Ariel Toaff

Ariel Toaff
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Born	1942
Died
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Occupation	Historian
Known for	Pasque di sangue (Blood Passover)
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Ariel Toaff

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 provoked immediate and widespread condemnation.

• **Abraham Foxman** (National Director, Anti-Defamation League): “Toaff’s book is a disgrace to scholarship and an insult to the Jewish people. It revives the blood libel, one of the most pernicious antisemitic canards in history.” (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.” (London Jewish Chronicle, 16 February 2007)

• **Israeli government** and **Italian Jewish community** leaders: The book “gives credence to medieval accusations that Jews killed Christians in ritual murders.” (March 2007)

Toaff’s concessions and revised edition

Ariel Toaff withdrew the first edition within days and issued a revised second edition in 2008.

Precise concessions made by Ariel Toaff include:

• “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 and subsequent interviews Toaff explicitly 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.