Marital Strife and the Limits of Communal Networks in Geniza Society

The supervision of marriage and divorce was the most basic prerogative of the Jewish communal leadership in the Islamic Middle Ages. However, as the documents of the Cairo Geniza reveal, communal authorities were repeatedly faced with cases of husbands deserting their wives or failing their various marital duties. This tension has often been told as a story of persisting popular ignorance of Jewish law that the communal and scholarly elites attempted solve through paternalistic correction and legal legislation. This paper will attempt to re-examine this tension from a plurality of perspectives in a number of select case studies. By shifting perspectives it will be possible to ask what cultural values underlie the actions of the communal authorities, how were the commercial and communal networks put to use when it came to marital strife and, finally, how these attempts looked like “from below.” This examination will tie in to the on-going debate on the networks of community and commerce, by exploring what was the “contract enforceability” when it came to husbands and wives in the Geniza, both in regard to the actual legal marriage contract, as well as the mutual normative expectations between husbands and wives. This paper will show the communal networks “in action,” as well as the limits of the community’s power and the ability of individuals to maneuver and negotiate their private lives.