“A Life for a Life”: a Jewish Anti-Abortive Technique in Early Modern Italy and Its Many Inter- and Intracultural Ramifications

Abstract With this article, I seek to demonstrate how the analysis of Jewish magical texts may aid in the identification of hidden aspects of premodern Jewish women’s everyday life and material culture. I do so by focusing on the interplay between magic and childbirth among premodern Italian Jews. I analyze a magical recipe for avoiding a stillbirth preserved in a Hebrew codex of magical interest penned in central Italy at the end of the eighteenth century. Along with providing an edition and English translation of the recipe, I reflect on the trajectories of the circulation and transmission of this childbirth tradition both at an inter- and intra-cultural level.