A Jewey Roundup

DovBear points us to a new book that proposes that medieval blood libels might have been based in some fact. Of course, there are many problems with this thesis, not the least of which is that most of the evidence supporting this claim are confessions extracted via torture.

However as DB noted in the comment thread:

I don't think even this historian says its a remnant of an actual practice.

He's saying:

A - Non Jews hated Jews.
B - Boy did they hate Jews
C- So they slandared them
D- Big time
E - Unfortunately one small group of kooks involved themselves in something gross
F - The story spread, mutating as it wnt from person to person
G - until it had taken on a life of its own, and
H - was tied in with the already existing and unrelated hatred, slanders, and lies.

Seems fair.

It's like with anything else- information isn't the problem, it's the interpretation of it. Better understanding the PROCESS of how the blood libel developed in Christian communities is useful, and even if it turns out that there was some minor seed of truth in it certainly doesn't validate how it was used by Christians as a tool to abuse Jews- PARTICULARLY if the Jews got the idea from the Christians.

Via Yeshiva World:

The Israelis just arrested the infamous Netanya Seder Bomber from 2002. Good. Let him rot in jail.

Oh, and Spain's finally apologized for that whole Inquisition/Reconquista thing. Apparently by creating a Sephardic Culture Institute. I say the Jews play hard-ball on this one and ask for reparations.

Also, history and science have struck another blow against Biblical literalism. Remember the Essenes? Of course you do. Back when Judaism was still in its experimental 'teen' years, the Essenes decided to show everybody why monasticism isn't such a good idea by going off to Qum'ran, living in caves, and acting like their shit didn't stink.

Well guess what?

Archaeologists think they've discovered why the Essenes died out.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte biblical scholar James Tabor suggested the investigation at a site outside the ruins of Qumran, noting instructions in two of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the “War Scroll” and the “Temple Scroll”) specifically requiring latrines to be located at a significant distance “north-west of the city,” and also to be “not visible from the city.” Tabor had also noted that the first century Jewish historian Josephus described very similar exotic toilet practices among the religiously strict sect known as the Essenes….

“I started thinking that in the scrolls they have these very explicit descriptions of where the latrines have to be,” Tabor explained. “It has to do with religious ritual purity — the latrines have to be located in a place that the ancient texts designate as ‘outside the camp’. That’s a phrase used in the Torah, where Moses tells the ancient Israelites ‘build your latrines outside the camp.’ When you go to the toilet, take a paddle or a shovel with you and use the toilet and then cover it up,” he said, explaining that the ancient practice appears to have been revived at Qumran.

…Zias and Tabor also note that the settlement’s unusual latrine practices may be clues in solving some of Qumran’s other archaeological puzzles — in particular, questions raised by the 1,100 graves found at the site, which are almost exclusively male.

“The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group that I have ever studied in over 30 years and this is readily apparent,” said Zias, who has done previous work on the Qumran burials. “For example, 2,000 years ago in Jericho, 14 kilometers to the north, the chances of an adult male dying after 40 were 49 percent. But when you go to Qumran, the figure for people surviving to 40 falls to six percent — the chances of making to 40 differ by a factor of eight!

“And yet we are told that these men arrived very healthy – they had physical examinations coming in. The people at Qumran thought that you could look at body types and tell what kind of person you were. Josephus tells us that the Essenes were selective — you had to be 20 years old, and you had to be healthy,” Zias noted.

The puzzle comes together for Zias when he combines the community’s latrine practices with its near-obsessive use of pools for ritual cleansing and bathing.

“Burying your feces in the outdoors makes a lot of sense until you live in Qumran,” Zias said. “What happened was that 20 to 40 people went out there every day over a period of 100 years. By burying their fecal matter, they actually preserved the microorganisms and parasites. In the sunlight, the bacteria and parasites get zapped within a fairly short amount of time, but buried, the parasites can live in the soil for up to a year. Then people pick up things by walking through fecally contaminated soil — it’s like a toxic waste dump, and if you have any cuts on your feet…”

So the Essenes poisoned themselves by trying to follow Biblical toilet instructions. What else?

Well-defined community bathing practices, combined with a lack of running water, complicated the problem of daily exposure to contaminated soil. A cleansing pool was located at the settlement entrance on the return route from the latrine area and is likely to have been a fertile breeding ground for pathogens picked up from the human waste-enriched soil.

“Here is where things really get bad,” Zias explained. “After they went to the latrines they were required to enter one of the emersion cisterns (Miqvot) before they came back into the settlement. Hygienically, that sounds like a good idea, if you have fresh running water, but there is no running water at Qumran, only runoff which was collected during the three months of winter rains. They enter the cisterns where everyone else has been, with all the bacteria they’ve brought in with them, floating around. The bacterium, which usually doesn’t last long in the air and sunlight, stays active for a longer period in the sediments and is continually re-suspended in the water by people disturbing the pool.”

…“People who have cleansed themselves in the outside pool also have to go into the Miqwah twice a day. The water there may looked clean, but hygienically, it was rarely changed and must have been very dirty with the potentially fatal pathogens shared by everyone who was entering it for ritual purification. And Miqwah cleansing is a total immersion, which means that it gets in your ears, in your eyes and in your mouth. It is not hard to imagine how sick everyone must have been,” Zias said.

Fan-freaking tastic! So in this case, attempting to keep the law perfectly actually led to it killing people. I can't decide whether to make a Metzitzah B'peh joke or one about snake-handlers.

Lastly, the good doctor notes the tragic cyclical element in all of this:

“As a group the men of Qumran were very unhealthy, but I think this would have been likely to have actually fed the Essenes’ religious enthusiasm,” said Tabor. “They would have seen their infirmities as punishment from God for their lack of purity and then have tried even harder to purify themselves further.”

Sweet freaking Moses.

Note to present-day Jews. Science good, death by dysentery bad. I guess this means I should go replace all those Nosson Slifkin books I burned.