Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia: The Ritual Murder Trial of Mendel Beilis

Notes

169 Introduction: A Murder without a Mystery 1. Until February 1918 Russia used the Julian calendar, which in the twentieth century was thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the rest of the Western world. All dates are given according to the Julian calendar. 2. Hasidim are adherents of a branch of Orthodox Judaism that emerged in the eighteenth century in Eastern Europe. Hasidism focuses on the spiritual and mystical aspects of Judaism and challenges traditional Judaism’s emphasis on the study of texts. Hasidism is comprised of family dynasties established by charismatic leaders. 3. The administration of the library refused to hand over the collection, and later in 1992 the Russian government nullified the court’s decision. The books have remained in legal limbo since the early 1990s: as recently as 2010 a judge in Washington , D.C., ruled that Lubavitchers are the rightful owners of the library, but the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the decision. To date, the Lenin Library has transferred only 30 books to Lubavitchers, all of which are duplicates of books already in Brooklyn. For a summary of these events, see Konstantin Akinsha and Patricia Grimsted, “On the Way Back: The Schneerson Collection and the Return of the ‘Smolensk Archive’,” in Ekaterina Genieva, Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, Karina Dmitrieva, and Mariana Tax Choldin, eds., The Return of the “Smolensk Archive,” 232–271; Sherry Hutt and David Tarler, eds., Yearbook of Cultural Property Law 2010; and Michael Bazyler and Seth Gerber, “Chabad v. Russian Federation: A Case Study in the Use of American Courts to Recover Looted Cultural Property,” International Journal of Cultural Property 17 (2010): 361–386. 4. Some general works on ritual murder are Alan Dundes, ed., The Blood Libel Legend; Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany; Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism; and Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism. 5. Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town, 97; Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, 263–281. Notes 170 Notes to Pages 5–9 6. The strappado is a form of torture in which the victim’s hands are tied behind her or his back. The victim is lifted into the air by a rope that is attached to the wrists. In order to intensify what must already be excruciating pain, weights may added to the feet. Once the victim is suspended in the air, the rope is loosened, thereby dropping the victim partway to the ground. Strappado also refers to the device that carries out the torture. 7. R. Po-Chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial. 8. Helmut Walser Smith notes that Protestants in German-speaking Europe tended to reject the ritual murder charge over time, while “the idea of ritual murder retained more of a hold” on Catholics. See The Butcher’s Tale, 107. 9. Paweł Maciejko, “Christian Accusations of Jewish Human Sacrifice in Early Modern Poland: The Case of Jan Serafnowicz,” Gal-Ed 22 (2010): 15–66; Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, Procesy o mordy rytualne w Polsce w XVI–XVIII wieku; Hanna Węgrzynek, “Czarna legenda” Zydów: Procesy o rzekome mordy rytualne w dawney Polsce; Daniel Tollet, Accuser pour convertir: du bon usage de l’accusation de crime ritual dans la Pologne catholique à l’époque modern; Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė, “Blood Libel in a Multi-Confessional Society: The Case of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ,” East European Jewish Affairs 38, no. 2 (2008): 201–209; and Jacek Wijaczka, “Ritual Murder Accusations in Poland Throughout the 16th to 18th Centuries,” in Susanna Buttaroni and Stanisław Musiał, eds., Ritual Murder: Legend in European History, 195–209. 10. Magda Teter, Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation, 183 and 209–210. 11. Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale, 123. 12. Robert Rockaway and Arnon Gutfeld, “Demonic Images of the Jew in the Nineteenth Century United States,” American Jewish History 89, no. 4 (2002): 355–381. 13. I am not the first to stress this point. For a similar argument, see Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Antisemitism, 1700–1933. 14. Vasilii Rozanov in particular was obsessed with what he believed was the significance of blood for Jews. For a discussion of Rozanov’s views on Jews, blood, and...