Jonathan Haeber
May 20, 2004
The Primary Force in Medieval Anti-Jewish Violence: Using Haitian Voodoo as a Case Example
People are both fascinated and afraid of the secretive and ritualistic aspects of religion. Such aspects are reminiscent of a time when fetishes, animism, and polytheism were the norm, and sacrifice and pagan festivals were once part of even the most clean-cut of modern religions.[1]
Haitian Voodoo is the contemporary brunt of “black magic” claims. Voodoo has only recently captured attention as a secretive religion that impales dolls with pins, invokes magic to murder unsuspecting victims, and raises the undead. In a work of propaganda that will be discussed later, Sir Spenser St. John places a number of unfounded claims against Voodoo that fed the current misconceptions, viz: cannibalism, ritual murder, and the casting of evil spells. Similar misconceptions were placed on another group, centuries earlier in Medieval Europe: Jews.
The Jews who lived during the first crusades were mystical in their practice and interpretation of the Talmud during a time when anything that resembled sorcery was vehemently attacked and feared. Along with the ‘Saracens,’ Jews were the Voodoo of their time. Their religious beliefs included practices that would have seemed foreign and magical to outsiders. The secretive nature of the rituals, along with the separation of Jewish day-to-day life from that of 12th century Christian is what played the primary role in their incrimination. The ripple effects of Thomas of Monmouth’s Life of William are a reflection of the primary reason for anti-Jewish bigotry and mob violence in Medieval Europe: fear of the mystical and ritualistic ‘other,’ rather than retribution for the death of Christ.[2]
Misconceptions of Ritualistic Jews From Roman Times to Late Antiquity
Gavin Langmuir says about the history of anti-Jewish propaganda: “If history and historiography - human happenings and historians’ assertions about what happened - are as different as a battle and a book, they are nonetheless inextricably linked.” Langmuir adds to his statement: “This is peculiarly true in the case of accusations of ritual murder against Jews, for such accusations have been as much a phenomenon of historiography as of history” (Langmuir 1).
Langmuir bases that statement on The Life of William of Norwich, but he doesn’t shy away from the origins of anti-Jewish propaganda, conceived two centuries before Christ, and thus having no basis in blame for Christ’s death. Rather, the source was most likely the Roman conquerors’ misinterpretation of seeing Jewish rituals in practice at the Temple of Jerusalem. The historian Posidonius later sensationalized the rituals into an accusation of cannibalism. It was repeated as true down to the first century C.E. by Appolonius Molon, Damocritus, and Apion, and described but dismissed by Flavius Josephus (Langmuir 2).
The cannibalism story was passed along orally, no doubt, as Christianity grew and the Jews were the new scapegoats. From around 340 CE, Roman Catholicism received official state approval. Imperial edicts against paganism date from approximately this time. The majority of Rome was therefore Christian, and mobs persecuted non-Christians, especially Jews. As religions considered pagan disappeared, Jews became increasingly visible, an obvious minority, and it was only a matter of time before the general Christian public labeled Jews as the last of the remaining pagans (http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/christians&jews.htm). The growth in the study and practices of the Talmud (ca. 3rd to 6th centuries CE) and of Hekhalot adjurations (ca. 3rd to 7th centuries CE) further fueled anti-Jewish rhetoric. Christians could do little to comprehend these documents and the accompanying Jewish rituals. Furthermore, Christians recognized mystical and secretive qualities in such rituals. In the secret and ritualistic nature of the Talmud and Hekhalot texts, Christians could think of nothing other than the machinations of Satan.
Thus, by the 10th century, Jerome referred to the Jewish house of prayer as “a synagogue of Satan,” and Isidore of Seville called attention to “sorcerers and Jews” (McCall 267). By the 11th century this had progressed further when Adso of Montiérender, a much-quoted authority, said that the “Antichrist would be a Jew of the tribe of Dan… into whose womb the Devil would also enter at the moment of conception to ensure that the child should be the very incarnation of all evil, and that he would be brought up in Palestine by Jewish sorcerers and magicians who would educate him thoroughly in the black arts and all that was iniquitous” (McCall 267).
