Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Blood: Reflections on what unites and divides us
    Blood: Reflections on what unites and divides us
    Blood: Reflections on what unites and divides us
    Ebook59 pages39 minutes

    Blood: Reflections on what unites and divides us

    By Anthony Bale and David Feldman

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Blood is something that all humans share: a vital force that courses through our veins – the giver of life. This book gathers together specially commissioned essays from leading scholars which reflect on the religious, historical, and medical dimensions of blood. Written for a broad audience and illustrated with full colour plates, the essays encompass history, literature, art history, religious studies and medical humanities and explore some of the most challenging issues surrounding blood and ritual. The themes covered include: blood in Christian and Jewish culture, medieval antisemitism, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Jewish ritual, blood and 'race', Jews and genes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMar 24, 2016
    ISBN9781784421397
    Blood: Reflections on what unites and divides us

    Related to Blood

    Related ebooks

    Social History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tracing The Origin Of The Four-legged Serpent In SA Rock Art

      Sep 21, 2020

      In 1987, the former Xhosa homeland of Ciskei launched a series of first-day cover stamps and postcards depicting a giant mythical snake in the Keiskamma River. The malevolent snake or inabulele formed part of the ‘The Story of Sikulume’, recorded by

      5 min read

    • Article

      Veil of Shadows: On Jewish Trauma, Place, and American Anti-Semitism

      Nov 27, 2018

      A little less than 50 miles from Krakow, at the confluence of the Vistula and Sola rivers, there is a town of slightly under 50,000 inhabitants named Oświęcim. The official tourist site for Oświęcim describes the city as being “attractive and friendl

      12 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Sep 1, 2022

      In my job, travelling the world making films on history and culture, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring religion in its many manifestations. Religion, after all, is a gift for the camera: full of colour, action and often moving rituals. It’s also a c

      3 min read

    • Article

      Out for Young Blood

      Oct 12, 2017

      The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the time,” Dracula’s Abraham Van Helsing tells his colleagues. “He can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the living. Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow younge

      11 min read

    • Article

      ‘Seeing Our Common Humanity’: New Yorkers March Against Anti-Semitism

      Jan 6, 2020

      Some 25,000 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge Sunday to protest recent attacks against Jews in the New York area.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Robert C. Koehler: Transcending cultural erasure

      Mar 14, 2024

      Oh Lord, kumbaya . . . As I absorb the daily news of war and global devastation, I sing these words to myself — quietly, yes, secretly, lest I ignite instant flash-bang sarcasm from the surrounding world. What next? A flower in a rifle barrel? Sarcas

      4 min read

    • Article

      Anthropomorphising God

      Feb 24, 2022

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Francesca Stavrakopoulou Picador 2021 Hb, 608pp, £25, ISBN 9781509867332 There’s no doubting Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s ambition. In this huge, hugely entertaining,

      11 min read

    • Article

      Anthropomorphising God

      Feb 24, 2022

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Francesca Stavrakopoulou Picador 2021 Hb, 608pp, £25, ISBN 9781509867332 There’s no doubting Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s ambition. In this huge, hugely entertaining,

      11 min read

    • Article

      Punishment From On High

      Jan 19, 2023

      Punishment From On High
      3 min read

    • Article

      One Word: Castration

      Jun 19, 2018

      One Word: Castration
      7 min read

    • Article

      The road to Book Pyre Beacon

      Nov 25, 2021

      MY LITERALLY maiden aunt was a censorious miserly bitch whose hobbies and interests included sly denigrations of her sister-in-law (my mother), sponging, confecting vinegary ketchup which took the enamel off teeth and insisting that her drab house wa

      3 min read

    • Article

      Wisdom On The Bonfire

      Oct 29, 2020

      Wisdom On The Bonfire
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Holocaust

      Jan 30, 2024

      The Holocaust
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Blood

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Blood - Anthony Bale

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      Anthony Bale, David Feldman, Joanne Rosenthal

      In our Veins

      Marc Michael Epstein

      Shylock’s Blood

      Anthony Bale

      Modern Blood

      David Feldman

      Blood Imagery, Jewish Rituals, and Social Activism

      Robin Judd

      Sucking Blood

      Sander L. Gilman

      Blood Archaeology, Disease Prevention, and Eugenic Affirmation

      Dorothy Porter

      Universal Blood

      Gil Anidjar

      About the Authors

      Acknowledgements

      This volume of essays has been compiled to complement the exhibition Blood at the Jewish Museum London. We are grateful to Abigail Morris, the staff of the Museum and especially to Joanne Rosenthal for the knowledge, skill and enthusiasm they have brought to this collaborative venture.

      We would also like to record our thanks to the Birkbeck/Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund for Public Engagement, which made a grant to facilitate this publication.

      Dr Jan Davison has managed this project from beginning to end. Her expertise and input have been invaluable.

      ‘Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee; surely thou hast hated thine own blood, therefore blood shall pursue thee.’

      Ezekiel 35:6

      ‘This cursed Jew hym hente, and heeld hym faste,

      And kitte his throte, and in a pit hym caste.

      I seye that in a wardrobe they hym threwe

      Where as thise Jewes purgen hire entraille!

      O cursed folk of Herodes al newe,

      What may youre yvel entente yow availle?

      Mordre wol out, certeyn, it wol nat faille,

      And namely ther th’onour of God shal sprede;

      The blood out crieth on youre cursed dede.’

      Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prioress’s Tale from The Canterbury Tales (late fourteenth century)

      ‘No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to history and why history is so often confused is that it has been written by men who were ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves… Language and religion do not make a race – there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood.’

      Benjamin Disraeli, Endymion (1880)

      ‘Blood is a very special juice.’

      Mephistopheles, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Part 1 (1808)

      Introduction

      ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’

      Shylock, in William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, c. 1596.

      The first plague in Egypt, rivers turned to blood (Exodus 7:19). Coloured etching, 1775–79. Wellcome Library, London.

      Blood is something that all humans share: a vital force that courses through our veins – the giver of life. This is the definition of blood at its simplest and most elemental. Look to religious, early medical, racial and historical texts and images and blood takes on other meanings which proliferate in an amazing variety of institutional and cultural contexts. Blood, it transpires, is never simple: blood can always be interpreted.

      This book gathers together a range of reflections on how blood, in its regulation and its representation, has been understood as a part of Jewish ritual and culture and how it has been traded as a symbol between Jews and non-Jews and, in particular, between Christians and Jews. Blood is central to Jewish religion and ritual: it has been used by Jews for their

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1