The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz by Michelle Cameron

Pocket Books, 2009 ISBN: 9781439118221

Written by a descendant of Rabbi Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenberg, a noted Talmudic scholar and commentator of the Middle Ages, Cameron explores Baruch’s life, and the life of the Jewish communities of Medieval France, Germany, and England, through the viewpoint of a fictional character: the Rabbi’s wife, Shira, about whom nothing (not even her real name) is actually known.

The imagined character of Shira is an intelligent and lively daughter of a Rabbinic scholar who runs a yeshiva in their home. To the disapproval of the community, Shira’s father teaches his motherless daughter to read and write, and to study Torah, something that gets harder for her to do as she gets older and becomes more and more responsible for overseeing the household and the running of the school. Shira and Meir meet while he is studying at her father’s school, and theirs is a love match, but Meir’s expectations of Shira to be a traditional wife often chafe at her.

Despite their occasional differences, and perhaps because of the challenges faced by the Jewish communities in Medieval Europe: anti-Semitism that ranged from restricting people’s lives to violent attacks, to the burning of every copy of the Talmud in a community (a real historical event on Meir Ben Baruch’s life which is recounted here), to accusations of witchcraft, mass imprisonment for imagined crimes, or the crimes of others, Shira and Meir pull together and build a rich life together.
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Well-researched, and rich with both historical detail, and emotion, this is a book that readers of historical fiction will find informative and deeply satisfying.