Îaroset and the Blood Libels*

Susan WEINGARTEN Tel Aviv University

‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ ÎAROSET AND THE BLOOD LIBELS*

RÉSUMÉ

Les accusations de meurtre rituel qu’a connues l’Europe médiévale avaient souvent pour objet de prétendus meurtres d’enfants chrétiens par des juifs, qui auraient utilisé le sang de leurs victimes pour préparer les maÒÒot de la Pâque. Toutefois, c’est la Ìaroset qui est parfois mise en cause, une sorte de purée brun-rouge qui se mange lors du seder, et qui aurait soi-disant été préparée avec la tête et les entrailles d’enfants chrétiens assassinés. L’article s’intéresse à une tradition littéraire juive associant la Ìaroset au sang et à la mort de nourrissons, ainsi qu’à une tradition alimentaire juive qui veut que l’on consomme des entrailles animales l’après-midi précédant le seder. Ces deux traditions semblent dater du IVe siècle, à une époque où les chrétiens accu- saient les gnostiques, un groupe marginal se situant entre judaïsme et christianisme, de consommer des avortons dans une mixture rappelant fort la Ìaroset. On peut, dès lors, se demander si les accusations de fêtes cannibales portées contre les juifs, au moment de la Pâque, ne remonteraient pas également au IVe siècle de l’ère chrétienne.

SUMMARY

Mediaeval European blood libels often accused Jews of murdering Christian children, and using their blood for baking Passover maÒÒot. Some accusations, however, centred on Ìaroset, the reddish-brown dip eaten at the seder. This was said to be made of the head and entrails of murdered Christian children. This paper traces a Jewish literary tradition connecting Ìaroset with blood and dead babies, and a Jewish food tradition of eating animal entrails in the afternoon before the seder. Both these traditions appear to date back to the fourth century. There is also evidence that fourth-century Christians accused Gnostics, a group on the fringes between Judaism and Christianity, of eating dead babies in a Ìaroset-like mixture. In light of this, the paper asks whether mediaeval accusations of Jewish cannibalistic feasts at Passover can now be traced back to the Christian fourth century.

* Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Professors Guy Stroumsa and Pieter van der Horst, and my colleague Dr Yuval Shahar for discussions of blood libels and Ìaroset, and especially Professor Aharon Oppenheimer, who read and commented on the whole text. My thanks also to the German-Israel Foundation (GIF), for their support of a larger project, of which this is part, on ancient food in its religious and cultural contexts.

Revue des études juives, 172 (1-2), janvier-juin 2013, pp. 83-100. doi: 10.2143/REJ.172.1.2979741

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 8383 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 84 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

The ritual of the Passover seder commemorating the exodus from Egypt includes reading the haggadah,1 drinking red wine and eating symbolic foods. The foods are used to symbolise both the harsh conditions of the Jewish slaves and the final redemption: thus bitter herbs are dipped into the reddish-brown mixture called Ìaroset, usually made of fruits, nuts and spices with wine or vinegar, to modify their bitterness. Îaroset itself is expounded by the rabbis as alluding to both slavery and redemption. Paradoxically, Ìaroset does not appear in the text of the haggadah, only in the accompa- nying stage directions which differ from version to version and from place to place. I have already discussed Ìaroset and its changing ingredients in an earlier paper.2 But in the course of this study, particularly when I arrived in mediaeval Europe, I have become aware of what I call the dark side of Ìaroset. From time to time, often around Easter, beginning in England and spreading all over mediaeval Europe especially following the massacres of the First Crusade in 1096, Jews were accused in community after community of the ritual murder of Christian children, sometimes associated with cannibalistic feasting on their victims. These fantastic accusations are usually classed together as ‘blood libels.’3 Later, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, accusations of desecration of the Host were also made — with the wafer reportedly responding to Jewish attempts to pierce and cut it by spurting blood, changing into a baby etc. While the accusations were often that the Jews needed Christian blood for baking their maÒÒah, in mediaeval France some accusations centred round Ìaroset. In the biblical story retold at Passover, Jewish babies are killed in Egypt. In the fourth century, Christians accuse Gnostics of eating their own babies to celebrate Passover. In the Middle Ages Christians accuse Jews of eating Christian children to celebrate Passover. Can we trace any links between

1. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the question arose of how to celebrate the festival of Passover without pilgrimage or the paschal offering. The main solution was through the introduction of the Passover haggadah, an extensive exposition of verses narrating the exodus from Egypt, based on the biblical command “and you shall tell [we- higgadeta] it to your children” (Ex. 13:8). It should be noted that all the rabbis mentioned in the haggadah except one are rabbis of the Yabneh period, which suggests the time it was originally written. For a recent review of the evidence, see J. KULP, “The Origins of the Seder and Haggadah”, Currents in Biblical Research 4 (2005), p. 109-134. 2. S. WEINGARTEN, “Îaroset”, in R. HOSKINGS (ed.), Authenticity in the Kitchen: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2005, Totnes, 2006, p. 414-426; S. WEINGAR- TEN, Îaroset: the Taste of History (forthcoming). 3. For discussion of the terminology, I. J. YUVAL “‘They Tell Lies: You Ate the Man’: Jewish Reactions to Ritual Murder Accusations”, in A. SAPIR ABULAFIA (ed.), Religious Violence between Christians and Jews: Mediaeval Roots, Modern Perspectives, Basingstoke, 2002, p. 86-107.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 8484 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 85

these through Ìaroset? The very earliest accounts accusing Jews of cannibalistic eating of a human sacrifice, albeit not on Passover, come from Hellenis- tic Egypt. Christians were also accused by pagans of similar practices from the second century CE, and they in turn accused Christian heretics such as Gnostics and Montanists in the fourth century.4 In the fourth century the pagan Rutilius Namatianus also implies that Jews were cannibals.5 Scholars have debated whether there were connections between these accusations and the mediaeval phenomena.6 I shall be looking to see whether the accusations around Ìaroset and the associated literary traditions have anything to contrib- ute to this debate. It is clear there are many ways of treating these questions. I have tried to avoid psychological and anthropological theory: no Golden Bough, Jungian subconscious or Lacanian imaginaire. My subject is Ìaroset in history, and I shall confine myself to the attempt to see how far we can trace the connection between this foodstuff and the blood libels, moving backwards from mediaeval ritual murder trials, in particular a trial which took place in fourteenth-century Savoie.

