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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the comprehension and diffusion of Freud's concept on totemism, through the investigation and psychoanalytic interpretation of the passover ritual and its comparison with the Eucharist. Although it is true that, among the authors who have studied the latter ritual, a nearly unanimous agreement exists in considering it as a sacramental meal with an obvious totemic content, this is not so for the Jewish Passover, its totemic character being questioned and even completely denied by some psychoanalysts and other investigators.
I shall refer, in the first place, to the contents of the sacrifice, presenting a brief historical and psychoanalytic survey, since it is the basis of the ceremonials that I shall describe and interpret later on.
According to definition, sacrifice is an offering to the divinity in proof of homage or expiation. The word itself applies to a great variety of rites which may considerably differ in their elements, but having however an underlying common aim. The most interesting rite, in connection with the purpose of this paper, consists in the custom of eating, in a sacramental way, a determined food which represents the god. In primitive times, this symbolic ingestion of the god, on a sacrificial basis, was widespread among peoples having no major geographical or historical connections. Frazer describes, in “The Golden Bough”, many ceremonials