In 1911, a 12-year-old boy was kidnapped and murdered in Keiv,
Ukraine. Local people accused an area Jew, Menachem Beilis, of
committing the crime, and he was promptly arrested and held in
the most appalling circumstances for two years. Beilis was
innocent, but the fact that he was blamed for a crime he did not
commit is not what was remarkable; Jews in Ukraine have long
faced intense anti-Semitism, and it surprised few that a Jew was
quickly arrested for the murder, on flimsy evidence. What set
the Beilis trial apart from other criminal prosecutions was the
nature of the Russian government's case against him. Menachem
Beilis became the last Jew in the West to be formally tried for
the ancient slur of the blood libel. He was accused, like many
Jews before him, of killing a Christian child so that he could
use her blood in a Jewish religious ritual. For nearly a
thousand years, Jews like Menachem Beilis have been accused of
procuring blood in this way. The reasons Jews are said to
require this blood vary: usua