While the stigmas applied to witches and Jews throughout Christendom shared curious similarities—both were often accused of the lively and improbable offense of murdering Christian infants and drinking their blood 18 —their cases remain quite distinct. Witches, in all likelihood, did not even exist, and those murdered in their stead numbered perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 over three hundred years of persecution;19 Jews have lived side by side with Christians for nearly two millennia, fathered their religion, and for reasons that are no more substantial than those underlying the belief in the Resurrection have been the objects of murderous intolerance since the first centuries after Christ.