"Blood Libel"... really Sarah? - Democratic Underground

SoCalDem

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Wed Jan-12-11 07:52 AM
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"Blood Libel"... really Sarah?

Edited on Wed Jan-12-11 07:59 AM by SoCalDem

I call "failure to google" on her speech writers.... this won't end well for her..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
Blood libel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blood libel (also blood accusation<1><2>) refers to a false accusation or claim<3><4><5> that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays.<1><2><6> Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration–been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.<4>

The libels typically allege that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos for Passover. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically blood libel claims have often been made to account for otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases, the alleged victim of human sacrifice has become venerated as a martyr, a holy figure around whom a martyr cult might arise. A few of these have been even canonized as saints.

In Jewish lore, blood libels were the impetus for the creation in the 16th century of the Golem of Prague by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Many popes have either directly or indirectly condemned the blood accusation, and no pope has ever sanctioned it.<7> These libels have persisted among some segments of Christians to the present time, and recently Muslims as well.

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http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0003_0_03147.html

BLOOD LIBEL

BLOOD LIBEL, the allegation that Jews murder non-Jews, especially Christian children, in order to obtain blood for the Passover or other rituals: most blood libels occurred close to Passover, being basically a another form of the belief that Jews had been and still were responsible for the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the divine child; a complex of deliberate lies, trumped-up accusations, and popular beliefs about the murder-lust of the Jews and their bloodthirstiness, based on the conception that Jews hate Christianity and mankind in general. It is combined with the delusion that Jews are in some way not human and must have recourse to special remedies and subterfuges to appear, at least outwardly, like other men. The blood libel led to trials and massacres of Jews in the Middle Ages and early modern times; it was revived by the Nazis. Its origin is rooted in ancient, almost primordial, concepts concerning the potency and energies of *blood. In the early 2000s a controversy among scholars surrounded the argument that the blood libel began in the Middle Ages in the wake of the sacrifice of Jewish children by their parents during Crusaders raids on Jewish communities on their way to the Holy Land.
Origins

Blood sacrifices, practiced by many pagan religions, are expressly forbidden by the Torah. The law of meat-salting (meliḤah) is designed to prevent the least drop of avoidable blood remaining in food. Yet pagan incomprehension of the Jewish monotheist cult, lacking the customary images and statues, led to charges of ritual killing. At a time of tension between Hellenism and Judaism, it was alleged that the Jews would kidnap a Greek foreigner, fatten him up for a year, and then convey him to a wood, where they slew him, sacrificed his body with the customary ritual, partook of his flesh, and while immolating the Greek swore an oath of hostility to the Greeks.

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Some suspect that stories like this were spread intentionally as propaganda for Antiochus Epiphanes to justify his profanation of the Temple. Whatever the immediate cause, the tale is the outcome of suspicion of the Jews and incomprehension of their religion.

To be victims of this accusation was also the fate of other misunderstood religious minorities.

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During the Middle Ages some heretical Christian sects were also afflicted by similar accusations. The general attitude of Christians toward the holy bread of the Communion created an emotional atmosphere in which it was felt that the divine child was mysteriously hidden in the partaken bread. The popular preacher Friar Berthold of Regensburg (13th century) felt obliged to explain why communicants do not actually see the holy child by asking the rhetorical question, "Who would like to bite off a baby's head or hand or foot?" Popular beliefs and imaginings of the time, either of classical origin or rooted in Germanic superstitions, held that blood, even the blood of executed malefactors or from corpses, possesses the powers of healing or causing injury. Thus, combined with the general hatred of Jews then prevailing, a charge of clandestine cruel practices and blood-hunting, which had evolved among the pagans and was used against the early Christians, was deflected by Christian society to the most visible and persistent minority in opposition to its tenets.

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