Volume 35, Number 21 & 22 · January 19, 1989
Scapegoats
By G.R. Elton
The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany
by R. Po-chia Hsia
Yale University Press, 248 pp., $27.50
Virtually every reasonably well integrated community requires a scapegoat who is in some sense an outsider; without his services, the miseries and accidents of life would have to be blamed on a member of that community, with sadly disruptive consequences. In Europe, and more especially in Central Europe, that role was for centuries filled by the Jews: they moved into it with the revival of Christianity during the twelfth century, and they played it out in the revival of barbarism during the twentieth. Of course, they suited it exceptionally well. Found in every town but everywhere unassimilable, living in a separation that reflected both choice and imposition, distinctive in dress and behavior, both mysterious and familiar, they slotted easily into the position of the dangerous outsider, rampant within the community of insiders.
Review, 3119 words
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