In March 1911, in Kiev, a 13-year-old Christian youth, Andrei Yushchinsky, was kidnapped and murdered. On July 11, 1911, a Jewish man, Menachem Mendel Beilis, was arrested for the crime, which was touted in the czarist-controlled media as a Jewish ritual murder. It was a classic case of the blood libel. A Kiev police detective investigating the case, Nikolai Krasovsky, did not believe that Beilis was guilty. It cost him his career, but even after being fired, he continued his investigations. One hundred years ago next week, on May 30-31, 1912, his findings — including naming the real killers — were published in Kiev newspapers. Nevertheless, Beilis was brought to trial on Sept. 25, 1913. The case, which lasted just over a month, had international news coverage, shining a world spotlight on anti-Semitism in the Russian empire. For many, it gave the czarist government a black eye and helped to spur the exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe. In the end, despite the efforts of the Kiev prosecutors, a jury acquitted Beilis after a few hours of deliberation.
The Beilis case unfolded in a climate of change in the United States and Europe.
Jews in the United States in the early part of the 20th century were energized by the promise of the good life in “the golden land,” but at the same time aware of anti-Semitism, said Eli Faber, John Jay College professor emeritus specializing in Jewish American history.
In those years, young Jews were beginning to go to college and enter the professions. There was a movement away from the Lower East Side. The Yiddish press was vibrant. Yiddish newspapers were not “Jewish” newspapers, meaning newspapers filled with Jewish content. They were general circulation newspapers like the New York Herald, but written in a language other than English (in this case, Yiddish). Among readers of these newspapers there was a “sharp and keen interest in what was going on in America and in the world,” Faber said.
“Blood Libel: The Life and Memory of Mendel Beilis,” includes a discussion concerning the connection between the Beilis case and the novel “The Fixer,” the 1966 Pulitzer Prize winner by Bernard Malamud. The discussion is based on a 2010 article written by Jay Beilis, Jeremy Simcha Garber and Mark S. Stein that appeared in the Benjamin Cardozo Law School review, DeNovo.
The Malamud plot involves the character Yakov Bok, accused of murder in Kiev in the same time period in which the real Beilis case unfolded. As part of the revised Beilis memoir, the editors include numerous instances of what they allege is plagiarism by Malamud.
Two other cases in the public eye frame the Mendel Beilis case — “frame” being the key word in more than one sense.
In 1894, the French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish, was accused of treason by passing secrets to Germany. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on the harsh prison colony of Devil’s Island.
The Dreyfus conviction stood despite evidence pointing to another officer. Such notable writers as Émile Zola and others took up Dreyfus’ cause, even as others in French life on the right stood by his guilt.
With the Jewish population of Bergen County on heightened alert, some 200 religious and community leaders gathered last night to discuss the recent string of anti-Semitic incidents in the county with law enforcement and government officials and communal leaders. The meeting was held at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey (JFNNJ) under the joint auspices of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Synagogue Leadership Initiative (SLI).
Tension has mounted as the incidents have escalated. They began shortly before Chanukah, when vandals defaced a Maywood synagogue with Nazi symbols. Ten days later. a Hackensack synagogue was similarly vandalized.
Then the incidents moved up to a more dangerous level with the attempted arson at a Paramus synagogue in the early hours of Jan. 4. This was followed exactly one week later by a full-blown firebomb attack at Congregation Beth El in Rutherford one week later.
The attack nearly had tragic consequences because the congregation building also houses the home of Rabbi Nosson Schuman and his family. One firebomb was thrown through a window and ignited his bed. Schuman was able to put out flames and then he, his wife, five children, and his father escaped the building, avoiding serious physical injury. The attack, however, left a residue of fear mingled with hope.
“I knew there were people who hated me,” the rabbi said at a press conference following the JCRC/SLI meeting, but he cited the outpouring of interfaith support. “What I see is the beauty of the American people,” he said.
Thanks to the legacy of a Jewish soccer team, a trail of memory stretches from Vienna, to Bergen County, to Jerusalem, and around the world.
Earlier this month, The Jewish Standard published an article about Sport Club Hakoah, a Bergen County soccer team carrying on the name and tradition of the original Hakoah team that played in the Austrian capital in the early part of the last century, before the Nazis took power.
Miriam Braun, an Englewood native now living in Israel, chanced upon the article while reading The Jewish Standard online. It sparked warm memories for her. She recalled that her father, Yitzchak, played for the original team in the early 1930s.
On a recent Sunday night, with darkness all around, a rectangle of bright light illuminated a soccer field, and a small bit of Jewish sports history was replayed as Sport Club Hakoah of Bergen County trounced its opponents, 6-2.
The victory, at the Fairleigh Dickinson University field in Teaneck, was the second in a row for Hakoah, showing that the new team was beginning to gel, said its general manager, Ron Glickman.
More important, the new team honored its namesake, Sport Club Hakoah Wien, which formed in 1909 to give Jewish men in Vienna the chance to participate in high-level sports. The team was Austrian national champion in 1925-26.
Back in 2003, Mary-Edna Krutchkoff of Fair Lawn was driving out of her company parking lot when her car was struck by another. She called her husband, Alan, who at first was angry at the other driver.
Don’t blame the other driver, Mary-Edna said, because the woman had a lot on her mind — her son-in-law, in the military, was going to Iraq.
Alan’s anger immediately mellowed, as he tells it, and he “adopted” the son-in-law, buying supplies for him to take along.
Out of that grew the volunteer organization Adopt-a-Soldier Platoon, a grass-roots organization that sends food and care items to service people overseas.
A group of Israeli ex-pats in the Tenafly area recently got to wondering — how to keep their children tied to their Israeli roots while living several thousand miles away in Bergen County?
An answer to their question came quickly, and within a few months an after-school program for Hebrew-speaking youngsters was born.
The program, for pupils in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, will begin next month in rented space at the Maugham School in Tenafly with an initial enrollment of some 65 students. The program will meet once a week for 35 weeks of two-hour sessions.
A dispute is simmering in Teaneck over new school bus routes, which parents of Jewish day school students say in many cases are dangerous and at best difficult to work with.
The new system establishes new central pick-up and drop-off points for the students. In the past students were picked up and let off close to their homes. Under the new plan, in some cases students must walk long distances or be driven to the central points.
A meeting is scheduled for Monday evening at 7:30 at the Richard Rodda Community Center, Gym 2, called by the parents’ group “Safe Teaneck.” Board of education officials and police officials have been invited, said Elie Katz. Katz is a councilman but was speaking in his role as the parent of a youngster who will use the bus service.
