Contending with interreligious rape in the 16th and 17th centuries: Social realities and literary representations

This essay compares the ways in which interreligious sexual violence against female Jews is depicted in literary sources with the social realities documented in rabbinic responsa and supplications from the 16th and 17th centuries. All extant accounts of sexual violence against female Jews were written by men; rabbis, chroniclers, learned authors, and community leaders. Nonetheless, this essay argues that literary depictions written or published in early modern Italy used the representations of interreligious rapes to create a patriarchal image of Jewish society, by upholding an ideal of maidens and married women who preferred killing themselves, to safeguard the presumed honour of their family and community when facing non-Jewish assailants. In surviving responsa and supplications from this period, on the other hand, rabbis and community leaders reveal the more common scenario of female rape survivors, whose continued existence, as well as the subsequent birth of children as a result of their rapes, created a range of problems for their families that could not be ignored. An analysis of these different types of sources thus attests to the refusal of male authors to represent the plight of girls and women of their communities – preferring, instead, to reiterate age-old topoi that suited their patriarchal self-perception.