The Bloody Passovers
of Dr Toaff
By Israel Shamir
Blood,
betrayal, torture, and surrender are intervowen in the story of
an Italian Jew, Dr Ariel Toaff, as if penned by his compatriot
Umberto Eco. Dr Toaff stumbled onto a frightful discovery, was
horrified but bravely went on, until he was subjected to the
full pressure of his community; he repented, a broken man.
Dr Toaff is the son of the Rabbi of Rome and a professor in the
Jewish University of Bar Ilan, not far from Tel Aviv. He made a
name for himself by his deep study of medieval Jewry. His three-volumed
Love, Work, and Death (subtitled Jewish Life in
Medieval Umbria) is an encyclopaedia of this admittedly
narrow area. While studying his subject he discovered that the
medieval Ashkenazi Jewish communities of North Italy practiced a
particularly horrible form of human sacrifice. Their wizards and
adepts stole and crucified Christian babies, obtained their
blood and used it for magical rituals evoking the Spirit of
Vengeance against the hated Goyim.
In particular, he dwelt on the case of St Simon of Trent. This
two-year old child from the Italian town of Trent was kidnapped
by a few Ashkenazi Jews from his home
on the eve of Passover 1475 AD. At night, the kidnappers
murdered the child; drew his blood, pierced his flesh with
needles, crucified him head down calling “So may all Christians
by land and sea perish”, and thus they celebrated their
Passover, an archaic ritual of outpouring blood and killed
babies, in the most literal form, without usual metaphoric
“blood-wine” shift.
The killers were apprehended, confessed and were found guilty by
the Bishop of Trent. Immediately, the Jews took their protest to
the Pope and he had sent the bishop of Ventimiglia to
investigate. He allegedly accepted a hefty bribe from the Jews
and concluded that the child was murdered by a Hamas mine in
order to besmirch Israel, as there was no Tsahal ordnance found
on the beach of Trent. “Simon had been killed by Christians with
the intention of ruining the Jews”, said the pre-war Jewish
Encyclopedia, in a clear case of premonition: the same argument
was used by Jews in 2006 while
explaining away the mass murder of children in Kafr Qana.
However, in 15th century the Jews were influential,
yes, but all-powerful, no. They could not deal with the world
like they did in 2002 after their massacre of Jenin by ordering
everybody to buzz off. They had no American veto in the Security
Council. They could not bomb Rome, and the word “antisemitism”
was invented 400 years later. They were given a fair deal which
is much worse than preferred treatment: Pope Sixtus IV assembled
a commission of six cardinals chaired by the best legal mind of
that time, for retrial; and this Supreme Court found the
murderers guilty. See more for a
Catholic version and a
Jewish version of the events. The records of the trial have
survived centuries and are still available in Vatican.
In 1965, the Roman Catholic Church entered a perestroika[i].
These were the halcyon days of the Vatican II when the
modernizers uprooted the foundations of tradition hoping to
update the faith and to fit it into the new Jewish-friendly
narrative of modernity; in plain prose, the bishops wanted to be
loved by the liberal press.
The ever-watchful Jews used the opportunity and pushed the
bishops to decommission St Simon of Trent. They were happy to
oblige: already in bizarre ritual, the Church leaders had found
the Jews free from guilt for Crucifixion of Christ while
admitting the Church’s guilt for persecution of Jews; the
crucifixion of an Italian baby was a small matter compared with
this reversal. In a hasty decision, the bishops ruled that the
confessions of the killers were unacceptable because obtained
under torture, and thus the accused were innocent, while the
young martyr was anything but. His cult was discontinued and
forbidden, and the remains of the martyred child were
removed and dumped in a secret place to avoid resumption of
pilgrimage.
And now we come back to Dr Ariel Toaff. While going through the
papers of the trial, he made a staggering discovery: instead of
being dictated by the zealous investigators under torture, the
confessions of the killers contained material totally unknown to
the Italian churchmen or police. The killers belonged to the
small and withdrawn Ashkenazi community, they practiced their
own rites, quite different from those used by the native Italian
Jews; these rites were faithfully reproduced in their
confessions, though they were not known to the Crime Squad of
the day. “These liturgical formulas in Hebrew with a strong
anti-Christian tone cannot be projections of the judges who
could not know these prayers, which didn't even belong to
Italian rites but to the Ashkenazi tradition," Toaff wrote. A
confession is of value only if it contains some true and
verifiable details of the crime the police did not know of. This
iron rule of criminal investigation was observed in Trent
trials.
