Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 7, 2020

What a Blood Libel on the Saint Lawrence River Reveals about American Exceptionalism

The exception that proves the rule.

In the town of Massena, New York, near the Canadian border, a four-year-old girl disappeared in the fall of 1928—just two days before Yom Kippur. A rumor quickly spread that the town’s small Jewish community had kidnapped her to use her blood for a nefarious holiday ritual. Drawing on Edward Berenson’s recent book on the subject, Gary Stein explains what happened next:

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