The Velizh Affair

  substance to the arguments made against Jews.24 In Velizh, as well as in

  other criminal investigations of ritual murder, the works authored by

  Sołtyk, Walsh, and Neophytos, among others, were employed as scien-

  tific aids in prosecuting Jews for the crime of ritual murder.

  After converting to Catholicism in August 1828, Anton Vikentiev

  Grudinskii disclosed to the inquisitorial commission that none other

  than the preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar

  Moses Maimonides had allegedly authored a manuscript in which he

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  described the cultural beliefs and practices that had historically moti-

  vated Jews to commit ritual murder. Grudinskii claimed that he had

  stumbled upon the work, How Christian Children Should Be Murdered,

  when he was browsing through a box of confiscated Jewish books in a

  synagogue in the provincial town of Mira. Grudinskii was not the only

  convert in the history of ritual murder trials who talked about the secret

  uses of Christian blood in Jewish religious rituals and ceremonies.25

  Most of the confessions came because of long torture sessions; some

  individuals claimed to have witnessed and participated firsthand in the

  blood libel rituals, but no one had bolstered the charge by referencing

  the authorial voice of one of the greatest minds of world civilization.26

  Born in Andalusia, in the southern part of Spain, at the end of the

  golden age of Jewish culture, Maimonides (also known as Rambam, his

  Hebrew acronym) committed himself to revealing the inner meaning

  of Judaism and the hidden mysteries of the Torah. In his great work

  Mishneh Torah, Maimonides provided in clear and unambiguous lan-

  guage a guide to the halakhic (legal) world of Jewish civilization so that the entire Oral Law might become known to Jews.27 What was once

  concealed and convoluted would now become accessible and com-

  prehensible. In replies to legal queries, Maimonides provided a rec-

  ord of opinions on a wide range of subjects— on, among other things,

  marriage and divorce, ownership and rental of property, conversion to

  Judaism and apostasy, menstruation, and circumcision. With respect

  to the Israelite covenant of blood, Maimonides explained that human

  blood played no role whatsoever in the ritual drinking of blood or the

  baking of bread made with blood.28

  In the ancient Near East, a sect by the name of the Sabians report-

  edly ate blood because they believed that it was the food of the devils

  and that whoever ate it fraternized with the jinn (prophesying demons).

  In response to these idolatrous practices, Maimonides explained that

  Jewish law prohibited not only the consumption of blood but also eat-

  ing the flesh of slaughtered animals in the vicinity of its blood. Blood

  may have linked the Israelites with their God— as in the Passover sacri-

  fice or the blood of sacrifices thrown against the altar— but it could not

  be used after the fashion of the idolaters.29

  Most likely, Grudinskii had little or no expert knowledge of

  Maimonides’ religious and philosophical writings. This did not stop

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  141

  him from using the great philosopher’s name to his own advantage.

  Grudinskii explained that the first page of the alleged manuscript in his

  possession was illustrated with Rambam’s portrait, two Christian boys,

  a wooden barrel, and an assortment of instruments Jews used to torture

  and kill Christian children. Jewish communities were required to keep

  a copy of the instruction manual, rolled up in a scroll, in the wooden

  cabinet of their synagogues. The wooden barrel, which was equipped

  with eight iron nails, was placed underneath the bimah (raised platform) of the synagogue, while the torture instruments— one iron coronet, two

  iron washtubs, a circumcision knife, and a chisel— were stored in either

  the communal synagogue or the school.

  According to Grudinskii, Rambam instructed Jews to take an oath of

  secrecy. If anyone would begin to suspect Jews of the crime, they would

  be expected to make sure that no one would ever find out the truth. And

  if they were ever caught in the act, Jews should keep the rites and ritu-

  als associated with blood sacrifice of Christian children a well- guarded

  secret.30 Grudinskii went on to say that, each year before the Passover

  holiday, exactly four executive board members of the Jewish community

  were responsible for abducting young Christian children. The Jewish

  communal government maintained power over Jewish religious institu-

  tions by way of a vast network of brotherhoods. To do this, it devised

  secret ceremonies and inculcated fanatical beliefs to maintain internal

  control over its members.31

  Grudinskii claimed that Rambam’s manuscript was hidden in an old

  synagogue, but he could not remember which one exactly. Convinced

  that Judaism was imbued with dark secrets, St. Petersburg instructed

  provincial governors to go door to door in search of religious works

  that helped expose fanatical beliefs and practices. In the fall of 1827 and winter of 1828, at the height of the panic, the Department of Spiritual

  Faiths of Foreign Confessions instructed provincial governors to search

  rabbis’ homes for old Jewish books prescribing the use of Christian

  blood for religious rituals.32 It is unclear how many Jewish communities

  were targeted or the number of books that were eventually confiscated.

  We do know that secret files were delivered to the inquisitors in Velizh,

  and that Catholic priests were summoned to summarize and translate

  key passages of books and pamphlets. Grudinskii took great care to

  translate an old manuscript, which he claimed was authored by the great

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  philosopher. In due time, however, a linguistic expert, an apostate from

  Mstislavl, declared Grudinskii’s translation “disingenuous.” After a par-

  ticularly intense interrogation session, Grudinskii eventually confessed

  that he had fabricated the story from start to finish.33

  By the time the officials searched houses in search of Jewish reli-

  gious texts, the scope of the investigation had expanded exponentially.

  Khovanskii was confident that the inquisitorial commission had gath-

  ered enough evidence to convict the Jews of a crime that resembled other

  disturbing episodes in a long chain of historical events. On October 13,

  1829, Khovanskii reported to state councilor Count Aleksandr Ivanovich

  Chernyshev, “I have several archival files and various other types of

  documents in my possession that demonstrate how frequently [Jews]

  instruct their coreligionists, under the guise of religious law, to conceal the truth, make false statements, and violate sworn oaths.”34 The medical

  assessment of the body, as corroborated by the testimony of numerous

  witnesses, soundly established that this was no ordinary crime but the

  work of what the governor- general called “cruel and unusual forms of

  tyranny.” The only thing left to do, he felt, was to assemble the dos-

  sier and transfer the interrogation record
s and supporting evidence to

  St. Petersburg.35

  Peter the Great’s judicial reforms of the early eighteenth century

  initiated substantive changes to record keeping. An important part

  of the bureaucratic process was the production of an orderly dossier.

  The Russian government created a formulaic template for assembling

  and signing paperwork. The commitment to systematic record keeping

  played an important role in the preparation of criminal files. Secretaries

  were charged with transcribing everything that was said in the interroga-

  tion room in special notebooks. All the letters, petitions, memos, tran-

  scripts, and material evidence needed to be catalogued and preserved.36

  Not only did imperial law spell out a commitment to order and ethics,

  it also required devotion to the bureaucratic ideals of form and proce-

  dure: for administrative files to be written, formatted, and preserved in

  an exact manner.37 In October 1829, Khovanskii promised St. Petersburg

  that the clerical work would be completed in four months’ time. When

  the deadline passed, the governor- general penned several memos in an

  impatient tone, urging Shkurin to “expedite the work to the best of your

  ability and bring the case to its long- awaited conclusion.”38

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  Part of the problem was that the commission spent the better part

  of November in Vitebsk, investigating new developments in the case.

  It also did not help matters that Vasilii Ivanovich Strakhov— the man

  who worked so hard to assemble an airtight case against Jews— had

  fallen gravely ill. The first symptoms appeared on September 29, 1829,

  and for the better part of four weeks, the inspector- councilor spent his

  days in bed. By late October, Strakhov felt well enough to resume his

  duties, consisting largely of paperwork and last- minute interrogations

  and face- to- face confrontations. With the end finally in sight, Strakhov

  worked feverishly to complete the work he had started so long ago, but

  the illness returned before long. On February 19, 1830, Shkurin reported

  to the governor- general that the inspector- councilor lacked the strength

  to get out of bed. On May 12, doctors gave Strakhov only a few days

  to live, and exactly three days later, at 10:30 in the morning, he died of

  what the medical examiner categorized as “inflammation and suppura-

  tion of the brain.”39

  That spring, five scribes worked around the clock to format the docu-

  ments according to the specifications of the law code. Eager to wrap up

  the investigation in a timely manner, Khovanskii was happy to send his

  most meticulous men to Velizh at a moment’s notice. “If five scribes are

  not able to get the job done, then all [the commission] needs to do is

  request for more help.” On May 16, the governor- general proclaimed

  that the investigation had run its course and that there was no reason for

  any members of the inquisitorial commission to remain in Velizh. The

  only thing left to do was to “itemize the files, fasten the pages together, and label the documents.”40

  It turned out that the formalities of record keeping and assembly

  of the files proved to be an extraordinarily consuming and demanding

  task. The scribes labored all summer, and only on August 27, 1830, was

  the dossier transferred to Vitebsk. As required by law, the original files

  remained with the governor- general’s chancellery office for safekeeping;

  an identical copy was forwarded to St. Petersburg for official review.

  Khovanskii requested that all the prisoners’ personal belongings pur-

  chased with official state funds to be itemized and handed over to the

  magistrate’s office. Most important, the accused Jews were to remain

  locked up in Velizh until the Senate reached a decision, while the accus-

  ers were to be relocated to Smolensk. A caravan of twenty- six horses

  14

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  the Velizh affair

  made the epic journey from Velizh to the provincial capital of Vitebsk,

  carrying dozens of sealed boxes filled with thousands of pages of docu-

  ments: official reports, interrogations, depositions, forensic- medical

  evidence, transcripts of face- to- face confrontations, communiqués, lists, maps, translations of foreign- language books, knives, and an assortment

  of petitions, complaints, and letters.41

  In addition to Fedor’s death, Jews were charged with the murder con-

  spiracy of nine other people— two boys, the noblewoman Dvorzhetskaia,

  two girls, and four peasant children— as well as the desecration of church

  property. Although nowhere near as severe as the charge of ritual mur-

  der, the interrogations also revealed that the Jews enticed the accusers

  to go “astray,” a punishable criminal transgression. For centuries, the

  formal abandonment of Christianity was no small concern for church

  leaders. According to the Russian criminal law code, individuals who

  repudiated the Christian faith were categorized as apostates or heretics,

  subject to punitive measures for their transgressions, and sentenced to

  hard labor in Siberia for a period of eight to ten years.42

  The Second Section of the Fifth Department of the Senate reviewed

  the Velizh dossier. Senators included eminent bureaucrats, officers, and

  a full complement of generals, all appointed by the tsar. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Fifth Department reviewed an extensive

  dossier of cases dealing with peasant uprisings, runaway serfs, desertion

  and failure to fulfill military duties, contraband activities, sacrilege and blasphemy, deviation from religious norms, forgery and counterfeiting,

  contraband activities, the production of illegal goods, theft, and murder.

  The Senate possessed the authority to compel colleges and provincial

  governors and governors- general to carry out its orders. Although it

  functioned as a supreme court of appeals, the Senate was nevertheless

  subordinated to the tsar in judicial capacity. It could submit a recom-

  mendation to introduce, overturn, or amend a law, but the emperor

  always had final approval.43

  It did not take long for the Senate to dismiss most of the charges for

  lack of supporting evidence. The court took much longer to deliber-

  ate over whether Jews murdered Fedor as a result of superstitious rites

  and convictions. As a separate but related question, it also considered

  if a sect of child murderers was secretly operating within the Jewish

  community— if, in other words, ritual murder was a fact of Jewish

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  religious life. Although the principal suspects did not confess to the

  murder, the court had in its possession a wealth of incriminating facts:

  material and medical evidence; the confessions and partial confessions

  of Fratka Devirts, Itsko Nakhimovskii, and Nota Prudkov; and the

  testimonies of Terenteeva, Kozlovskaia, and Maksimova. The court also

  made note of several crucial details: that a small group of Jews gathered

  secretly in the middle of the night at the homes of Shmerka and Noson

  Berlin, that a Jewish watch guard was stationed outside Shmerka’s home

  at
precisely the time the boy disappeared, that the temperament and

  psychological disposition of the Jews changed dramatically during the

  interrogation sessions, and that an overwhelming majority of Christians

  in the town were convinced of Jews’ guilt.44

  Some of the evidence may have been ambiguous, inconclusive, or

  indirect, but when taken together, it was overwhelming. Senators I. F.

  Savrasov and K. G. Mikhailovskii were convinced that the Jews had

  ritually murdered Fedor, and there was no doubt in their mind that a

  special Jewish sect played a lead role in the conspiracy. On December

  1, 1831, Savrasov and Mikhailovskii recommended the following

  punishment:

  • Even though Maria Terenteeva, Avdotia Maksimova, and Praskoviia

  Kozlovskaia played a lead role in the murder and renounced their

  Christian faith, they voluntarily confessed to their crimes and

  named all the participants in the affair. For these reasons, their

  sentence would be reduced to exile to Siberia, where they would be

  expected to repent for their ways of life.

  • Anna Eremeeva was expected to repent for her way of life.

  • Khanna and Evzik Tsetlin, Slava, Hirsh, Noson, and Ryvka

  Berlin, Ruman Nakhimovskii, Iosel’ Mirlas, Iosel’ Glikman, Feiga

  Vul’fsonov, Orlik and Fratka Devirts, and Nota Prudkov would

  lose their civil liberties and be exiled to Siberia for hard labor.

  The men were to be punished by twenty blows of the knout and

  branded as criminals; the women would receive fifteen blows.

  • Meir Berlin, Shmerka and Basia Aronson, and Itsko Vul’fson

  would lose their civil liberties and be exiled to Siberia for perma-

  nent residence. The men would be punished by twenty- five blows

  of the lash; the women would receive twenty blows.

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  • Rokhlia Feitel’son, Khasia Chernomordik, Leizer Zaretskii, Itsko

  Beliaev, and Abram Kisin would lose their civil liberties and be

  exiled to Siberia for permanent residence.

  • Zelik Brusovanskii, Khaim Khrupin, Iankel’ and Ester Chernomor-

  dik, Blium Nafanov, Malka Baradulina, Rokhlia Livensonov, Risa

  Mel’nikova, Abram Glushkov, Iosel’ Turnovskii, Itsko Nakhimovskii,

  and Abram Katson would lose their civil liberties and be exiled to

  Siberia for permanent residence.