The philosophical sea-change of the eighteenth century known as the Enlightenment altered religious discourse and its influence on society. It shifted the paradigms of anti-Judaism from criticism over the heretical religious beliefs of the Jews to criticism over their practice of religious “supersitions” contrary to the new culture of rationality.
Sara Libby Robinson, Blood Will Tell : Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011), 32.