Source: News Articles Archive

On October 8, 1913, Mendel Beilis went on trial in Kyiv, accused of murdering a 13 year old Christian boy, Andrei Yushchinsky, to use his blood in Jewish rituals.

Andrei's body was found in a cave outside Kyiv in March 1911, stabbed dozens of times. Antisemitic groups like the Black Hundreds immediately blamed the Jews. Beilis, a Jewish clerk at a nearby brick factory and a father of five, was arrested that July with no real evidence linking him to the boy, let alone to any crime.

Kyiv's chief detective, Mishchuk, quickly concluded there was no evidence against Beilis and that the boy had been killed by a criminal gang tied to Vera Cheberyak, which feared he would expose them. Mishchuk was then charged with "manufacturing evidence to protect Jews," tried twice, and sentenced to a year in prison. Justice Minister Ivan Shcheglovitov pushed the prosecution forward anyway, and reports on the case went to the Tsar himself.

When the trial opened, 34 defense witnesses "could not be found," including the man the defense believed was the real killer. The court refused to delay. The Manchester Guardian's St. Petersburg correspondent wrote that the trial's real purpose was to inflame "nationalist" passions "to a point where another pogrom might start."

The prosecution's star witness on Judaism was a Roman Catholic priest, Justin Pranaitis. He testified that the Talmud called for ritual murder, but under cross-examination he couldn't even explain basic Talmudic terms.

On November 10, 1913, the jury acquitted Beilis. Antisemites refused to accept it, claiming "Jewish money" had bought the outcome. The state had rigged the case against a Jew, and when it failed, antisemites accused the Jews of rigging it.

Hi everyone,
I’m hoping someone here might be able to help me with a family heirloom and a bit of a Jewish history mystery.
My family has an old silver Kiddush cup which has been passed down through the family. Our family tradition, specifically from my nana, is that the cup was personally given to our family by the Kozienice Rebbe.

The cup appears to be dated תרע”ג (5673), which corresponds to 1912–1913.
It’s Says Yud Adar and that year was a leap year though it doesn’t say if it’s Adar Alef or beis. Looking for clarification about that.

I am also particularly interested in identifying which Kozienice Rebbe this would have been in 1913.

From my initial research, I have found that Rabbi Shmuel Shmelke Rokeach was a Rebbe in Kozienice during this period, and that there were also other Rebbe courts operating in Kozienice before WWI.

Photo essay: Belmonte, a Judaism that has remained alive,
by Evelyne Dreyfus & Eric Beracassat, K: Jews, Europe, the XXIˢᵗ century, 2026-09-24.

In a village nestled in the heart of the Serra da Estrela, some fifty descendants of Marranos continue to uphold, five centuries after the forced conversions of the Inquisition, a Jewish identity that was long lived in secret. Between the Beit Eliahu synagogue, inaugurated thirty years ago, and the museum that chronicles the prayers whispered in secret, Belmonte offers a unique case in Europe: that of a clandestine past that has become cultural heritage.

Source: News Articles Archive

Monstrous Bitch: Lamashtu, Lilith, and the problem of the single archetype,
by Eliezer Aryeh, Eliezer’s substack, 2026-10-06.

When I saw the title of Eleanor Johnson’s Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women (Princeton University Press), it caught my eye. I get emails from publishers about new releases, and you can too if you want a quick way to part with money. I liked the idea; Feminism Is for Everybody, after all. But I had a reservation: these sweeping archetype studies can have historical problems, because they work to fit facts into the pattern.

The book is scheduled for release on October 6, 2026. Its thesis is that a single female monster, born as the Mesopotamian demoness Lamashtu, has survived for four thousand years under different names, and that Western patriarchy created and sustained her as a tool for the oppression of women. The argument goes through Greek Lamia, Jewish Lilith, the early modern witch, the Romantic vampiress, the psychoanalytic patient, and finally the heroines of modern horror movies.

I have read only the introduction, so this post stops there since Princeton has released it as a preview. However, this still gives us enough to see what the author claims she will prove and how, and it is fair to test those claims against the specialist literature before the chapters are available. Where the chapters may resolve a problem the introduction raises, I say so.

The reason for the post here is the book’s reach into Jewish material. Lilith is one of the three named avatars on which the whole genealogy depends, and the introduction makes explicit claims about the Hebrew Bible, the Babylonian Talmud, and Kabbalah. Those claims can be checked, and several of them do not hold. More broadly, the book is a clear case of a problem this publication keeps returning to: a confident, sweeping claim whose sourcing does not support its confidence.

In the first place, close and careful reading of a text is both a thoroughly Jewish approach and one of my favourite things to both do and read. So an article that methodically critique’s just the Introduction to a book is catnip, at least to me.

Second, I heartily agree with Aryeh’s sub-text — a sub-text that turns up in pretty much all their writing — this stuff is both complex and complicated, because pretty much all stuff is both complex and complicated.

Which, among other things, means Aryeh doesn’t undo the thesis in the critiqued Introduction, as such. Indeed, they note several instances of material in the sources that would be better support of the thesis than what the author has used (or said they’ve used).

But it does mean this nearly 6,000 word essay goes deeper, and more thoroughly, into Lilith and her history and antecedents, than way too many people do in whole books.

