If you saw this outfit at a historical event . . . what would you assume about the person wearing it?
Where is it from, and when?
Did it occur to you you might be looking at a medieval Jew?
What are the differences? Would it be okay to notice them?
Welcome to SnappyDragon Studios! I'm V : Costumer, history nerd, and unapologetic Loud Jewish Girl.
Extra special welcome to everyone watching this during CoSy;
go look in the description and the pinned comment for links to the full schedule!
Let me tell you a little about me . . . and in the process, about Jewish heritage in a nutshell.
I'm American, of Ashkenazi heritage, raised in a very hippie Reform community,
I'm agnostic and practice my Judaism culturally. We'll break all that down for the goyim— first,
"goyim" means "non-Jews" and has no negative connotations. There are many different cultural
heritages within Judaism. In this video I'll be talking about Ashkenazi Jews who descend from
Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe, and Sephardic Jews who descend from the Spanish
and Portuguese Jewish community that was expelled around 1492. However, there are many many more,
including Jewish communities from Ethiopia, Yemen, India, Italy, Central Asia, the Caucasus,
Georgia, Greece . . . There are Jews of all races living everywhere in the world from all
sorts of heritages. In the modern world there are also "sects" within Judaism, although these
sort of codified differences didn't exist in the middle ages. The most commonly known today are
the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform sects, but there are several others. I grew up Reform,
so that's what I know most about. It grew out of a desire in the 18th and 19th centuries for
Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe and America, to assimilate into Christian-normative or "secular"
society, to have greater safety and freedom. A lot of Reform Jews live very secular or
secular-seeming lives . . . Which segues nicely into being an agnostic and "cultural" Jew : Jews
are known for having incredibly diverse and conflicting beliefs about everything, *especially*
Judaism itself, to the point where "ask two Jews, get three opinions" is a common saying.
Since Judaism occupies this interesting space where it's a religion *and* a culture *and* sort
of an ethnicity, many Jews identify strongly with the cultural components even if they are atheist,
agnostic, and/or not spiritual or religious. There's some further reading in the description.
Now, especially in Western media, the usual idea of what a Jew is, is . . . basically,
me. White, Ashkenazi, from the Northeast US. This is *not* a particularly accurate idea, and like I
said, there are Jews of all races and all cultures living all over the world. All this to say : My
perspective is limited on account of me being one person, and is also affected by the fact
that I happen to line up with the wider world's incorrect perceptions of the Jewish people.
The Jewish experience is so broad and diverse and varied, it would be impossible for me to
represent or talk about all of it because there's just too much there. So I'm going to zoom in on
two settings that I have studied a bit more : England and Spain, both in the late 11th century.
The further back you go in history, the more distinct cultural styles of dress you'll find
among all sorts of groups. In that regard, Jews and the cultures within Judaism are no different.
Especially within separated Jewish communities, you might see clothes that were very different
from what goyim living in the same area wore. However, many historical Jewish communities
were intermingled with goyish society, and those Jews may have dressed more according to their
local cultural styles. As a general rule, the more that Jews were accepted or assimilated into goyish
society, the more like their goyish neighbors they would dress. The flip side is that goyish society
often required Jews to wear "identifying dress", different clothes so everyone who saw them knew
they were Jewish, as a way of enforcing separation between Jews and everyone else. Obviously this is
a very antisemitic practice, and the first kind of identifying dress most people will think of
is from 1930s and 40s. But the practice has existed for well upwards of a thousand years.
In the 11th and 12th centuries there were actually no blanket "sumptuary laws", meaning restrictions
on clothing according your rank or property or income, in either England or Andalusian
Spain. While these laws were a major factor in Jewish and goyish dress in other settings,
I won't be getting into them because they didn't exist in the areas we're looking at right now.
However, there was one major cultural difference that affected Jewish dress right down to the
construction methods, and it's called sha'atnez. The Torah prohibits wearing "wool and linen
together". Shoshi of Costume Literate is a bit of an expert on sha'atnez and has a video that's
just come out about it, so go watch it and subscribe to her channel! She was *incredibly*
helpful with the research for this video. Jewish scholars have, very characteristically,
argued a great deal about what exactly this means, whether it applies to only fabric
like linsey-woolsey, or having both linen and wool fabrics in one garment . . . The general
historical and modern interpretation is that while it's okay to wear separate garments of wool and
linen at the same time, you couldn't have wool and linen in the same garment in any capacity. This is
a big deal because a lot of Western Europe was sewing wool garments together with linen thread.
Jewish tailors and wearers would have needed different construction methods and been very
careful of their fiber usage. I have a lot more research I want to do on what these construction
methods actually were, and I've run into some materials-related challenges in replicating them.
If you have any sources for wool sewing thread, *please* put them in the comments.
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We'll be looking at two outfits : An English Ashkenazi Jew from the late 11th or early
12th century, and a Sephardic Jew living in Muslim-ruled Andalusia or present-day Spain,
at the same time. Neither of these outfits is a perfect historical reconstruction,
if such a thing could even exist, and each will be the focus of its own in-depth
sewing and research video coming out after CoSy! Subscribe so you don't miss those.
