The blood libel originated in the fantasy of male Jewish bleeding.

Evidence

The ancient fantasy of male Jews bleeding regularly had been the origin of the idea of Jewish ritual murder from early modern times to the present. Jewish men were believed to need Christian blood to “heal” their bloody discharge. This view persisted into the late nineteenth century. It was raised again at the turn of the century in a powerfully written pamphlet by Daniel Chwolson, professor of Hebrew at the University in Saint Petersburg, as one of the rationales used to justify the blood libel. Chwolson notes that it was used to “cure the diseases believed to be specifically those of the Jews,” such as male menstruation. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 752

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of medieval antisemitic conspiracy theories and how bodily difference gets weaponized rhetorically.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the literary critic Howard Eilberg-Schwartz or Sander Gilman cover male Jewish menstruation in more depth?