Important to note is that Jews were persecuted less in the antiquity than in medieval times, despite the fact that Catholicism was in a period of fantastic growth during Late Antiquity. In fact, what I’ve found to be the first recorded Christian violence inflicted upon the Jews was an annual punishment in retribution for allegedly supporting the ‘infidel’ Saracens in sacking the city of Toulouse (McCall 266).[3] The violence had nothing to do with blaming Jews for the death of Christ. In fact, as many sources affirm, the origins of animosity toward Jews had more to do with their cultural, economic, and mostly, religious differences.
Beginning in 1096, these differences were what fueled centuries of the worst anti-Semitism in history. It was only after then that Christians threw Christ’s death into the mix (though, I hope to prove, their true impetus for action was fear of the mystical). According to Ephraim Kanarfogel, in her study of the Tosafist period (11th to 13th centuries), magic began to be “denigrated generally, and associated with heretics and Jews. Secret knowledge was feared and penances were prescribed for those who resorted to the use of magic” (Kanarfogel 166).
Mystical Judaism Following the First Crusade
By 1096, there was a rising suspicion of the Jews. In both the Franco-German (Ashkenazi) and Andalusian-Spanish (Sephardim) branches, elements of what Encyclopedia Britannica terms “magic of Babylonian origin” were present. The entry goes on to say that Franco-German Judaism undoubtedly contained a continuity of mystical tradition based on Sefer Yetzira and Hekhalot Jewish literature (http://search.eb.com/eb/article?query=hekhalot&ct=&eu=108151&tocid=35208#35208.toc). True, mystical rituals were not ubiquitous, by any means, especially magical rituals with pagan origins, such as some prescribed by the Sefer ha-Razim text.[4] Nevertheless, it can be safely said that outsiders either witnessed or were told by Jewish converts about such mystical elements of Judaic tradition. There is proof that parchments containing passages from the Hekhalot, and to a lesser degree, the Sefer ha-Razim, were in wide circulation from the 8th century onward (Lesses 5). In addition, the backdrop of a European world of oral hearsay, among those in the serfdom and lower-to-middle classes above all, would have allowed rumors to spread about such texts. There is no doubt that some Franco-German Jews were familiar with the Hekhalot scriptures, in which the embedded rituals may have served a large role in alienating the Jews from the Christians.
The Hekhalot collection is the most widely cited source of Jewish mysticism. Hekhalot means “palace,” and the rituals in the text focused on language - how certain combinations of the divine name, if recited correctly can achieve miraculous results. According to Rebecca Macy Lesses in her study of Early Jewish Mysticism, Ritual Practices to Gain Power, the Hekhalot source included “hypnotic repetition of phrases. . . divine and angelic names recited in order to bring angels down to earth. . . (and) seals to gain access to the palace, or inscribed on amulets worn for protection” (Lesses 4). Lesses concludes that some of the Hekhalot adjurations were performance rituals, similar to how a present-day Pentecostal would be described as worshiping. Such actions may have struck outsiders as bizarre, just as someone who is not a Pentecostal is shocked after attending or witnessing a Pentecostal service. During Thomas of Monmouth’s time, the performance rituals that Lesses refers to would have imbued the Jewish residents as pagan aliens, practitioners of sorcery and strange magic. The rise of Kabbalistic Judaism, following the first crusade of 1090, further fueled the labeling of Jews as Satan’s sorcerers and magicians. Moshe Idol considers Hekhalot literature to be the first stage of ecstatic Kabbalah, (Lesses 49).
Therefore, ecstatic and esoteric Kabalistic practices grew concurrent to Thomas of Monmouth’s ritual murder charge, pointing towards likelihood that the two went hand-in-hand. Accordingly, Thomas of Monmouth’s charges in William’s Life were either: a.) A response to what Thomas saw as a rise in Jewish ecstatic practices and his fear of that, or b.) A response to what he didn’t see, the esoteric side, and how the increasing exclusivity and hidden aspects, especially of Franco-German Kabbalism, played into his anti-Jewish rhetoric.[5] Such a conclusion would be apt when comparing Thomas of Monmouth’s Life with the aforementioned Roman claims of cannibalism around 200 BCE by Posidonius. In that case, as in Thomas of Monmouth, the sensational accusation of the sacrifice and desecration of a human had a basis on the foreignness and otherness of the Jews. In both cases it was their alleged mystical rituals that led to the criminalization of Jews. Furthermore, Thomas’ accusation was most likely independent of Posidinius’ according to Langmuir (2), showing that some external influence other than the liability in Christ’s death pushed both historiographers to similar conclusions – in this case, the Jews’ mystical rites.