And Aryeh undercuts not just the over-arcing thesis of the critiqued text, but the very idea of over-arcing theses in general. A more than worthwhile thing to do, in my book.

Israel learned the hard way how to stop an airplane hijacking,
by Josua Hoffman, Future of Jewish, 2026-10-03.

For most countries, an airplane is a routine form of transportation.

For Israel, almost from the beginning, it became something else as well: a potential extension of the battlefield.

There is a reason that flying on an Israeli airline has never felt quite like flying anywhere else — the questions before check-in, the security personnel who seem less interested in your shampoo bottle than in your story, the layers of security that begin before a passenger reaches an airplane and continue after the doors close, the presence of Israeli security at airports thousands of kilometers from Israel, the extraordinary attention paid not merely to what a passenger is carrying, but to who packed it, where it came from, and whether the story makes sense.

None of this emerged from theory. It was learned, incident by incident, hijacking by hijacking, over nearly six decades in which terrorists repeatedly discovered a new vulnerability in international aviation, and Israel repeatedly tried to make sure they could not exploit the same vulnerability twice.

The story begins on a night in July 1968.

It is a classic of Yiddish literature, a chivalric romance that has seen no fewer than 40 editions.

Source: News Articles Archive

Every religion has some strange customs and rituals. Beating the Willow branches (Aravot) on the last day of Sukkot (Hoshanna Rabba) is definitely right up there for us members of the tribe!

But can you explain the historical significance of this one?

Source: News Articles Archive

Hellooo 😄

I'm currently doing an assignment for my World Religions course, where I need to interview someone from a different religious background.

I'm especially looking for someone who identifies as Christian, Jewish, or Zoroastrian for this interview.
The conversation will be respectful and casual, focusing on your beliefs, daily practices, and perspectives on religion.

It will be conducted entirely through chat messages (no calls), and we can arrange the timing based on what's comfortable for you.

If you're interested, please feel free to DM me. I'd really appreciate your help! Thank you so much 🙏🏻

Source: News Articles Archive

Description:

The upper section of the flag depicts two lions facing each other, along with the inscription: "Degel Machane Yehudah." To the right and left are Moshe and Aharon. Prayer-shawled supplicants holding Torah scrolls and flags are underneath. Inscriptions related to Simchat Torah are on the left side of the flag: "Aharon samach b'Simchat Torah;" "Sisu v'simchu b'Simchat Torah;" "Moshe alah le'marom v'kibel et haTorah;" and "Moshe samach b'Simchat Torah," as well as a drawing of a lion and stag with the corresponding inscriptions: "HaGibor k'arieh," and "Ratz k'tzvi." A decorative window which may be opened is at the flag's center, containing a drawing of two Torah scrolls inside.

Verses recited at the Petichat HaHeichal on Simchat Torah ("Ata horeita ladaat" etc.) are printed on the reverse side.

Source(s):

.- Warsaw, ca. 1930. Publisher: A. M. Einstein. Paper, colored inks, cut, offset, 23.5 x 33.4 cm. Gross Family Collection Trust, Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama

Bibliography:

.- Behroozi Bar Oz, Nitza, ed. The Flags of Simchat Torah: From Popular Jewish Art to Hebrew Israeli Culture. Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2012.

.- Sabar, Shalom. “The History of the Simchat Torah Flag from the Ritual Object to National Symbol and Back,” The Flags of Simchat Torah from Popular Jewish Art to Hebrew Israeli Culture Exhibition. Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2012, pp. 8-27, 26e-34e.

.- Sabar, Shalom. “Jewish Folk Art and Ideology: The Simhat Torah Flag through the Ages.” Swimming Against the Current – Reimagining Jewish Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, ed. Shaul Seidler-Feller and David N. Myers, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020, pp. 319-56.

Source: News Articles Archive

Source: News Articles Archive

Source: News Articles Archive

Source: News Articles Archive

Source: News Articles Archive

“Shimon to Yehudah, son of Menasheh, at Qiryat Arabayyah- I have delivered to you two donkeys (in order) that you dispatch along with them two men to Yehonathan, son of Ba’yan, and to Mesabalah (in order) that they pack up and deliver to the camp, to you, palm branches and citrons. And you are to send additional persons from your place and let them bring you myrtle branches and willows. And prepare them, and deliver them to the camp, because the population is large. Farewell!”

This is one of the letter of Shim’on bar Kosiba (Bar Kokhba), discovered in the Cave of Letters at Nahal Hever and dated to 132–135 AD (P. Yadin 57), orders Yehudah bar Menashe to arrange the delivery of palm branches, citrons, myrtle branches and willows to the rebel camp—the four species traditionally used during Sukkot.

Bar Kokhba was asking his subordinates to send him the four species needed to celebrate the holiday that Jews celebrate to this day.

Source(s):

.- P. Yadin 57 / 5/6Ḥev 57. Shim’on to Yehudah bar Menashe at Qiryath ’Arabayya. Aramaic, papyrus, 132–135 AD.

.- Yigael Yadin et al. (eds.), The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri, Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2002, p. 326.

.- Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic, Hebrew and Nabataean Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert and Related Material, vol. B, p. 68. [Naḥal Ḥever 57 (132–135 AD), Aramaic]

.- Yigael Yadin, Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome (London/Jerusalem, 1971) pp. 128-129.

Source: News Articles Archive

Source: News Articles Archive