Judaism discovered

Excerpts from the introductory sections of Ariel Toaffs "Blood Passover" ("Pasque di Sangue")

...in Anglo-Saxon (British and American) historical-anthropological research on Jews and ritual murder (from Joshua Trachtenberg to Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia), magic and witchcraft traditionally feature among the favorite aspects under examination. This approach, for a variety of reasons, is enjoying an extraordinary rebirth at the present time (cf. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany, [London, 1988]). But that which seems to obtain a high degree of popularity at the moment is not necessarily convincing to meticulous scholars, not content with superficial and impressionistic responses. Nearly all the studies on Jews and the so-called "blood libel" accusation to date have concentrated almost exclusively on persecutions and persecutors; on the ideologies and presumed motives of those same persecutors: their hatred of Jews; their political and/or religious cynicism; their xenophobic and racist rancor; their contempt for minorities. Little or no attention has been paid to the attitudes of the persecuted Jews themselves and their underlying patterns of ideological behavior — even when they confessed themselves guilty of the specific accusations brought against them. ⁶⁹¹

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Even less attention has been paid to the behavioral patterns and attitudes of these same Jews; nor have these matters been considered worthy even of interest, attention or serious investigation. On the contrary: these behavioral patterns and attitudes have simply been incontrovertibly dismissed as non-existent — as invented out of whole cloth by the sick minds of anti-Semites and fanatical, obtusely dogmatic Christians. ⁶⁹²

Nevertheless, although difficult to digest, these actions, once their authenticity is demonstrated or even supposed as possible, should be the object of serious study by reputable scholars...Scholars must be permitted the possibility of attempting serious research on the actual, or presumed, religious, theological and historical motivations of the Jewish protagonists themselves. Blind excuses are just as worthless as blind dogmatic condemnation: neither can demonstrate anything other than that which already existed in the mind of the observer to begin with. It is precisely the possibility of evading any clear, precise and unambiguous definition of the reality of ritual child murders rooted in religious faith, which has facilitated the intentional or involuntary blindness of Christian and Jewish scholars alike, both pro and anti-Jewish. Any additional example of the two-dimensional "flattening" of Jewish history, viewed exclusively as the history of religious or political "anti-Semitism" at all times, must necessarily be regretted. When "one-way" questions presuppose "one-way" answers; 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 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.

(For example, the recent volume by Susanna Buttaroni and Stanislaw Musial, Ritual Murder: Legend in European History, [published in 2003 in Crakow in Polish and English and in Vienna in German], opens with a preamble [p. 12] which is, in its way, conclusive: "It is important to state from

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the very beginning that Jewish ritual murder never took place. Today proving such theories wrong is not the goal of scientific research").

As stressed above, it is simply not permissible to ignore the mental attitudes of the Jews who were tried, tortured and executed for ritual murder, or persecuted on the same charge. At some point, we must ask ourselves whether the "confessions" of the defendants constitute exact records of actual events, or merely the reflection of beliefs forming part of a symbolic, mythical and magical context which must be reconstructed to be understood. In other words: do these "confessions" reflect merely the beliefs of Gentile judges, clergy and populace, with their private phobias and obsessions, or, on the contrary, of the defendants themselves? Untangling the knot is not an easy or pleasant task; but perhaps it is not entirely impossible. In the first place, therefore, we must investigate the mental attitudes of the Jews themselves, in the tragic drama of ritual sacrifice, together with the accompanying religious beliefs and superstitious and magical elements. Due attention must be paid to the admissions which made historical and local context, identifiable within a succession of German-speaking territories on both sides of the Alps, throughout the long period from the First Crusade to the twilight of the Middle Ages. In substance, we should investigate the possible presence of Jewish beliefs relating to ritual child murders, linked to the feast of Passover, while attempting to reconstitute the significance of any such beliefs. The trial records, particularly the minutely detailed reports relating to the death of Little Simon of Trent, cannot be dismissed on the assumption that all such records represent simply the specific deformation of beliefs held by the judges, who are alleged to have collected detailed but manipulated confessions by means of force and violence to ensure that all such confessions conformed to the anti-Jewish theories already in circulation at the time.

A careful reading of the trial records, in both form and substance, recall too many features of the conceptual realities, rituals, liturgical practices and mental attitudes typical of, and exclusive to, one distinct, particular Jewish world — features which can in no way be attributed to suggestion on the part of judges or prelates — to be ignored. Only a frank analysis of these elements can make any valid, new and original contribution to the reconstruction of beliefs relating to child sacrifice held by the alleged Jewish perpetrators themselves — whether real or imagined — in addition to attitudes based on the unshakeable faith in their redemption and ultimate vengeance against the

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Gentiles, emerging from blood and suffering, which can only be understood in this context. In this Jewish-Germanic world, in continual movement, profound currents of popular magic had, over time, distorted the basic framework of Jewish religious law, changing its forms and meanings. It is in these "mutations" in the Jewish tradition — which are, so to speak, authoritative — that the theological justifications of the commemoration [in mockery of the Passion of Christ] is to be sought, which, in addition to its celebration in the liturgical rite, was also intended to revive, in action, vengeance against a hated enemy continually reincarnated throughout the long history of Israel (...Amalek, Edom, Haman, Jesus). ⁶⁹³

We must therefore decide whether or not the alleged "confessions" relating to the crucifixion of children the evening before Passover; the testimonies relating to the utilization of Christian blood in the celebration of the feast of the Passover, represent, in actual fact, mere myths, i.e., beliefs and ideologies dating far back in time; or actual ritual practices, i.e., events which actually occurred, in reality, and were actually celebrated, in prescribed and consolidated forms, with their more or less fixed baggage of formulae and anathemas, accompanying the magical practices and superstitions which formed an integral part of the mentality of the Jews themselves.

In any case, I repeat, we should avoid the easy short-cut of considering these trials and testimonies only as projections — extorted from the accused by torture and other coercive methods, both psychological and physical — of the stereotypes, superstitions, fears and beliefs of the judges and populace. Such a method would trigger a process inevitably leading to the dismissal of these same testimonies as "valueless documents with little basis in reality," except as "indications of the obsessions of a Christian society" which saw, in the Jew, merely a "distorted mirror image of its own defects.

This task appears to have seemed absolutely prohibitive to many scholars, even famous ones, well-educated men of good will, having concerned

⁶⁹³ "...profound currents of popular magic had, over time, distorted the basic framework of Jewish religious law, changing its forms and meanings...these 'mutations' in the Jewish tradition — which are, so to speak, authoritative..." Here is another heavily suppressed truth -this time concerning the Babylonian-pagan nature of Judaism - which Toaff has the adroitness to address. It would be interesting to see at what date Toaff fixed the rise of this "mutation." Note too that Judaism has a litany of personages who it is incumbent on the believer to hate, from Amalek to Jesus, an eternal train of loathing. What a terrible burden for the mind and spirit of the individual Judaic to bear — this religious obligation to hate!

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themselves with this difficult topic. First, Gavin Lanmuir, who, starting from the facts of Norwich, England, considers the crucifixion and ritual haemotophagia, which appear in two different phases of history, as simply the cultivated and interested inventions of ecclesiastical groups, denying the Jews any role at all except a merely passive one, devoid of responsibility. (Cf. G.L. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Anti-semitism, [Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1990]). Lanmuir was later followed by Willehad Paul Eckert, Diego Qualiglioni, Wolfgang Treue and Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, who...paying particular attention to the Trent trial documentation, considered it all tout court and often a priori a baseless libel, an expression of hostility on the part of the Christian majority against the Jewish minority...⁶⁹⁴

According to the point of view adopted by these researchers, the inquisitor's interrogation methods and tortures served no purpose other than to orchestrate a completely harmonious confession of guilt, i.e., of adherence to a truth already existing in the minds of the inquisitors. The use of leading questions and a variety of stratagems, including, in particular, refined torture, were intended to force the defendants to admit that the victim had indeed been kidnapped and tortured according to Jewish ritual, and finally killed in hatred of the Christian faith. The confessions are said to be obviously unbelievable, since the murders were allegedly committed to permit the ritual use of Christian blood, in violation of the Biblical prohibition against the ingestion of blood, a prohibition scrupulously observed by all Jews. As to torture, it is best to recall that its use in the municipalities of northern Italy, at least from the beginning of the thirteenth century, was regulated, not only by tractate, but by statute as well. As an instrument for determining the truth, torture was permitted in the presence of serious and well-justified clues in cases in which it was considered truly necessary by the podesta (magistrate) and judges. All confessions extorted in this manner, to be considered valid, had to be corroborated by the inquisitor, later, under normal conditions, i.e., in the absence of physical pain or even

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the threat of renewed torture. (Cf. E. Maffei, Dal reato alia sentenza. II processo criminale in eta communale, [Rome, 2005], pp. 98-101). These procedures, while unacceptable in our eyes today, were in fact the norm (then), and seem to have been observed in the case of the Trent trials.

