of the custom has to do with the Angel of Death cleansing his sword in the water. At this point he alluded to a possible scriptural prooftext as the basis for the custom: “It is said: ‘And Miriam died there and was buried there (Numbers 20),’ and later it is said: ‘And the community was without water,’ the reason being that all had spilled out their water [due to her death].” No mention is made of Miriam's merit besides the use of the verse as prooftext.Footnote 31
The Orḥot Ḥayim's account demonstrates that not only did the author fully absorb the association between Miriam and spilling water found in the Ashkenazi Tashbeẓ a generation earlier, but that he already ascribed this custom to the Israelites themselves, thus overriding the midrashic notion of Miriam's well, prompted by the proximity between the account of Miriam's death and the Israelites' thirst. In his eyes, the thirst of which the Bible speaks was caused by the fact that everyone spilled out their water upon Miriam's death. It almost seems as if this remark was designed to cast the entire practice into the realm of the absurd.Footnote 32
Such an extreme change in attitude in this relatively short time span must be based on some sort of significant rationale. One possible reasoning could stem from the fact that the outright attacks and attempts to direct anathematic language at the Virgin Mary proved to be counter-productive. As Israel Yuval has noted, the use of graphic anti-Marian language in prayers like ‘alenu le-shabeaḥ had begun to dissolve, probably because it drew the attention of Christians who, in turn, accused Jews of being blasphemous towards their saints in general, and the Virgin Mary in particular.Footnote 33 This explanation should, however, only magnify our perplexity, for the rise in the role of Miriam is remote from being an outright attack on the Virgin Mary. It is probably a more subtle way of meeting the Marian challenge, almost not admitting it, yet dealing with it covertly by empowering the figure of Miriam in Jewish European sources form the twelfth century, and associating her image with water.
Israel Ta-Shma was not only the first to notice the link between these matters and the Marian cult, but was also the first to notice their gradual disappearance and eventual omission, especially with regard to the female custom of drawing water at the end of the Sabbath. In his concluding argument on this topic, he noted:
I tend to link the appearance of the custom to the emergence of miraculous healing springs associated with the name of the Christian Mary…Jews attempted to explain the healing abilities [of the water sources] if they were ‘real’ with the link to the ‘well of Miriam’. The disappearance of the custom I tend to associate with the horrors of the Black Death and the well and water source poisoning libel with which Jews were accused. In its aftermath, a nocturnal gathering of Jewish women at wells on Saturday night might have rendered such attempts perilous if not outright lethal. However so far these are only speculations.Footnote 34
Although Ta-Shma may have been right in suggesting the link between the new Jewish custom and “the emergence of miraculous springs associated with … Mary” and its gradual disappearance related to the Black Death, the scope of the phenomenon he pointed out is not as limited as he had thought; the explanation he gave falls short of providing us with a sufficient answer to the gradual disappearance of Miriam from later Jewish sources. Moreover, even if one accepts Ta-Shma's argumentation and relate the disappearance of the water-drawing customs to the perils of the Black Death, explanation for both the association of Miriam with the custom of spilling the water, which was carried out privately and not in the public eye, and for the broader scope of references to the Jewish reaction to the Marian challenge is still wanting. It, therefore, seems that the disappearance of Miriam has less to do with the figure of Miriam per se, and more to do with the change in the manner in which the figure of Mary was perceived in Christian society, which also occurred in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century.
By the late thirteenth century, Mary was no longer seen as the possible link or conduit between the Jews and Christianity. Her image, once associated with the hand extended to converts, became more commonly depicted as protector of those offended and supposedly victimized by Jews.Footnote 35 From this period on, another aspect of this change can be found in the fact that in late medieval Germany Jewish quarters that were razed to the ground and synagogues that were appropriated from expelled Jewish communities were then dedicated to the Virgin Mary.Footnote 36 For example, we have the well-documented case of the Regensburg Jewish quarter, which was leveled in 1519 following the Jews' expulsion from the city (February 1519). The area confiscated was dedicated to Schöne Maria, “the Fair Virgin Mary.”Footnote 37 Thus Mary became the signifier of the annihilation of Jewish presence; her figure celebrated the absence of Jews. The role of the Virgin Mary as a formidable enemy of the Jews, and at times even instigator of outright violence against them, can be seen in Marian plays and theatrical enactments that took place in the town squares and cathedral plazas all over Western Christendom. These plays, many of which were associated with the cult of the Virgin, were figuratively anti-Jewish and extremely violent in conveying their anti-Jewish messages, as recently shown by Merrall L. Price.Footnote 38 In the more private sphere, illuminated books of meditation and prayer dedicated by devotees to the Virgin, which were more common in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, depict the Jews in the most monstrous and savage ways and suggest a graphic intolerance toward them.Footnote 39 Mary's figure came to signify that Jews could no longer be tolerated in Western Europe, and one aspect of her cult became the religious expression of this idea.Footnote 40
It seems that the once possibly tempting challenge for the Jews, Mary, was gradually being redefined, and her figure assumed a different nature. She no longer was a threat to Jews by her appeal, charity, and seductive influence. In these vestments her challenge might have caused Jews to deliberate and at times fully succumb to the persuasive arguments for conversion encapsulated in her figure. By the fourteenth century, this was no longer the case. Accordingly, the role attributed by Jews to the figure that was supposed to fend off the Marian challenge, Miriam, was no longer in need and she gradually faded away.
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Although some scholars have argued that there are only “a few (surprisingly few) Jewish sources that directly address Mary's position in the Christian history of salvation and her emerging cult,”Footnote 41 it seems that a wide and diverse reaction to the cult of the Virgin Mary is by no means in need of proof. The search for evidence of the direct polemic evidence is not the only means of uncovering the Jewish mode of coping with the Marian challenge. There is much more to meeting the Marian challenge than direct attacks on the Virgin Mary, her cult, or the persuasive aspects of her cult that Jews might have thought of as appealing. Jews dealt with this challenge in a variety of ways, some more subtle than others, and therefore alongside the outright polemical manifestation we should look for quieter means, such as the internal empowerment of Jewish female figures such as Miriam. Internal Jewish sources, including custom manuals and other books designed for a larger, more diverse readership, provide suggestive evidence in this respect. These sources, especially, homiletic works, demonstrate that Jews drew on the biblical and midrashic images of Miriam in order to simultaneously supplant and respond to the perceived power and allure of the competing Christian traditions of the biblical Miriam's namesake—Virgin Mary.
By identifying the tension between the competing interests in which Jewish authors promote what they saw as authentic and ancient traditions on this issue, one can pinpoint other ways in which Jews confronted the Marian challenge, by means other than outright polemic. Amplifying and empowering the role of Miriam and constructing new tropes in order to respond and repel traditions from without is but one possible avenue Jews could have applied to meet the Virgin's match with a fascinating spurt of creativity. These ideas were designed to deflect the threat of a powerful and suggestive religious tradition that presented a formidable challenge for Jews. In this middle ground the image of Miriam rose as a subject common to the true religious traditions, precisely because each of the two religions was already invested in the theme, alluding to the same prooftexts yet applying a different hermeneutical tool kit.