Much like the similarities between the claims of Posidinius and Thomas of Monmouth, there are ties between the charges made against Medieval Jews and post-Colonial Voudon. Besides the fact that the two religions have immense differences in practices, belief systems, and origins they have a common history of persecution, and the unique ways in which their practices were demonized.
Haitian Voodoo
The modern misconceptions of Haitian Voodoo have already been touched on. In fact, if you were to ask even the most educated of individuals what they can say about Voodoo, one of the first responses would probably be that it is a cult that practices Black magic, uses pins and voodoo dolls in their rituals, and calls on dark spirits for nefarious or self-serving purposes. Some may even go as far to reply by saying that it is a cannibalistic or sacrificial cult. Only by looking through the foggy lens of false historiography on Haitian Voodoo can we truly understand what the Medieval Jews faced. Voodoo is the perfect contemporary control group that brings the millennium-old Jewish experience closer to home.
Hispaniola was divided into two territories in 1697. It was then that the Spanish ceded the western half, now known as Haiti, to the French. For 100 years, the French colony burgeoned and became one of the richest colonies in the history of the world. Such success was bought through one of the highest slavery rates in the new world. The absolute number of slaves in Haiti increased dramatically, resulting in high ratios of blacks to whites – estimates are around 17 to 1 (Moreau 257) - that no doubt set fear into the colonizers minds (Corbett). Around this time, the crown instituted the Code Noir, an edict by King Louis XIV mandating slave owners to baptize and Christianize the slaves. Simultaneously, the Code Noir outlawed the exercise of any religion other than Catholicism (McAlister 212). This was in direct response to the colonials’ fear of Voodoo and the Jesuits’ repulsion of it.
The origins of Voodoo can be traced to Africa, where over 1,000 ethnolinguistic communities produced almost as many forms of religious expression and belief. According to Joseph Washington, “Religion in African communities is written in its members’ hearts, minds, oral history, rituals, priests, rainmakers, elders, and kings” (Washington 25). In such a setting, there were no sacred scriptures, only traditions. Their rituals were what bound them together as communities, much like Kabbalah did during anti-Jewish climate of Medieval Europe.
Ironically, however, it was the strengthening of these communal bonds that caused Catholicism – and outsiders in general – to harbor suspicion, in medieval times as well as post-colonial Haiti. There was a feedback effect in the case of both. When both experienced increased adversity, their respective communities grew more secretive and close-knit, and thus became the target of persecution. The persecution led to further stratification between the opposing belief systems, and incited more and more false accusations and sensational rumors. The dichotomy that developed became more pronounced through time, which led to an unambiguous climate of Black and White, Good and Bad. In colonial Haiti, the slave owners and Jesuits saw the Black slaves as literal practitioners of Black magic, even though the vast majority of Voodoo – 95-percent – is comprised of White magic (houngan), rather than Black magic (bocor) practitioners (Corbett). By 1790, such a fear of the dark Vodoun religion had spread. In 1784 the state of Louisiana banned the importation of slaves from Haiti, fearing a Voodoo outbreak (“Slave”).
Anything that was not Christian in Colonial Haiti was labeled as evil. McAlister says that “Institutional Caholicism depended on its opposition to Vodou, for it was its position against what was impure and illegitimate that strengthened Catholic virtue in Haiti.” The same can be said for the Jews. Though Catholicism did not explicitly condone the pogrom of Jews during the Crusades, they implicitly and tacitly allowed it for the same reasons McAlister gives in her study of Haiti. In fact, as MacAlister affirms, Catholicism used the trope of the Jews to justify blotting out Voodoo in Haiti:
The equation of non-Christians with Jews gave bourgeois Haitians one more cultural difference between themselves and the nonliterate Vodouists. Besides being dark-skinned, nonliterate, Creole-speaking peasants, they also were pagans, and anti-Christians. Symbolically, they were Jews. Haitian Catholics came to depend on the trope of the Vodouist-Jew as a force to oppose and exclude, a way to define the Catholic self through a negative referent (McAlister 215).
