● A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel By Edmund Levin Schocken, 362 pages, $28.95 A little more than 100 years ago, an innocent man was about to go on trial. His alleged crime: the murder of a 13-year-old boy two years earlier, found dead of multiple…
The leader of Poznan’s Jewish community has accused Catholic clergymen of perpetuating a local blood libel. Alicja Kobus, chairwoman of the western city’s Jewish community, made the accusation on Jan. 26 in an interview with the Gazeta Wyborcza daily about a fresco which depicts an anti-Semitic blood libel and which adorns Poznan’s Sacred Blood of…
Nearly 350 years after his wrongful execution, a French Jew who had been convicted of a blood libel was exonerated and declared a martyr. The village of Glatigny in the eastern district of Moselle set the record straight Sunday on the wrongful conviction of Raphael Levy in 1670 for murder. Levy, a simple merchant, was…
One hundred years ago, czarist Russia was convulsed by the “Beilis Affair” — the trial of my grandfather, Mendel Beilis, on charges that he ritually murdered a Christian child and used his blood to make matzo for Passover. Beilis was arrested in Kiev by the czarist secret police and imprisoned for more than two years,…
1913 •100 years ago Mendel Beilis Not Guilty After two hours of deliberation, the jury in Mendel Beilis’s blood-libel trial has declared him not guilty of all crimes. Beilis stood quietly, and his demeanor was calm — just as it was for most of the five-week-long trial — as the verdict was read. The courtroom…
This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century. In September 1913, Mendel Beilis, the clerk of a brick factory, stood accused in a Kiev courtroom of murdering a 13-year-old boy to use his blood to make matzo. Over the course of a four-week trial, the…
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 New Jersey’s Jews are furious after discovering that a number…
In this week’s podcast, fill-in host Paul Berger is joined by opinion editor Gal Beckerman to discuss the most recent presidential debate and how instant reaction on Twitter might be harming political discourse. Then, staff writer Josh Nathan-Kazis calls in from Las Vegas to report on the influence of billionaire Sheldon Adelson on the Nevada…
