Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians David Biale In both Judaism and Christianity, blood holds extraordinary symbolic power - as the blood of sacrifice, of Jesus, of the Jewish martyrs, of menstruation, and more. Yet though they share the same literary, cultural, and spiritual origins, on the question of blood the two religions have followed quite different trajectories. For instance, whereas Judaism rejects the eating or drinking of blood, Christianity mandates its symbolic consumption as a central sacrament. How did these two traditions, both originating in the Hebrew Bible's cult of blood sacrifices, veer off in such different direction? With his characteristic wit and erudition, David Biale traces the changing and often clashing roles of blood as both symbol and substance through the entire sweep of Jewish and Christian history, from biblical times to the present. David Bialeis Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis, and author of Eros and the Jews?: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (UC Press) and editor of Cultures of the Jews: A New History. He edited Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (UC Press) with Susannah Heschel and Michael Galchinsky.