Îaroset and the ‘blood libels’: the trial of Savoie, 1329

From the mid-twelfth century, at the yearly Easter celebrations by Chris- tians in memory of the crucifixion of Jesus, anger against the Jews as ‘Christ killers’ was rife. Passover often coincided with Easter, and many times there were accusations against a local Jewish community of the ritual murder/ human sacrifice of a Christian child, whose blood, it was said, was baked into maÒÒah, the wafers of unleavened bread eaten at the Passover seder,

4. See on this A. MCGOWEN, “Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism against Christians in the Second Century”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994), p. 413-442; J. RIVES, “Human Sacrifice among Pagans and Christians”, Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995), p. 65-85 and the bibliographies cited in both these papers. 5. RUTILIUS, De reditu suo, v. 381-384, where the Jewish inn-keeper is compared to Antiphates, the king of the cannibal Laestrygonians in Homer’s Odyssey 10, l.114f. There are also accounts of Jewish cannibalism as part of war atrocities in the epitome of the fourth century Cassius Dio by XIPHILINUS, Historia Romana, 98.32,1-3; or as a result of extreme circumstances: the fifth century midrash Lamentations Rabbah records Jews trapped underground as a consequence of the Bar Kokhba revolt being forced to eat their companions. 6. For example, P. VAN DER HORST in “The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism: a Chapter in the History of Anti-Semitism”, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities 8 (2008), p. 54-55 writes that “the motif of Jewish cannibalism, whether or not preceded by a ritual murder, turned out to be very long-lived. In the Christian Middle Ages it is revivified in a number of ways” (my stress, S.W.).

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 8585 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 86 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

which thus was said to provide a cannibalistic feast.7 The accusations were not only about maÒÒah. The Jewish midrashic associations of blood and death of Jewish children with Ìaroset can be paralleled in Christian accusations that Jews used Christian children and their blood in this Passover food, too. In 1453 the Jews of Arles were accused of killing Christian children and making Ìaroset with their blood. Fortunately the case was brought before the King, le bon roi René, and the Jews of Arles were cleared of this fantastic accusation. An earlier accusation of ritual murder, in Savoie in 1329, also led to the Jews involved being acquitted, since their evidence had been given under torture. In other places in Europe, accused Jews were less fortunate.

The protocols of the Savoie trial are still extant, and detail both the revolt- ing accusations about Ìaroset and the defence. The Jews, it was said, […] morti dictos pueros tradiderunt ac de capitibus et intestinis eorum collirium seu epulum,8 quod vocatur aharace, et pro cibo judeis universis dando compo- suerunt. Et de dicto cibo quolibet paschate loco sacrificii comedunt dicti judei. Conficiuntque saltem in quolibet anno sexto […] […] handed over the said children to be killed and made their heads and intestines into a paste or food which was called aharace (Ìaroset) which was made for all the Jews to eat, and which said food the said Jews eat at Passover instead of the Passover sacrifice every sixth year […]

The document adds that […] judei in quacumque parte mundi existentes suum aharace faciant in suo paschate certis annis de predictis et pro predictis credunt se esse salvatos, et quod dictus Acelinus de eodem aharace pluries comedit. Item et appareat per confessionem dictorum Acelini et Jaqueti quod ipsi vendiderunt et tradiderunt duos pueros […] pro dicto aharace faciendo.

7. There is a vast literature on ritual murder accusations. See, for example H. STRACK, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, New York, 1909, and more recently R. PO-CHIA HSIA, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany, New Haven-London, 1988; I. J. YUVAL, Two Nations in your Womb: perceptions of Jews and Christians on Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Berkeley, 2006. I have not yet seen A. TOAFF’s Pasque di sangue: Ebrei d’Europa e omicidi rituali, Bologna, 2007, which has come in for a great deal of scholarly criticism and which the author himself has retracted in part. On the significance of blood in Jewish and Christian traditions, see M. B. HART (ed.), Jewish Blood: Reality and Metaphor in History, Religion and Culture, London-New York, 2009, with bibliography ad loc.; C. W. BYNUM, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond, Philadelphia, 2007, sees blood as the “central symbol and central cult object of late mediaeval devotion — and perhaps the central problem as well.” 8. Collirium, the Latin word I have translated here as “paste” was used in earlier times to mean clay. We shall see below that Ìaroset was said by the rabbis to symbolise clay. Could this meaning still have been attached even to this nightmare of Ìaroset?

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 8686 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 87

[…] Jews in every part of the world make their aharace on their Passover in certain years from these ingredients and they believe that with these ingredients they will attain salvation. The said Acelin [the Jew accused] ate several times from the aharace. And it also appears that from the confession of the said Acelin and the said Jaquet [the Christian accused] that they sold and handed over two children […] in order to prepare the said aharace.

