|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
|
 Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:36 am Post subject: The anti-semitic blood libel, revisited |
 |
|
Rather interesting academic controversy in Israel. This prof is into some pretty arcane stuff.
| Quote: |
The author of a book on the use of blood by Jews in Ashkenazi communities in the Middle Ages said Sunday, in the face of the furor its publication aroused, "I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me."
In an interview with Haaretz from Rome, Professor Ariel Toaff said he stood behind the contention of his book, "Pasque di Sangue," just published in Italy, that there is a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews. However, he said he was sorry his arguments had been twisted.
"I tried to show that the Jewish world at that time was also violent, among other things because it had been hurt by Christian violence," the Bar-Ilan history professor said. Of course I do not claim that Judaism condones murder. But within Ashkenazi Judaism there were extremist groups that could have committed such an act and justified it," he said.
Toaff said he reached his conclusions after coming across testimony from the trial for the murder of a Christian child, Simon of Trento, in 1475, which in the past was believed to have been falsified. "I found there were statements and parts of the testimony that were not part of the Christian culture of the judges, and they could not have been invented or added by them. They were components appearing in prayers known from the [Jewish] prayer book.
"Over many dozens of pages I proved the centrality of blood on Passover," Toaff said. "Based on many sermons, I concluded that blood was used, especially by Ashkenazi Jews, and that there was a belief in the special curative powers of children's blood. It turns out that among the remedies of Ashkenazi Jews were powders made of blood."
Although the use of blood is prohibited by Jewish law, Toaff says he found proof of rabbinic permission to use blood, even human blood. "The rabbis permitted it both because the blood was already dried," and because in Ashkenazi communities it was an accepted custom that took on the force of law, Toaff said. There is no proof of acts of murder, Toaff said, but there were curses and hatred of Christians, and prayers inciting to cruel vengeance against Christians. "There was always the possibility that some crazy person would do something."
Toaff said the use of blood was common in medieval medicine. "In Germany, it became a real craze. Peddlers of medicines would sell human blood, the way you have a transfusion today. The Jews were influenced by this and did the same things.
"In one of the testimonies in the Trento trial, a peddler of sugar and blood is mentioned, who came to Venice," Toaff says. "I went to the archives in Venice and found that there had been a man peddling sugar and blood, which were basic products in pharmacies of the period. A man named Asher of Trento was also mentioned in the trial, who had ostensibly come with a bag and sold dried blood. One of the witnesses said he was tried for alchemy in Venice and arrested there. I took a team to the archives and found documentation of the man's trial. Thus, I found that it is not easy to discount all the testimony," he added.
|
| Quote: |
| Meanwhile, Bar-Ilan University announced Sunday that its president, Professor Moshe Kaveh, will summon Toaff to explain his research. The university's statement said it strongly objected to what was implied in media publications regarding Toaff's research, and condemned "any attempt to justify the terrible blood libels against the Jews." However, the university also reiterated that Toaff was among the senior lecturers in his field in Israel and internationally. |
Gotta say, he could've come up with a less provocative metaphor than being crucified!
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/824823.html
But the prof is now recalling the book for some re-writing, and is donating all earnings to the Anti-Defamation League...
| Quote: |
The author of a book on the ritualistic use of blood by Jews in Ashkenazi communities in the Middle Ages on Wednesday asked the book's Italian publisher to discontinue distribution in order to let him amend and annotate contentious sections.
Professor Ariel Toaff submitted his request to the El Molino publishing house just days after the book was released, due to the furor its publication caused around the world. The first edition of the book had sold out within a few days of its release.
|
| Quote: |
Toaff announced that he would donate the proceeds from the sales of his book to the Anti-Defamation League, which battles anti-Semitism.
Last week, following the release of the book in Italy, the ADL condemned Toaff's claims that some of the confessions extracted from Jews during post-Crusades trials were based on actual fact.
ADL Chairman Abraham Foxman said that Toaff's book serves the interests of anti-Semites. "It is hard to believe that anybody, not to mention an Israeli historian, would legitimize baseless claims of blood libel," Foxman said.
In his announcement, Toaff said that he had decided to donate the profits "out of a sense of personal responsibility for what had occurred, and in order to emphasize how deeply sorry I am for the insult I caused to the Jewish public."
"I would never allow any Israel hater to use me or my research to rekindle the hatred that brought about the deaths of millions of Jews," he added.
|
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/826066.html |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
A German's professor's rebuttal of Toaff, translated by an historian at my alma mater...
| Quote: |
| In an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz on 12 February, he claimed to have found in the investigative records of the Trent trial details that �did not come from the Christian culture of the judges� and thus had to be of Jewish origin. This shows that he understands both societies as strictly separate entities that did not communicate with each other and in which no knowledge or rather half-knowledge about the other side existed. If we follow this logic, then everything that has ever been said about Jews and about the many other �others� would also have to be true. The investigative records of the judiciary, especially in the time of the pogroms during the Black Death, with their accusations of well-poisoning, are full of such half-knowledge, paired with eager and peculiar interpretations. Sometimes it seems as though the future accusers had sat down to eat at the same table and then, when it suited them, concocted their own coherent if utterly faulty version of all the things they had seen and misunderstood. Torture did the rest to bring out further �details�. But Toaff takes the things recorded under these circumstances at face value. Had he looked just a bit beyond the edge of his writing-table, he might have noticed that the activities of the circle around the �humanist� Tridentine bishop Johannes Hinderbach had connections to the witch-hunting campaign of the Dominican Heinrich Kramer (�Institoris�), famous for the Malleus maleficarum or �Witches� Hammer�. The bishop of Brixen thought the latter was a psychopath and had him expelled from his bishopric. Toaff seems never to have heard of any of this. His version of events suggests that the Jews had nothing better to do than to take on and act out the (fictitious) roles that had been assigned to them, but that had been developed a thousand years earlier by Christians to be used against their own Christian enemies in internal doctrinal squabbles [The literary nature and antiquity of these accusations alone, as in the case of witchcraft accusations, demonstrates that they were traditional smears, not based on real activities � AG]. |
http://tinyurl.com/36tpnz |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
