Title Page of the Register of a Jewish Midwife

Roza, wife of Leyzer ben Moses Judah, was a midwife in the Dutch city of Groningen who served both Jewish and non-Jewish women and their families. While little is known of her life, she left behind a detailed bilingual Hebrew–Yiddish register of her activities in the Jewish community in the years 1794–1832. The register itself provides basic information about the households she served, in turn shedding light on the social structure of the Jewish community in the Netherlands at the time and on the vital role played by midwives in Jewish society. Roza also produced a register of births in Dutch documenting her work among non-Jews, an indication of a long-standing tradition of Jewish midwives working across communal boundaries as well as evidence of Jewish midwives’ literacy, status, and level of education (this latter register in Dutch does not seemed to have survived).