The son of the chief rabbi of Italy, a respected professor at Bar-Ilan University, is one of the stupidest Jews alive. He wrote a book on the medieval “blood libel,” the lie that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood in religious rituals or to make matzoh for Passover. These lies were the foundation for the torture and murder of thousands upon thousands of Jews throughout the centuries in Europe and, to this day, are used in Jew-hating materials, right up to those nifty Jew-hate series Arab TV shows during Ramadan.
The reason Ariel Toaff is one of the stupidest Jews alive: He said in his book that the libel was not entirely untrue. He has been quoted in newspapers saying that Jews of the Middle Ages did use blood in their rituals.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Toaff responded angrily to his critics, saying, “My research shows that in the Middle Ages, a group of fundamentalist Jews did not respect the biblical prohibition and used blood for healing. It is just one group of Jews, who belonged to the communities that suffered the severest persecution during the Crusades. From this trauma came a passion for revenge that in some cases led to responses, among them ritual murder of Christian children.”
He seems to very distinctly insist that these things happened.
In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Toaff said, “There is no proof that Jews committed such an act.” But he added that the confessions do hold some truth – as when the accused recount anti-Christian liturgies that were mainly used on Passover, when the Israelites’ liberation from ancient Egypt became a metaphor for Judaism’s hope for redemption from its suffering at the hands of Christians.
“These liturgical formulas in Hebrew cannot be projections of the judges who could not know these prayers, which didn’t belong to Italian rites but to the Ashkenazi tradition,” he said.
And now he says he was misquoted, or misunderstood, or whatever. Upon his return to Israel, and a discussion with Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches, he issued this statement:
Toaff, a professor at Bar-Ilan University, released an official statement expressing his deepest apologies for what he considered to be the “horrible distortions†and misunderstandings of his book, “Pasque di Sangue” (Bloody Passovers) released in Italy. The book’s publication and reception caused an uproar in the Jewish world.
“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,†the statement read.
I would believe that statement a little more if he hadn’t been quoted in the AP and La Stampa saying the exact opposite. But at least he is attempting to do damage control.
Toaff, a rabbi who holds dual Italian and Israeli citizenship, said he directed the Italian El-Molino publishing house to stop distribution in order that he may “re-edit those passages which comprised the basis of the distortions and falsehoods that have been published in the media.â€
“I am taking these steps in order to prevent the further misuse of my book as anti-Semitic propaganda,†the statement said.
Toaff also promised to donate all forthcoming funds from the sale of his book to the Anti-Defamation League to express his “profound regret regarding the misrepresentations that were attributed to me and which hurt the Jewish people.â€
It’s too late. The damage has been done. The Jew-haters of the world now have a book that they can say proves the blood libel is true.
The David Dukes of the world have already bought their copies and are busy scanning them into computers as you read this, of that I am certain. I can write their ad campaign for you: “WRITTEN BY A RESPECTED ISRAELI PROFESSOR! THE BOOK THE JEWS DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE! READ THE PASSAGES THE ZIONISTS FORCE THE AUTHOR TO CUT! JEWS REALLY DO MURDER CHRISTIAN BABIES AND EAT THEIR BLOOD!”
You think I’m exaggerating? Give it a few weeks, then head to Stormfront.
On top of everything else, every other medieval historian consulted by the media for a quote has said that Toaff used testimony extracted by torture—that has been discredited by everyone else in the field—as his “proof” that anti-Christian rituals occurred.
Monsignor Iginio Rogger, a church historian who in the 1960s led the investigation into the murder of a 2-year-old Simon of Trento, for which 16 Jews were hanged, said many scholars have concurred that the confessions were completely unreliable.
“I wouldn’t want to be in [Toaff’s] shoes, answering for this to historians who have seriously documented this case,” he said. “The judges used horrible tortures, to the point where the accused pleaded: ‘Tell us what you want us to say.'”
Hebrew University historian Professor Israel J. Yuval, a blood-libel expert, said, “From the information I have received, Professor Toaff’s interpretation sounds trumped-up.”
I’ve been sitting on this story for days, because it’s the kind of thing that simply adds to the Jew-hater’s litany of “evidence” that the evil Zionist conspiracy is the reality, and they are the voices in the wilderness being ignored—instead of the Jew-haters that we know them to be.
Thanks, Ariel Toaff, for giving extra ammunition to the world’s Jew-haters. Because it’s not like they needed any more, right?
Perhaps I should start up a new category: The What Were They Thinking award. Because you have to wonder what Toaff was thinking when he released this book.
Idiot.
Oy! I have athlete’s foot. Can I drain that clown’s fluids for a cure.
How was it that the University hired this nitwit?
Y’know, in Hebrew the word for “abomination” is toev. Coincidence?
This is not just stupidity. It is also incompetence in his professional field of study. He based his argument on documents that were filled with discradited lies, “testimony” extracted under torture. He might just as well decide, on the same basis, that the confessed witches of Salem were guilty. What kind of historian uses his sources so incompetently?
@ Michael Lonie
There was a comment from one Stormfront which was pretty much similar in content to yours except that the poster added World War II NDSAP Germany.
Am I the only one to notice that Israeli universities have an unusual number of morons on the public dole preaching total garbage – Ilan Pappe, Neve Gordon, Dana Olmert, Baruch Kimmerling, etc.?
More than 350 years ago, Sir Edward Coke wrote in his treatise on the laws of England that English law had long ago discarded any reliance on confessions extracted by torture, not only because of the moral implications of torture, but also because the confessions were unreliable. Blackstone’s ommentaries, written some 130 years later, agree.
Off topic: Coke, by the way, reports with approval the judicial rewriting of a wealthy Jew’s will in order to confiscate money the Jew had left to a yeshiva and instead use the money to raise Jewish orphans as Christians and educate them in the Christian religion. The court ruled that the Yeshiva was against public policy, and that the best way to effectuate the dead Jew’s intent was to use the funds to train Jewish orphans in the “true” religion.