15 February 2007
Ariel Toaff, an Italian-Israeli academic, has temporarily halted the publication of his book that critics say lent credence to European blood libels against Jews. Toaff, who is a professor at Israel's Bar Ilan University, argues in his book “Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders” that medieval accusations claiming that Jews used Christian blood for religious rites may have been based on a rabbinical edict allowing the use of dried blood for medicinal purposes. The author, whose father Elio Toaff is a former chief rabbi of Rome, further writes that the hostility evinced by “extremist” Jews toward Christians at the time may have fueled the blood libels. In the days following the book’s release, the international furor prompted Toaff to ask Al Molino, the book’s Italian publishers, to discontinue publication so he could annotate some of the more controversial passages.
Toaff said in a statement that many of his arguments had been “twisted,” and that he hoped the annotations would “prevent the further misuse of my book as anti-Semitic propaganda.” The author promised to donate proceeds from the book to the Anti-Defamation League, which has condemned the book. Jewish and Catholic scholars have denounced his work, saying that he simply reinterpreted known documents and gave credence to confessions that were extracted under torture.
