Jewish Blood
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Jewish Blood This book deals with the Jewish engagement with blood: animal and human, real and metaphorical. Concentrating on the meaning or significance of blood in Judaism, the book moves this highly controversial subject away from its traditional focus, exploring how Jews themselves engage with blood and its role in Jewish identity, ritual, and culture. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book brings together a wide range of perspectives and covers communities in ancient Israel, Europe, and America, as well as all major eras of Jewish history: biblical, talmudic, medieval, and modern. Providing historical, religious, and cultural examples ranging from the “Blood Libel” through to the poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg, this volume explores the deep continuities in thought and practice related to blood. Moreover, it examines the continuities and discontinuities between Jewish and Christian ideas and practices related to blood, many of which extend into the modern, contemporary period. The chapters look at not only the Jewish and Christian interaction, but the interaction between Jews and the individual national communities to which they belong, including the complex appropriation and rejection of European ideas and images undertaken by some Zionists, and then by the State of Israel. This broad-ranging and multidisciplinary work will be of interest to students of Jewish Studies, History and Religion. Mitchell B. Hart is an associate professor of Jewish history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is the author of The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine (2007) and Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (2000). He is currently at work on a reader about Jews and race. Routledge Jewish Studies series Series Editor: Oliver Leaman University of Kentucky Studies, which are interpreted to cover the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, culture, politics, philosophy, theology, religion, as they relate to Jewish affairs. The remit includes texts which have as their primary focus issues, ideas, personalities, and events of relevance to Jews, Jewish life, and the concepts which have characterized Jewish culture both in the past and today. The series is interested in receiving appropriate scripts or proposals. Medieval Jewish Philosophy An introduction Dan Cohn-Sherbok Facing the Other The ethics of Emmanuel Levinas Edited by Seán Hand Moses Maimonides Oliver Leaman A User’s Guide to Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption Norbert M. Samuelson On Liberty Jewish philosophical perspectives Edited by Daniel H. Frank Referring to God Jewish and Christian philosophical and theological perspectives Edited by Paul Helm Judaism, Philosophy, Culture Selected studies by E. I. J. Rosenthal Erwin Rosenthal Philosophy of the Talmud Hyam Maccoby From Synagogue to Church: The Traditional Design Its beginning, its definition, its end John Wilkinson The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt Margaret Betz Hull Deconstructing the Bible Abraham ibn Ezra’s introduction to the Torah Irene Lancaster Image of the Black in Jewish Culture A history of the Other Abraham Melamed From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews Daniel Summerfield Philosophy in a Time of Crisis Don Isaac Abravanel: defender of the faith Seymour Feldman Jews, Muslims and Mass Media Mediating the ‘Other’ Edited by Tudor Parfitt with Yulia Egorova Jews of Ethiopia The birth of an elite Edited by Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Tudor Parfitt Art in Zion The genesis of national art in Jewish Palestine Dalia Manor Hebrew Language and Jewish Thought David Patterson Contemporary Jewish Philosophy An introduction Irene Kajon Antisemitism and Modernity Innovation and continuity Hyam Maccoby Jews and India History, image, perceptions Yulia Egorova Jewish Mysticism and Magic An anthropological perspective Maureen Bloom Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed Silence and salvation Donald McCallum Muscular Judaism The Jewish body and the politics of regeneration Todd Samuel Presner Jewish Cultural Nationalism David Aberbach The Jewish–Chinese Nexus A meeting of civilizations Edited by M. Avrum Ehrlich German-Jewish Popular Culture before the Holocaust Kafka’s kitsch David Brenner The Jews as a Chosen People Tradition and transformation S. Leyla Gürkan Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture Jewish interpretation and controversy in medieval Languedoc Gregg Stern Jewish Blood Reality and metaphor in history, religion, and culture Edited by Mitchell B. Hart Jewish Blood Reality and metaphor in history, religion, and culture Edited by Mitchell B. Hart First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Selection and editorial matter, Mitchell B. Hart; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Jewish blood: reality and metaphor in history, religion and culture/ [edited by] Mitchell B. Hart. p. cm. – (Routledge Jewish studies series; 30) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Blood–Religious aspects–Judaism. 