...we must attempt to search for the heterogenous elements and particular historical-religious experiences which are alleged to have made the killing of Christian children for ritualistic purposes appear plausible, during a certain period, within a certain geographical area (i.e., the German-speaking regions of trans-Alpine and Cisalpine Italy and Germany, or wherever there were strong ethnic elements of German Jewish origin, any time between the Middle Ages and the early modern era)..Jn this research, we should not be surprised to find customs and traditions linked to experiences...which were to prove more deeply rooted than the standards of religious law itself, although diametrically opposed in practice, accompanied by all the appropriate and necessary formal and textual justifications. Action and reaction: instinctive, visceral, virulent, in which children, innocent and unaware, became the victims of God's love and vengeance. The blood of children, bathing the altars of a God considered to be in need of guidance, sometimes, of impatient compulsion, impelling Him to protect and to punish. At the same time, we must keep in mind that, 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 halakha, in addition to deeply-rooted customs saturated with magical and alchemical elements, all combined to form a deadly cocktail when mixed with violent and aggressive religious fundamentalism. ⁶⁹⁵

There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that, 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

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his justifications and his "distinctions" (Cecil Roth, The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jews: The Report by Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV), London, 1935. The Ganganelli Report was republished by M. Introvigne, Cattolici, antisemitismo e sangue: 11 mito delVomicidio rituale, 2004).⁶⁹⁶ The records of the ritual murder trials should be examined with great care and with all due caution.

...The Trent trials are a priceless document of this very kind. The trial records — especially, the cracks and rifts in the overall structure permitting the researcher to distinguish and differentiate, in substance, not just in form, between the information provided by the accused and the stereotypes imposed by the inquisitors — are dazzlingly clear. This fact cannot be glossed over or distorted by means of preliminary categorizations of an ideological or polemical nature, intended to invalidate those very distinctions. In many cases, everything the defendants said was incomprehensible to the judges -often, because their speech was full of Hebraic ritual and liturgical formulae pronounced with a heavy German accent, unique to the German Jewish community, which not even Italian Jews could understand;⁶⁹⁷ in other cases, because their speech referred to mental concepts of an ideological nature totally alien to everything Christian. It is obvious that neither the formulae nor the language can be dismissed as merely the astute fabrications and artificial suggestions of the judges in these trials. Dismissing them as worthless, as invented out of whole cloth, as the spontaneous fantasies of defendants terrorized by torture and projected to satisfy the demands of their inquisitors, cannot be imposed as the compulsory starting point, the prerequisite, for valid research, least of all for the present paper. Any conclusion, of any nature whatsoever, must be duly demonstrated after a strict

⁶⁹⁶ Toaff makes an important distinction concerning "momentum" which can lead to
stereotypes and rumors. Because some accounts of Judaic ritual murder are true, not all
accounts are true. One should no more automatically believe that Judaics are always guilty of
ritual murder accusations, than one should automatically believe that anyone who doubts the
authenticity of some charges of Judaic ritual murder is a "bigoted antisemite." It is prudent of
Toaff to cite the Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV) report in this context. It shows he can both
uphold its specific conclusions and his own careful and meticulous investigation.

⁶⁹⁷ Toaff notes: The expressions in Hebrew (ritual and liturgical) appearing in these
depositions can usually be reconstructed with precision, fitting easily into the context of the
ideological and religious discourse of the world of Ashkenazi Jewry to which these Jews
belonged. There is, therefore, no question of any Satanic language redolent of witchcraft, or
"pseudo-language" invented by judges to demonize the Jews, as suggested by many writers .

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evaluation and verification of all the underlying evidence sine ira et studio, using all available sources capable of confirming or invalidating that evidence in a persuasive and cogent manner.

The present paper could not have been written without the advice, criticism, meetings and discussions with Dani Nissim, a long-time friend, who, in addition to his great experience as a bibliographer and bibliophile, made available to me his profound knowledge of the history of the Jewish community of the Veneto region, and of Padua in particular. The conclusions of this work are nevertheless mine alone, and I have no doubt that that the above named persons would very largely disagree with them. I have engaged in lengthy discussions of the chapters on the Jews of Venice with Reiny Mueller, over the course of which I was given highly useful suggestions and priceless advice. Thanks are also due to the following persons for their assistance in the retrieval of the archival and literary documentation; for their encouragement and criticism, to Diego Quaglioni; Gian Maria Varanini; Rachele Scuro; Miriam Davide; Elliot Horowitz; Judith Dishon; Boris Kotlerman and Ita Dreyfus.

Grateful thanks are also due to those of my students who participated actively in my seminars on the topic, held at the Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University (2001-2002 and 2005-2006), during which I presented the provisional results of my research. First and foremost, however, I wish to thank Ugo Berti, who persuaded me to undertake this difficult task, giving me the courage to overcome the many foreseeable obstacles which stood in the way. (End quote from the Introduction to Blood Passover by Ariel Toaff).
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Judaism's hatred for Christians is remarkable in the depth of its antagonism

The deluge of stories of a "Holocaust" by Germans against Judaics in World War II has eclipsed much of the memory of the historic rabbinic persecution of Christians dating to antiquity.

"...in the time of the martyrdom of Polycarp~the Jews of Smyrna were among the most bitter enemies of Christians, and among the most violent in demanding the death of Polycarp.

