This innovative reassessment of ritual murder accusations brings together scholars working in history, folklore, ethnography, and literature. Favoring dynamic explanations of the mechanisms, evolution, popular appeal, and responses to the blood libel, the essays rigorously engage with the larger social and cultural worlds that made these phenomena possible. In doing so, the book helps to explain why blood libel accusations continued to spread in Europe even after modernization seemingly made them obsolete. Drawing on untapped and unconventional historical sources, the collection explores a range of intriguing topics: popular belief and scientific knowledge; the connections between antisemitism, prejudice, and violence; the rule of law versus the power of rumors; the politics of memory; and humanitarian intervention on a global scale.

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Ritual Murder Accusations in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond / Eugene M. Avrutin, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, and Robert Weinberg1. Imagined Crimes, Real Victims: Hermeneutical Witches and Jews in Early Modern Poland / Michael Ostling2. The Jewish Blood Libel Legend-A Folkloristic Perspective / Haya Bar-Itzhak3. Ritual Murder in a Russian Border Town / Eugene M. Avrutin4. The Saratov Affair as a Critical Juncture in Ritual Murder History / Andrew C. Reed5. The Blood Libel in Nineteenth-Century Lithuania: A Comparison of Two Cases / Darius Stali¿nas6. Yahrzeits, Condolences, and Other Close Encounters: Neighborly Relations and Ritual Murder Trials in Germany and Austria-Hungary / Hillel J. Kieval7. Human Sacrifice in the Name of a Nation: The Religion of Common Blood / Marina Mogilner8. The Predatory Jew and Russian Vitalism: Dostoevsky, Rozanov, and Babel / Harriet Murav9. Connecting the Dots: Jewish Mysticism, Ritual Murder, and the Trial of Mendel Beilis / Robert Weinberg10. A Half-Full Cup? Transnational Responses to the Beilis Affair / Jonathan Dekel-Chen11. Simulating Justice: The Blood Libel Case in Moscow, April 1922 / Gennady Estraikh12. The Blood Libel and Its Wartime Permutations: Cannibalism in Soviet Lviv / Elissa Bemporad13. Was the Doctors' Plot a Blood Libel? / Jeffrey Veidlinger14. The Sandomierz Paintings of Ritual Murder as Lieux de mémoire / Magda TeterList of ContributorsIndex