In light of a recent article (terrible quality scan, here) from the New Yorker which caused quite a stir, I thought that the below clip was most appropriate:
February 14, 2007
BREAKING: Toaff Pulls Libel Book
Professor Ariel Toaff has decided to suspend the distribution of his book Pasque di Sangue (Easter of Blood / Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders), bowing to pressure from Bar-Ilan University, where he serves as a tenured professor, and parties who he says “distorted” the claims of the book.
UPDATE:
Haaretz reports that Toaff has not withdrawn the book altogether. Rather, Toaff has suspended publication to facilitate his “[emendation of] contentious sections.” In his comments printed in Haaretz, Toaff reiterated his claim that he wished to expose the existence of fundamentalist, and violent, elements in Ashkenazic Jewry. Though I know nothing about the contents of the book, I am relatively sure that his claims build to a large extent on the Hebrew Crusade-narratives, of which I have already quoted a short excerpt. I hope to post some preliminary comments in the near future.
By the way, the “talkbacks” (i.e., comments) on Israeli news websites are seeing some of Toaff’s (purported) students from Bar-Ilan alleging ulterior (i.e., contemporary) motives for the publication of this controversial theory, which Toaff would often hint to in his lectures. In this case, the claim would go: If religious fundamentalists would go so far as to butcher children in the Middle Ages, we need to be wary of contemporary religious fundamentalists as well for fear of what they might perpetrate.
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