Acelin was forced to defend himself, other named Jews, and indeed the whole Jewish community against these charges: asseruerit […] quod ipse predicti Aquinetus et Jocetus aliquos pueros a dicto Jaqueto […] nonquam emerunt, et quod in suo aharace nonquam sanguinem vel carnem apponunt, quia esset contra legem eisdem per Moysem datam. He declared that he and the afore-mentioned Aquinet and Jocet had never bought children from the afore-mentioned Jaquet […] and that [the Jews] never mixed blood or meat in their aharace because this was against the law that had been given them by Moses.9

In his summing up, the judge in this case, Peter Ravasii, wrote that he found that the Jews anno quolibet tempore paschali eorumdem sacrificium seu suum aharace faciunt, ut Deo sacrificent secundum formam legis per Moysem eis datam, in quo sacrificio seu aharace neque sanguine neque aliquod crudum seu mortivum apponere debet, sed panes adimos cum lattucis agrestibus in suo aharace seu sacrificio ponere debent. […] make their offering or aharace every year at the time of Passover, so that they make their service to God following the form of law given to them by Moses, where they must not put blood or any other raw or dead? thing in their offering or aharace, but they must put unleavened bread with wild lettuce in their aharace or offering.

He thus acquitted the accused and all the local Jewish community. But for Acelin it was too late. He died in prison as a result of the tortures he had suffered.

In these accounts the Christian accusations of this one Jew are extended to the whole Jewish community. They impute a six-yearly ritual to the accusation of Jewish cannibalistic eating of Ìaroset. I do not understand the significance

9. R. BEN SHALOM, “The Ritual Murder Accusation at Arles and the Franciscan Mission at Avignon in 1453” (Hebrew), Zion 63 (1998), p. 391-407. The original Latin texts are given by M. ESPOSITO, “Un procès contre les Juifs de la Savoie en 1329”, Revue d’histoire ecclésias- tique 34 (1938), p. 785-795. The translations are my own. It is interesting to note that the Floren- tine scholar Esposito failed to identify the nature of aharace. It was identified by B. Z. DINUR, Israel in the Diaspora, vol. 2, part 2 (Hebrew), Tel Aviv-Jerusalem, 1966, p. 556.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 8787 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 88 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

of the six years; most other cases of accusations make it one year or seven. It is common, however, that accusations are of the whole community. The very first mediaeval blood libel we know of, in England in 1144, had spoken of a Jewish conspiracy centred in Narbonne, which was said to choose a Christian child as sacrificial victim every year from a different country, although it did not mention Ìaroset.10 In Savoie, the eating of the Ìaroset is said to be to ‘attain salvation,’ like the eucharist. It is also noteworthy that the word repeatedly used in the judicial summing up, sacrificium, which I have translated as ‘offering,’ is used in other Christian contexts to refer to the eucharist.11 The Jewish tradition of the whole Passover Seder is a celebration of the redemption from Egypt and a foreshadowing of the final redemption that is to be. Apart from this general setting, as we shall see below, Ìaroset is also specifically associated with redemption as well as with slavery, for the rabbis debate whether it is a reminder of clay, which signifies slavery, or the apple tree, which signifies redemption. The children were also said to be sold. This is, of course, reminiscent of the New Testament account of the selling of Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Blood is not mentioned in the written accusation, but from the Jewish refutation it is clear that the Jews are aware that blood is part of the ritual murder fantasy, which they deny: “He declared that … they never mixed blood or meat in their aharace.” Furthermore, the Jews are specifically acquitted of eating blood in their sacrificium seu aharace, their Ìaroset offering. We can see in these two cases that when mediaeval Christians accused Jews of using blood in their preparations for Passover, they were sometimes also referring to Ìaroset.12

Talmudic Ìaroset

We shall now move back to look at Ìaroset itself, and what the Jewish sources have to say about its symbolism and allusions. Right from the earliest times we hear of Ìaroset, it is clear that the rabbis disagreed on the significance given to it. The Babylonian Talmud says that Ìaroset is a reminder of the clay used for the bricks made by the Jews when slaves in Egypt.13 However, it also cites an alternative suggestion: that it was a reminder of the

10. This accusation did not, however, include references to cannibalism or Ìaroset. 11. C. DU CANGE, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, vol. VI, s.v. sacrificium. 12. BEN SHALOM, “The Ritual Murder Accusation”, p. 399. 13. BT PesaÌim 115a. Mishnah PesaÌim 10, 3 debates whether Ìaroset is a religious obligation or not.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 8888 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 89

apple tree, which is connected to the redemption (see the explanation below). The fourth-century Jerusalem Talmud, on the other hand, had debated whether Ìaroset symbolises clay or blood.14 It does not specify which blood, but blood flows copiously through the Passover narrative and there are a number of possibilities. The first of the ten plagues sent by God to Egypt turned all the water in the land to blood, while in the last plague it was the blood of the paschal lamb painted on the doorposts of Jewish houses which was the sign for the destroyer to pass over them and kill only the first-born of the Egyp- tians.15 The Mekhilta, a third century midrash, associates the blood of the lamb with the blood of circumcision, the blood of the covenant, and this association is further developed in the tenth or eleventh century midrash Exodus Rabbah: in both the Passover haggadah and the Jewish circumcision ceremony the verse ‘In thy blood, Live!’ (Ezekiel 16:6) is recited.16

Îaroset in midrash and targum?

The biblical book of Exodus writes of the Egyptian slavery The Egyptians ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites the various labours they made them perform. Ruthlessly they made life bitter for them with harsh labour at mortar and bricks and with all sorts of tasks in the field.17

Later we hear that the Egyptian Pharaoh made life even more difficult, and instead of providing straw to mix with clay to make the bricks to build

