Pinkas MeHaBrithoth.

(CIRCUMCISION REGISTER).

Bédarrides, (France)

1639-72

“Record of the circumcisions performed by me, Leon of Cavaillon, a resident of Bédarrides since the year 5400 (1639-40).” Hebrew manuscript, documents 49 circumcisions performed over a period of 42 years.

Far older than most surviving circumcision registers, this manuscript is of particular interest, as a relic of Jewish life in the small towns and villages of the French papal territories. It was only at the end of the 17th century that the Jewish population was confined to the carrières, or ghettos, of the “four holy communities:” Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon, and L’Isle. Until then, Jews lived all over the Comtat-Venaissin. The most important of these smaller communities was Bédarrides, seven miles north of Avignon along the Rhône, next to the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. While the Comtat was an enclave within France, Bédarrides was an enclave within the Comtat, held by successive popes in a personal capacity rather than a corporate one. For its Jewish inhabitants, this technical distinction had the practical effect of exempting them alone, among all the Pope’s Jews, from the obligation to go about in a yellow hat. Its distinct status was not enough, however, to stop the disbanding of even this privileged rural Jewish community in 1694, on the initiative of a zealous vice-legate of Avignon. The circumcisions recorded here by the Mohel Leon of Cavaillon of Bédarrides, were often members of his own extended family and can be found in locations as obscure as Malemort (also known as Malemort-les-Lavoirs and now as Malemort-du-Comtat). Noteworthy in this register, is the custom documented in his repeated reference to not merely a godfather (or, as among Ashkenazim, two godfathers, “sandek” and “kvater”--from the old German Gevater, co-father) but, rather, to a godfather and a godmother “sandek” and “sandeketh.”