The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town - Hardcover

Edward Berenson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393249425 ISBN 13: 9780393249422

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019

Synopsis

A fascinating investigation of America's only alleged case of blood libel and what it reveals about anti-Semitism in the United States and Europe.

On 22 September 1928, four-year-old Barbara Griffith strayed into the woods surrounding Massena in New York. Hundreds of people looked for the child but could not find her; then someone suggested that Barbara had been kidnapped and killed by Jews. The mayor and local police believed the rumour and the allegation of ritual murder, known to Jews as "blood libel", took hold. Rational people in government and Jewish leaders had to intervene to restore calm once Barbara was safely found.

At first glance, it seems bizarre that so many embraced the accusation but many of Massena's inhabitants had emigrated recently from Central and Eastern Europe where "blood libel" was common. The Accusation is a shocking and perceptive cross-cultural exploration of American and European responses to anti-Semitism.

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Review:

An extraordinary--and timely--story expertly told. Edward Berenson, a distinguished historian of modern Europe, opens up a side of early twentieth-century American history that feels both startling and eerily familiar in its mix of ethnocentrism and political toxicity. A lucid, deeply intelligent, and important book. --Steven J. Zipperstein, author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

This model of micro-history illuminates both the persistence and inconsistency of antisemitism in Western culture through the unlikely prism of an almost forgotten event in a backwater American town during the presidential election of 1928. Berenson's research ranges widely over time and space, and his narrative deftly blends scholarly generalizations with nitty-gritty historical reconstruction. The highly readable result is a tour de force of insight and synthesis. --Peter Hayes, author of Why? Explaining the Holocaust

The Accusation starts with what amounted to an obscure footnote in regional narratives and a minor curiosity in studies of American Jewish history, and builds upon it a very large, important story. In a richly woven tapestry, Edward Berenson examines the many strands that link early twentieth-century Massena, New York, to the Middle Ages, when Jews found themselves accused of using the blood of young Christians to bake matzo, their ritual Passover bread. Deftly connects the very local to the national and to the global. --Hasia R. Diner, Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History, New York University

About the Author:

Edward Berenson is a professor of history at New York University. He is the author of Europe in the Modern World and The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story. He lives in Tarrytown, New York, with his wife, Catherine Johnson.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0393249425
• ISBN 13: 9780393249422
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256