14. JT PesaÌim 37d 15. Ex. 7:17-21; 29-30. On the apotropaic force of the use of blood here, see S. E. LOE- WENSTAMM, The Tradition of the Exodus in its Development (Hebrew with English summary), Jerusalem, 1983, p. v-vii and 80-94. 16. Mekhilta PisÌa 5, J. Z. LAUTERBACH (ed.), Philadelphia, 1933-1935, p.14; Exodus Rab- bah 19, 5. See on this, S. ZEITLIN, “The Liturgy of the First Night of Passover”, The Jewish Quarterly Review 38 (1947-1948), p. 431-460, esp. p. 434-440; B. M. BOKSER, The Origins of the Seder: the Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism, Berkeley, 1984, p. 96-99; L. A. HOFF- MAN, Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism, Chicago, 1996, p. 100; S. J. D. COHEN, “A Brief History of Jewish Circumcision Blood”, in E. W. MARK (ed.), The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite, Hanover-London, 2003, p. 30-42 and esp. p. 34-37; ID., Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism, Berkeley etc., 2005; Henoch 30 (2008) theme-issue, R. S. BOUSTAN, A. YOSHIKO REED (eds.), Blood and the Boundaries of Jewish and Christian Identities in Late Antiquity; and now J. COSTA, “Le marqueur identitaire de la circoncision chez les rabbins de l’Antiquité”, in B. Pouderon et S. C. Mimouni (éd.), La croisée des chemins revisitée, Paris, 2012, p. 161-194. I am grateful to José Costa for allowing me to see his paper prior to publication. 17. Ex. 1:14, according to Jewish Publication Society Tanakh: a New Translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the Traditional Hebrew Text, Philadelphia, 1985.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 8989 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 90 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

his cities, he made the Israelite slaves go to forage for the straw as well, and scourged them if they made fewer bricks as a result. Jewish baby boys were condemned to death by drowning. The death and misery of the Egyptian slavery is expanded in various midrashim. The first of these is to be found in the targum, which translates and adds further explanations to the text of the Pentateuch. Thus in the biblical book of Exodus, after the redemption from Egypt and the revelation on Mount Sinai, the Jewish people accept the ‘book of the covenant’ of God’s laws: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do and obey,” they promise. To ratify this covenant Moses sprinkles them with the blood of oxen.18 Following this, he and the priests and elders have a vision of God on his throne, with the likeness of a ‘brick of sapphire’ under His feet.19 This fourth-century targum gives a literal translation of this verse about the sapphire brick beneath God’s feet, and then adds a further horrifying story, set in the time of the Egyptian slavery.20 The brick, it writes, is: מידכר שיעבודא דשעבידו מצראי ית בני ישראל בטינא ובליבנין והואן נשייא בטשן ית טינא עם גובריהון הות תמן ריבא מפנקתא מערתא ואפילת ית עוברא ואשתבטש עם טינא נחת גבריאל ועבד מיניה לבינתא ואסקיה לשמי מרומא ואתקניה גלוגדק תחות אפופודין דמרי עלמא […] a memorial of the slavery wherewith the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with clay and bricks. The women were treading the clay with their husbands. There was one delicate young woman who was pregnant. She aborted

18. Ex. 24:1-8. On this passage as “an initiation ritual”, D. BIALE, “Blood and Belief”, in HART, Jewish Blood, p. 14-30, esp. p. 17; and ID., Blood and Belief: the Circulation of a Symbol between Christians and Jews, Berkeley, 2007. 19. JPS Tanakh: pavement of sapphire. 20. I use the conventional dating of G. STEMBERGER, Introduction to the Talmud and the Midrash, Edinburgh, 1996 (2nd ed.), for Targum pseudo-Jonathan and Pirqei de-Rabbi Eli‘ezer below. A. SHINAN, in a number of works including “Beyn Midrash le-Targum: ‘Al Targum ha-Torah ha-meyuÌas le-Yonatan u-Midrash Pirqei de-Rabbi Eli‘ezer”, in M. B. LERNER, M. A. FRIEDMAN (eds.), MeÌqarim be-Midreshei Aggadah: Sefer Zikkaron li-∑ebhi Me’ir RabbinowiÒ, Tel Aviv, 1996, p. 231-243, has proposed that Pirqei de-Rabbi Eli‘ezer in fact predates the targum and was its source, but his thesis has been convincingly rejected by R. Hayward, “The Date of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Some Comments”, Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989), p. 7-30. Shinan replied to this in “Dating Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Some More Comments”, Journal of Jewish Studies 41 (1990), p. 57-61 “leav[ing] it to the reader to decide” (p. 61), but as far as I know he has not replied to Hayward’s detailed further answer to his criticisms in “Pirqei de Rabbi Eliezer and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan”, Journal of Jewish Studies 42 (1991), p. 215-246. With reference to the two versions of the midrash discussed here, it is noteworthy that Shinan himself, when discussing these in particular, merely places them side by side, noting the resemblance between them and does not claim that the Pirqei de-Rabbi Eli‘ezer version preceded the Pseudo-Jonathan version: A. SHINAN, “Aggadot temuhot we-Ìaserot maqbilah be-Targum ha-meyuÌas le-Yonatan”, in A. MELTZER (ed.), We-hu Pela’i: Sefer Zikkaron le-Rabh Profesor PinÌas Pela’i, Be’er Sheva, 1998, p. 35-43, esp. p. 36.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9090 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 91

her foetus and it got trodden in with the clay. Gabriel came down and made it into a brick, and going up to the Heavens on high, set it as a footstool under the throne of the Lord of the Universe.21