This discovery has the potential to shake, shock and reshape the
Church. The noble learned rabbi Dr Toaff brought back St Simon,
the double victim of 15th century vengeance and of 20th
century perestroika. This called for repentance of the Vatican
doctors who forgot the murdered child while looking for
friendship with important American Jews, but they still do not
admit their grave error. Monsignor Iginio Rogger, a church
historian who in the 1960s [mis]led the investigation into St
Simon's case,
said that the confessions were completely unreliable for
“the judges used horrible tortures”. This was an antizionist and
hence antisemitic remark, for rejection of confessions obtained
under torture would let all the Palestinian prisoners out of
Jewish jails; this was an anti-American remark, for the US
recognizes the value of torture and practices it in Guantanamo
and elsewhere. This was a holocaust-denier remark for thus they
invalidate the Nürnberg trials. The renown Jewish American
lawyer and adept of torture Alan Dershowitz could have argued
against Rogger; but somehow he did not.
"I wouldn't want to be in Toaff's shoes, answering for this to
historians who have seriously documented this case," said Rogger
to USA Today. Toaff’s shoes are vastly preferable to
those of Rogger who will have to answer for slighting the saint
in Heaven.
Moreover, this Trento crime was not an exception: Toaff
discovered many cases of such bloody sacrifices connected with
the mutilation of children,
outpouring of blood and its baking in Matzo (unleavened
bread) spanning five hundred years of European history. Blood,
this magic drink, was a popular medicine of the time, and of any
time: Herod tried to keep young bathing in blood of babies,
alchemists used blood to turn lead into gold. Jewish wizards
meddled in magic and used it as much as anybody. There was a
thriving market in such delicacies as blood, powder made of
blood and bloody matzo. Jewish vendors sold it accompanied with
rabbinic letters of authorization; the highest value was blood
of a goy katan, a gentile child, much more usual was
blood of circumcision. Such blood sacrifices were "instinctive,
visceral, virulent actions and reactions, in which innocent and
unknowing children became victims of the love of God and of
vengeance," Toaff wrote in the book's preface. "Their blood
bathed the altars of a God who, it was believed, needed to be
guided, sometimes impatiently pushed to protect and to punish."
This somewhat cryptic remark can be understood by reading
Israeli professor Israel Yuval’s book Two Nations in Thy Womb.
Yuval explained that blood libations were necessary (in the eyes
of Jewish magicians) to bring forth Divine Vengeance upon the
Goyim. He also quotes an irrefutable (i.e. not denied by Jews)
instance of blood sacrifice by a Jew. ( Read about it in my
article
Bloodcurdling Libel.) Toaff improved upon Yuval by stressing
the ordinary magic use of blood by Jews in the Middle Ages, and
by allowing for the anti-Christian element: crucifixion of
victims and the cursing of Christ and Virgin. Here his book is
supported by (admittedly, more timid) Reckless Rites: Purim
and the Legacy of Jewish Violence by
Elliott Horowitz. Horowitz tells his reader of strange
rituals: flagellation of the Virgin, destruction of crucifixes
and the beating up and killing Christians.
Now it is behind us. We can look at the past and say: yes, some
Jewish wizards and mystics practiced human sacrifices. They
murdered children, mutilated their bodies and used their blood
in order to outpour Divine Wrath on their non-Jewish neighbours.
They mocked Christian rites by using Christian blood instead of
blood of Christ. The Church and the people all over Europe were
right. The Europeans (and the Arabs, and the Russians) weren’t
crazy bigots, they understood what they saw. They punished the
culprits but they left the innocent in peace. We, humans, can
look at this dreadful page of history with pride, and shed a
tear or two for the poor children destroyed by these
wrath-seeking monsters. Jews may be more modest and cease
carrying their historical wounds on the sleeve: their
forefathers thrived despite these terrible doings by some of
their coreligionists, while in the Jewish state, sins of some
Palestinians are visited upon all of them. We can also dismiss
with shudder the whining of Israel’s friends when they want us
not to see the Jenin Massacre or Qana Massacre for – yes,
exactly, this is like the “blood libel”, i.e. not a libel at
all.
Let us hope that the great daring act of Professor Toaff will
become a turning point in the life of the Church. The swing
caused by perestroika of Vatican II went too far. Remember that
the Russian perestroika ended with the collapse of the whole
structure. While anti-papists feared an anti-Christ on the See
of St Peter, there is the real danger of a Gorbachev.