Though there were definite efforts by the Jesuits to demarcate the opposing religions – Catholicism and Vodou – the distinction between the two only became more and more hazy. The slaves carried with them the traditions of their homeland (see appendix a). One common belief of most African cults and religions was the worship of the loa or multi-faceted gods. Haitian slaves used the all-encompassing deity of Africa and aspects of the French colonizer’s Catholic denomination to form what scholars call “syncretisms” (Corbett). The American Museum of Natural History says, “Haitians found a way to channel these diverse arts and rituals into Vodou, which embraces a wide range of spiritual expression” (“Sacred”).
Much the same can be said of 12th century Judaism. At the time, Ashkenazi Judaism was drawing from the Talmud, Hekhalot, Babylonian, and Greco-Roman tradition. However, unique to the Haitians, was that they adopted the religion of their oppressors, but on their own terms. On the other hand, Ashkenazi Jews vehemently denied Catholicism, sometimes preferring suicide to forced baptism. This can be rhetorically problematic when comparing the reasons behind persecution of Voodoo and Judaism. However, upon closer consideration, the efforts to convert Vodoun did not turn out as hoped by the Jesuits; therefore, the Vodoun were technically not converted, in the eyes of the Jesuits. Their attempts at Christianizing the slaves were called, “half-hearted” and a “badly organized enterprise” (McAlister 212), the reason being that Haitians continued to practice Voodoo in tandem with Catholicism. It was in this setting of Colonial Haiti that tensions grew, ultimately leading to the Haitian Revolution and independence in 1804.
The Revolution was not a battle of the slave, Voodoo-practicing class of Haiti, but rather of the freed Black plantation owners that suffered from French restrictions on Black land ownership and trade (Corbett “Short”). The Black landowners who won independence had little regard for the religion of the masses – what was earlier described as a ‘syncretism’ of Catholic and West African beliefs. Most of the landowners were full-fledged Catholics who further harbored suspicion of the Vodoun for the same reasons as the French Jesuits. From 1800-1815, Voodoo was suppressed by three of Haiti's most famous rulers, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe (Corbett). By the late-1800s diplomats who were present in Haiti were given a biased look at the religion from the perspective of land-owning and ruling classes. Such a skewed look at Voodoo played a major contribution in the anti-Voodoo diatribe of Spenser St. John who arrived in Haiti beginning 1863.
Jews, Witches, and Heathens
The first known text to decry the pagan practices of Voodoo constituents was written just prior to the revolution by Moreau De Saint-Mery. Moreau was a French member of the Superior Council of the Colony, the island’s highest judicial and advisory body. Moreau, however, does not openly make false accusations. His observations do not include sacrifice, cannibalism, or dark magic. He speaks against voodoo for what he considers its amorality, rather than what Spenser St. John considers its direct alliance with satanic and demonic practices (Moreau De Saint-Mery 1-7; St. John 200-201).
Sir Spenser St. John’s account, written nearly a century later, was composed with its own motives and misconceptions, much more malevolent than those of Moreau. Unlike the Life of William of Norwich, the text of St. John is not a complete account based on the incrimination of a single ethno-religious group; eighty-percent of St. John’s Hayti: Or the Black Republic is concerned with the geography and history of the island country. The other twenty percent has direct similarities with ritual murder charges made against Jews in Thomas of Monmouth’s Life of William and later.
St. John and Thomas of Monmouth are similar in that they both were the first instance of false charges against their respective antagonists. They both served as the mother text upon which misconceptions proliferated and led to more persecution. Their motives may be difficult to determine, but their rhetoric remains the same. By endowing the accused with luciferic, magical, and secretive characteristics they aimed to alienate the groups from the Christian mainstream.
West Africans, the original conceivers of Voodoo, played no role in the death of Jesus Christ, and therefore were not criminalized because of their role in his death. If the ritual murder, cannibalism, and black magic charges against the Vodoun provide any indication of the reasons for criminalization, then crucifixion liability did not play the primary role in the charges made against the Jews. True, there are numerous allusions to Christ in the details surrounding the boy martyr’s death, but if the true reason was blame for Christ’s death, then Christians would have accused the Jews much earlier than 1150 – as far back as 340 CE, when the Romans set Christianity apart as the official state religion. In fact, the Romans had more reason to use Christ’s death against the Jews then, as it would have de-emphasized the Roman role in the crucifixion.
The accusations of the Salem witch trials further lead credence to this assertion, since the accused were Christians, not Jews. Rather, it was the fear of such Christians, their alleged clandestine acts, and the rituals they performed that made them suspects. In fact, the witch trials took it one step further by illustrating the danger of allowing the “other” in the Christian realm. It was Tituba the Black Voodoo woman in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible that led the young Christian women of Salem astray. Similarly, it was the French Jew in the Chronicle of Richard of Devizes – A Jew who was portrayed as the befriender and companion of a “young lad” – that led the young boy to his death (Appleby 64-69). The text of Richard of Devizes also shows another misconception was at least rumored by the late 12th century – the belief in ritual cannibalism.
Charges of Cannibalism Indicating Divergence Crucifixion Blame
In Richard of Devizes’ narrative, the story of the martyred boy of Winchester ends with the lad’s friend accusing the Jew of cutting the “throat of my only friend, and I presume he has eaten him, too” (69). Other than the Roman charge of cannibalism, this is what appears to be the first of its kind. It is difficult to determine whether Richard of Devizes is using his trademark sarcastic wit to poke fun at the charges or he really did think that Jews committed such acts. Nonetheless, it proves that there was a constituency that actually considered the charges to be valid around 1190 – only a few years after William of Norwich’s story really began to spread.
As the first account of Jewish ritual murder, the Life of William did not contain overtly outlandish charges, but such charges quickly became outlandish through the oral rigmarole that spread the story (thus the almost-immediate charges of cannibalism). The Life of William therefore served as an impetus for what the general non-literate public already believed since the Norman Conquest but needed authorial confirmation.
The Jews were a relatively new ethnic group in England that arrived after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Their neighborhoods were small and isolated from the general public, but were often located next to the market; therefore, the public was constantly exposed to their cultural and religious differences (appendix b). It’s probable that the lower and middle classes had an apathetic view of the Jews prior to 1066, since they were not directly exposed to the Jews, despite hearing about them in gospel accounts and religious gatherings. It’s highly likely that the Matthew 27:25 was something most English dismissed with diffidence, since their belief was that Christ’s crucifixion was necessary as a ransom for their salvation.
However, the strange dress, strange acts, and the closed access to the world of the Jews were things they could not dismiss. It was there in front of them every day, reminding them that they were not the only religion out there (see appendix c) - that Catholicism was not the ecumenical belief they thought it was. It was for such a reason that the first mass murder of Jews occurred during the crusade of 1090. The Jews had been residing in England for only two decades. The mobs that murdered the Jews were not officially sanctioned Crusade armies, but splinter factions of the general public that needed to let out their angst and/or fears. These factions, part of the “People’s or Peasant Crusade,” were more likely to be concerned with what threatened their lives and their towns directly, rather than what threatened the integrity of The Vatican. They usually came from “the lower segments of society” (Langmuir, “History” 290).
If we were to make a modern comparison, it would be much like the American experience with new immigrants. The cultural customs of Mexican nationals, for example, may not ire most of the public, but only the small groups that may think the Hispanic influence will increase immorality and cause negative social and economic impacts. If the Mexicans had martyred a saint, it would not serve the basis of the mob’s actions as much as their close contact with the “otherness” of the group.
Thomas of Monmouth catered to the public’s worst fears about the new, strange, mystical Jews that had set up camp next to the castle and market of Norwich. He portrayed the actual murder of William as something that occurred behind closed doors, in the private alleys of the darkness of the night (19). It was something that was pre-meditated as a yearly ritual (15); something that was witnessed only through the chinks of a window. There was the use of strange objects – a teazle, straps, knives, thorns. William was compared to an “innocent lamb led to the slaughter” (19), echoing mystical pagan sacrificial rituals of Babylonian origin. Furthermore, the Jews are portrayed as acting out a performance ritual - “rioting in the spirit of malignity around the boy” (21) (appendix d). In all of these aspects, Thomas was alluding to their secret rituals. He was feeding the imaginations of the English lower and middle class and giving them reason to assume that cannibalism, for example, would not be a far-fetched accusation, considering the strange practices of what was earlier described as Kabbalistic Judaism.
Likewise, Haiti in 1890 harbored similar suspicions from the Black land-owning bourgeois and newly readmitted Roman Catholic Church.[6] Spenser St. John – like Thomas of Monmouth – was the spokesperson and instigator of such suspicions, most notably, cannibalism. St. John devotes an entire chapter to Voodoo cannibalism saying: “I have been informed on trustworthy testimony that in 1887 cannibalism was more rampant than ever” (St. John xii). This charge is based on hearsay testimony similar to what Thomas of Monmouth cited in his prologue: “I have been careful to set down nothing which I have not seen or which I have not come to the knowledge of by common report. . . far be it from me to lie in holy things or to handle the word of God deceitfully” (4).
Both men are avowing their impartiality, as well as their accuracy. But, their evidence is nonetheless based on word of mouth, rather than concrete evidence. Just as the ritual death of William of Norwich was attributed to a sexual deviant or accident, the charges of cannibalism, historians say, are unfounded (Corbett). They most likely were sensationalism constructed by journalists (ethical standards in journalism were low at the time) or fabricated by the land owning and ruling class of Haiti in order to hold political and economic power over the rural Voodoo-practicing peasantry.[7]
St. John even paints the Vodoun in a Jewish light, saying in one place:
I never in my life had seen a more villainous set of negroes and negresses collected together, among whom we recognized several Papaloi by their knotted hair. They scowled at us as we passed their cottages, and would probably have liked to stone us; but as their protector was dead, they contented themselves with muttered curses . . . and from Pauline's bath (Bonaparte's sister), now in ruins, the Vaudoux-worshippers took the water used in cooking the flesh of their human victims. (St. John 191).
There are two elements of this quote that allude to Judaism: first, the act of stoning, which seems bizarre, given the colonial setting; second, the use of water for cooking the flesh of human victims, which could be an allusion to Exodus 23:19 in the Hebrew Scriptures.[8] St. John’s analogy between Voodoo and the Jews, though, was not a new concept. The Catholic Church had been using it for years.
Black Magic, Black Plague, Black Slaves, Black Jews
McAlister’s thesis argues that the Jesuits of Colonial Haiti used the trope of the Jew in their conversion of Voodoo ‘heathens,’ calling the medieval situation of the Jews a “mythological blueprint for demonization” (203). She argues that, up to this day, Haitians with Roman Catholic leanings are sometimes anti-Jewish and reenact their own version of the Passion play every year at Easter (203-204). For years, she writes, Haitians performed effigies on makeshift dummies that represented Jews (see appendix e).[9]
By essentially saying, “this is what happened to the Jews; don’t become them. Convert. Become Christian, and you won’t become a Jew,” the Colinizers were able to hold a measure of control over some slaves. Control was central on an island with a 17 to 1 Black to White ratio.
Furthermore, what threatened such control were the secret voodoo gatherings at night. Secrecy among voodoo followers was paramount, says St. John – “the oath of secrecy, which is the foundation of the association (voodoo), is accompanied by everything horrible which delirium could imagine to render more imposing." (St. John 195). Fear of the unknown was a decisive factor in the case of the Jews, as well as Voodoo. In both cases, the rituals were professed to be done in the dark, outsiders were prohibited, and everything from orgies of libation, to Black magic, to child sacrifice was imagined.
So far, all of the charges that have been discussed involve groups, rather than individuals. Some of the charges that surfaced in the late medieval period involved individual Jewish ‘magicians’ who poisoned the wells of towns rumored to cause the Black Plague (Hsia 88). The similarities with Haitian Voodoo are uncanny, the exemplary case being the charge made against a father of the early Haitian resistance to oppression, Macandal. Macandal was said to have killed hundreds of slave owners by poisoning their water wells with Voodoo poison in 1759. The validity of the claim is questionable, according to Stewart King, who says that Macandal was “accused of an enormous plot which suited the propaganda purposes of the white system at the time” (King).
