 1 Title page of the Register of a Jewish Midwife by Roza, wife of Leyzer ben Moses Judah, in Yiddish (L) and Hebrew (R). | Roza, Wife of Leyzer ben Moses Judah 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). |
Roza of Groningen’s register (record book) reflects the important and often historically-ignored professional role that (Jewish) women have been performing for centuries as midwives. In this medical role, Roza exemplified a literate, professional woman whose technical expertise was respected by Dutch, Jewish and non-Jewish women.
Register of a Jewish Midwife
1794–1832
This is the book of the generations/children of man, those that were born by my hands among the Hebrew women. I came to them, I the midwife, for they are vital [Exodus 1:15–19] and give birth to a son or daughter. I took this book as my possession, and I recorded in it the name of those giving birth with the name of the newborn, with the date of birth, so that it should be a remembrance from the day I began this occupation and forward. And I prayed to the Lord above that he should strengthen me and give me courage and not let my hands falter while I am engaged in this profession, and may no obstruction be caused by my hands, heaven forbid, neither to the woman sitting on the birthing stool nor to the newborn about to be born: Only let it be expelled from the uterus like an egg from a hen. And these are the children of Israel who were born by my hands. In addition to this, I took another book and there I wrote in Dutch script the names of those born by my hand among gentile women here in Groningen, Sunday, 1 Kislev in the year “I am the midwife.” Roza wife of Leizer bar Moshe Yehuda, long may he live. [16 November 1794]
Translated by Elisheva Carlebach.
Roza, wife of Leyzer ben Moses Judah, Title Page of the Register of a Jewish Midwife. Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam. This text selection and image appear in slightly different forms in the Posen Digital Library. “Wife of Leyzer ben Moses Judah, Register of a Jewish Midwife” by Roza is included in The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6: Confronting Modernity, 1750-1880.
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