In an Italian town of Orvieto on the Adriatic shore,
the Jews demanded the removal of an exhibition of great
artistic value and the cessation of the procession commemorating
the miracle of Trani. There, a millennium ago, a consecrated
host was stolen from the church by a Jewess, the thief decided
to fry the body of Christ in oil, but miraculously the host
turned into flesh and started bleeding profusely so that the
holy blood poured all over the house. Indeed such cases of host
desecration are well attended all over Europe; they were well
described by Yuval, Horowitz and Toaff; they indeed occurred,
and only infamous Jewish chutzpah pushed
The Roman Association of Friends of Israel into writing a
letter to the Pope demanding an end to a one-thousand-year-old
observance. And they got it. The Church bent over, the panels
were dismantled, the procession cancelled and profound apologies
to Jews were issued, to the vast satisfaction of Israeli
ambassadors Gideon Meir (to Rome) and Oded Ben Hur (to
the Vatican) who dictated the capitulation.
“Strange world indeed ours. – wrote Domenico Savino in the
excellent web-magazine
Effedieffe. - The offense is brought to the Christian Faith
and forgiveness is asked of those who had perpetrated it.”
Savino muses whether it was impossible just to politely ignore
the demand of Friends of Israel, and he quotes at length the
words of Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican representative at
this capitulation. Kasper is doing full Monty: he denies that
the Church is the True and Only Chosen Israel, asserts the equal
position of the Jews as “elder brothers”, denies the necessity
of Christ, asks forgiveness of the Jews while promising “a new
spring for the Church and the world”.
“Spring for the Church?! - exclaims Savino. - Ah, but we have
heard it already! The Pope said after Vatican II “We waited for
the spring and the storm has come ». That spring has been enough
for us and after this reconciliation in Orvieto I do not want
more to hear the word ‘spring’ and see the wide smirk of
satisfaction of “elder brothers” Gideon Meir and Oded Ben Hur!”
The perestroika came not only in Italy, and not only within the
Catholic Church. In Germany a new sacrilege is being prepared: a
“politically correct Bible” with the story of Passion being
changed so as not to cause discomfort to Jews. The title is
misleading: they may not call their bastard product “new German
translation of the Bible free of gender bias and anti-Semitism”,
like one can’t call one’s waste water, “wine free of
intoxicants”. Changing one letter in the Bible is equivalent to
ruining the world, says the Talmud, and adduces an example of a
Torah scroll where one word is changed, from “meod” (very) to
“mavet” (death). Such a death-celebrating Torah would surely
cause our world to perish. “Antisemitism-free” scripture
probably will center on Jewish suffering while the Church will
play the role of the villain of the piece. It will extol Judas
and reject Christ. Likewise, removing “gender bias” will also
remove the Annunciation, this great divide between sterile
monocausality of the Jews and the Christian meeting of Heaven
and Earth. Indeed the Christian model was so much more
successful that even Jews adopted it in their Cabbala, and
apparently decided to dump the redundant old monocausality to
the Germans.
In England, an old liberal weekly, the Observer, changed
its feathers and became the neocon nest supporting the war and
Bush-Blair alliance. In perfect logical sequitur the
paper also renounced Christ and preferred Jews, as in
this review of a new English book. Adam Mars-Jones prefers
Oscar Schindler to General Adam von Trott who was executed for
his part in Generals’ Plot in 1944: “That's what made
Schindler's List such a startling film: it followed Jewish
ethics by showing the hero's outer journey, for once, rather
than an inner one. The guy was tainted - so what? That's his
business, as long as he saved Jews. His mitzvahs earned him his
place among the Righteous Gentiles, and in the absence of an
afterlife (not really a feature of Jewish belief) that's all
that can be said. Let's have more of that tone, and less of a
cult of martyrdom. Veneration for sacrifice, for purely symbolic
victory, can distort the most well-meaning enterprise, and risks
insulting the dead, who had no options.”
The Observer reviewer made clear his choice for Judas or
Caiaphas (“though tainted, he wanted to save Jews”) and against
Jesus Christ who was the Sacrifice. His call for “less of a cult
of martyrdom, less veneration for sacrifice, for purely symbolic
victory” would make Golgotha the final last word, with no
Resurrection in sight. Who needs Christian virtues? Man’s faults
and vices are “his business, as long as he saved Jews”, and the
best a goy may hope for is a “place among the Righteous
Gentiles”. From this point of view, St Simon and other children
did not die in vain; they helped the Jews call for God’s
Vengeance, and that is the best they could possibly wish.