Mass Media: The Bane of Misconceived Religions
Spenser St. John’s account came at the brink of a major era in history. Mass media was in a period of rapid expansion from the early 20th century to the 21st century. The propensity for the media to print the sensational was the very vehicle of false misconceptions in Voodoo. The 20th century saw the creation of the Voodoo doll myth and misconceptions about voodoo zombies. At the same time, the rising tensions between Jews and Palestinians contributed to the reemergence of anti-Jewish diatribe, including many of the original charges – everything from cannibalism in the eucharist (see appendix f) to ritualistic sacrifice (see appendix g) are just a Google search away.[10]
Hollywood didn’t just stand by and watch, either. The 1987 movie, The Believers, is about a psychiatrist (Martin Sheen) who stumbles upon Voodoo Magic in New York City. The movie summary says Sheen treats a police officer who is “found maniacally ranting and suicidally scared at a murder scene involving a young boy with a strange black magic staging . . . (Sheen) struggles with the seemingly impossible notion that this black magic is real” (Wallis).
The final efforts of the Catholic Church in Haiti were in vain, however. From 1941-42, the Church waged an all-out holy war against Voodoo, burning shrines and beating and killing houngans and mambo (white magic voodoo priests). By the early 50s, the Catholic Church made efforts at lasting peace with Voodoo, even incorporating Voodoo drums and melodies into Catholic services (Corbett). Since Vatican II, there has been a general benevolence and official recognition of Voodoo as a religion, as well as official recognition by the Church that Jews are no longer culpable for the death of Christ. Evangelical Protestants, however, replaced the Catholics in going against Voodoo. By the mid-70s, Protestants began proselytizing in Haiti, denouncing Voodoo as devil worship.[11] Major news sources report regular charges made against Vodoun members, most of which turn out to be false (see appendix i).
In concession, there is a bad seed in every religion, and evil is pervasive to all. However, the incrimination of Judaism and Voodoo led to undeserved capital punishment and general public prejudice. It is only through recognizing that fear of the mystical leads to misperception and misperception leads to violence that change can be made through education and dispelling false myths.
An understanding of Mystical Judaism is possible by recognizing the difference between mystical practices and magical ones - the intent of the ritual acts being the determining factor. The same can be said for Haitian Voodoo – for most Voodoo practitioners use their “right hands,” and never their “left.” Though the religion has been devalued in the tourist climate of New Orleans (where Haitian voodoo was corrupted, according to Corbett), most of the approximate eight million adherents are mystical, and use their spiritual rituals as ways in which they can closer connect with their gods. Voodoo, many scholars would say, is the only glue that binds the sad state of Haiti together as a nation, despite its poverty and sordid history.
With the recent rift drawn between Judaism and the Nation of Islam, there is hope that the Jews and ancestors of Black slaves will empathize with each other through their common historical experiences. Because of their rituals and mystic nature – because of their separation from the society in which they were present – they both were the victims of fear of the “other.” As the cultures and practices of Voodoo and Judaism continue to have resonance in the multi-faceted belief systems of today, with proper awareness, their mystical rites – harmless in nature - can be recognized as an indissoluble aspect of their religious identity, nothing to be feared, nothing to blot out.
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Welford, 1889.
“Voodoo as Evangelism” Anonymous Online Posting, October 1998.
< http://www.jacksonsnyder.com/arc/2001/Voodoo%20as%20Evangelism.htm >
Wallis, John. “The Believers.” DVD Talk. 11 Aug, 2002.
< http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=4358 >
Washington, Joseph Jr. Black Sects and Cults. Garden City: Doubleday, 1972.
APPENDICES
Appendix A
Origins of Haitian Voodoo
Source: American Mueseum of Natural History
Appendix BMap of Norwich (Jewry Highlighted)
Source: Jessopp and James
Appendix C
Jews Conducting Business with a Christian from the Dresden. Note the Differences in Style and Dress from the Christian and Jew
Appendix D
Voodoo Performance Ritual Depiction compared with one of Jewish Ritual Murder
Sources: Chireau and Hsia respectively
Appendix D – Part 2
Appendix E
Jew Effigy in Haiti: The makeshift Jew is depicted sitting on the roof with a briefcase, laptop, and pen in his pocket.