"Eusebius (Eccl. Hist, iv 15) says, that when Polycarp was apprehended, and brought before the Proconsul at Smyrna, the Jews were most furious of all in demanding his condemnation. When the mob, after his condemnation to death, set about gathering fuel to burn him, 'the Jews/ he says, 'being especially zealous, as was their custom—ran to procure fuel.' And when, as the burning failed, the martyr was transfixed with weapons, the Jews urged and besought the magistrate that his body might not be given up to Christians."⁶⁹⁸

Judaism's hatred for Christians is remarkable in the depth of its antagonism and the lengths to which it will go to avoid chukas akum (imitating the Christians). Somehow, unlike historic detestation for Judaics on the part of some individual Christians, the institutionalized rabbinic hatred for Christians is never repented and almost always justified as an "understandable reaction to vicious anti-semitic persecution." The reverse — justifying antipathy toward Judaics based on historic Judaic oppression of Christians, whether in Soviet Russia by circumcised Judaic Communists, or in eighteenth century Poland, is never permitted; is always denounced and abhorred.

In Poland: "(Jews) supervise the collection of public revenues. They have also gained control of inns, bankrupt estates, villages and public land by means of which they have subjugated poor Christian farmers. The Jews are cruel taskmasters, not only working the farmers harshly and forcing them to carry excessive loads, but also whipping them for punishment. ...So it has come about that those poor farmers are the subjects of the Jews, submissive to their will and power. Furthermore, although the power to punish rests

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with the Christian official, he must comply with the commands of the Jews and inflict the punishments they desire. If he doesn't, he would lose his post. Therefore the tyrannical orders of the Jews have to be carried out." ⁶"

God help any Polish Catholic at any time who sought relief from this Talmudic tyranny. But vengeance against Christians is institutionalized in the religion of Orthodox Judaism; that is why the circumcised Judaics who helped to take over Christian Russia in 1917 made "anti-semitism" a capital crime. The Bolshevik leader Hirsch Apfelbaum ("Zinoviev") writing in Krasnaya Gazeta (Aug. 31, 1918), demanded than an ocean of blood wash over the Christian people of Russia: "Let there be floods of blood...More blood! As much as possible."

Maimonides decreed: "The Yid should be distinguished from the Christians and distinct in his dress and his actions, just as he is different from them in his knowledge and understanding." The basic halacha is that any of the practices that Christians use in their false worship (avodah zara) is forbidden to be done by Judaics (Yiddin) even if Judaics used these practices prior to Christianity. In other words, even if the Bible—or the Talmud— sanctions a certain practice, Judaics are forbidden by the rabbis from continuing to do so if this practice was subsequently adopted by Christians. So for example the Tosafos describe the custom of a matzeivah, a single stone upon which korbonos (temple offerings) were brought. The use of a matzeivah in this manner is mentioned many times in the Sefer Bereishis. Yet the rabbis in Sefer Devorim prohibit its use, since it was eventually adopted by the Christians. As noted, organs may not be used in a shul even though organs in Judaic services can be traced back hundreds of years, but since organs came to be used in churches, the rabbis forbade their use in synagogues. The same proscription applies to the singing of any Old Testament hymn subsequently sung in a church. By the same token, the use of flowers in the synagogue, though traditional in Judaism, were banned by the Vilna Gaon (Lithuania: Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon). Rabbi Moshe Feinstein concurred, citing the Shulchan Aruch.

The mystery of the ever-present male Judaic head-covering (kipa, yarmulke etc.) is solved by the knowledge that it is mandatory in a religious context because being bare-headed is mandatory for Christian males in

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church. Rabbi Feinstein rules that entering a synagogue or davening (praying) on the part of a Judaic male without his head covered is strictly forbidden since Christian men always remove their hats when entering a church. Feinstein discusses the need to recite a penitential purification formula (shemonah esrei) on the part of the Judiac male who imitates Christians by praying with an uncovered head. However, many rabbinic authorities (poskim) permit an uncovered male Judaic head in order to deceive the goyim in circumstances in which to wear a yarmulke would raise their ire: testimony in a court of gentile law, for example, or in circumstances where the wearing of a head-covering might cause a Judaic male to lose his job. Hence, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, an Orthodox Judaic follower of the Talmud, when running for the office of Vice-President and later President of the United States, appeared in public in most cases without his yarmulke, so as not to risk losing the prospective "job" he was seeking.

We can even trace the origins of the Yiddish language to hatred of Christians. The Judaic-German halachic decisor Rabbi Moshe Sofer (the "Chasam Sofer") ruled that, based on the eighteen decrees of prohibition of the Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Talmud), one of which forbids the adoption of the language of the Christians, it was later necessary for Judaics to make many alterations to the German language, which as a result led to the gradual rise of Yiddish.

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