Still Running Off at the Keyboard

BLOODY PASSOVER by Ariel Toaff

The book is online here.

First, Toaff's credentials. From Wikipedia:

Ariel Toaff is a professor of Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar Ilan University. He is the son of Elio Toaff, a former Chief Rabbi of Rome.

Among his works are The Jews in Medieval Assisi 1305-1487: A social and economic history of a small Jewish community (1979), Il vino e la carne. Una comunità ebraica nel Medioevo ("Wine and Meat. A Jewish Community in the Middle Ages", 1989), Mostri giudei. L'immaginario ebraico dal Medioevo alla prima età moderna ("Jewish Monsters. The Jewish Imaginary from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era", 1996) and Mangiare alla giudia. La cucina ebraica in Italia dal Rinascimento all'età moderna ("Eating 'alla giudia'. Jewish Cooking in Italy from the Renaissance to the Modern Age", 2000).

That should qualify him to write the sort of book I'm looking at.

Next, some statements from the translators comments:

Prof. Toaff has since partially recanted, and now maintains that:

- yes, Jews are a corrupting and disruptive element in society;
- yes, Jews lend money at 40% and seem to do little else;
- yes, Jews buy and sell justice with huge bribes;
- yes, Jews pull off all sorts of fraudulent bankruptcies and swindles;
- yes, Jews resort to poisoning and assassination when thwarted;
- yes, Jews are obsessed with hatred for Christians and the Christian religion;
- yes, Jews kidnapped and castrated Christian boys on a large scale and sold them into slavery in Islamic Spain for centuries;
- yes, Jews used [and still use?] human blood in all sorts of quack remedies, despite the Biblical prohibition, even for minor complaints;
- yes, Jews [and still use?] Christian human blood in their matzoh balls at Passover;
- yes, Jews [and still use?] Christian human blood in their wine at Passover;
- yes, the blood had to be from Christian boys no more than 7 years of age;
- yes, the blood had [has?] to be certified kosher by a rabbi;
- yes, there was [is?] a large and profitable trade in fake blood products and animal blood, which was [are?] unsuitable to the purpose;
- yes, Christians tried to sell the blood of Christian boys to Jews, but were rejected because the Jews feared it was animal blood; but no, no
Christian boys were ever killed to obtain the blood. Never, never! Or hardly ever. It all came from “voluntary donors”!

The translators are Gian Marco Lucchese and Pietro Gianetti. They do not cite a source for the claim that Toaff believes these things.

Moving on to the book itself, Toaff writes:

...when the stereotype of "anti-Semitism" hovers menacingly over any objective approach to the difficult problem of historical research in relation to Jews, any research ends up by losing a large part of its value.

All such research is thus transformed, by the very nature of things, into a "guided tour" conducted against a fictitious and unreal background, in a "virtual reality show" intended to produce the desired reaction, which has naturally been decided upon in advance. (p. 9)

In speaking of "customs and traditions linked to experiences which did not exist elsewhere" Toaff writes:

...in the German-speaking Jewish communities, the phenomenon, where it took root, was generally limited to groups in which popular tradition, which had, over time, distorted, evaded or replaced the ritual standards of Jewish halakhah, in addition to deeply-rooted customs saturated with magical and alchemical elements, all combined to form a deadly cocktail when mixed with violent and agressive religious fundamentalism. There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that, that, [sic] once the tradition became widespread, the stereotypical image of Jewish ritual child murder continued inevitably to take its own course, out of pure momentum. Thus, the Jews were accused of every child murder, much more often wrongly than rightly, especially if discovered in the springtime. In this sense, Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli, later Pope Clement XIV, was correct in his famous report, in both his justifications and his "distinctions". (pp 13-14)

He claims that the Jews in the area and at the time when this study is set identified more readily with other Jews who thought similarly than they did with the nation in which they were dwelling:

Moreover, the Jewish community at Venice, like the others of more or less distant Ashkenazi origin to be seen in the more immediate and smaller centers of northern Italy, formed part of a German-Jewish koinè, consisting of German-speaking Jews on both sides of the Alps, linked by liturgical usages and similar customs, sharing the same history, often marked by events both tragic and invariably mythologized, as well as by the same attitude of harsh hostility to the arrogant Christianity of surrounding society, the same religious texts of reference, the
same rabbinical hierarchies, produced by the Ashkenazi Talmudic academies to whose authority they intended to submit, and the same family structures (36). These communities made up a homogenous entity from the social and religious point of view, which might be called supranational, in which the Jews of Pavia identified themselves with those from Regensburg, the Jews from Treviso with the Jews of Nuremberg, and the Jews of Trent with those from Cologne and Prague, but certainly not with those from Rome, Florence, or Bologna. Relations with the Italian Jews who often lived alongside them, where such relations existed, were markedly fortuitous, based on contingent common needs of an economic nature, and the common perception of being viewed as identical by the surrounding Christian environment. (p. 25)

In other words, I've come again upon evidence that unlike Roman Catholicism, Judaism is not monolithic.

