This does not yet explain how the Jews, and the Ashkenazi Jews in particular, could reconcile the Biblical prohibition against the oral consumption of blood – which was rigid and without exceptions -- with the custom, apparently well-rooted, of using it, nonetheless, in medications and elixirs of various kinds, proven and tested over time. Since these elixirs are often true and proper medications, even if not contemplated by official medicine, the Jewish ritual law (halakhah) only permitted them when the patient was considered in danger of his life, in which case the complete and temporary abolition of all the norms of the Torah -- Jewish law -- was permitted in order to save the patient. But, as we have noted, in popular practice, blood, both human or animal, appeared even in preparations to be administered to patients suffering from minor complaints, or complaints of only relative seriousness, or even as a curative in the toils of love. Confronted by these obvious contradictions, even
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the defendants in the Trent trial found it necessary to take a position, and to explain and justify such things. And this was not an easy task at all, partly because many of them lacked the necessary culture to do so.
Lazzaro da Serravalle, servant in Angelo da Verona’s house, attempted to do so instinctively, without entering into any over-complicated reasoning. In his view, the dictates of the Torah referred to animal blood only -- which was always prohibited -- while it was permitted to ingest the blood of a human being, particularly if it was the blood of a Christian, the declared enemy of the Jews and Judaism [322]. As usual Israel Wolfgang, who must have possessed rather more culture than Lazzaro, although not strictly rabbinical, attempted to supply a more elaborate response, ingenious and less crude. To the young artist from Brandenburg, it was clear that the Torah and later rabbinical regulations presupposed two different moral codes, one applying to the Jewish world, and the other applicable to the surrounding Christian world, which was different and often hostile and menacing. Therefore, that which was prohibited between Jews was not necessarily prohibited in relations between Jews and Christians. For example, the Biblical norm which prohibited usury between two brothers (Deut. 23:21), "unto a stranger thou may’st lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury"), was interpreted as concerning exclusively relations between Jews, while usurious lending to Christians was automatically permitted -- so much so as to be universally practiced [323]. With a bold analogy, which we decline to believe was extorted by judges exceptionally erudite in Jewish matters by means of ingenious verbal and psychological trickery, Israel Wolfgang maintained that even the Biblical prohibition against human blood was absolute for Jews, and rigid when it involved blood extracted from the veins of Jews, but was permitted and even recommended when originating from the body of Christians, or Christian children in particular [324].
In this regard, it is worth recalling that, in that which Camporesi calls as "the dark tunnel of necromantic medicine", specialty shops offered alchemists and herb alchemists oils and balsams extracted from fetid mummies, miraculous electuaries containing the powder of craniums, often from persons condemned to death, fat from human flesh, distilled from the bodies of persons killed and suicides [325]. It is not surprising that popular medicine should also have permitted them as legitimate medications, prescribing them not only in the cure of serious and dangerous complaints. The sole recommendation in these cases remains the explanation that oils, fats and bones in powder, mummies and human flesh
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in poultices -- as Israel Wolfgang explained to the judges of Trent with reference to human blood -- were not to be extracted from the corpses of Jews. The rabbinical responses were rather clear in this regard, when they hastened to stress that "there is no prohibition against usefully benefiting from the dead bodies of Gentiles" [326].
Perhaps the solution to the Biblical and rabbinical contradiction between the consumption of blood and the custom -- established among the Ashkenazi Jews -- of consuming it on the most varied occasions, may be identified in a late response of Jacob Reischer of Prague (1670-1734), head of the yeshivah of Ansbach in Bavaria and later active at Worms and Metz [327]. The ritualistic text contains testimonies to a practice widespread over time immemorial among the Jews of the German community, and considered de facto permissible, notwithstanding the fact that it obviously contradicted the dictates of the Talmud. Being a custom now generalized among the Jews (minhagh Israel), it came, over time, to assume the same strictness as a ritual standard. The inquiry and the response of the Reischer referred to the consumption of the blood of the stambecco (Bocksblut), for medicinal use, even in cases in which the patient was not in danger of his life.