Likewise, British soldiers could not hope for a better fate than
to die for Israel on the streets of Basra, or Teheran, or
elsewhere.
Thus, in Rome, Berlin or London, the Jews won a round or two in
their competition with the Church. By stubbornly hanging on and
never regretting, never apologizing, always working against
Christianity, they succeeded in replacing in many simple minds
the image of the Via Dolorosa, Golgotha and the Resurrection
with their gross misrepresentation of human history as of a long
line of innocent Jewish suffering, blood libels, holocausts and
the Zionist redemption in the Holy Land. Though people
reasonably rejected the idea of Jewish guilt in death of Christ,
they installed instead an even more absurd idea of Church’s
guilt in death of Jews.
The consequences are not purely theological. Britain, Italy and
Germany acquiesce in Jewish strangulation of Christian
Palestine, in the blockade of Gaza, in the robbery of Church
lands in
Bethlehem and
Jerusalem. They support American Drang Nach Osten. Worse:
they lose their connection to God, their empathy to fellow human
beings dries up, as if the blind spirit of vengeance conjured up
by innocent blood caught up with them.
The publication of Dr Toaff’s book could become a
not-a-minute-too-early turning point in the Western history,
from apology of Judas to adoration of Christ. Yes, his narrative
of murdered children makes just a small crack in the huge
edifice of Jewish exceptionalism built in Europeans’ mind. But
great edifices can fall in a moment, as we learned on 9/11.
Apparently, the Jews felt it and they attacked Toaff like
maddened
swarm. A renown Jewish historian, rabbi and a son of a
rabbi, wrote about 500-year old events – why should they bestir
themselves? In the Middle ages, use of blood, necromancy, black
magic were not an exclusively Jewish realm. Witches and wizards
of gentile background did it too. So just join the human race,
warts and all! But this is too demeaning to the arrogant
Chosenites.
“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," said ADL National Director Abe Foxman. The
Anti-Defamation League called the book “baseless and playing
into the hands of anti-Semites everywhere.”
Not much of an historian, not much of a rabbi, Foxman has a
priori knowledge, based on faith and conviction, that it is
“baseless”. But then, he said the same about the Jenin Massacre.
In a press release, Bar-Ilan University “is expressing great
anger and extreme displeasure at Toaff, for his lack of
sensitivity in publishing his book about blood libels in Italy.
His choice of a private publishing firm in Italy, the book's
provocative title and the interpretations given by the media to
its contents have offended the sensitivities of Jews around the
world and harmed the delicate fabric of relations between Jews
and Christians. Bar-Ilan University strongly condemns and
repudiates what is seemingly implied by Toaff's book and by
reports in the media concerning its contents, as if there is a
basis for the blood libels that led to the murder of millions of
innocent Jews.”
These are firing words. Toaff came under strong community
pressure: he was about to find himself at 65, on the street,
probably without pension, without old friends and students,
ostracized and excommunicated. Probably his life was threatened
as well: Jews employ professional secret killers to deal with
such nuisances. In the old days, they were called rodef,
now they are called kidon, still as efficient as of old,
and they were intercepted less often than bloodthirsty maniacs.
His reputation would be annihilated: a
Sue Blackwell would “consult her Jewish friends” and call
him a Nazi, an ADL-sponsored Searchlight would discover,
invade or invent his private life, many small Jews in the Web
would denigrate him in their blogs and in their flagship, the
Wikipedia. Who would befriend him? Probably not a single
Jew, and not many Christians.
In the beginning of the attack, he tried to
brave it: “I will not give up my devotion to the truth and
academic freedom even if the world crucifies me.” Toaff told
Haaretz earlier this week that he stood by the contention of his
book, that there is a factual basis for some of the medieval
blood accusations against the Jews.
But Toaff was not made of stern stuff. Like Winston Smith, the
main character of Orwell’s 1984, he
broke down in a mental cellar of Jewish inquisition. He
published a full apology, stopped distribution of his book,
promised to submit it to Jewish censorship, and “also promised
to donate all the funds forthcoming from the sale of his book to
the Anti-Defamation League” of good Abe Foxman.