Throughout the book there are numerous examples cited of child murders attributed to the Jews. Most of the testimony for these claims was obtained under torture, so I am not going to blog any of the claims. Whether or not any of them are true is for the reader to decide. The details of the trial of the Jews accused of killing Simon of Trent and the lesser details of these other ritual murders takes up the bulk of the book. The setting of these stories is the Ashkenazi Jewish community. They span a couple of centuries. Every chapter is quite heavily footnoted.

Toaff devotes many pages to establishing an anti-Christian feeling among the Jews:

Jews in the Duchy of Milan were tried and sentenced for the possession of books, liturgical and study texts containing offensive and insulting expressions about Jesus, the Messiah, the Virgin Mary, the dogmas of the Christian religion and anyone practicing Christianity On [sic] at least four occasions during the second half of the 15th century. (p. 89]

In the Simon of Trent trial, it was alleged that the Jews had murdered Simon in order to acquire his blood for use in the Passover ritual where it would be mixed with the bread and wine. Therefore Toaff concentrates on the question of whether blood was used in medical and ritual purposes historically in this time setting.

Circumcision hemorrhages, epistaxis [nosebleed], overly abundant menstruation, open hemorrhoids, abnormal abdominal flow. The most
effective cure to control and heal them always seemed to be
recourse to the powerful and magical powdered blood of children. But in this, the Jews were acting no differently from the Christians of the
surrounding society, despite Hindenbach’s feigned and artificial stupefaction. In popular medicine, blood, whether human or animal, was
alleged to be an indispensable component in the preparation of electuaries [powder-based medications mixed with honey or syrup to form a
paste] and astringent powders of extraordinary effectiveness (10). As Pier Camporesi wrote, "a sacred and alchemistic haemostatic, blood
(and not incorrectly, in epochs in which hemorrhages represented a terrible tragedy, was considered a powerful healant" (11). According to
the prescriptions of the Theatrum Chemicum, marvelous unguents and powders were derived from human blood, capable of arresting even
the most resistant flow of blood and of expelling dangerous infirmities (12). The most expert specialists knew that human blood possessed
great therapeutic powers and was therefore to be prepared and treated with the greatest care. (pp. 94-95)

Toaff claims the Cabbalah speaks of the use of blood for circumcision:

The texts of the practical Cabbalah, the handbooks of stupendous medications (segullot), compendia of portentous electuaries, recipe books
of secret cures, mostly composed in the German-speaking territories, even very recently, stress the haemostatic and astringent powders of
young blood, above all, on the circumcision wound. These are ancient prescriptions, handed down for generations, put together, with variants
of little importance, by cabbalistic herb alchemists of various origins, and repeatedly reprinted right down to the present day, in testimony to
the extraordinary empirical effectiveness of these remedies. (p. 97)

Toaff addresses the Biblical injunction against consuming blood by citing passages in medical literature of the time that recommended the use of blood in treating disease:

if we turn once again to the compendia of segullot in use among Jews of German origin, we will find a broad range of recipes
providing for the oral ingestion of blood, both human and animal. These recipes are stupendous electuaries, sometimes complex in
preparation, intended to cure ailments and bring about cures, as well as to protect and to cure. (p. 101)

Perhaps the solution to the Biblical and rabbinical contradiction between the consumption of blood and the custom -- established among the
Ashkenazi Jews -- of consuming it on the most varied occasions, may be identified in a late response of Jacob Reischer of Prague (1670-
1734), head of the yeshivah of Ansbach in Bavaria and later active at Worms and Metz (45). The ritualistic text contains testimonies to a
practice widespread over time immemorial among the Jews of the German community, and considered de facto permissible, notwithstanding
the fact that it obviously contradicted the dictates of the Talmud. Being a custom now generalized among the Jews (minhagh Israel), it came,
over time, to assume the same strictness as a ritual standard. The inquiry and the response of the Reischer referred to the consumption of the
blood of the stambecco (Bocksblut), for medicinal use, even in cases in which the patient was not in danger of his life. (p. 105)

The legality of this custom [drinking the dried blood of the ibex] must be upheld because it is long-established. This medication is obviously permissible, because clearly, when a custom becomes widespread among the Jews (minhagh Israel), it must be considered to be on the level of the Torah itself. ...the notion that a custom established over time in the community of Israel, even if in contrast with the norms, was to be considered perfectly authorized and permissible. (p. 105)

To be continued...