Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders (orig. lang. Pasque di sangue. Ebrei d'Europa e omicidi rituali) is a 2007 book by Israeli historian Ariel Toaff. The book analyses a notorious medieval trial regarding accusations of the ritual murder of a child by Jews for the purposes of Passover.^[1] Because the book lent credence to one of the ritual murder stories, it sparked intense controversy including calls for him to resign from or be fired from his professorship; the questioning of his research, historical method(s), and motives as they relate to his writing of the book; threats to his life; and demands that he be prosecuted.^[2]

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Reactions to the book concentrated on the final chapter, which addressed the story of Simon of Trent, a young boy supposedly murdered by Jews in order to extract his blood to be used in making bread for Passover rituals. Roman Catholics commemorated Simon's martyrdom for five centuries, until, in 1965, the Vatican published Nostra aetate, which aimed at extirpating antisemitism from the Catholic faithful. The Bishop of Trent signed a decree proclaiming that the accusation against the Jews of that city was unfounded.

Shortly after its publication, press reports were circulated stating that Toaff claims in his book that there was some truth to the story, and that Christian children may have been killed by "a minority of fundamentalist Jews of Ashkenazi origin." In an interview with Haaretz Toaff said: "Over many dozens of pages I proved the centrality of blood on Passover," Toaff said. "Based on many sermons, I concluded that blood was used, especially by Ashkenazi Jews, and that there was a belief in the special curative powers of children's blood. It turns out that among the remedies of Ashkenazi Jews were powders made of blood."^[7] The article also states that: "Although the use of blood is prohibited by Jewish law, Toaff says he found proof of permission given by a highly restricted school of Ashkenazi rabbis to use blood, even human blood. 'The rabbis permitted it both because the blood was already dried, and because in Ashkenazi communities it was an accepted custom that took on the force of law.'"^[7]

Amos Luzzatto, former president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, has said, "I would expect a more serious statement than 'it might have been true.'" He also expressed dismay at the sensationalism with which Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading daily, treated the issue.^[8] A preliminary rebuttal, including interviews with Italian scholars, appeared on 11 February 2007 in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.^[9] Twelve of Italy's chief rabbis in a press release refuting Toaff's claims declared: "It is totally inappropriate to utilize declarations extorted under torture centuries ago to reconstruct bizarre and devious historical theses."^[8] Kenneth Stow, Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, wrote: "To disparage this book is not, as some have suggested, to challenge academic freedom. It is to decry bad historiographical method."^[10]

Writing in the same newspaper, Prof. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia states: "There is plenty of evidence to suggest hatred between Jews and Christians, as many scholars have demonstrated regarding the Middle Ages. It is, however, quite a leap of imagination to take testimonies obtained under torture and to construct a hypothetical reality based on unrelated circumstantial facts. It may be true that dried blood or other exotic ingredients were used in popular medicine, Jewish or Gentile - not being an expert on the history of medicine, I remain open-minded on this; but it is sheer blind logic to jump to the conclusion that Jewish groups might have used Christian blood for ritual practices."^[11]

According to David Abulafia, Professor of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge, "... the significance of blood in Christian culture, and in particular the significance of the Eucharistic sacrifice, is largely ignored as an explanation of the fantasies, for such they were, about Passover rituals, fantasies in which the unleavened bread and wine became explicit negations of the body and blood of Christ. The blood libel has played a particularly nefarious role in the history of anti-Semitism."^[12]

Massimo Introvigne, an Italian sociologist of religion and director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) argued that "Toaff's work is not based on any "discovery". On the central case for his argument, which is that of Trent, he does not bring new documents but tries to overturn the scientific methodology used for decades for the correct interpretation of known and public ones, without realizing that, using his method, one would also have to admit that witches rode broomsticks to meet the Devil, or that hundreds of good 1990s Americans were kidnapped by little green men from some distant galaxy".^[13]

Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto wrote "The havoc unleashed against the author of Bloody Easter represented one of the most serious and shameful episodes in the intellectual history of contemporary Italy. As well as one of the most demeaning signs of the conformism that marks, throughout the Western world, any politically correct discourse on Judaism...".^[14]

A week after its publication, Ariel Toaff withdrew the book from circulation,^[10] in order to "re-edit the passages which comprised the basis of the distortions and falsehoods that have been published in the media"^[15][16] The book was republished the following year. Toaff added an afterword, "Trials and Historical Methodology: In defence of Pasque di Sangue", in which he wrote,

I wish to specify that the principal aim of my research was to investigate the role of the so-called ‘blood culture’ in the German-speaking Jewish community, as in the Christian society that surrounded it. This was a manifold, therapeutic, magical, propitiatory, alchemic role which flouted the strict biblical and rabbinic prohibitions on the consumption of blood....But between this dried blood used in the rite – blood which originated from unknown ‘donors’, alive and well, and mostly belonging to indigent families – and alleged ritual murders there was no relationship whatsoever save in the minds of judges (and not only those of Trent) as they endeavoured to prove the blood accusation against the Jews. Through their tendentious interpretations, the magical, therapeutic, alchemic, propitious or maleficent use of blood served to give plausible support to the deadly blood libel.^[17]