1. Id., at 300.
2. See Alexandr Tager, in M. Grinberg and A. Kovel'man, eds.Tsarskaia Rossiia i delo Beilisa: Issledovaniia i materialy, 2nd ed. (Moscow/Jerusalem: Gesharim, 1995 [original publication 1934]).
3. Hans Rogger,Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 155. The charge that Jews engaged in the ritual use of Christian blood can be traced to an episode in Germany in 1235, although previously they had been accused of crucifying a Christian child, William of Norwich, in the 12th century, and had been accused of human sacrifice in the 1st century. Accusations of ritual murder reached their peak in late 15th century Europe, and tapered off in the 17th. But in Russia and Eastern Europe, the number of ritual murder cases reached its height in the 19th and the early 20th centuries. A partial list of these cases includes: the Veilizh case of 1823, the Saratov case of 1853, the Kutais case of 1879, and the 1911–1913 Beilis case. From 1897 to 1911 there were five other ritual murder cases in Russia. Khana Spektor's trial, which ended in acquittal, overlapped with the arrest of Mendel Beilis in 1911. Most historians interpret the ritual murder cases of the medieval period in terms of the religious framework of the time, though they differ as to which aspects of it are the most significant. R. Po-Chia Hsia argues that the cases permitted Christian society to play out a drama of human sacrifice and redemption. R. Po-Chia Hsia,The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 226. Gavin Langmuir attributes great importance to the first appearance of the charge of actual ritual blood consumption in 1235 and suggests that the charge can be related in part to Christian doubts about the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Gavin I. Langmuir,Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 266–281. Historians find very little evidence of a religious framework in modern ritual murder cases, even in cases where political forces do not dominate, as in the Beilis affair. Hillel Kieval, investigating the 1899 Czech ritual murder case against Leopold Hilsner, finds a “virtual absence of religious symbolism” in accounts of the case. He finds instead that narratives of the case are organized around a modern discourse of crime and detection, in which the facts are left to speak for themselves. In place of a religious narrative, Kieval finds a “not quite coherent racial code.” Hillel J. Kieval, “Representations and Knowledge in Medieval and Modern Accounts of Jewish Ritual Murder,”Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society, vol. 1, no. 1 (1994), p. 68. Jonathan Frankels 1997 study of the 1840 Damascus blood libel case gives greater importance to the religious framework. Jonathan Frankel,The Damascus Affair: Ritual Murder,' Politics, and the Jews in 1840(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 257–310. In his chapter, “The Occult Element in Russian Judeophobia,” John Klier argues that until the 1870 s, charges against Jews in Russia were “based on observable evidence,” but that afterwards, charges against Jews can be termed “occult” because they “were often fantastic, esoteric, or even supernatural.” Klier goes on to say that since these “phenomena are not susceptible to rational investigation, their widespread acceptance revealed a new psychological orientation in Russian society.” John Doyle Klier, “Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 1855–1881,” in S. White, ed.Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, vol. 96 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 417 and 417–449. In this article, I attempt a rational investigation into the conditions of belief in the occult phenomenon of ritual murder by reconsidering the question of a religious framework for the charge against Beilis, not in terms of theological debates about the true religion, but in terms of the apocalyptic discourse of the literary circles of early 20th century Russia and its role in the secular ritual of the Beilis trial.
4. See L.F. Katsis, “Delo Beilisa v kontekste ‘serebrianogo veka,’” in A. Kovel'man and M. Grinberg, eds.Tsarskaia Rossiia i delo Beilisa(Moscow/Jerusalem: Gesharim, 1995), pp. 412–434.
5. See V.G. Korolenko, “Multanskoe zhertvoprinoshenie,” inPolnoe sobrante sochinenii, vol. 4 (St. Petersburg: A.F. Marks, 1914), pp. 361–464. Two points relate the Multan case to the subsequent Beilis trial and the other ritual murder cases of the period. Korolenko reported that the prosecutor began his speech repeating the ritual murder accusation against Jews, as if belief in that accusation could support belief that the Multan peasants performed similar rituals. Korolenko also reported testimony given by an inhabitant of the region that in the Udmurt religion an angry god named “Kurban” demanded a human sacrifice every fifty years. The term is the Hebrew word for victim or gift to God, and it is found in Mark 7:11. Later in the trial, the testimony was refuted.