Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 10 hours ago
Magda Teter, "Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth"
Chaired by Brandon Bloch (UW-Madison)
Tuesday, 8 February 2022
Zoom, 3:00PM CT
Sponsored by:
George L. Mosse Program in History
Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at UW-Madison
Based on her recent publication, "Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth" (Harvard University Press, 2020). Visit the book website here: thebloodlibeltrail.org/.
Winner of the 2021 George L. Mosse American Historical Association Prize
Accusations that Jews ritually killed Christian children emerged in the mid-twelfth century, following the death of twelve-year-old William of Norwich, England, in 1144. Later, continental Europeans added a destructive twist: Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. While charges that Jews poisoned wells and desecrated the communion host waned over the years, the blood libel survived.
Initially blood libel stories were confined to monastic chronicles and local lore. But the development of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century expanded the audience and crystallized the vocabulary, images, and “facts” of the blood libel, providing a lasting template for hate. Tales of Jews killing Christians—notably Simon of Trent, a toddler whose body was found under a Jewish house in 1475—were widely disseminated using the new technology. Following the paper trail across Europe, from England to Italy to Poland, Magda Teter shows how the blood libel was internalized and how Jews and Christians dealt with the repercussions.
The pattern established in early modern Europe still plays out today. In 2014 the Anti-Defamation League appealed to Facebook to take down a page titled “Jewish Ritual Murder.” The following year white supremacists gathered in England to honor Little Hugh of Lincoln as a sacrificial victim of the Jews. Based on sources in eight countries and ten languages, Blood Libel captures the long shadow of a pernicious myth.
Magda Teter (Fordham University) grew up in Cold-War Poland. She holds M.A. in Oriental Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is now Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University. Teter is the author of Blood Libel: On The Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (Harvard, 2011), Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2006), and articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish.
Her work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, YIVO Institute, and the Yad Ha-Nadiv Foundation (Israel), among others. She has been a Harry Starr Fellow in Jewish Studies at Harvard, an Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies also at Harvard. In 2017-2018, she was the Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and in 2020-2021, the NEH Senior Scholar at the Center for Jewish History.
She has served on the editorial boards of Polin, the Sixteenth Century Journal, the AJS Review, and was co-founder and editor of the Early Modern Workshop (http://www.earlymodern.org). Teter has also served as Vice-President for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies, and a treasurer of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
Magda Teter, "Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth"
Chaired by Brandon Bloch (UW-Madison)
Tuesday, 8 February 2022
Zoom, 3:00PM CT
Sponsored by:
George L. Mosse Program in History
Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at UW-Madison
Based on her recent publication, "Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth" (Harvard University Press, 2020). Visit the book website here: thebloodlibeltrail.org/.
Winner of the 2021 George L. Mosse American Historical Association Prize
Accusations that Jews ritually killed Christian children emerged in the mid-twelfth century, following the death of twelve-year-old William of Norwich, England, in 1144. Later, continental Europeans added a destructive twist: Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. While charges that Jews poisoned wells and desecrated the communion host waned over the years, the blood libel survived.
Initially blood libel stories were confined to monastic chronicles and local lore. But the development of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century expanded the audience and crystallized the vocabulary, images, and “facts” of the blood libel, providing a lasting template for hate. Tales of Jews killing Christians—notably Simon of Trent, a toddler whose body was found under a Jewish house in 1475—were widely disseminated using the new technology. Following the paper trail across Europe, from England to Italy to Poland, Magda Teter shows how the blood libel was internalized and how Jews and Christians dealt with the repercussions.
The pattern established in early modern Europe still plays out today. In 2014 the Anti-Defamation League appealed to Facebook to take down a page titled “Jewish Ritual Murder.” The following year white supremacists gathered in England to honor Little Hugh of Lincoln as a sacrificial victim of the Jews. Based on sources in eight countries and ten languages, Blood Libel captures the long shadow of a pernicious myth.
Magda Teter (Fordham University) grew up in Cold-War Poland. She holds M.A. in Oriental Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is now Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University. Teter is the author of Blood Libel: On The Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (Harvard, 2011), Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2006), and articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish.
Her work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, YIVO Institute, and the Yad Ha-Nadiv Foundation (Israel), among others. She has been a Harry Starr Fellow in Jewish Studies at Harvard, an Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies also at Harvard. In 2017-2018, she was the Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and in 2020-2021, the NEH Senior Scholar at the Center for Jewish History.
She has served on the editorial boards of Polin, the Sixteenth Century Journal, the AJS Review, and was co-founder and editor of the Early Modern Workshop (http://www.earlymodern.org). Teter has also served as Vice-President for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies, and a treasurer of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