The targum has added here an explanation of the sapphire brick which is the divine footstool: God too has His memorials of the Egyptian slavery. This story of persecution resonates through the ages — later rabbis often used the motif of the ‘delicate girl’ forced into unfamiliar labour to under- line the sufferings of the whole Jewish people.22 For us as post-Holocaust readers the story resonates still further. The baby is redeemed by the angel, who makes it into part of the fabric of Heaven, but what of the mother? The very brief targum does not tell us any more about her. However, by the ninth century there are further developments in midrash, filling in more details of the story. This is the case of Pirqei de-Rabbi Eli‘ezer, which probably originated in Palestine but spread widely23: והיו ישראל מקוששין את הקש במידבר, והיו רומסין אותו בחמוריהם ונשיהם ובניהם ובנותיהם, והקש של מדבר היה נוקב עקביהם, והיה דם יוצא ומתבוסס בחמר. ורחל בת בתו של שותלח היתה הרה ללדת ורמסה בחמר עם בעלה, ויצא הולד מתוך מעיה ונתערב בתוך המלבן, ועלתה צעקתה לפני כסא הכבוד, ירד מיכאל המלאך ולקח את המלבן בטיט שלו והעלהו לפני כסא הכבוד. ואותו-הלילה נגלה הקדוש-ברוך-הוא והכה כל בכורי מצרים, שנאמר: ויהי בחצי הלילה וה׳ הכה כל בכור (שמות יב כט). Israel were gathering the straw in the wilderness, and they trod it with their donkeys and their wives and their sons and their daughters. The straw from the wilderness pricked their heels and the blood came out and got mixed with the clay. Rachel, the granddaughter of Shutelach, was very pregnant, and she trod the clay with her husband and the foetus came out of her womb and got mixed up in the brick. Her cry rose to the Throne of Glory, and the angel Michael went down and took the brick made with the clay and brought it up before the Throne of Glory. That same night the Holy One, blessed be He, was revealed and smote all the first born of Egypt as it is said: and at midnight God smote all the first born (Ex 12:29).24

The midrash goes further than the targum. There is an explicit link between the brick-making and blood: the clay for the bricks is mixed with the blood from the heels of the Jewish slaves pricked by the straw, working

21. Targum pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 24:10, M. GINSBURGER (ed.), Berlin, 1903. 22. See e. g. B. L. VISOTSKY, “Most Tender and Fairest of Women: a Study in the Trans- mission of Aggada”, Harvard Theological Review 76 (1983), p. 403-18. 23. It is quoted at the beginning of the twelfth century by Rabbi Nathan of Rome in his ‘Arukh. See on this STEMBERGER, Introduction to the Talmud, p. 329. 24. Pirqei de-Rabbi Eli‘ezer 48.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9191 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 92 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

like donkeys. And it is then mixed with the blood of the dead baby, aborted by its mother while treading the clay with her husband. And here the mother is named as Rachel, whose cry evokes the book of Jeremiah, where Rachel weeps for her children, the whole Jewish people: Thus saith the Lord, A voice was heard in Ramah Lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children Refused to be comforted For her children, Because they were not.25

And it is her cry which reaches God on high (the literal translation of ‘Ramah’ is a high place) together with her child so horribly trampled into the the ,טיט clay of the brick — and the word used by the midrash for clay is same word which is used in both Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud for the clay which Ìaroset symbolises. But the prophecy in Jeremiah ends with words of hope: Thus saith the Lord Refrain thy voice from weeping […] For thy work shall be rewarded – saith the Lord: […] And there is hope in thine end – saith the Lord: […] That thy children shall come again to their own border.

In this midrash, as in the targum, the child trampled into the brick brings redemption — but here it is in the form of the terrible vengeance of the final plague, the smiting of the first born of the Egyptians, the death of their pagan children for the death of Rachel’s Jewish child. It was this final plague which brought about the redemption from Egypt.

Excursus: Rachel weeping for her children

We have already noted that part of the horrors of the Egyptian slavery included the direction by Pharaoh to kill Jewish baby boys by throwing them into the river Nile. The midrashim relate that the Jews responded to this by abstaining from sex, so they would have no children. Eventually the ‘virtuous Jewish women’ realised this would result in the destruction of the whole

25. Jer. 31:15.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9292 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 93

people, and went out to seduce their own husbands ‘under the apple trees.’ The results of this were babies born under the same apple trees. The apple tree thus became associated with redemption, and was seen as an alternative symbol for Ìaroset. This midrash about the apple tree and its connection to redemption is cited by Rashi, who lived in Troyes in France at the time of the First Crusade in 1096, and whose commentaries quickly became stand- ard, being used to this very day.26 Scholars have pointed out that there is a New Testament parallel to the decree of Pharaoh calling for the drowning of Jewish baby boys, in King Herod’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ — also male babies — in an attempt to kill Jesus, the predicted king of the Jews.27 And here, as in the midrash, the author of the Gospel also associates the mourning mothers with the figure of Rachel from Jeremiah: ‘In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and would not be comforted, because they are not.’28 Thus both Jews and Christians in their narratives of the wicked king killing male Jewish babies personalise the mourning mother[s] in the form of the biblical Rachel, weeping for her children. Later, twelfth-century Jewish narratives of the massacres of Jews in Mainz associated with the First Crusade will figure a ‘pious mistress Rachel,’ who is brought to kill her own children rather than leave them to their Chris- tian attackers, who subsequently kill her too.29

Îaroset in the liturgy

To return to Ìaroset. Perhaps it seems a little far-fetched to associate the deaths of the aborted babies trodden into the clay with Ìaroset, in spite of the explicit references to blood and clay. We might think that Ìaroset can be linked to the biblical text about brick-making, given that the rabbis tell us it was a reminder of clay, but not necessarily to this particular targum or midrash. However, as already noted by Yuval,30 this same dark association

26. Midrash Exodus Rabbah 1.12.4 with parallels in Land of Israel midrashim and BT Sotah 11b; Rashi’s version is a commentary on BT PesaÌim 116a. 27. D. MALKIEL, “Infanticide in Passover Iconography”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993), p. 85-99, esp. p. 99. The possible links between Christian and Jewish narratives is discussed by YUVAL, Two Nations, p. 248-251. My discussion builds on the foundations laid by Malkiel and Yuval, and develops them further. 28. Matt. 2:18. 29. See J. COHEN, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade, Philadelphia, 2004, p. 106-129. 30. YUVAL, Two Nations, p. 253.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9393 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 94 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

seems to have been picked up in the eleventh century by a French Jewish scholar from Narbonne, Joseph Tov Elem (Bonfils). He was much used as a religious legal authority by mediaeval Ashkenazi Jewish commentators on the Talmud, who lived mostly in France and Germany. Apart from his legal works, Joseph Tov Elem also wrote yoÒrot.31 One of them was written for Shabbat ha-gadol, the ‘Great Sabbath’, which immediately precedes Passo- ver, and describes preparations for the festival.32 It includes the following lines relating to Ìaroset: ולמה טבלו בחרסת זכר לטיט שאשה ובעלה דורסת ולמה תבלין בתוכו מגבלים כמו מלבן זכר לניפוץ עם לקשש קש לתבן

And why should [the bitter herbs] be dipped in Ìaroset? As a reminder of the clay which a woman treads with her husband. And why is spice mixed with it like a brick? In memory of the scattering of the people to gather stubble for straw.

