Outrage As Rabbi Rules That Only Certain Gentile Blood Suitable For Matza

The Todtsheygetzer Rebbe.

Jerusalem, April 2 – Religious and political leaders are charging discrimination after a prominent authority on Jewish law ruled that Jews must prepare their Passover bread with the blood of only certain groups of non-Jews.

Rabbi Pesach Blutbrodt, head of the ultra-orthodox Todtsheygetzer sect of Hasidim, told his followers last week that in their annual use of gentile blood to produce the unleavened “matza” bread for Passover, they are required to seek out the blood of Catholics only, preferably children. Non-catholic gentiles were quick to object, calling on Rabbi Blutbrodt to retract his statements.

“It is outrageous that this Rabbi would consider Muslim blood inferior to Christian blood,” said Ahmad Azzahattar of the organization Liberal-Ecumenicals of the Levant (LIBEL). “We call on Rabbi Blutbrodt to take back his racist ruling, and on his fellow Rabbis to distance themselves from the very notion that Christian blood makes better matza than anyone else’s.”

Christian leaders echoed Azzahattar’s sentiments. “It is unhelpful at best, and destructive at worst, to discriminate between the various kinds of non-Jewish blood available for matza,” said Vatican spokesman Monsignor Capilario Russo. “While one might expect Catholics to be flattered at being singled out as the only people worthy of being killed and having our blood drained for use in the Passover ritual, in fact we find it offensive that the blood of others – even other monotheists – is not similarly qualified.” He said the pope had been in contact with Jewish leaders, who assured him that normative Jewish practice draws no distinctions among types of non-Jewish blood for use in matza.

The episode echoes a case in the 1980’s when Palestinians charged that IDF soldiers were using Palestinian children for target practice, and international pressure was brought to bear on Israel to get the Jewish state to target all Arabs equally.