A Murder in Lemberg : Politics, Religion, and Violence in Modern Jewish History / Michael Stanislawski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stanislawski, Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orthodox Judaism--Relations--Nontraditional Jews--History--19th century.

Orthodox Judaism.

Jews--Cultural assimilation--Ukraine--Lʹviv--History--19th century.

Jews.

Reform Judaism--Ukraine--Lʹviv--History--19th century.

Reform Judaism.

Jews--Ukraine--Lʹviv--History--19th century.

Jews--Ukraine--Lʹviv--History--18th century.

Lʹviv (Ukraine)--Ethnic relations.

Lʹviv (Ukraine).

Galicia (Poland and Ukraine)--History--Uprising, 1848.

Galicia (Poland and Ukraine).

Kohn, Abraham, 1807-1848--Assassination.

Kohn, Abraham.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 152 pages) : illustrations, map

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

How could a Jew kill a Jew for religious and political reasons? Many people asked this question after an Orthodox Jew assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Itshak Rabin in 1995. But historian Michael Stanislawski couldn't forget it, and he decided to find out everything he could about an obscure and much earlier event that was uncannily similar to Rabin's murder: the 1848 killing--by an Orthodox Jew--of the Reform rabbi of Lemberg (now L'viv, Ukraine). Eventually, Stanislawski concluded that this was the first murder of a Jewish leader by a Jew since antiquity, a prelude to twentieth-century assassinations of Jews by Jews, and a turning point in Jewish history. Based on records unavailable for decades, A Murder in Lemberg is the first book about this fascinating case. On September 6, 1848, Abraham Ber Pilpel entered the kitchen of Rabbi Abraham Kohn and his family and poured arsenic in the soup that was being prepared for their dinner. Within hours, the rabbi and his infant daughter were dead. Was Kohn's murder part of a conservative Jewish backlash to Jewish reform and liberalization in a year of European revolution? Or was he killed simply because he threatened taxes that enriched Lemberg's Orthodox leaders? Vividly recreating the dramatic story of the murder, the trial that followed, and the political and religious fallout of both, Stanislawski tries to answer these questions and others. In the process, he reveals the surprising diversity of Jewish life in mid-nineteenth-century eastern Europe. Far from being uniformly Orthodox, as is often assumed, there was a struggle between Orthodox and Reform Jews that was so intense that it might have led to murder.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Part One: The Murder and Its Background

Chapter One: Galicia and Its Jews, 1772-1848

Chapter Two: Lemberg and Its Jews, 1772-1848

Chapter Three: A Reform Rabbi in Eastern Europe

Chapter Four: Rabbi Abraham Kohn in Lemberg, 1843-1848

Chapter Five: Revolution and Murder

Part Two: The Investigation, Sentence, and Appeal

Chapter Six: Abraham Ber Pilpel, Murderer?

Chapter Seven: The Indicted Co-Conspirators

Chapter Eight: Magdalena Kohn v. the Austrian Empire

Conclusion

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [143]-147) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9780691187778

0691187770

OCLC:

1132217830