The stubble for straw comes from the biblical text, and Ashkenazi mediaeval rabbis specified that the spices in the Ìaroset must not be ground too finely, but left in small pieces like the straw in clay bricks. The image here in the poem of the woman treading clay together with her husband, on the other hand, does not appear explicitly in the biblical or talmudic texts, but only in the stories we have seen from the targum and the midrash about the woman whose baby was trodden into the clay.33 (It is interesting to note in this context, however, that the JT PesaÌim 37d, where the text we have is very corrupt, can be read to imply that according to the school of Issi, a woman should make Ìaroset together with her husband, and that this indeed is the Yemenite custom.34)

31. On yoÒrot, liturgical poems connected to the Jewish calendar see, E. FLEISCHER, The Yotzer: its Emergence and Development (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1984. 32. Siddur oÒar ha-tefillot, vol. 2, Vilna, 1914, p. 250. 33. I. J. YUVAL, “Passover in the Middle Ages”, in P. F. BRADSHAW, L. A. HOFFMAN (eds.), Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times, Notre Dame, 1999, p. 127-160, esp. p. 153-154, and in more detail ID., Two Nations, p. 251-253. Yuval does not discuss the targum, only the midrash, but the addition of this link only serves to confirm his argument. Text of the edition) ולמה נקרא שמה (ד)[ר]ו(כ)[ב]ה. (דו !ה!כא) [שהיא רבה] ע(י1)מ(ן)[ו] .34 of the Israel Language Academy, 2001). S LIEBERMAN, Ha-Yerushalmi ki-pheshuto, vol. 1, Jerusalem, 2008 (3rd ed.), p. 520 reads this text as saying that it (Ìaroset) must be ground with ולמה it (i.e. maror) but Y. KAPPAÎ, Sefer Agaddata de-PisÌa, Jerusalem, 1959, p. 13 reads in other words, he says, that men and women work together ,נקרא שמה דוכה שהיא דכה עמו preparing it [the dukkeh = Ìaroset] and pounding it. He adds that in the printed editions which

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9494 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 95

In the Jerusalem Talmud, the third-century Rabbi Joshua ben Levi is cited as saying that Ìaroset symbolises the clay from which the Israelites made building bricks for Pharaoh.35 The Jerusalem Talmud then cites an alternative, even earlier tradition, that Ìaroset signifies blood. This tradition of the blood symbolism of Ìaroset, as opposed to the clay symbolism, is not present in the Babylonian Talmud. However, it is cited from the Jerusalem Talmud by the twelfth-fourteenth century tosafists, in their commentary on BT PesaÌim 116a. The tosafists add that Ìaroset is thinned down at the time of eating with wine and vinegar. A tosafist from England, Jacob b Judah Îazzan of London, explained that this is a solution to the halakhic problem posed by the Jerusalem Talmud text: since there is a contradiction between making Ìaroset thick like clay and thin like blood, his teacher, Moses of London, would make it thick at first and then thin it down at table with wine in order to cover both prescriptions.36 Jacob also quotes Maimonides on making This is the .(דורסן) ’Ìaroset, saying that the ingredients should be ‘trodden clay with her husband in the (דורסת) same verb used of the woman treading yoÒer. Clearly blood, treading clay and making Ìaroset were actively connected in the minds of these authors. Thus, if we now take the Jerusalem Talmud, targum, midrash, yoÒer and the commentaries of the tosafists together, we have a continuous thread of Jewish tradition associating Ìaroset with blood and clay and thus with the death of Jewish babies, from the fourth century to the Middle Ages. Not all of these pieces of evidence are complete — but taken all together they add up to a picture which seems to have been known to late antique and mediaeval Jewish audiences. Some elements even have Christian parallels. So was it this long tradition that was picked up and perverted in the mediaeval Christian ‘blood libels’?

Entrails

We have seen that the accusation of ritual cannibalism against the Jews of Savoie made the charge that they used the heads and intestines [de capitibus et intestinis] of the murdered children to make their Ìaroset. The very first recorded accusation of Jewish human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism is to

did not understand the language of EreÒ Yisra’el and its customs the text was corrupted, which led to strange interpretations. 35. JT PesaÌim 37d 36. JACOB BEN JUDAH ÎAZZAN OF LONDON, ‘EÒ Îayyim, I. BRODIE (ed.), Jerusalem, 1962- 1967.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9595 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 96 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

