An apostate — a Jew who had abandoned his people — invented a blood libel and decided to prove it. He found a bird, slaughtered it, drained its blood into a small bottle, and then slipped into the synagogue at night. He hid the bottle among the scrolls in the Aron HaKodesh, the Holy Ark.
The next day he went to the king, to the bishops, and to the princes of the army. He told them he had proof that Jews used blood in the preparation of matzah for Passover. If they came to the synagogue with him in the morning, he would open the ark and show them.
The Dream
That same night, the Shamash of the synagogue — the beadle responsible for its daily operation — was awakened by a dream. A voice told him to go immediately to the synagogue, search the ark, and remove what had been planted there.
He rose, dressed, went to the synagogue. He opened the ark. Behind the scrolls he found the bottle of blood.
He poured out the blood, washed the bottle, and filled it with red wine — the kind of wine used every Friday night for the Kiddush, the sanctification of the Sabbath. Then he replaced it exactly where he had found it.
The Morning
At dawn, the king and the princes surrounded the synagogue. The Jewish leaders were summoned. The ark was opened. The apostate stepped forward, triumphant.
The bottle was pulled out. It was red. The king's men uncorked it. It smelled like wine.
They poured a drop into a cup. It was wine.
The king turned and ordered the apostate to be hanged.
The Gaster exempla, preserved in Codex Gaster 130 and told in various Jewish communities across medieval Europe, reads as a folk-theology of divine protection against blood libels — a genre of accusation that would continue to terrorize Jewish communities through the twentieth century. The Shamash did not save his people with a sword. He saved them with obedience to a dream — and with the substitution of Shabbat wine for a drop of calculated hate.