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Howard Schwartz. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism . New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. lxxxvi, 618 pp.

the second part, Horowitz turns especially to evidence of a Jewish assault on medieval and early modern Christianity. Dozens of Christian texts allege, and some Jewish chronicles confirm, that Jews occasionally attacked the most sacred symbols of Christianity or that, in a few instances, they perpetrated religiously motivated violence against Christians themselves. Perhaps the weakest part of Horowitz’s argument stems from the fact that abuses of Christian religious symbols occurred not only during Purim but also around Passover and Easter or Shavuot and Ascension Day. Although this expands the scope of the Jewish “legacy of violence” well past Purim, Horowitz suggests that “spring fever” arising from an intensifying liturgical calendar may help explain the clustering of charges of Jewish violence in this period. Typically, Jewish (and some nonJewish) historians have assumed that accusations of Jewish violence had no basis in reality. In Christendom, where Jews represented a small minority, attacks on Christians and Christian symbols could only be self-destructive. Jews, some historians have assumed, had a better sense of self-preservation. Such accounts, then, must instead project irrational Christian fears of the Jewish minority and represent one aspect of Christian antisemitism. But Horowitz subjects the historians’ comfortable assumption to scrutiny. He shows that our sources seem to provide real evidence of occasional, religiously motivated Jewish violence against both Christians and their symbols. Although Horowitz has been criticized for unearthing only “three reported Christian deaths at the hands of Jews in the course of history,” calling into question the reality of a “legacy of Jewish violence,” the real story here is that in spite of the heavy retribution such violence elicited from the majority culture, Jewish violence should appear at all. Reckless Rites is a provocative volume, rich in historical detail. Horowitz tells a story, not without humor, that attempts to connect events of the distant past with contemporary conflicts. Unusual for a work of history, Reckless Rites is also a good read.