be found in the first century CE Apion of Alexandria, as quoted and refuted by Josephus. Apion accuses the Jews of abducting and sacrificing an adult Greek annually, and eating his entrails: et gustare ex eius visceribus.37 There does not seem to be any continuous tradition of accusations of eating human entrails from the Graeco-Roman world to mediaeval France. But perhaps there was a more material reason for the charge that mediaeval French Jews ate human entrails in their Ìaroset. In the Tosefta, probably compiled before the Mishnah in the mid-third century, there is a discussion of what food may be eaten on Passover eve, before the seder.38 This was a considerable problem, as the main food at the time was bread. All leavened bread was removed from Jewish houses by early morning on Passover eve. Unleavened bread was not allowed before the seder itself — eating it before its time was like sleeping with one’s betrothed before marriage, said the rabbis.39 So what could stave off the pangs of hunger? The Tosefta writes that you may eat ,(beaten flat40 (or possibly pickled in salt or vinegar ,בני מאיים ,animal entrails as entrails are not considered real food — a servant is not considered to have stolen his master’s food if he eats entrails. This passage in the Tosefta is elaborated in BT PesaÌim 107b, and further discussed by French mediaeval commentators, Rashi and his grandson Samuel ben Meir, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Thus it was part of contemporary mediaeval discourse, even if there is no evidence of actual practice. It is also noteworthy in this context that many Jewish families’ tradition for Passover eve food at the present day is to eat sausages — which are, of course, stuffed entrails. There from the Latin ,סיקייר] is a description of the work of the sausage maker insiciarius] stuffing entrails in the Jerusalem Talmud, which is preceded by pounding in a mortar.41

37. JOSEPHUS’ Contra Apionem 2: 91-96. See on this accusation, P. SCHÄFER, Judeopho- bia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Cambridge (Mass.)-London, 1997, pp. 62f., and bibliography ad loc. Schäfer takes viscera here as “all body parts”, which is indeed the first meaning given by the Oxford Latin Dictionary, but Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary gives “entrails, inner parts” as the primary meaning. See on this also VAN DER HORST, “Myth of Jewish cannibalism”, p. 55-56. 38. For dating of the Tosefta on Passover, see S. FRIEDMAN, Tosefta ‘atiqta, Ramat Gan, 2002, passim. 39. Mishna PesaÌim 10, 1; JT PesaÌim 68b: Rabbi Levi said: He who eats maÒÒah on Passover eve is like a man who sleeps with his betrothed in her father’s house before the wedding. He who sleeps with his betrothed in her father’s house is whipped. means either to beat or to pickle. Lieberman suggests ‘dipped in salt כבש The root .40 water’, presumably under the influence of the meaning “pickle”, and the text of the Babylonian Talmud, but this seems less likely. There is also a description in BT PesaÌim 68a of cleaning the entrails of the Passover sacrifice on Passover eve, including squeezing out the dirt, which would support our suggestion. I am indebted to Rabbi S. Krauthammer for this reference. probably from the ,אנטרין JT Shabbat 10a, although here the word used for entrails is .41 comes from the ,מדוכה ,The word used for mortar .בני מאיים Greek enteron, not the Hebrew

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9696 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 97

In any case, Jews appear to have eaten entrails on Passover eve in the third century, according to the Tosefta, and it was certainly the case that rabbis were still discussing and writing about these entrails in twelfth and thirteenth century France, just as we have seen that they were discussing the blood symbolism of Ìaroset. Were their Christian neighbours aware of this? And was this one of the reasons why entrails are included in their cannibalistic charges?

Accusation of Gnostic cannibalism

Finally, there is one more Christian blood libel I would like to examine, perhaps the most disgusting of all. This takes place in the fourth century but is not aimed directly at Jews, but at Gnostic heretics.42 Epiphanius, later bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, was born in Palestine in the fourth century. His book Panarion details many Christian heresies, including both Judaism itself, and groups on the fringes of both Judaism and Christianity. His information is valuable, but often confused and unreliable.43 The Gnostics, (he gives them many other names too), come in for particularly scathing treatment, since, he says, he was tempted by them in his youth, both sexually and theologically. This particular heresy, he writes, forbids reproduction, so if a woman gets pregnant they abort her. They then pound the foetus with pestle and mortar, and eat it mixed with pepper, honey, spices and myrrh. This is how they celebrate their Pascha, says Epiphanius.44 This is clearly a blood libel, accusing the Gnostics of cannibalism on their Pascha. Pascha presumably refers to Easter (or at least a Gnostic parody of Easter45) here, although in the New Testament the term is used often to refer to the Jewish Passover.46 Given the history of the term, it is interesting to find that several of the elements can be identified as being parallel to Ìaroset.

and as we shall see below, this root appears in the name used for ,[דוך] ”root “to pound .דוכה ,Ìaroset in the Jerusalem Talmud 42. On the problems of defining Gnosticism: M. A. WILLIAMS, Rethinking Gnosticism: an Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, Princeton, 1996; K. L. KING, What is Gnos- ticism, Cambridge-London, 2003. 43. P. R. AMIDON (ed. and tr.), The Panarion of Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, Oxford, 1990, p. vi. 44. EPIPHANIUS Panarion 26 (PG 41, 340). 45. G. W. H. LAMPE, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford, 1961, sv Pascha translates Pascha as I Passover and II Easter, with many subcategories of each, but has a third and separate main entry III for “Gnostic” cannibalistic rite, citing Epiphanius Haer [i.e. Panarion] 26. 46. Matt. 26:2; 18;19; 30; Mark 14: 1; 12; 14; 16; 26; Luke 22:1;7;11;15; John 11:55;12:1;13:1. WILLIAMS, Rethinking Gnosticism, p. 180 and n. 48, discusses this parodic ‘Passover.’

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9797 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 98 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

The aborted foetus can be paralleled in the contemporary targum, which we identified as linked to Ìaroset in Jewish tradition. The targum, as we saw, wrote of the woman who miscarried while treading clay for bricks. Her baby got trodden in the clay and was carried up to heaven and incorporated in God’s own footstool. Here, the deliberately aborted baby is re-incorporated into the bodies of the blasphemous Gnostics. Epiphanius’ readers may have recalled here the curses of Deuteronomy 28:45ff., where the children of Israel are told that if they do not keep God’s commandments, they will be cursed. They will undergo attack and siege and famine and as a result, “You will eat the fruit of your own womb, the flesh of your sons and your daughters, that the Lord your God has given to you (v. 53).” The biblical text continues, “The tenderest woman among you […] in spite of her daintiness and her tenderness, her eye will be evil against the man of her bosom and against her own son and against her daughter and her afterbirth that goes out from between her legs and her children that she bears: indeed she will eat them out of lack of everything in secret (v. 56).”

