Renegade Editor’s Note: This was written by someone who
did not see any validity to the accusations.
By Joshua Trachtenberg
From Jewish Magic and Superstition [1939]
From Jewish Magic and Superstition [1939]
Of all the
charges against the Jewish people the one that has enjoyed the hardiest
tenacity and the utmost notoriety, and has produced the direst consequences, is
the ritual murder accusation. In its popular version it foists upon Jewish
ritual the requirement of Christian blood at the Passover service. The subject
of much study and infinitely more polemics, its absurdity has been conclusively
established, but the true nature of the accusation has never been made
sufficiently clear. The legend as we know it has experienced several
redactions. In its pristine form it was the product of ancient superstition – and
of the idea of the Jew as sorcerer.
One of the most pervasive beliefs
was in the great utility for medicinal and magical purposes of the elements of
the human body. Medieval magic is full of recipes for putting to occult use
human fat, human blood, entrails, hands, fingers; medieval medicine utilized as
one of its chief medicaments the blood of man, preferably blood that had been
freshly drawn, or menstrual blood. The ritual murder accusation was the result
of these beliefs.
There is on record at least one
accusation against a Jew, dating from the thirteenth century, of despoiling a
servant girl, whom he was said to have drugged, of some flesh which he intended
to put to a magical or medicinal use. This was the motive which was believed to
have prompted many assumed ritual murders. One of the first medieval references
to this accusation, made by Thomas of Cantimpré early in that century,
attributed the need for Christian blood to the widespread Jewish affliction of haemorrhages
(some later accounts changed the malady to haemorrhoids), which could be cured
only by the application of this blood. The Jews of Fulda (Hesse-Nassau),
accused in 1235 of murdering five children, are said to have confessed that
they did so in order to procure their blood for purposes of healing. Matthew
Paris’s contemporary account of the alleged crucifixion of Hugh of Lincoln by
Jews in 1255 ascribed to them the intention of using the boy’s bowels for
divination. To skip a century and a half, in May, 1401, the city council of
Freiburg (in Breisgau) wrote to Duke Leopold requesting the total expulsion of
the Jews from their city, the foremost count against them being that they periodically
slaughtered a Christian child, for “all Jews require Christian blood for the
prolongation of their lives.” The only Christian statement on the ritual murder
charge against the Jews of Tyrnau in 1494 explains their need of this blood on
several grounds: “Firstly: they [the Jews] were convinced by the judgment of
their ancestors that the blood of a Christian was a good remedy for the
alleviation of the wound of circumcision. Secondly: they were of the opinion
that this blood, put into food, is very efficacious for the awakening of mutual
love. Thirdly: they had discovered, as men and women among them suffered
equally from menstruation, that the blood of a Christian is a specific medicine
for it, when drunk. Fourthly: that they had an ancient but secret ordinance by
which they are under obligation to shed Christian blood in honour of God in
daily sacrifices in some spot or other.” As late as the beginning of the
eighteenth century it is reported that in Poland and Germany tales were told
and songs sung in the streets “how the Jews have murdered a child, and sent the
blood to one another in quills for the use of their women in childbirth.”
It is evident from these instances
that the suspicion of magic was behind the accusation of child murder. There is
no mention of the Passover, of kneading the blood into the unleavened cakes, or
drinking it at the Seder service, all of which are late refinements. The
records of the early accusations are meaningless unless viewed against the
background of medieval superstition. A modern writer who has made a careful
study of Christian magic and witchcraft, and who proves himself as credulous
and superstition-ridden as the period he examines, expresses exactly the
medieval view, which is his as well: Jews were persecuted “not so much for the
observance of Hebrew ceremonies, as is often suggested and supposed, but for
the practice of the dark and hideous traditions of Hebrew magic. Closely
connected with these ancient sorceries are those ritual murders… In many cases
the evidence is quite conclusive that the body, and especially the blood of the
victim, was used for magical purposes.”
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