this community that commits itself to fasting on Mondays, Thursdays and Mondays and to attending this synagogue every morning and evening. May God (haMakom) hear their prayers, accept their fasts, and save and redeem them from all hardship and adversity together with all of Israel. Amen.”84
In medieval prayer books (siddurim), this prayer85 sometimes appears with the word “individual” (yahid) as a gloss or inserted in the text, an indication that although these fasts were fixed in the calendar, they were exercised by individual choice rather than communal obligation.86 If more than ten men fasted on a single day, the liturgy was augmented with a special Torah reading and liturgical poetry (piyyutim). The inclusion of collected liturgical poems in medieval prayer books signals that they were regularly recited.87 Furthermore, fasting was often complemented by charitable contributions.88
Ominous events also prompted communal fasts. Numerous reports of responses to peril describe the entire community fasting at such times, including children and sometimes even toddlers. The following account of the Jews of Trier in 1096 serves as an example:
And in those days, they fasted many times and abstained; they atoned and gave charity. They fasted for six weeks, day by day, from Passover until Shavuot, and every evening they scattered coins for the poor. They were taxed four times and for each libra of tax payment, they gave a denarius for protection. When that was not sufficient (payment for protection), the bribes multiplied until they had given all of their property, even the shawls89 on their shoulders.90
Figure 6. List of fasts. From North French Miscellany. © The British Library Board. Ms Add. 11639, fols. 683v, 684r. Northern France, late thirteenth century.
Other communities fasted when they were under attack and during various commemorations.91 For example, a well-known description of the Blois Affair of 1171 concludes by stating that the Jewish communities of France and the Rhine all established that day as “a day of mourning and fasting, as a result of their own desire and the instructions of our rabbi, the Ga’on, Jacob b. Meir (Rabbenu Tam, ca. 1100–1171)—who wrote books informing them that it was fitting to designate this as a fast day for our entire people, a fast that will surpass the fast of Gedalyah b. Ahikam in importance because it is a Day of Atonement.”92 The institution of commemorative fasts continued throughout the Middle Ages, as when the Talmud was burned and during the Black Death.93
Medieval sources also document communal fasts that were induced by concerns and sensibilities beyond the calendar cycle and imminent danger. These fasts point to motivations from self-discipline and self-torment to penance. Textual instructions for fasting illustrate the many ways to observe a fast, from not eating at all to partaking of specific foods refraining from others. Ephraim Kanarfogel has analyzed a fascinating community fast as preparation for conjuring the soul of a dead man. In response to a father who had been unable to attend the funeral of his murdered son, Rabbenu Tam and Elijah of Paris are reputed to have permitted the use of the Tetragrammaton to resurrect the image of the deceased:
Isaac said: It happened that twenty-year-old Elijah, son of Todros, was killed in his home city. His father was away when he was buried. Upon his return, the father refused to eat or drink until the great rabbis of his time, Jacob of Ramerupt and Elijah of Paris, would allow him to conjure his son’s image by using the Divine Name…. They ultimately granted him permission to do so. He then bathed, immersed, dressed in white, and then, [along with Todros,] the entire community fasted on Thursday and went to synagogue.94
Here we see personal and communal fasting as preparation for summoning the dead youth’s soul. The father prepares for this ritual most intensely, by immersing then dressing in white, but the community joined him in fasting and accompanied him for the actual ceremony.
Like their ancestors in late antiquity, medieval Jews fasted for personal reasons without community involvement.95 In the Middle Ages, the practice of fasting after a bad dream was maintained, but with more ritual complexity: the fast was initiated by an announcement and chanting a set group of verses in the presence of three male witnesses, and while fasting the “dreamer” would refrain from grooming in the form of shaving or hairstyling.96 This fast was thought to prevent the omens in that dream from reaching fruition.97 Despite talmudic debates over their appropriateness and ge’onic restrictions on their applicability,98 observance of these fasts on the Sabbath continued throughout the Middle Ages in Germany and northern France. Medieval Ashkenazic authorities tried to balance opinions that discouraged such Sabbath fasts with those that favored them: thus it became customary to nullify fearsome dreams that occurred before the Sabbath by fasting on the Sabbath and to make amends for that very fast by refraining from eating on Sunday.99
Fasts were also taken on to mark a wide array of personal decisions, physical transitions, and life-cycle junctures. As in late antiquity, brides and grooms fasted on the day of their wedding,100 a gesture that resonated with the biblical description of Daniel’s preparation for revelation. Medieval sources mention fasting as an expression of regret after insulting a fellow community member101 and after drinking wine produced by non-Jews.102 As we will see in greater depth later in this chapter, converts would fast as one component of their process of returning to Judaism.103 In addition, a narrative in one thirteenth-century manuscript tells of a woman and her husband who fasted before a much-feared confrontation.104 Thus fasts were undertaken for a wide variety of reasons.105
Not only adults but also children fasted. They are explicitly mentioned with women and men in certain contexts for fasting, particularly during community-wide fasts after traumatic communal events106 and on annual fast days.107 Rashi notes that children who had reached the “age of education” (gil hinukh) should fast, recommending nine or ten years as the appropriate starting point.108 Rashi’s grandson, Jacob b. Meir (Rabbenu Tam), also addressed this subject when queried on his opinion of especially pious people109 who not only refused to feed their own young children (who were under the age of education) on Yom Kippur but who also claimed that parents who fed their young offspring on that day were transgressing the law. In his reply, Jacob b. Meir supports parents whose children ate and drank on Yom Kippur, refuting the arguments posed by the more stringent members of his community.110 thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources acknowledge that some parents instructed their children, boys and girls, to fast from a very young age even though that practice exceeded halakhic guidelines.111 Despite assertions that such fasting was not only unnecessary but potentially dangerous for young children, an undercurrent of approval for this approach to fasting persisted.112
While there is little need to detail men’s practice as a specific category given that the sources above feature men as the primary population that fasts, it is significant to highlight the select texts where women’s fasts are explicitly mentioned,113 many of which are listed by Bitha Har-Shefi in her research.114 Women, like men, fasted as individuals and with the community; for example, their fasts followed the annual calendar during the Ten Days of Repentance115 and the Fasts of Gedalyah and Esther.116 Admittedly, “one (ehad) [who]” is the protagonist in the stories that are regularly told of paradigmatic man.117 Yet, as mentioned earlier, this use of the masculine singular form represents the rhetorical norm, whereas women are specifically mentioned in circumstances that pertain to them exclusively118 or where a woman is the primary subject. This literary pattern is represented in the famous case of a businesswoman who asked Rashi if she were required to observe the Fast of Esther when it coincided with her work-related travel.119
Fasting among women is notably recorded