We have seen the ‘delicate woman’ who involuntarily aborts her baby in the Jewish targum and midrash. However, these present her as a victim, not a sinner, and she is certainly not subject to the terrible second half of the curse, that as a result of famine she would eat her own body products and her children, in secret. But Epiphanius’ accursed Gnostics are voluntarily and openly eating their own aborted babies, in a direct challenge to the biblical curse. The dead Gnostic foetus is pounded up with pestle and mortar. The Jerusalem Talmud, also contemporary with Epiphanius, says Ìaroset is actually called dukkeh, ‘pounded,’ because it was pounded in a mortar. We noted above that Yemenite Jews still call Ìaroset ‘dukkeh’ today.47 All mediaeval haggadah illustrations from Barcelona to Bavaria which show Ìaroset-making show it being prepared with pestle and mortar. Pepper and spices appear in Ìaroset recipes and while bees’ honey is uncommon, date honey is often used, especially in the east.48 Epiphanius’ Gnostics are also reported by him to have consumed other body fluids such as semen and menstrual blood.49 But the

47. See KAPPAÎ, Agaddata de-PisÌa, and ID., Halikhot Teiman: ha-yehudim be-∑ana u-bhenoteha, Jerusalem, 2002, p. 39. This was noted by LIEBERMAN, Ha-Yerushalmi ki-feshuto, p. 520 and Y. N. EPSTEIN, “Mi-Diqduqei Yerushalmi”, Tarbiz 5 (1934), p. 270-271, in their discussion of the text of the JT PesaÌim 37d. 48. On mediaeval illustrations of Ìaroset-making and ingredients of Ìaroset, see my forthcoming book, Îaroset: the Taste of History. 49. WILLIAMS, Rethinking Gnosticism, p. 299, n. 48 relates semen to sexual passion, and notes that: “the play on the words pathos, suffering, paschein, to feel passion, to suffer and Pascha (Greek form of the Hebrew Pesach, ‘Passover’) was common in early Christianity.”

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9898 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’ 99

report of eating their dead baby in a Ìaroset-like mixture is specified as their celebration of Passover. The allusions here may be seen as a blasphemous parody of the Last Supper and the Christian Eucharist. There are clearly a number of parallels in this fourth-century text to the blood libel against the Jews in fourteenth-century France. Both Gnostics and Jews are accused of ritual murder, in order to celebrate their Passover. Both are accused of eating a dead child. Both are accused of making it into Ìaroset or a Ìaroset-like mixture.

To sum up, the fourteenth-century blood libel from France accused Jews of making the Ìaroset they ate at the Passover seder out of dead Christian children’s heads and entrails. We have traced a thread of literary allusions to blood, clay and dead babies associated with Ìaroset in Jewish sources, stretching from the fourth to the eleventh century. We have seen a third- century custom of eating animal entrails just before the Passover seder, a tradition discussed through fifth and seventh century Babylonia up to twelfth- century France at least, and possibly actually carried on at the present day. There were certainly Christian accusations that the Gnostics, a heretical sect at the fringes between Judaism and Christianity, ate dead babies in a Ìaroset- like mixture at Passover. Is it possible that mediaeval accusations of Jewish cannibalistic feasts at Passover can now be traced back to the Christian fourth century? Although I have used the generally accepted term ‘blood libel,’ neither in Savoie nor in Epiphanius is there an explicit accusation of the cannibalistic use of the blood itself — as there was, for example, with another Christian heresy mentioned in the fourth century by the church fathers Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem and Augustine.50 The Montanists were accused of draining blood from a child to use it in their sacrifices and bake it into their bread. But at least in Savoie, this accusation of the cannibalistic use of blood is understood to be there by the Jews, who defend themselves against it, saying they are forbidden any blood. Did their Christian neighbours have some knowledge of the Jewish practice at the Passover seder of the ritual drinking of red wine and spilling it drop by drop, accompanied by a list of the Egyptian blood? We may perhaps deduce something of the ,דם plagues beginning with kind from later practice: — after the seventeenth-century pogroms in Poland

50. The earliest accusation of child murder by Cyril of Jerusalem does not specify blood: J. B. RIVES, “The Blood Libel against the Montanists”, Vigilae Christianae 50 (1996), p. 117- 124; for details of the charges of using blood: S. ELM, “‘Pierced by Bronze Needles:’ Anti- Montanist Charges of Ritual Stigmatization in their Fourth-Century Context”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996), p. 409-439 and bibliography ad loc.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 9999 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23 100 ‘IN THY BLOOD, LIVE!’

known as the Chielmnicki massacres, a local rabbi forbade red wine at the seder.51 We have already seen that the Jerusalem Talmud in the fourth century debates whether Ìaroset is in memory of clay or of blood: ‘If clay, it should be made thick; if blood, it should be made liquid.’ This discussion is quoted by mediaeval French and English commentators, the twelfth and thirteenth-century Tosafists, who suggest that Ìaroset should first be made thick and then thinned down with wine or vinegar to a more liquid form. Several Jewish communities thin down their Ìaroset with red wine to this day. But while many other Passover customs are handed down by oral traditions which quote the very words of the source texts, none of the Jewish celebrants today says openly that this practice is in memory of blood.

Susan WEINGARTEN [email protected]

51. DAVID BEN SAMUEL HALEVI, Turei ha-zahabh on ShulÌan ‘arukh, OraÌ Ìayyim, Hilkhot PesaÌ 472, 9. See MALKIEL, “Infanticide”, p. 99; YUVAL, Two Nations, p. 253-254.

996151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd6151_REJ_2013/1-2_04_Weingarten.indd 100100 221/05/131/05/13 10:2310:23