Paola Tartakoff's Books

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

By: Paola Tartakoff

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Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

By: Paola Tartakoff

A investigation into the thirteenth-century Norwich circumcision case and its meaning for Christians and Jews In 1230, Jews in the English city of Norwich were accused of having seized and circumcised a five-year-old Christian boy named Edward because they "wanted to make him a Jew." Contemporaneous accounts of the "Norwich circumcision case," as it came to be called, recast this episode as an attempted ritual murder. Contextualizing and analyzing accounts of this event and others, with special attention to the roles of children, Paola Tartakoff sheds new light on medieval Christian views of circumcision. She shows that Christian characterizations of Jews as sinister agents of Christian apostasy belonged to the same constellation of anti-Jewish libels as the notorious charge of ritual murder. Drawing on a wide variety of Jewish and Christian sources, Tartakoff investigates the elusive backstory of the Norwich circumcision case and exposes the thirteenth-century resurgence of Christian concerns about formal Christian conversion to Judaism. In the process, she elucidates little-known cases of movement out of Christianity and into Judaism, as well as Christian anxieties about the instability of religious identity. Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe recovers the complexity of medieval Jewish-Christian conversion and reveals the links between religious conversion and mounting Jewish-Christian tensions. At the same time, Tartakoff does not lose sight of the mystery surrounding the events that spurred the Norwich circumcision case, and she concludes the book by offering a solution of her own: Christians and Jews, she posits, understood these events in fundamentally irreconcilable ways, illustrating the chasm that separated Christians and Jews in a world in which some Christians and Jews knew each other intimately.

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264

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University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812251873

ISBN 13

9780812251876

Between Christian and Jew

Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391

By: Paola Tartakoff

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Between Christian and Jew

Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391

By: Paola Tartakoff

In 1341 in Aragon, a Jewish convert to Christianity was sentenced to death, only to be pulled from the burning stake and into a formal religious interrogation. His confession was as astonishing to his inquisitors as his brush with mortality is to us: the condemned man described a Jewish conspiracy to persuade recent converts to denounce their newfound Christian faith. His claims were corroborated by witnesses and became the catalyst for a series of trials that unfolded over the course of the next twenty months. Between Christian and Jew closely analyzes these events, which Paola Tartakoff considers paradigmatic of inquisitorial proceedings against Jews in the period. The trials also serve as the backbone of her nuanced consideration of Jewish conversion to Christianity—and the unwelcoming Christian response to Jewish conversions—during a period that is usually celebrated as a time of relative interfaith harmony. The book lays bare the intensity of the mutual hostility between Christians and Jews in medieval Spain. Tartakoff's research reveals that the majority of Jewish converts of the period turned to baptism in order to escape personal difficulties, such as poverty, conflict with other Jews, or unhappy marriages. They often met with a chilly reception from their new Christian brethren, making it difficult to integrate into Christian society. Tartakoff explores Jewish antagonism toward Christians and Christianity by examining the aims and techniques of Jews who sought to re-Judaize apostates as well as the Jewish responses to inquisitorial prosecution during an actual investigation. Prosecutions such as the 1341 trial were understood by papal inquisitors to be in defense of Christianity against perceived Jewish attacks, although Tartakoff shows that Christian fears about Jewish hostility were often exaggerated. Drawing together the accounts of Jews, Jewish converts, and inquisitors, this cultural history offers a broad study of interfaith relations in medieval Iberia.

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225

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University of Pennsylvania Press

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ISBN 10

0812206754

ISBN 13

9780812206753

Between Christian and Jew

Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391

By: Paola Tartakoff

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Between Christian and Jew

Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391

By: Paola Tartakoff

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

225

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812206754

ISBN 13

9780812206753

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

By: Paola Tartakoff

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Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

By: Paola Tartakoff

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

264

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812251873

ISBN 13

9780812251876

Book's by Paola Tartakoff

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

Between Christian and Jew

Between Christian and Jew

Between Christian and Jew

Between Christian and Jew

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

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