Thursday, February 8, 2007
This is unreal, and I love the way the "Jewish" point of view is put immediately on the defensive -- 'Jewish figures "denied" the claims'. This Israeli professor, according to the article, used the "confessions" of Middle Ages Jews to assemble his book. One is left speechless.
Telegraph: Professor outrages Jews with book claim
The details were revealed in yesterday's Corriere Della Sera newspaper which published extracts of the book by Professor Ariel Toaff, Easter of Blood. European Jews and ritual homicides.
Last night his claims were denied by leading Jewish figures including his father Elio, once chief rabbi of Rome.
In the book, Prof Toaff describes the multilation and crucification of a two-year-old boy to recreate Christ's execution at Pesach, the Jewish Easter. The festival marks the fleeing of the Jews from Egypt and Prof Toaff says Christian blood was used for "magic and therapeutic practices."
In some cases the blood was mixed with dough to make the azzimo, unleavened bread, eaten at Pesach.
He says the acts took place in northern Italy, around the city of Trento in German-speaking areas that border modern-day Austria.
Prof Toaff bases his book on confessions he says came from Jews captured and put on trial for the practice, which took place from 1100 and 1500.
He writes that several confessed to the crucifixion of Christian children and that they were executed.
However, the claims were condemned by Jewish leaders in Rome. Their declaration read: "There has never existed in the Jewish tradition any ritual involving human blood. It is improper to use the declarations extracted under torture hundreds of years ago to construct theories as original as they are aberrant.
"The only blood split in these stories was that of many innocent Jews killed for unjust accusations."
However, Prof Toaff, who teaches at the Bar Illan University near Tel Aviv, responded: "This declaration is a disgrace, before judging they should have read my book and then saved themselves the bother."
Update: Also at the Jerusalem Post: Historian gives credence to blood libel
Luzzatto describes Toaff's work as a "magnificent book of history...Toaff holds that from 1100 to about 1500...several crucifixions of Christian children really happened, bringing about retaliations against entire Jewish communities - punitive massacres of men, women, children. Neither in Trent in 1475 nor in other areas of Europe in the late Middle Ages were Jews always innocent victims."
"A minority of fundamentalist Ashkenazis...carried out human sacrifices," Luzzatto continued.
Toaff offers as an example the case of Saint Simonino of Trent. In March 1475, shortly after a child's body was found in a canal near the Jewish area of Trent, the city's Jews were accused of murdering Simonino and using his blood to make matzot...
Simonino of Trent is also known as "Simon," as seen at this "Traditionalist" (as opposed to mainstream) Catholic web site.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Bar-Ilan Professor: Jews murdered Christians for Matza (Update).
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Al-Qaeda TV and just about every terrorist group is going to love this story. At a minimum, it proves that 'academentia' is alive and well in Israel too. It is not a new claim, it even was heard on Oprah a couple of years ago, who accepted it wit ...... Read More
Un-effin-believable. I don't even think Wheels of Justice would say this. What a genius Jew-hating, Nazi of a Jew- a professor who makes the blood libel seem possible. Torquemada would be proud. Then again, so will Gilad Atzmon and Paul Eisen.
what the FUCK ?!
The basis of his book is confessions extracted through torture during the Inquisition? Good lord.
"Prof Toaff bases his book on confessions he says came from Jews captured and put on trial for the practice, which took place from 1100 and 1500."
Yeah, that was the first thing that jumped out at me: Of course they confessed under torture. And their confessions were dutifully recorded in Christian records. Another dead giveaway--in case anyone needed one--is that the Jews never "celebrated" Christ's execution. Jesus was not an important figure for Jews; it was only in the Christian imagination that Jews were Jesus' enemy.
What kind of idiot is this!? What is it about us Jews that we generate, from our own ranks, people who hate us so much? Not merely indifferent to us, mind you, but who hate us? And who can deal in such sophistries.
Maybe we should also concede that there might have been something after all to those witches' trials during the same period. After all, those women confessed, too.
It's not just the obnoxiousness of this professor, but his stunning stupidity.
What I think is entirely possible is that you'll get some Europeans, perhaps not many, but some, who will say that maybe where there's smoke there's fire. That, of course, Jews haven't done this in centuries, but maybe in the distant past...
In 1989 Oprah Winfrey had a woman, Vicki Polin, on her show who said that Jews DO use the blood of Christian children to make matzos.
I blame Oprah Winfrey and her staff for broadcasting LIES.
"When that show was aired, the Anti Defamation League jumped to attack Oprah Winfrey for irresponsibly allowing a woman to broadcast the blood libel on the basis of "recovered memories."
http://www.shmoozenet.com/yudel/mtarchives/001283.html
I think that those who claim that blood was used in making matza, should be forced to bake matza with blood and then demonstrate the appearance of the matza.
It's amazing how attitudes and beliefs that you thought were long dead seem to get a second life, at least to an extent. I guess they're like old clothes: You hang onto them long enough, they'll come back into fashion.
That Oprah link is interesting stuff.
Yet again blood liables spewing from the mouths of those apparently uneducated people. And you would think a professor should know better!
I am still waiting for all these people who claim that this is true to read the Talmud and kashroot laws only to find the the consumption of both blood and humans is prohibited. But then again if they did that, their claims wouldn't stand up at all.
It still amazes me that we take confesions to be 100% true. Even in today's world there are people who will confess to things that they certainly were not "guilty" of for various reasons.
Lindsay:
I am afraid you are giving far too much credit to the Groves of Academe. There are plenty of nutty professors out there, Jewish and otherwise, who come out with the most egregious crap, especially where the subject matter touches Jews, Israel or the Holocaust in any way, from the infamous Norman Finklestein to the Iranian Canadian professor who made an appearance at Ahmadinejad's recent Holocaust deniers' conference and pretended not to be aware of the purpose and who would comprise most of the attendees. While Prof. Dossa accepts the reality of the Holocaust, he has a pet theory that the Holocaust is misused to form US foreign policy. The only problem with his theory, is that it consists of nothing more tangible than a circular argument.
I am sure that anti-Semites everywhere will rush out to buy this book.........
for the sake of the records
it maybe noticed God
giving instruction to Abrahm
to kill his son,
the story takes, of course,
a more politically correct
course of events.
however it may be considered
as a record of the
banning of religious practice
involving killing of other human
beings within the religious milieu
to which the author(s) of the
aforementioned story belonged.
Ritual killings have been reported in detail for many other religious/cultural groups - clearly talking about
ritual killings in the early roman (or greek or celts or ...) civilization
creates less heated debate,
considering also the timeline
of evolution of judaism - with respect
of the aforementioened religions - it is quite impossible to exclude
the presence of ritual killing, later refused (and taken off the records) in a more evolved phase of judaism.
if this was present in the timeframe indicated by the author of the book should be judged AFTER reading the book itself.
This is even more freakish when one considers that Bar-Ilan is a bastion of conservative thought, a university founded by the middle-of-the-road "knitted kippah" Orthodox Zionists in response to exclusion by left-liberal bulwarks like Tel-Aviv University and Haifa University (academic base of the infamous Ilan Pappe). So it occupies a place roughly similar to Notre Dame or a souped-up, scaled-up version of Yeshiva University.
What is this nutcase doing on the Bar-Ilan faculty, of all places?
Please sign the petition to have Bar Ilan (named after the stalwart Jewish defender Rabbi Meir bar Ilan!) remove this mamzer from its faculty.
http://www.petitiononline.com/silv56yh/petition.html