Historian Ignites Uproar in Italy

Books

By AMY K. ROSENTHAL
February 23, 2007

JERUSALEM — In Rome last week a new book by the Italian-Israeli scholar Ariel Toaff was removed from bookstores at the author's request after selling 3,000 copies. Mr. Toaff's book, a history of the blood libel in the Middle Ages, has faced severe criticism from the Jewish community for stirring up anti-Semitic hatred.

"The author has the right to ask for his book to be retracted according to the norms of authors' rights, but he must pay the costs," Mr. Toaff's editor at Il Mulino publishing house, Ugo Berti, said. The book has, however, cost Mr. Toaff more than publishers' fees. He was dismissed as editor of the Jewish historical review Zohar, and many of his friends and colleagues now shun him. Mr. Toaff has also been prevented from seeing his father, Elio Toaff, Rome's former chief rabbi for 50 years, whose signature is among those on a rabbinical press release that was issued against the contents of the book before its publication.

In his book, "Pasqua di Sangue: Gli Ebrei d'Europa e omicidi rituali" (Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders), Mr. Toaff suggests that during the period between 1100 and 1500, a small, radical group of Ashkenazi Jews who settled in the Germanspeaking region of northeastern Italy ritually murdered Christian children. He bases his conclusions on testimony from the 1475 murder trial of a Christian child, Simon of Trent, which he says contains "statements that were not part of the Christian culture of the judges [who] could not have invented or added them."

The rabbis who signed the statement condemning the book deny the use of human blood in any Jewish rituals. Many members of the Italian Jewish community are shocked that Mr. Toaff could write such a book. "It's unbelievable to us that a man educated and enlightened in the tradition of his prestigious father could even begin to suggest that testimonies taken from Jews under torture could have any truth," an advisor to Riccardo Di Segni, Rome's chief rabbi, Chiara Di Segni Shilat, said.

Members of the academy have also joined the public outcry. "The testimonies of those Jews tortured and killed for young Simon's murder have been exhaustively examined and falsified by numerous historians," a professor of modern history at the University of Rome, Anna Foa, said. "One needs a degree in psychoanalysis in order to follow [Mr. Toaff's] ideas that seem to fall from the sky."

The suggestion of any historical basis for the blood libel, especially by a Jew, could not come at a worst time. "He knew perfectly well that the blood libel myth has been one of the most aggressive and exploited forms of anti-Semitism in our times," a journalist for the Italian newspaper Il Giornale and a professor of Middle Eastern history at Luiss University in Rome, Fiamma Nirenstein, said. "The Muslim world will just love this."

"If relations were normal, then reaction to this book whether by a Jew or non-Jew would be the same, but Italian Jews went into an utter panic," said Manuela Consonni of the Hebrew University. "The sensationalism that has occurred as a result of Toaff's book demonstrates the prevailing abnormality which exists between Catholic and Jewish Italy even 60 years after the Holocaust."

It may be too early to assess the damage of Mr. Toaff's book on Italian Jewry. While some negative impact seems unavoidable, it may also present an opportunity to take proactive measures. "The Italian Jewish community has to learn that they are strong enough and can fight anti-Semitism. This is an opportunity for us to grow and evolve," Ms. Di Segni Shilat said. Mr. Toaff has already offered to turn over the profits he makes from his book to the Anti-Defamation League, which last week issued a condemnation of the book.

Ms. Rosenthal is a writer for the Italian daily Il Foglio. She lives in Rome and Jerusalem.

Historian Ignites Uproar in Italy

Books

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