Around 1070 in England, William the Conqueror extended a welcome for Jews
from his home of Normandy to come to England. They primarily settled in towns and cities,
with Oxford being one of the first. Jews brought with them trade connections to Jewish merchants
around the Mediterranean, which were so desirable that there are records of Bishops elsewhere in
Europe establishing legally protected Jewish communities to make their towns more prosperous.
Under English feudal law, Jews were considered "royal serfs" and subject directly to the Crown.
They had the right to hold land from the monarch, to move freely within England, to buy and sell,
and to swear on the Torah when a Christian would use the Bible. Many were successful tradespeople,
merchants, tutors, property owners, and yes— moneylenders. The antisemitic myth about Jews
being money-hungry came from Christians pushing Jews into financial work because they themselves
were barred from doing it, then vilifying us for doing work that was contrary to their religion
but necessary to their society. William the Conqueror preferred to receive his feudal
dues in coin directly to the treasury, so there was a huge need for moneylenders in the kingdom.
My first layer is a linen smock, which serves as my base layer or "underwear". Linen is easy
to wash, comfortable, and kept the body and the outer clothes cleaner when worn between them.
This smock has a keyhole neckline, long sleeves with square gussets under the arm for movement,
and an ankle-length skirt with gores in the sides. It's sewn with waxed linen thread,
mostly unbleached gray, but a little bit of bleached white at the neckline. On my legs and
feet, I have bias-cut woven hose in gray linen— wool would be the accurate choice, but I live in
California and I'd rather not overheat. Sha'atnez can apply to things like garters and belts,
since your hose depend on your garters to stay up, so I've used linen tape garters tied just below
the knee instead of wool. The shoes are not accurate, they're just what I have around.
Next comes a wool kirtle, with a similar cut to the smock, but gores in the front and back
as well as the sides. There's again a high keyhole neckline, which closes with a brooch. Since
wearing fully separate garments of wool and linen at the same time was not considered sha'atnez,
I can wear this over my linen smock. What would be a problem is the fact that this
kirtle is actually sewn with linen thread, which *is* sha'atnez. Sorry! It's doing
double-duty from a Viking-age outfit. If I add a leather belt, this would be
a complete outfit for working dress, or informal wear. But remember how I talked
about the prosperity and success of the Jewish community? Let's add a gown over this kirtle,
an extra layer worn for formal dress or by those who could afford the expense of more fabric.
This is a "bliaut", a fashion brought in by the Normans during the conquest,
which could perhaps be more familiar to Norman Jews who emigrated to England than it was to the
local English. It's made in pink wool, with a wide gored skirt and huge draping sleeves,
and lacing at both sides to create a close-fitting naturally curved silhouette. To make this gown
suitable for a Jewish wearer, the eyelets are bound in wool yarn rather than linen thread, and
the lacing cord is also made from wool. The sides of the gown are spiral-laced using a metal aglet
sewn to the lacing cord. This pulls the gown close to the body, showing off the wearer's figure,
and the fact that they could afford a garment fitted with curves, which required fabric waste
to cut. Cloth was extremely expensive to produce, so this was a pretty big deal.
Around my waist I'll tie a wool girdle, matching the contrasting wool trim at the neckline.
Goyish fashionable hairstyles during this period involved partially uncovered hair
even for married women, which was a bit of a departure from the wrapped veils of the
previous period or the wimples of the following one. There's a tradition of
married Jewish women covering all of their hair which continues into the modern day,
depending on how observant a person is. It's not a commandment or law from the Torah, rather it's
a cultural norm that became a religious rule. It has its roots in social customs stretching
back millennia, where married women of all sorts of religions were expected to cover their hair.
I am not married, so my hair is in two braids, with a circular linen veil draped on top of my
head and kept in place by a wool band and some pins. If I were married, I might pin or tape my
braids to my head, and wrap my hair in a kerchief or wear a cap under my veil to cover everything.
Around the same time, but at the southern end of Western Europe, there was a massive Jewish
community in present-day Spain and Portugal. The Iberian peninsula or Al-Andalus was mostly ruled
by Muslim rulers in the 11th century, and it was one of the best places to be if you were Jewish.
Muslim rulers in Iberia and Southwest Asia treated the Jews and other non-Muslims in
their territories as "dhimmis", which was a protected legal status that didn't have any
equivalent in most Christian territories. There were legal codes governing dhimmis, which did
require deference to Muslims, an additional tax, and identifying dress, but in exchange for this
they were otherwise treated as citizens rather than outcasts. Al-Andalus was also known for
being more cosmopolitan and tolerant than other Muslim states, with records of Muslim women going
without veils even though it was a cultural and religious requirement elsewhere. This comparative
level of tolerance meant that many Jews rose to high rank, even at the courts of Muslim rulers.
My base layer for this outfit is a linen "qamis", meaning shirt, in a finer and lighter-weight linen
to suit the warm climate. It's just above knee-length, and is a slightly different
rectangular cut, with gores starting under the arms instead of at the waist. The neckline is
high and round, but slit down to the sternum and closes with ties made of linen fingerloop braid.
