Glikl bas Judah Leib

1. Glikl bas Judah Leib A Woman on the Cusp of Modernity

3. “Every two years I had a baby, I was tormented with worries as everyone is with a little house full of children, God be with them! and I thought myself more heavily burdened than anyone else in the world and that no one suffered from their children as much as I. Little I knew, poor fool, how fortunate I was when I seated my children ‘like olive plans round about my table.”

4. “Even among the great rabbis, I knew but few who prayed with [my husband’s] fervor. If he were praying in his room, and some one came to fetch him forth where something could be bought up cheap, neither I nor any servant in my whole house would have the heart to go to him and speak of it. Indeed, he once missed a bargain in this way, to the loss of several hundred thalers. He never regarded these things, but served God faithfully and called upon Him with diligence; and He repaid him for all, two and threefold over.”

5. “I was busied in the merchandise trade, selling every month to the amount of five or six hundred Reichsthalers. Further, I went twice a year to the Brunswick Fair and each time made my several thousands profit…. “My business prospered, I procured me wares from Holland, I bought nicely in Hamburg as well, and disposed of the goods in a store of my own. I never spared myself, summer and winter I was out on my travels, and I ran about the city the livelong day. “What is more, I maintained a lively trade in seed pearls. I bought them from all the Jews, selected and assorted them, and then resold them in towns where I knew they were in good demand.”

7. “My father had me betrothed when I was a girl of barely twelve, and less than two years later I married…. Immediately afterwards my parents returned home and left me – I was a child of scarcely fourteen – alone with strangers in a strange world. That it did not go hard with me I owed to my new parents who made my life a joy…. “Hameln, everyone knows what it is compared to Hamburg; taken by itself, it is a dull shabby hole. And there I was – a carefree child whisked in the flush of youth from parents, friends and everyone I knew, from a city like Hamburg plump into a back-country town where lived only two Jews. “Yet I thought nothing of it, so much I delighted in the piety of my father-in-law…”

9. “[The doctor] came and saw at a glance that nothing could be done, and he departed. “Whereat I said to my husband, ‘Dearest heart, shall I embrace you – I am unclean?’ For I was then at a time I dared not touch him. And he said, ‘God forbid, my child – it will not be long before you take your cleansing.’ But, alas, it was then too late.”