Jor­dan R. Katz’s Deliv­er­ing Knowl­edge pro­vides a new lens for under­stand­ing Euro­pean Jew­ish moder­ni­ty. Katz argues per­sua­sive­ly that female mid­wives played an inte­gral yet unap­pre­ci­at­ed role in Jew­ish moder­ni­ty. Deliv­er­ing Knowl­edge shows that, from the end of the Thir­ty Years’ War (which last­ed from 1618 to 1648) through the close of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, Euro­pean states exert­ed increased con­trol over their pop­u­la­tion through record-keep­ing and cre­den­tial­iza­tion. Jew­ish mid­wives, with their unique access to Jew­ish women, played a cru­cial reli­gious, legal, and bureau­crat­ic role in Europe.

The book’s six chap­ters treat dif­fer­ent aspects of mid­wifery. The first chap­ter describes how mid­wives in Ams­ter­dam nav­i­gat­ed the require­ment that, begin­ning in 1668, all mid­wives in Ams­ter­dam gain licen­sure from the Med­ical Col­lege as Dutch offi­cials sought to address infant mor­tal­i­ty in the wake of dead­ly con­flicts and epi­demics. The require­ment posed a prob­lem for Jew­ish women as, in addi­tion to ful­fill­ing the require­ments that they were cit­i­zens, had been mar­ried, and had attend­ed at least six­teen births with­in two years of train­ing, they also had to prove that they were lit­er­ate in Dutch. In 1703, Roza Salmons had the reg­u­la­tions trans­lat­ed into Yid­dish, which sat­is­fied her exam­in­ers. Unlike Salmons, oth­er Jew­ish mid­wives oper­at­ed with­out a license, despite the threat of legal and finan­cial con­se­quences. Salmons also had a Dutch obstet­ri­cal text trans­lat­ed into Yid­dish, explored in chap­ter five.

The sec­ond chap­ter two explores how mid­wives were per­ceived by com­mu­nal actors such as physi­cians, rab­bis, and neigh­bor­hood women. Katz sug­gests that mid­wives were not con­sid­ered a threat to the med­ical estab­lish­ment and worked along­side oth­er med­ical stake­hold­ers. The chap­ter includes a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of how some used amulets in hopes of pro­tect­ing moth­er and child in the birthing cham­ber. One amulet includ­ed the names of Adam, Eve, and Lilith along with the angels ​“Senoi, Sensenoi, and Semangalof.”

The third chap­ter ana­lyzes the per­son­al records of births kept by mid­wives. Although these notes were informed by the broad­er cul­ture of record­keep­ing, Katz argues, they were not kept as offi­cial state records but for the mid­wives them­selves. Nev­er­the­less, as chap­ters four and six show, mid­wives were essen­tial sources of knowl­edge in ques­tions of pater­ni­ty and nid­dah (men­stru­al puri­ty). As the time of birth was con­sid­ered pre­car­i­ous, mid­wives would often ask unmar­ried women to reveal the father of their child dur­ing birth and were some­times offi­cial wit­ness­es. Giv­en their gyne­co­log­i­cal knowl­edge, mid­wives were often con­sult­ed by rab­bis to jus­ti­fy why blood from med­ical con­di­tions such as uter­ine pro­lapse did not pro­duce men­stru­al blood, which would ren­der a woman rit­u­al­ly impure. They were also con­sult­ed to con­firm that a mis­car­ried baby con­sti­tutes a first­born son to deter­mine the rit­u­al of Pidy­on ha-Ben, redemp­tion of the first­born son, was required for a sur­viv­ing child.

Katz touch­es on why women became mid­wives and what their finan­cial sta­tus was (although a fuller explo­ration of the eco­nom­ics and demo­graph­ics of mid­wifery would have enriched the book). Often the pro­fes­sion was passed from moth­er to daugh­ter, but not always. Katz explains that some mid­wives tend­ed to serve more afflu­ent fam­i­lies while oth­ers were enlist­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty and could be quite poor. Deliv­er­ing Knowl­edge joins a body of schol­ar­ship chal­leng­ing and rewrit­ing the nar­ra­tive of Jew­ish moder­ni­ty. Rather than a tele­o­log­i­cal sto­ry that cul­mi­nates in polit­i­cal eman­ci­pa­tion for Jew­ish men, the new account acknowl­edges the role women played in shap­ing Jew­ish life in one of the most dynam­ic peri­ods of Euro­pean Jew­ish history.