NEWS AND VIEWS
Mendel Beilis: A Jewish Symbol
"Mendel Beilis is not guilty, but the murder was committed in the Zaitzeff brickyard and five quarts of blood have been taken from the body," was the verdict which the jury has been made to deliver in the famous-infamous "ritual" trial at Kieff, Russia. And we say made advisedly, for no sane person can believe for a moment that the jury, which was of the Government's picking, was ever expected to bring out a verdict according to the dictates of conscience. For such things as conscience, justice and even common decency are tabooed in Russia just at present, not only with respect to the Jew, but also with respect to the Russian people at large. Since the pledges given in the historic "manifesto" of October 17th were broken the government has attempted to correct one wrong by another. And now dissatisfaction runs high, the peasantry are suffering from periodic famines and plagues, and the only support of the authorities are the dregs of the Russian people, the so-called Black Hundreds. An "issue" was desperately needed to excite the lowest passions of the as yet half-savage masses, to befuddle the people at large and to create a safety valve for the accumulating popular discontent. And when some two years ago the Russian Duma referred to a committee a bill for the abolition of the Pale of Jewish Settlement, the Czar and his advisers saw in it a sign of the times. They saw that the progressive parties might use the Jewish question as a lever to force some reforms of a more general character. A "diversion" was desperately needed, and, of course, the ever present "Jew" was there. The Yuschinsky boy was killed by the friends of the notorious den-keeper Vera Cheberiyak. That band of criminals had reason to think the boy might denounce them to the police; he was stabbed many times, killed and hidden in a cave. Some months later Mendel Beilis was arrested
(This department is conducted by Dr. George Jeshurun)
in spite of the fact that the secret service officers who were put on the case pointed to the Cheberiyak woman as the leader of the gang who committed the murder. Two important police officers have been degraded and punished for their pains. The proofs submitted by an intrepid writer have been side-tracked, and the manufacture of "evidence" begun. It was necessary not only to convict Beilis, but also to create an impression in the minds of the common people that the Government is really defending the Russian people from an enemy of the Fatherland whose very religion makes it incumbent on him to consume Christian blood. And so the oft-exploded ritual fable has been dragged into court to furnish a "motive" for the killing of the boy. It mattered not that all the testimony furnished in court strongly pointed to the Cheberyak woman as the possible instigator of the crime; it matters not that the witnesses of the prosecution could not repeat orally their depositions which they supplied at the preliminary inquest; it mattered not that against the accused were testifying notorious convicted criminals whose testimony would not have been admitted in any court of justice; and it mattered not that the attempt of the prosecution to show that Beilis was seen dragging the Yuschinsky boy in broad daylight through a crowded street—miserably failed. All that was as nothing to the organs of Russian "justice." The Prosecutor, with unparalleled brazen-faced cynicism charged the jury to convict the defendant and expressed his "inner convictions" that the defendant was guilty of a ritual murder.
But it would seem that even the Czar and his minions cannot always have their own way. The Russian Orthodox Church refused to affirm the ritual murder charge in the courtroom. The only "expert" whom the prosecution could impress into its service was a nondescript Catholic priest who proved his ignorance by being unable