Under that, I am wearing pants! "Sarwal" trousers were worn by people of all genders
in the Muslim-ruled medieval world, either as undergarments or outerwear. These have a
rectangular cut with gores to add fullness in the leg, and fasten with a drawstring around
the waist. Undergarment sarwal could be bleached linen or cotton, and might have an even simpler
cut with short wide legs and no gores. Al-Andalus had greater access to a lot of the raw materials
needed for rich textiles than the rest of Europe, including silk, cotton, and dyes like indigo.
Linen dyes particularly well with indigo, so this striped deep blue linen is perfect.
If I wasn't going out, this would actually be a complete outfit for informal wear. The Muslim
cultural norms in Andalusia allowed for wearing only these lightweight garments in private,
informal settings, because of the hotter climate. Sometimes they could be fine cotton or silk,
and quite sheer! And, yes, this outfit of sarwal and qamis is both the etymological
and fashion cousin of Indian salwar kameez, by way of Persian and Arabic
language and culture. In the rest of Western Europe, this would be considered underwear.
If I'm going anywhere, or doing anything more formal, I'll need another layer. First,
I'll tuck my qamis into my sarwal, because it'll work better for this particular outfit. A common
outer layer was a "jubba", a long gown cut exactly like the qamis. That wouldn't be suitable for this
outfit's intended purpose, so mine is a "qaba", a button-front knee-length coat in lightweight wool.
As best I can tell, the more layers you added the more formal the outfit was, so courtly dress
might involve a jubba over the qamis, a heavy silk coat, and then a plain linen overcoat to protect
the silk outdoors. The rectangular construction is similar to the qamis with a split down the front.
I've sewn this with silk thread so it isn't sha'atnez. The material is a lightweight worsted
wool flannel, opaque and light-colored to keep the sun off, but quite breathable so I won't overheat.
Now for the two items that make this outfit even more distinctly Jewish.
My belt is leather, as required by the dhimmi laws. Rich fabric sashes were reserved for
Muslims; Jews and Christians had to use other materials such as leather or cord.
There may have been a specific style of belt that signified dhimmi status,
but we don't seem to know what it looks like. Dhimmis were also required to wear
"honey-colored" or yellow headwear. Social norms around veiling were more lenient in Al-Andalus,
so I have a simple stole or scarf made of lightweight yellow wool, hemmed with silk thread.
If I were married I would probably cover my hair fully when out in public, but I am not, so draping
a stole loosely around my head and shoulders will do. I haven't yet found any information
on how hair was styled under the headwear, so it's in a single braid at the back of my head.
These two Jews, far apart as they were, might have been related. They could have been cousins,
or in-laws, their families could have traded with eachother. Their lives would not have been
perfect, or easy, or without discrimination, but they could have lived out their days in
relative safety, with the freedom to prosper, to put down roots, and to live their lives as Jews.
It didn't last.
The first recorded blood libel in history happened in England, not even a hundred years
after Jewish communities made their homes there. The Jews of Norwich were blamed for
the unsolved death of a 12-year-old Christian boy— a boy who was made a saint. In Andalusia,
the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 11th century led to political instability,
which spelled danger for even the highest-ranking Spanish Jews. In 1066, the same year William the
Conqueror came to England, at least 1,500 Jewish households were massacred in the city of Granada.
Spanish Jews were endangered both by the Christian rulers' reconquest of the peninsula,
and by the less tolerant Almoravids and Almohads who came to aid the Muslim rulers against the
Christians. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides fled Muslim-ruled Spain in the mid-12th century.
In 1290, after having taxed English Jews far beyond what they could pay, the English crown
expelled every Jew from the country with only what they could carry, which freed the English
upper classes from the debts they owed and allowed them to seize Jewish property. In 1492,
less than a year after Christian rulers reconquered the whole Iberian peninsula, every Jew
who had not been forcibly converted by the Spanish Inquisition was expelled. Jews were not legally
allowed to live in England until 1656, and when they were, many of those that made the journey
were the descendants of Sephardi Jews expelled from Spain a hundred and fifty years prior.
So when you think about Medieval Europe— and, much of Asia and Africa too— when you build
your mental picture, your story about who was part of that world . . . Remember us. We were there.
You might have known us at a glance, by a red apron or a yellow veil, or we might
have looked like anyone else. We were there, and you will find us if you remember to look.
And if you can't find us . . . it isn't happenstance.
It's because we were erased.
Thank you for watching, and as always, I hope you learned something! And again,
extra special thanks to my CoSy viewers. There are numerous playlists of CoSy content,
which I'll toss a card for up in the corner, and a link to the full schedule including all
the live panels, Instagram challenges, and Discord server invite is in the description.
If you're watching after CoSy, you can still see all of the videos! Don't forget to like,
subscribe, and leave me a comment about your favorite often-forgotten part of history.
I'll see you in my next video . . . which, if it's still CoSy, will be on Saturday!
Keep on learning, and keep looking for what's missing as well as what's already there. Bye~