Prior to effective medical techniques, amulets were a trusted method of protecting believers at their most vulnerable. To keep newborns and their motheres safe, Jews drew on prayers, incantations, and legends of creation as well as angels and demons

Birth has always been dangerous, for mother and baby alike. Although 20th-century medical advances have reduced the risks, the specter of death loomed over every birth until then. Estimates from 18th-century France suggest that a quarter of all infants died either at birth or in their first year, and barely more than half made it to age five. No wonder people tried anything to safeguard their newborns. In both Christian Europe and Islamic lands, Jews adapted such ancient local practices as magic recipes and spells, while birth amulets have been in use since antiquity and became widespread in the 1500s, after the invention of printing. 

Amulets were often inscribed with incantations and magic symbols believed to bind and constrict the supernatural forces of evil in the world. Such talismans were hung over the birthing mother’s bed (or elsewhere in the room), attached to her limbs, or placed upon her stomach or other parts of her body. Sometimes they were even worn as jewelry. The words “Adam and Eve, out with Lilith” might also be written and circled on the wall, and “Sanoy, Sansanoy, and Samangalef” – the names of three mythical Jewish angels – would be scrawled on the door. 

 

Lilith

Most amulets designed to protect mother and child focused on the she-demon Lilith. Although a central figure in Jewish demonology, Lilith is older than the first Jewish context in which she’s mentioned. A list of Sumerian kings, dating from 2400 BCE, features a demon with a similar name and notes that Gilgamesh’s father was the evil spirit Lilu. Genesis Rabba, a midrashic work, identifies Lilith as “the first Eve.”