Murder in Lemberg: Politics, Religion,

Murder in Lemberg: Politics, Religion, and Violence in Modern Jewish History by Michael Stanislawski is not at all what one would think by just reading the title. The book is a tale of violence, crime, and loathing and how all of those issues affect all parts of society, but it is also about the murder of the city district Rabbi of Lemberg and the political victory of those who were against the murdered rabbi. Stanislawksi's purpose for writing a Murder in Lemberg seems to be so as to illustrate how the 1848 poisoning of Rabbi Abraham Kohn's in Lemberg was a critical moment in Jewish history and one that has was a relatively unknown event in Jewish history as it appears to be only the second murder of Jewish leader by an another Jew since the 2nd century. The book focuses on how a young Orthodox Jew, Abraham Ber Pilpel, was able to get inside the Reform Rabbi Kohn's kitchen and pour arsenic into the soup that was later served to the rabbi and his family as well as the rebuilding of the events that occurred the murder. The whole family was sickened by the poisonous soup, but only the rabbi and his young daughter, Teresa, died.

The first half of the book is a summary of the historical context of the period while the second half is all about the trial and the repercussions of the trial. The information about the trial as well as the police records come from an archival collection, which includes the appellate court file, which was housed in the Central State Historical Archive in L'viv (what used to be Lemberg in the mid 19th century),Ukraine. Stanislawski, through the examination of these materials, reveals that the alleged murderer's conviction was reversed on appeal, which was upheld by the Austrian supreme court, a fact that was not known before Stanislawski's examination of these materials.

Rabbi Kohn was a Reform Rabbi who became the chief Rabbi in Lemberg, giving him the authority to do certain things like abolish various Jewish taxes which were collected by Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox Jews, of course, benefitted from these taxes and thus were not happy by the ban. Therefore, it is important to note that the majority of people in Lemberg were strictly Orthodox and they were quite bitter about the Austrian government giving Kohn such a lofty position as chief rabbi in 1846. The Orthodox were so upset that it turned violent after Kohn wanted to ban the traditional Galitsianers' "uniform," which the Austrian government sanctioned it. At the same time, Kohn's temple and school were doing quite well, which also upset the Orthodox community. At one point, Kohn was attacked and pretty badly hurt by a group of Orthodox youth. Yet, Kohn remained insistent that his people could never hurt him. He said to his wife, "I am, after all, among Jews. What will they do to me in the end?" (p. 72). The thing was that most of the Orthodox saw him as being completely unfit to be a rabbi in Lemberg and believed that he was "personally irreligious" and "broke major commandments of Judaism" (p. 71).

Stanislawski does a good job of introducing us to the Galitsianers as well as putting an end to many misconceptions about them. Galicia was a rather radical area and they fostered the development of Reform Judaism. It was those people who constructed the Choral Temple in Lemberg and then asked Kohn to become its Rabbi as well as the principal of its school in 1843.

Of course the biggest question that is asked is whether Rabbi Kohn was murdered or not. Of course we know what Stanislawski thinks, but other writers, who did not have access to this archival information, have long been skeptical. Stanislawski believes that he was murdered, clearly, and he sets out on a mission to prove this point. Stanislawski notes that a lot of the people who wrote about Kohn's death were completely wrong. In fact, his tone is rather irreverent when talking about other authors who have broached this topic before and whom don't have the same views as his own (as they did not have access to the same information as he did). it's difficult to completely believe that Stanislawski is 100% correct, however, because the legal information that the he offers was all after the fact (i.e., after Kohn's death). In a way, Stanislawski is asking the reader to completely forget about contemporaneous elements of the case.

There was one man who was accused, went to trial and was convicted of Kohn's murder, but this was appealed and overturned. After the reversal of the conviction, the supreme court examined it again and the judgment was upheld. One of Stanislawski's arguments is that the accused was Orthodox and it was Orthodox writers and publishers who later tried to cover up the whole event, calling it merely a death -- not a murder. Stanislawski specifically points his finger at the publishing house Mosad HaRav Kook (p. 77), stating that they purposefully got it wrong.

Stanislawski's cover up story is great as it creates a lot of excitement and conspiracy, which is always fun to read, but the his story seems, for the most part, to be completely unsupported by the historical evidence and it also relies on somewhat questionable interpretation of the archival information. Stanislawski does admit that the murder of Rabbi Kohn must remain an unsolved case (p. 114), but he then states that he is quite sure that Orenstein and Bernstein were the guilty parties who conspired to murder Kohn because they were leaders of the Orthodox Jews and they were bitterly and fervently against his religious reform ideas. They were also the main tax farmers of Lemberg and they were wildly resentful of his attempts to ban meat and candle taxes. There are implications for a murder case in reference to the meat and candles as those taxes were not just beneficial to the Habsburg state, but they were also beneficial and profitable for the tax collectors. Stanislawski is quite adamant that they most certainly hired a hit man to do the deed (p. 113). He states:

Despite the fact that some of the witnesses who testified about the entry of the Orthodox Jew into the Kohn kitchen on that day were not the most reliable witnesses a prosecutor or a historian could wish for, it seems virtually certain that Abraham Ber Pilpel was indeed the man who put the arsenic into the Kohn family soup pot, and therefore that his original conviction by the Lemberg Criminal Court was correct. What precisely Pilpel's motives were is impossible to ascertain form the surviving documentation -- was he moved primarily by religious opposition to Rabbi Kohn, was he paid to commit this heinous act, or did he act out of a combination of these two motives? Most likely, although not provable on the basis of the evidence that has so far come to light, he was merely the hired hit man in a conspiracy launched, and paid for, by Herz Bernstein and Hirsch Orenstein, who themselves were motivated by a combination of financial self-interest and religious zealotry. (Stanislawski 112-113)