ALL OF THIS PARASHAH and most of the next one contain instructions for sacrifices, offered by individuals (either women or men) and by households at the central shrine. Yet the extensive focus on communal rites of worship in this part of the Torah may create the impression that other religious practices were either non-existent or discouraged. However, that impression would be erroneous, for—as in traditional societies everywhere—religious activities carried out only by women were part of Israelite household life. Such practices are virtually invisible in the Bible. Nevertheless, archeological evidence, interpreted in light of ethnographic data and anthropological models, allows us to recognize this aspect of women’s lives in the biblical period.
The gender-specific religious behaviors of women centered on the reproductive process. Women faced the possibility of infertility, complications of pregnancy, and insufficient lactation; they were also aware of high infant mortality. Today we deal with these reproductive problems medically. But in antiquity women carried out procedures—which we might view as superstitious—that were fundamentally religious in nature. That is, women performed rituals both to avert the evil forces (like Lilith) believed to be the cause of problems and also to attract benevolent spirits in order to achieve reproductive success.
Such practices were generally apotropaic (protective). Women might wear shiny jewelry or amulets to keep the “evil eye” away. They would tie a red thread around an infant’s limb for similar reasons, a practice that continues to this day among certain Jewish groups. They might keep a lamp burning in or near a birthing room, and they would salt and swaddle a newborn (see Ezekiel 16:4). Other practices, involving votive figurines and fertility symbols known from other ancient cultures, can also be identified. Such religious behaviors focus on the welfare of childbearing women and their offspring. No doubt women considered them necessary for the creation and safeguarding of new life. Carrying out such practices, which they believed could be effective, would have given women a sense of agency in dealing with considerable reproductive risk. This also means that they were ritual experts no less than the priests in charge of the official sacrificial regimen set forth in Vayikra. (See also “Women in Ancient Israel—An Overview.”)
—Carol Meyers