Source: McAlister
Appendix F
Book: Matzo of Zion by Moustafa Tlass. Note the obvious depction of the candelabra of Judaism as containing satanic horns, the floating evil spirits and the circle and star of paganism.
Appendix G
Modern Anti-Jewish Propaganda, Claiming that Jews still conduct ritual sacrifice of animals. (I altered the image because of content).
Blood-Letting is pivotal in Jewish life
The ritual slaughter of animals is a very special and affectionate custom in Jewish life. They cut the animals throat wide open in order to drive the animal into a rage whereby the blood is agonizingly pumped out of the creatures body. Depending on the species the divine death throes can take up to four hours. By each body motion a fountain of blood gushes out of the "sacrificial lamb's" throat. The animals go mad during this ordeal.
The ritual blood-letting can only be understood if one studies the Talmud and the Bible (Old Testament, i.e. "Numbers 6:16 and onward)
[1] For example, Christmas is not a celebration of the birth of Jesus; scholars agree that Christ was most likely born in the early fall. The Encyclopedia Britannica states that one explanation for the origin of Christmas was that it was the Roman “day of the birth of the unconquered sun,” a pagan day of festivities and libation (Encyclopedia Britannica “Christmas”).
[2] See Matthew 27:25 for the biblical incrimination of the Jews.
[3] The punishment for this was carried out annually and, according to Adhémar de Chabannes, a certain Hugh, the chaplain of Aimery, Viscount of Rochechouart once administered the ritual blow with such vigour as to smite ‘the brain and eyes from the faithless fellow’s head,’ scattering them upon the earth and killing the wretched Jew outright (McCall 266).
[4] The Sefer ha-Razim is a book of Babylonian origin with a number of pagan and sacrificial prescriptions within it.
[5] This isn’t to say that Thomas had other motives when writing his Life of William, including economic and personal ambition. Besides Thomas’ main goal of placing William of Norwich on a Saint’s pedastal, his secondary goal was to incriminate the Jews. I hope to show that his secondary goal was not because of blame for Christ’s death, but rather a fear of the stereotypical secretive and mystical Jew.
[6] The Vatican broke off relations with Haiti following independence in 1804 as a result of violence against White colonizers, including Catholic priests. Roman Catholicism, as officially recognized by the Vatican, did not return to Haiti until 1860 (Corbett).
[7] In fact, St. John attributes his sources to such individuals: “From Haytian official documents, the press of Port-au-Prince, and from trustworthy officers of the Haytian Government, my foreign collegues, and from residents long established in the country - principally, however, from Haytian sources." (Xi-Xii)
[8] Exodus 23:19 says: “Bring the best first-fruits of your land to the house of the Lord your God. Do not boil the meat of a young goat in its mother' s milk” (New Life Version).
[9] “The Easter ritual of burning “the Jew” or burning “Judas” in effigy was practiced until recently by all classes in Haiti. There were many local variations, and at 3:00 on Good Friday it was burned by the local community” (McAlister 209).
[10] Additionally, the White supremacist Web site http://www.stormfront.org has a posting that calls the tradition of eating "Haman Taschen" on Purim “barbaric,” and says “This repulsive ceremony is analogous to Christian churches teaching our children to symbolically beat the Jewish Pharisees who condemned Jesus and then eating foods symbolizing the pulverized body parts of the Jewish priests.”
[11] Consider this account from an online posting by a Protestant about his alleged encounter with Voodoo: “My morbid fear was that I would be the next sacrifice, sharing the bloody stump with the hapless chicken. I turned and ran as fast as my twenty-year-old legs would take me right into the uncertain blackness of ‘The Port.’ As I retreated, I realized that I had witnessed a classic (and prosaic) form of devil worship. And that there was no place to run but to Yahshua.” (“Voodoo as Evangelism”).
A new life, with new ambitions. My old autobiography seems like an ancient fossil, so it has been removed.
In the meantime, here is a bio:
Jonathan Haeber first picked up a photography at the age of 16. His work has appeared in CollegeBound Magazine, National Geographic News, the Daily Californian, Amsterdam-based TED, and a high school Civics textbook. Inspired partly by his senior thesis on the history of miniature golf, he's embarked on a project to catalogue abandoned structures across the West Coast. See more of his work at http://www.terrastories.com/bearings
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