Ariel Toaff

Ariel Toaff (born 1942) is a professor of Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar Ilan University in Israel, whose work has focused on Jews and their history in Italy.

He came to international prominence with the 2007 publication of the first edition of his controversial book Pasque Di Sangue (Passovers of Blood), in which he claimed historical basis for ritual use of human blood, obtained by murder. The claim was criticized as lending support to blood libel, an allegation that modern historians have described as unsupported by facts and which the Catholic Church has similarly repudiated since the 13th century. Toaff wrote that these critics had misunderstood his book, which argued that the ritual use of small quantities of dried blood in magical curses had been a real practice among medieval "Ashkenazi extremists", but that this was unrelated to the accusation of ritual murder which was the central claim of blood libel.

Ariel Toaff is the son of Elio Toaff, late former Chief Rabbi of Rome.

Among his works are The Jews in Medieval Assisi 1305-1487: A social and economic history of a small Jewish community (1979); Il vino e la carne. Una comunità ebraica nel Medioevo (Wine and Meat. A Jewish Community in the Middle Ages, 1989); Mostri giudei. L'immaginario ebraico dal Medioevo alla prima età moderna ("Jewish Monsters. The Jewish Imaginary from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era", 1996); and Mangiare alla giudia. La cucina ebraica in Italia dal Rinascimento all'età moderna (Eating Jewish style. Jewish Cooking in Italy from the Renaissance to the Modern Age, 2000).

Toaff's book, Pasque di sangue. Ebrei d'Europa e omicidi rituali ("Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders"), was published in February 2007. The book analyzes the cultural and historical background to a notorious 1475 murder trial in Italy. A group of Jews were accused of murdering a young boy, later known as Simon of Trent, and using his blood for Passover rites. The accused were tortured and confessed to killing the boy, who was informally venerated as a saint by Catholics until the 1960s. The consensus of scholarship has dismissed cases such as Simon of Trent's as a blood libel against Jews.

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