Language:
English
Year of publication:
1995
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Quarterly
Angaben zur Quelle:
42,1 (1995) 39-44
Keywords:
Blood accusation
;
Antisemitism History 1500-1800
;
Christian converts from Judaism
Abstract:
In the late 17th-18th centuries, the medieval myth of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children was substituted in conversionist tracts by a related myth: that the Jews would kill their own children rather than acquiesce to his or her conversion to Christianity. One of the later Christianizers, himself a converted Jew, J.S.C.F. Frey, explained, in the early 19th century, this putative form of Jewish infanticide by reference to Abraham, who was ready to kill his son Isaac out of his love for God; in Frey's words, many Jews would be glad to embrace Christianity, and only the threats of their rabbis prevented it. This motif, albeit in a milder form, may be traced also in our time.
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