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
bOunDaries Of the law
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
bOunDaries Of the law
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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
bOunDaries Of the law
145
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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the Velizh affair
• 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.
The Velizh Affair Page 22