The Feast of Purim and the Origins of the Blood Accusation

Abstract

Most of the scholarship devoted to the blood libel legend consists of surveys of case histories in or more countries. There has been relatively little speculation about the possible origins of the legend. One of the rare attempts at speculating on the difficult question of origins is that of Cecil a leading English Jewish scholar of the twentieth century. His suggestion that the blood libel legend may have arisen from the Christian misperception of the Jewish feast of Purim is often cited, but it is by no means clear that many writers on the subject of blood libel agree with his hypothetical origin theory. Cecil Roth made other contributions to the study of blood libel. For example, he critiqued Isabella of Spain (1931), written by William Thomas Walsh with specific reference to ritual murder. Walsh had argued that the historian was not obliged to make wholesale vindication of all Jews accused of murder and that one must admit that acts committed by Jews sometimes furnished the original provocation. Outraged, Roth exclaimed, It is the first time probably in living memory that the foul accusation has been made in this country [England}. See Jews, Conversos, and the Blood-Accusation in Fifteenth-Century Spain, Dublin Review 191 (1932): 219-31. For Walsh's attempt at replying to Roth's charges, see Reply to Dr. Cecil Roth, Dublin Review 191 (1932): 232-52. A more important contribution to blood libel scholarship is Cecil The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew: The Report by Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIVl