The Velizh Affair

The Velizh case was the longest ritual murder investigation in the modern world. Drawing on newly discovered trial records, historian Eugene M. Avrutin looks beyond antisemitism as the single most important factor in understanding ritual murder accusations, and in the process, provides an intimate glimpse of small-town life in eastern Europe.

A collection of essays exploring the history of an antisemitic accusation that haunted Jewish people in Europe and Russia, and how it spread. This innovative reassessment of ritual murder accusations brings together scholars working in history, folklore, ethnography, and literature. Favoring dynamic explanations of the mechanisms, evolution, popular appeal, and responses to the blood libel, the essays rigorously engage with the larger social and cultural worlds that made these phenomena possible. In doing so, the book helps to explain why blood libel accusations continued to spread in Europe even after modernization seemingly made them obsolete. Drawing on untapped and unconventional historical sources, the collection explores a range of intriguing topics: popular belief and scientific knowledge; the connections between antisemitism, prejudice, and violence; the rule of law versus the power of rumors; the politics of memory; and humanitarian intervention on a global scale. “This important contribution to our understanding of the evolution of ritual murder charges in Eastern Europe brings together a number of innovative studies on the topic, several of which could become standard reading on the subject.” —Glenn Dynner, Sarah Lawrence College “While the topic was not exactly novel to me, I enjoyed reading this book and I was constantly learning from the significant new information and fresh insights from the authors’ analyses.” —Shaul Stampfer, Hebrew University

"Pogroms: A Documentary History explores the remarkable long history of anti-Jewish violence in the East European borderlands beginning with the pogroms of 1881-1882 in the Russian Empire and concluding in Poland on the eve of World War II. This volume begins with a comprehensive introductory essay on pogroms followed by nine case studies. Organized chronologically, each chapter includes a unique array of archival and published sources, selected and introduced by a scholar expert in the period under investigation. The documents assembled here include eyewitness testimony, oral histories, diary excerpts, literary works, trial records, and press coverage. They also contain memos and field reports authored by army officials, investigative commissions, humanitarian organizations, and government officials. Each chapter explains the origins, timing, and consequences of pogrom violence at various levels of society, as well as the lives, relationships, activities, and interactions of those groups of people that rarely appear in the historical literature. By providing a nuanced analysis of the specific geopolitical context where the violence erupted, each chapter captures the specific nature of the waves of pogroms that broke out in different regions and at different times. Informed by the literature on collective violence and comparative genocide studies, this volume helps reevaluate the complex motivations, policy directives, and reactions of the most powerful decision makers to those officials and their accomplices operating in the provinces. The result is a balanced and accessible guide to the history of anti-Jewish violence"--

A Jewish delegation led by Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux was sent to the Middle East in the hope of discovering the real murderers.

One of the most dramatic explorations of a German town in the grip of anti-Semitic passion ever written. In 1900, in a small Prussian town, a young boy was found murdered, his body dismembered, the blood drained from his limbs. The Christians of the town quickly rose up in violent riots to accuse the Jews of ritual murder—the infamous blood-libel charge that has haunted Jews for centuries. In an absorbing narrative, Helmut Walser Smith reconstructs the murder and the ensuing storm of anti-Semitism that engulfed this otherwise peaceful town. Offering an instructive examination of hatred, bigotry, and mass hysteria, The Butcher's Tale is a modern parable that will be a classic for years to come. Winner of the Fraenkel Award and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2002.

Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers’ organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers’ rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein’s descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration.

Studies in particular monastic revivals in the 19th and 20th centuries, as epitomized by Trinity-Sergius.

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Russia's resurgence under Putin. By cleverly exploiting the memory of the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II, Putin's regime has made ordinary Russians feel that their country is great again.Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuseson ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been.The book explores why Russia, unlike Germany, has failed to come to terms with the darkest pages of its past: Stalin's purges, the Gulag, and the war deportations. The narrative roams from the corridors of the Kremlin to the wilds of the Gulags and the trenches of East Ukraine. It puts theannexation of Crimea and the newly assertive Russia in the context of the delayed fallout of the Soviet collapse.The Long Hangover is a book about a lost generation: the millions of Russians who lost their country and the subsequent attempts to restore to them a sense of purpose. Packed with analysis but told mainly through vibrant reportage, it is a thoughtful exploration of the legacy of the Soviet collapseand how it has affected life in Russia and Putin's policies.