She is also said to have bathed the dead and to have sewn their shrouds, meritorious endeavors in Jewish tradition. As a respected investment broker, Dulcea may have been involved in arranging matches and negotiating the financial arrangements which accompanied them. Unusually learned for a woman of her milieu, Dulcea is said to have taught other women and led them in prayer. Eleazar designates Dulcea as ḥasidah (pious or saintly) and ẓadeket (righteous) in addition to noting her domestic management and business finesse, he praises her needlework, recounting that she prepared thread and gut to sew together books, Torah scrolls, and other religious objects. Eleazar's elegy, an expanded alphabetic acrostic, links numerous details of Dulcea's domestic, religious, and communal endeavors with the praise of the "woman of valor" in Proverbs 31. These assaults did not go unpunished the local authorities, in accordance with the German emperor's mandate of protecting the Jews of his realm, quickly captured and executed at least one of the men. While the two miscreants may have worn Crusader markings, they appear to have attacked the family out of criminal motives, probably prompted by Dulcea's business reputation. Although many scholars have assumed the attackers were Crusaders, there were no massed Crusader forces in Germany at this time. Both documents are important sources of information about medieval Jewish women's activities. Eleazar ben Judah's surviving writings are two Hebrew accounts, one in prose and one in poetry, recounting the murders of Dulcea, and their daughters, Bellette and Hannah, by intruders in November 1196. A capable businesswoman, she was apparently entrusted with the funds of neighbors which she pooled and lent out at profitable rates of interest on which she received commissions. Married to a leading figure in the *Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, the German-Jewish pietist movement, she was the economic support for an extensive household, including children, students, and teachers. Dulcea came from medieval German Jewry's elite leadership class.
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