Ariel Toaff

Ariel Toaff
Image
Born	1942
Died
Nationality
Residence
Occupation	Historian
Known for	Pasque di sangue (Blood Passover)
Parents
Spouse(s)
Children
Sibling(s)
Website

Ariel Toaff (born 1942) is an Israeli-Italian historian and professor emeritus of medieval and Renaissance history at Bar-Ilan University. He is the son of Elio Toaff, former Chief Rabbi of Rome.

Blood Passover (first edition, 2007)

In February 2007 Ariel Toaff published Pasque di sangue: Ebrei d'Europa e omicidi rituali (Blood Passover: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders). In the first edition he argued that a small number of Ashkenazi Jewish extremists in northern Italy may have engaged in ritual murder of Christian children and used their blood in Passover rituals. Precise lengthy quotations from the first edition include:

“The use of the blood of Christian children in the celebration of Passover was apparently framed by precise rules, or at least this is what the depositions in the Trent trial indicate.” “The blood was used for magic and therapeutic practices.” “In some cases, the blood was mixed with dough to make the unleavened bread for Passover.” “The hostility evinced by ‘extremist’ Jews toward Christians at the time may have fueled the blood libels.” “Certain criminal acts, disguised as crude rituals, were indeed committed by extremist groups or by individuals demented by religious mania and blinded by desire for revenge against those considered responsible for their people’s sorrows and tragedies.”

Criticisms

The first edition was immediately condemned.

• Abraham Foxman (National Director, Anti-Defamation League): “It is incredible that anyone, much less an Israeli historian, would give legitimacy to the baseless blood libel accusation that has been the source of much suffering and attacks against Jews historically.” (February 2007)
• Robert Bonfil (historian): “Toaff’s book is an insult to the intelligence, an outrageous distortion of historical method… It repeats the blood libel insults scholarship.”

Toaff’s concessions and revised edition

Ariel Toaff withdrew the first edition within days. In a public statement and the afterword to the revised second edition (2008) he made the following explicit concessions:

• “I shall clarify that I have no doubts that the so-called ‘ritual homicides or infanticides’ pertain to the realm of myth; they were not rites practised by the Jewish communities living and working in the German-speaking lands or in the North of Italy.”
• “There was no historical evidence that any Jewish community ever practised ritual murder or used Christian blood in religious rituals.”
• “The confessions in the Trent trials and similar cases were extracted under torture and were fabrications.”
• “The blood libel was a myth with no basis in Jewish practice or belief.”
• “My original wording had been misinterpreted and I never intended to imply that such acts were sanctioned by Judaism or widespread.”

In the revised edition Toaff removed all claims of actual ritual murder or blood use, stating that his research had been into the social psychology of fear, superstition and the dynamics of medieval persecutions, not into proving the blood libel.

Resources

• First Edition of the book in English Blood Passover (August 2007)
• Revised version: