Blood Libel

The Ritual Murder Accusation at the Limit of Jewish History

Subjects: Cultural Studies, History, European History
Hardcover : 9780472118359, 250 pages, 6 x 9, July 2012
Open Access : 9780472902545, 250 pages, 6 x 9, March 2021

This open access version made available with the support of libraries participating in Knowledge Unlatched.
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The first book investigating the recent historiography of the ritual murder accusation

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Description

The ritual murder accusation is one of a series of myths that fall under the label blood libel, and describes the medieval legend that Jews require Christian blood for obscure religious purposes and are capable of committing murder to obtain it. This malicious myth continues to have an explosive afterlife in the public sphere, where Sarah Palin's 2011 gaffe is only the latest reminder of its power to excite controversy. Blood Libel is the first book-length study to analyze the recent historiography of the ritual murder accusation and to consider these debates in the context of intellectual and cultural history as well as methodology. Hannah R. Johnson articulates how ethics shapes methodological decisions in the study of the accusation and how questions about methodology, in turn, pose ethical problems of interpretation and understanding. Examining recent debates over the scholarship of historians such as Gavin Langmuir, Israel Yuval, and Ariel Toaff, Johnson argues that these discussions highlight an ongoing paradigm shift that seeks to reimagine questions of responsibility by deliberately refraining from a discourse of moral judgment and blame in favor of an emphasis on historical contingencies and hostile intergroup dynamics.

 

Hannah R. Johnson is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

[In Spanish]

- Rodrigo Laham Cohen

"...an argument? Yes: the language used to discuss the blood libel has forced historical treatments into a moralizing continuum that at one extreme suppresses the possibility of indeterminacy and at the other unleashes timeless forces of anti-Semitism... throughout this work, Johnson proves she can read very well."-LA Review of Books

- Susan Einbinder