His last words were as touching as those of Galileo recanting
his heresy: "I will never allow any Jew-hater to use me or my
research as an instrument for fanning the flames, once again, of
the hatred that led to the murder of millions of Jews. I extend
my sincerest apologies to all those who were offended by the
articles and twisted facts that were attributed to me and to my
book."
Thus Ariel Toaff surrendered to the community pressure. Not that
it matters what he says now. We do not know what mental tortures
were prepared for him in the Jewish Gestapo of ADL, how he was
forced to recant. What he gave us is enough. But what has he
given us? In a way, his contribution is similar to that of Benny
Morris and other Israeli New Historians: they repeated the data
we knew from Palestinian sources, from Abu Lughud and Edward
Said. But Palestinian sources were not trusted - only Jewish
sources are considered trustworthy in our Jewish-centered
universe. Thus Morris et al helped millions to free themselves
from the enforced Zionist narrative. This would not be necessary
if we were able to believe a goy vs. Jew: an Arab about the
Expulsion of 1948, an Italian about St Simon, maybe even a
German about war deportations. Now Ariel Toaff has freed many
captive minds by repeating what we knew from a variety of
Italian, English, German, Russian sources. If “blood libel”
turned out to be not a libel but a regular criminal case, maybe
other Jewish claims will go down, too? Maybe the Russians were
not guilty of pogroms? Maybe Ahmadinejad is not a new Hitler
bent on destruction? Maybe Muslims are not evil Jew-haters?
Ariel Toaff gave us also a window to view processes inside
Jewry, in order to learn how this incredible discipline of Swarm
is maintained, how dissidents are punished, how uniformity of
mind is achieved. Jewry is indeed exceptional from this point
of view: a Christian (or Muslim) scientist who would find a
blemish in the long history of the Church will not hide it, he
is not likely to be terrorized into obedience; he will not be
ostracized if he embraces the most vile view; even if
excommunicated, the scientist or the writer will find enough
support, as Salman Rushdee, Voltaire and Tolstoy discovered. Nor
Church neither Ummah command this sort of blind discipline, and
nor Pope neither Imam wields the power of Mr Abe Foxman over his
coreligionists. And Foxman does not care for truth, but goes for
what is (in his view) good for the Jews. No amount of witnesses,
not even a live broadcast of Jewish blood sacrifice would force
him to accept unpleasant truth: he will find a reason why. We
saw it in the case of Qana bombardment, when Israeli planes
destroyed a building and killed some fifty children, surely more
than the wizards of Umbria did. Thus do not expect Toaff’s book
will convince Jews – nothing can.
Do not envy this unity of Jewish hearts and minds; this unity’s
obverse side is that No Jew Is Free. A man is forced to
become a Jew by his parents; he has no freedom of mind on any
stage; he has to follow the orders. My Jewish reader, if you’ll
understand that you are a slave, not in vain you’ve read that
far.
Until you are able to answer the rhetoric question “Aren’t you a
Jew?” with simple “No”, you’ll remain a prisoner on parole, a
captive on the string. Sooner or later they will pull the
string. Sooner or later you’ll have to lie, to search for weasel
words, to deny what you know is right and true.
Freedom is at your gate; stretch
your arm and take it. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, freedom is
yours for asking. Freedom is Christ, for a man chooses Christ
with his heart, not with his foreskin.
You are free when you accept Christ and are able to reply as the
Gospel says (Matth 5:37) “Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes, I am a
Christian' and your 'No' mean 'No, I am not a Jew.' Luckily, it
is possible. Toaff could have had it; what a pity his courage
failed him!
His fate reminds me that of Uriel (almost the same name!)
Acosta. A noble forerunner of Spinoza, Acosta (born c. 1585,
Oporto, Portugal - died April 1640, Amsterdam) attacked Rabbinic
Judaism and was excommunicated. “A sensitive soul, Acosta found
it impossible to bear the isolation of excommunication, and he
recanted, writes Encyclopedia Britannica. Excommunicated again
after he was accused of dissuading Christians from converting to
Judaism, he made a public recantation after enduring years of
ostracism. This humiliation shattered his self-esteem, and he
shot himself.” Acosta’s error was that he went far, but not far
enough.
[i] Uncannily, this
church process practically coincided with the first
Perestroika (Debunking of Stalin) initiated by
Khrushchev on the XXII Party Congress in 1961, when the
Communist Party repented sins and crimes of its great
old leaders. One generation, thirty years later the
Party collapsed, its membership was decimated by the
second Perestroika. Penitence is good for soul, but
then, soul is immortal.
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