![]() Bernard Malamud, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 1967 “The Fixer” is a re-working of Mendel Beilis’ autobiography, described the case, in a letter in 1963, as “a blood ritual incident.” Maurice Samuel in 1966 wrote a book about Beilis called “The Blood Accusation.”īut there have been more than 100 references to “blood libel” since, most famously in 1982 when Israeli Prime Minister called the blaming of Israel for the Sabra and Shatilla massacre (when Israel’s Lebanese Christian allies killed hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut) “a blood libel against the Jewish state.” A search of the Times archives turned up only 15 references to the phrase between 1860-1980. #Jew who promotee blood libel trial#The Beilis blood libel trial was one of the first great media spectacles, covered in Kiev by more than 200 newspapers from around the world, with many having to stand in the rear of the court, along with a film crew.Īctually, “blood libel” was not what people called it back in the day. His mutilated body was discovered in a cave, drained of blood.īlood libels were so normative that in 1909 The New York Times reviewed a serious book, “The Jew and Human Sacrifice.” The boy, already a raggedy drifter in Kiev underworld, disappeared on his way to school on a late winter morning in March. She is Rachel Beilis, and she was just 2 years old in 1911 - exactly a century ago - when soldiers came in the night to arrest her father, Mendel Beilis, a Ukrainian Jew accused of murdering 13-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky, to use his blood in the making of matzah.īeilis, 37, was a brick factory foreman. If she hears “Sarah Palin” or “blood libel,” from a radio, perhaps at the nurses’ station, does she know, do the nurses know what she knows? Sometimes there is a sparrow-like flicker because of a word, perhaps, that seems to send her far from the Bronx winter. The elderly Jewish woman in the nursing facility will turn 102 in a matter of days, her nearly lost mind swirling between dreams, illusion, memory and the moment. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |