Russian Antisemitism and Other Stories

This story raised the hairs on my neck because of my familiarity with Russian history. It raises questions about where things are heading for Mountain Jews in Dagestan. These kinds of so-called fakes preceded Progroms during the Tsarist period.

One good example is the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903:

It was a moment that cast a shadow so deep, wide, and variegated as to leave its imprint on Jews, on Jew-haters, and on wounds licked ever since,” wrote Zipperstein. In addition to the murder of 49 Jews, at least 600 Jewish women were raped, and hundreds more injured. Although the town’s Jews organized at least one large-scale defense action, this resistance was largely ignored for decades, buried in the notebooks of Zionist reporters sent to cover the atrocities.

Located in Tsarist Russia’s fertile Bessarabia region, turn-of-the-century Kishinev was home to about 55,000 Jews among a population of 280,000. Today, the city is called Chisinau, and is the capital of the Republic of Moldova. Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, the small country is home to 15,000 Jews, most of whom live in the city that defined the word pogrom in 1903.

As with other attacks organized against Jews, the Kishinev pogrom began with a “blood libel,” or the accusation that Jews murdered a Christian child to use its blood for ritual…