A Murder in Lemberg: Politics, Religion, and Violence in Modern Jewish HistoryHow 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Galicia and Its Jews 17721848 | 9 |
Lemberg and Its Jews 17721848 | 18 |
A Reform Rabbi in Eastern Europe | 34 |
Rabbi Abraham Kohn in Lemberg 18431848 | 52 |
Revolution and Murder | 65 |
Abraham Ber Pilpel Murderer? | 81 |
The Indicted CoConspirators | 97 |
Magdalena Kohn v the Austrian Empire | 107 |
Conclusion | 112 |
Afterword | 121 |
Acknowledgments | 129 |
Notes | 131 |
143 | |
149 | |