2. Blood–Religious aspects– Christianity. 3. Judaism–Relations–Christianity. 4. Christianity and other religions–Judaism. 5. Berit milah. 6. Blood accusation. I. Hart, Mitchell Bryan, 1959– BM729.B58J48 2009 296.4–dc22 2008051951 ISBN 0-203-87640-7Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-47749-2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-87640-7 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-47749-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-87640-4 (ebk) Contents Contributors ix Acknowledgments xii 1 “Jewish blood”: an introduction 1 MITCHELL B. HART 2 Blood and belief: an introduction to a Jewish symbol 14 DAVID BIALE 3 We have never been Jewish: an essay in asymmetric hematology 31 GIL ANIDJAR 4 “By the blood that you shed you are guilty”: perspectives on female blood in Leviticus and Ezekiel 57 ELIZABETH W. GOLDSTEIN 5 The topography of blood in Mishnah Yoma 70 MICHAEL D. SWARTZ 6 God will see the blood: sin, punishment, and atonement in the Jewish–Christian discourse 83 ISRAEL J. YUVAL 7 Pharaoh’s bloodbath: medieval European Jewish thoughts about leprosy, disease, and blood therapy 99 EPHRAIM SHOHAM-STEINER 8 The blood libel in Solomon ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah 116 JEREMY COHEN viii Contents 9 The symbolic power of blood-letting: Bernard Picart’s La circoncision des juifs portugais 136 HILIT SUROWITZ 10 Blood and myth in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig 152 HAGAI DAGAN 11 “Man’s red soup”: blood and the art of Esau in the poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg 160 NETA STAHL 12 The “blood motif” in the struggle for political recognition: Zionist “dissidents” contest exclusion 172 UDI LEBEL 13 Mezizah: the controversy over the manner of dealing with circumcision blood among contemporary Orthodox Jews 194 IRA ROBINSON Index 210 Contributors Gil Anidjar teaches in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. He is currently completing his next manuscript, entitled Blood: A Critique of Christianity. David Biale is the author of Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians (2007). He is the Emanuel Ringelblum Profes- sor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis, and is currently completing a book on the history of Jewish secular thought. Jeremy Cohen holds the Abraham and Edita Spiegel Family Foundation Chair for European Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, where he served as Director of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center between 2002 and 2005. A specialist in the history of Jewish–Christian relations and three times a winner of the National Jewish Book Award, his various publications include The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (1982); Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (1999); and Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen (2007). Hagai Dagan is a lecturer in Jewish Thought and the head of the Division of Jewish Thought at Sapir College in Israel. His publications include Judaisms: A Group Portrait (2005; Hebrew), and Jewish Mythology (2003). Elizabeth W. Goldstein is currently a PhD candidate in Ancient History with a focus on the Hebrew Bible at the University of California at San Diego. She was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City in 2001. She recently presented an expanded prologue to her essay in this volume entitled “Genealogy, Gynecology and Gender: The Priestly Writer’s Portrait of a Woman” at a conference on gender and priestly writing at King’s College London. Elizabeth has also written on the biblical book of Jonah, has contributed to the Jewish Women’s Haftorah Commentary and most recently, the Women’s Torah Commentary published by the Union of Reform Judaism in 2007. She currently resides in California. Mitchell B. Hart is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is the author of Social Science and the Politics of Modern x Contributors Jewish Identity (2000) and The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine (2007). Udi Lebel is Senior Lecturer in Political Psychology and Political Science at Sapir College and Ariel University Center; Research Fellow in ICT (International Counter Terror Institute, The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzelia). He completed his PhD at King’s College London. His main research interests include civil– military relations, the politics of commemoration and bereavement, political behavior and culture, and political methodology.