Reply To: how did early jews keep warm in terribly cold climates during the winter?

Even when they were farmers, Jews did not live in isolated homesteads (the way Americans do), but would live in a village from which everyone would walk to their fields (as is probably the case in most of the world), and would go to a regional center for market days. That would have especially been true of Jews living in northern Europe during the last 1000 years (and remember the topic under discussion is keeping warm in winter, which is an issue in places where you can go several months with temperatures being clearly above freezing – but never was an issue in Eretz Yisrael).