"INQUIRY: What is the basis for the fact that most Jews traditionally permit the consumption and drinking of the coagulated and dried blood of the ibex [a long-horned Alpine mountain goat], known as Bocksblut and dried in the sun, even in the event that it may be consumed by patients whose lives are not in peril, such as people suffering from epilepsy, when it is one of the internal organs of the body which causes pain?
RESPONSE: The legality of this custom must be upheld because it is long-established. This medication is obviously permissible, because clearly, when a custom becomes widespread among the Jews (minhagh Israel), it must be considered to be on the level of the Torah itself. The ritual motive of the permission is based, in my view, on the fact that (the blood) is dried to the point that it is transformed into a piece of wood and contains no moisture .It is not, therefore, prohibited in any way."
The authoritative German rabbi sought to uphold the ritual lawfulness of dried blood totally without any liquid component, stating that, in this manner, the blood must be considered to have lost any alimentary connotations. But obviously, the central justification of his argument remained the notion that a custom established over time in the community of Israel, even if in contrast with the norms, was to be considered perfectly authorized and permissible.
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It has been accurately observed in this regard (but the reasoning may be opportunely repeated in other cases as well, as we shall see), that "the Ashkenazi Jewish community, in the eyes of its rabbis, represented the community of health, zealous in the application of the Law of the Lord; to those rabbis, it was impossible to conceive of the fact that thousands of Jews, devote, fearing God and solicitous in sanctifying the name of the Lord, may His name be blessed, might be violating the names of his Law day after day. If therefore the community of Israel practiced a certain custom, even in conflict with the norms of the Torah, that meant that this was permitted. The consequence of this bold assumption did not alarm that generation [....] The German rabbis revised in the actions of their people a sort of translation into reality of the Law of God, thus as it was transmitted for generations from father to son" [328].
If this reasoning was to be considered valid with reference to the standards of ritualistic law (halakhah), it was even more valid if applied to widespread and profoundly rooted customs, on the ritual lawfulness of which the Ashkenazi Jews, despite appearances, appeared to have no doubt [329]. Their rabbis did not therefore hesitate to approve and approve practices and customs, such as that of the consumption of blood, even when they appeared in obvious violation of the prohibitions of Jewish law.
322
Deposition of Lazzaro da Serravalle dated 16 December 1475. "Quod Christianis, inimicis fidei Judaice, possunt Judeai facere omne malum et quod lex (Dei) [...] loquitur de sanguine bestiarum" [“That the Jews may do any evil unto Christians, who are the enemies of the Jewish faith, and that the law (of God) […] speaks of the blood of beasts”] (ibidem, p. 53-54).
323
On the Jewish attitude towards lending to Christians at interest, see H. Soloveitchik,
324
Desposition of Israel Wolfgang dated 3 November 1475. "Existimant Judaei non esset peccatum comedere aut bibere sanguinem pueri chistiani et dicunt quod lex Dei, data Moysi, non prohibitat eis aliquid facere aut dicere quod sit contra christianos aut Jesus Deum Christianorum, dicens quod ex dicta lege eis prohibitum est foenerari, et tamen tenent Judaei quod nullum sit peccatum foenerari christiano et christianum decipere quovis modo" [“The Jews do not consider it a sin to eat or drink the blood of Christian boys and that the law of God, the so-called Laws of Moses, do not prohibit doing or saying anything at all against Christians or against Jesus the God of the Christians, saying that the said law prohibits them from lending at interest, and yet the Jews do not consider it any kind of sin at all to lend money at interest to Christians and to deceive Christians in any manner whatever”] ([Bonelli],
326
Hebrew:
327
Reischer,
328
In this manner, Haim Soloveitchik, intelligently and without reticence, as always, discusses the relationship between the customs of the Ashkenazi Jews and the norms of Jewish law, often in contradiction and mutually incompatible (cfr.
329
See the illuminating comments in this regard by Daniel Sperber, who discusses and broadens the arguments presented by Soloveitchik (cfr. Sperber,