The current study explores anti-Jewish humiliation rituals from a transnational perspective, taking up case studies from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Lithuania between 1933 and 1941. In so doing, it raises questions: What does the persistence of archaic forms of religious prejudice—the burning of beards and Payot, or the destruction of Torah scrolls and forced baptisms—tell us about the tension between the modern antisemitic narratives advanced by Nazi officials on the one hand and the pre-modern religious stereotypes given voice by local populations on the other? Was the violence driven by local dynamics? What messages did such acts communicate, both to Jewish and non-Jewish onlookers? Finally, did humiliation rituals help escalate or derail Nazi Jewish policy? In addressing these questions, this study aims to reconceptualize a number of historiographical problems, including the issue of local collaboration; the role of indigenous antisemitism in throttling ethnic tensions; and differences between urban and rural outbursts of anti-Jewish ritual violence in Central and Eastern Europe under Nazi rule. The project builds on methodological frameworks developed by scholars such as Charles Tilly, Helmut Walser Smith, and William W. Hagen, which “read” violence as a theatrical performance that follows a “social script,” while widening the geographical and chronological scope. On a broader level the study, which draws on insights from political science, anthropology, theater studies, and comparative genocide studies, addresses a variety of contemporary concerns. Indeed, by exploring the discrete causes of inter-communal violence across Europe, the book will join a conversation among social scientists about the relationship between war, ethnicity, religion and religious identity, and violence in the modern world.