ABSTRACT
In 1892 Asher Ginzburg, better known by his literary pseudonym Ahad Ha’am, published an article in the journal Hamelitz that concluded with the following sentence: “A Jew and blood – could there be a more complete contradiction?” Ginzburg was alluding to the disingenuous nature of the blood libels.1 We are not required in the present context to defend the Jews from libelous accusations, nor to put the lie to Ahad Ha’am’s claim by proving the centrality of the blood motif in Jewish culture. Our interest is with far more complex questions regarding the status of blood as a fundamental symbol and motif in Jewish culture. My premise is that every culture contains essential and dormant elements, which are bound to surface under certain historical conditions. These elements are of a permanent nature, phenomena of the longue durée, that express an inner-held worldview. Historical circumstances may render them central or marginal, but cannot eradicate them entirely from the collective consciousness. Alongside these are phenomena absorbed from without, owing to nothing more than a mere coincidence of events, that will wither and die with the passing of the circumstances that nourished them. Naturally, drawing a clear distinction between permanent internal phenomena and ephemeral external ones is a precarious and problematic enterprise. There are many gray areas, in which the external is absorbed and assimilated. It is likewise quite difficult to define just what an external cultural phenomenon is. Are the front lines of interfaith polemics the only place where two rival religions engage each other, or does the very existence of an overt polemic bring about profound domestic acculturations, so that each side, now externally engaged, redefines internally its own identity? It is said that when historians have nothing to say, they begin to compare. That is, in fact, what I am about to do – to compare. I seek to ascertain the presence of the blood motif in Judaism through the prism of its encounter with Christianity. The question raised by a comparative endeavor of this sort is two-fold: First, to what extent did Jewish-Christian relations influence the Jewish perspective on blood? And second, vice versa: to what extent did the Jewish perspective on blood influence the Jews’ attitude to Christianity and its rituals? I do not purport to deal here with overt expressions of the status of blood in the Jewish-Christian
discourse; I likewise intend to avoid any discussion surrounding blood libels, circumcision, menstrual blood, and other such familiar matters. My interest is in more humble and obscure instances of symbols and expressions linked to the cultural memory of martyred blood. I seek to show that the construction of such memories results from a two-way traffic involving the acculturation of Christian motifs and the rejection thereof. Alongside unique phenomena that have no equal in the Christian environment, we can identify other phenomena that share a great deal with the rival Christian dialectic.
