This is an important book in Jewish history and in the history of the European Middle Ages. Building on recent developments in medieval historiography as well as on her own previous endeavors, in judicious language and with a deep respect for her sources and previous scholarship, Elisheva Baumgarten presents a new departure in the way we could and should look at religious phenomena. More precisely, “this book focuses on how belief and practice relate to social norms rather than to religious thought” (220). In passing and without much theoretical ado, she also takes gender studies a good way forward. By “a constant comparison between the actions of both men and women” (2), her analysis “shows how views of gender were transformed over time and how the religious role of women was reinterpreted, with changes that often resulted in the exclusion of women from pious rituals” (221).

What then is new in Baumgarten's approach? The author's focus “on observance rather than on intellectual legacies” is designed to provide “the widest sweep of Jewish community members possible, rather than the few who authored medieval compositions” (2). With piety as a “guide to practice,” in order to “uncover the religious lives of Jews who were not part of the intellectual echelon,” she examines “how their behaviors were reflected and molded by those who wrote authoritative texts” (11). She combines this inquiry with a “gendered reading,” using “gender as a principal measure for signifying the exercise of power and struggles over authority” (2). The outcome is a focused and disciplined analysis of the manifestations of popular piety, collective and individual.

Baumgarten investigates the elusive category, “popular piety,” by looking at the activities of prayer, fasting, and charity (chapters 1–3), first and foremost in the Jewish milieu, but throughout the book in constant comparison with the Christian one, a comparative view that speaks to contemporary debates on the impact of majority society on the Jewish minority. Thus chapter 1, titled “Standing before God: Purity and Impurity in the Synagogue,” ties together changing concepts of purity and impurity—male and female—with developments in communal and individual prayer. Chapter 2 examines “Jewish Fasting and Atonement in a Christian Context,” while Chapter 3 focuses on “Communal Charity: Evidence from Medieval Nürnberg.” All three betray a historian at the high point of analytical prowess, as this reviewer can attest, having worked many years ago on the same manuscript that served Baumgarten so well in her chapter 3.

A fourth chapter develops the insights gained in chapters 1 to 3 in comparison to the Christian world. Chapter 5 follows habitus, specifically clothing and coiffure as markers of piety in Christian and Jewish Europe. Along the way, we learn some fascinating details about Jewish dress, hats, and hair in medieval Ashkenaz. It becomes evident that “for medieval Jews like their Christian counterparts, dress was an essential instrument for expressing membership and piety” (192). Chapter 6 takes on feigned piety by tracing two tales of pious pretenders. Baumgarten's discussion underscores the centrality of external cues and of designated acts (such as prayer, fasting, and retaining a set in synagogue). The last chapter singles out social and comparative perspectives in the development of practices of piety.

The thirteenth century appears as a period of marked, even pivotal change, not incidentally a feature paralleled by many a development in the host society. In Baumgarten's phrasing, the historical processes regarding piety outlined in the book converge with parallel developments in medieval politics and religion, including the intensification of Jewish-Christian polemics. Augmented displays of Jewishness (and by extension of piety) appeared at exactly the point when Christian authorities began requiring Jews to broadcast their religious identity with visual symbols. Views of gender were transformed over time and the religious role of women was reinterpreted, with changes that often resulted in the exclusion of women from pious rituals (221). By a deliberate choice, men and women were presented as increasingly different, practically as “separate people” (165–6). These were developments heavy with implications, some of which present in Jewish life to this very day.