Toaff our Donin

In the spirit of Nicholas Donin, Ariel Toaff aired out some dirty Jewish laundry which the counter-Jewish outposts quickly discovered. Toaff then came under pressure but, where Donin simply jumped the Tiber; Toaff revised his own book. Meanwhile the goys had Saved Receipts. Bernard M. Smith a week ago reviewed the Receipts. (I don't know what's up with the URL.)

Between a Donin and (say) a Cofnas: I am personally more of a Cofnas, despite being a Tiberjumper myself. I'll grant to counter-Jewish rhetoric a respectful hearing; I find much of this rhetoric overblown. This may mark me as a "marrano" to my peers on both sides of the river. Toaff, I gather, might be sympathetic to the marrano position, inasmuch as the marrano was a creature of the Sephardic experience.

For Toaff: the Jew in the Mediterranean was truly a man of both worlds, Catholic (not - by then - Orthodox) and Islamic. This Jew disliked Christianity but also disliked Islam. Christianity if an evil might be a similarly-survivable evil. Across the Massif, Alps, and Danube: Jewish life was harsher. Jews there interfaced with German Catholicism and Slavic Orthodoxy; then later the Lutherans in their Prussian expression. Anyone who was willing to become a Christian up there became a Christian - and never looked back. The Jews surviving Norwich fled; so did most of the Rhine. The Netherlands took in Sephardic Jews like Baruch d'Espinoza before Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim. The marrano was impossible in northern Europe.

Ashkenaz survivors were left on their own, with few means to play off "both sides", since surrounded by Christians any such sides would be in closer concert, against the Jew. Ashkenaz hostility to the Cross descended into hostility to any crucial symbols, even unto signing their names with "X" if illiterate in Latin languages. The Balkans tell us that putting up a cross on their stores would keep away "vampires"; this, I think, might be a joke, if not one as amuses me. Over here immigrants into Ellis Island had to mark something; they were told "keikel", so they would draw a circle like tic-tac-toe. I could go on but I am beginning to feel as if I shouldn't.

Toaff went on.

Toaff documented that East German and Slavic Jewry came to Italy with much less tolerance for Christian culture than the natives did. Toaff also noted that the great northern steppes and forests hosted some superstitions, some Jewish but also some pagan. Vampires drink blood; Jews had come to the north not drinking blood. But what's an antisemite (like Mike Enoch back in the day) without caring about semites? A taboo can easily turn into a fetish. And an ostensible convert from paganism might become a vodoun.

It is into, exactly, voodoo that we should understand what happened to Simon of Trent. Or into Ed Buck or Bryan Singer. UPDATE 6/20: Or in Southie.