Seriously. Sometimes things are so outlandish you just have to laugh at them.
For two thousand years, everyone has known what the "blood libel" was. I know that is before anyone here was born. Hell, it is before our venerated Founding Fathers were born. But that doesn't mean it's unimportant. After all, people who were personally acquainted with Jesus were walking around when this claim was used to kill thousands of Jews in Alexandria.
Our "modern" version of the blood libel starts almost a thousand years ago in Merrie Olde England. Richard the Lionhearted and his court used the lie to help foment anger against Jews as a warm-up to the Crusades.
If you have ever been to a Passover Seder, you may wonder about one of the rituals that are part of every First Night meal... it's related...
I'm talking about that part of the Seder where the person leading it sends someone (preferably a child) to go open the door and greet the prophet Elijah who is supposed to arrive on Passover to herald the Messiah.
Jews are so optimistic that this will be the year Elijah arrives, they set aside a cup of wine in anticipation of his arrival. No one touches that cup throughout the seder. It's not just because it's the crappiest wine in the house. It's tradition.
Passover, by the way, is not a high holy day like Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana. That's one reason there are so many variations on the ritual. To a first approximation, you can think of it as being more like a Thanksgiving meal than Easter celebration. Obviously, it is not an Easter celebration. On Passover, Jews eat the eggs. They don't hide them like Christians do on Easter. (Don't ask me what that's about). On Passover, Jews hide the aphikomen. If you don't know what the aphikomen is, don't worry about it. It's for kids.
Kids are actually a big focus of Passover. The four questions are recited by the youngest kids at the table. When the plagues visited on pharaoh are recounted, the "killing of the first born" is always a big hit with the boys. "You're lucky you weren't around then, or you'd be dead now." "Hey, if they killed the first born, what happens to the second born? Doesn't he become the first born?" These and other questions are examined in detail because Passover is really about cultural transmission. It's a way of handing down an oral tradition.
Of course, if you get a bunch of Jews together behind closed doors with an angry rabble outside looking for the people who killed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you're just asking for trouble. Throw in a story about how they're killing Christian babies right now to make their matzoh... and someone's going to get their house burned down.
I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is the tradition of having a kid open the door to greet Elijah originated in Europe sometime during the Middle Ages as an insurance policy to demonstrate to the locals that no Christian babies were really being slaughtered. The fact is this is a tradition amongst Ashkenazi Jews (European), not Sephardic Jews. The origination of the modern blood libel in Europe tends to support that story.
Here's how one Rabbi writing at aish.com describes the birth of this tradition:
The custom of opening the door for Elijah began in the Middle Ages, with the proliferation of the "Blood Libel." Frequently, if a Christian baby would die unexpectedly, the body would be "planted" in the courtyard of a Jewish home, and then the police would be summoned to "investigate the murder." Passover time was especially volatile, since Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian babies to bake matzahs.
Therefore, the custom began to keep the door open on Passover night, in order to watch out for anyone sneaking into the courtyard to start a blood libel.
Ok... so whether it's posting a look out, or appeasing the natives, everyone pretty much agrees -- it's insurance.
The fact that Our Lady of Historical Inaccuracy glommed on to something really fundamental to the identity of most Jews in America and tried to appropriate it as her own doesn't surprise me. Mama Grisly and her fanboys are always at their best when they can piss and moan about their lot in life as the victims. Of course, that is about as convincing as Haley Barbour's claiming to be a Civil Rights activist.
At one level this is deeply offensive. But frankly, there comes a point when you just have to shake your head and laugh. It's like having a dog pee on your carpet. What do you expect them to do? They're a dog.