From Abraham to Zacharias: The meaning of Hebrew and Christian Bible in Soma Morgenstern's 'Blutsaule'

According to Soma Morgenstern, his Blutsaule was written as if its author had not read any book but the Bible. Thus, the presence of the Hebrew Bible as the major intertext of this "Kaddish for the Jews" is not surprising, but the multiple allusions to the (Christian) New Testament are. This article examines references in Die Blutsaule to the Jewish and the Christian Bible and chooses to focus on the ambivalent role of Christians and Christianity in the narrated trial against the Germans, arguing that Morgenstern's "Totenbuch" can be read as a treatise on the relationship between Jews and Christians, Judaism and Christianity-a relationship that has come to a radical ending through the Shoa.