Berenson’s achievement in The Accusation is to contextualize the Massena blood libel in multiple provocative ways. Berenson offers a concise history of the origins of the blood libel in Europe, as well as its modern recurrences ... the resulting consequences for Jews makes for horrifying reading.
As it happens, Berenson was born in Massena. He knew residents who still remembered the incident, and so he was able to give his research a personal dimension (though he skates over that lightly, perhaps too lightly) ... It should be said of Berenson’s explanations that they rely heavily on circumstantial evidence ... Berenson’s book reminds us that what seems inconceivable is nonetheless possible.
...a fascinating case of scapegoating ... Berenson deftly takes the seemingly minor incident and uses it to explore how blood libels came to be. The well-researched book touches upon dozens of incidents that occurred for centuries across Europe and how they often centered on a supposed ghastly need for blood to make matzah.
This is a fascinating story, but Mr. Berenson’s rendition feels shallow. (Sure, Jewish kids in Massena were called 'Christ Killers' afterward, but that happened lots of other places, too.) One wishes he’d drilled down deeper or, to put it terms that struggling upstate communities have come to know, done some genuine historic fracking. He spoke to a few eyewitnesses, but even at this late date, a more ambitious canvass (an ad in the local paper?) could probably have produced more. He ignores New York City’s four Yiddish dailies, which, manned by people who’d fled this very thing, would surely have had something to say ... But when Mr. Berenson does stay close to home, he begins to bring the horrifying events taking place there back to life.
A Massena native, Berenson’s writing about the town is often characterized by a palpable sense of disappointment over both how the town handled the situation at the time and what the town has become in the present day (epitomized, for him, by Massena’s St. Lawrence County going for Trump in 2016). This mode stands in marked contrast with the way he writes about the details of the incident itself, which unfolds with the sizzle of a zeitgeisty true crime book. But both of these elements are something of a Trojan horse for a digressive historical survey of blood libel around the world, and a briefer consideration of the political climate for Jews in early 20th-century America ... At times this litany of cases can feel like a lengthy distraction from the American incident that is his stated subject, but Berenson’s goals are worthwhile: to demonstrate the way that antisemitism developed throughout European history ... In Berenson’s view, the story of The Accusation is worth telling and engaging with because the Massena incident is the only documented blood libel case in American history. But what does this singularity really mean? Ultimately, Berenson treats it as little more than an anomaly ... What is American antisemitism? That The Accusation brings the urgency of this question to the fore is the book’s defining strength; that it doesn’t attempt an answer, its defining weakness.
NYU history professor Berenson...provides a comprehensive look at a little-known episode of American anti-Semitism in this thoughtful history ... Berenson’s study benefits from his having interviewed several people alive at the time, including Griffiths, and wisely avoids sensationalism. Readers interested in the recurrence of anti-Semitism in the U.S. will find food for thought here
...[a] fluent account ... An excellent work of scholarly detection, especially timely in an age when the immigrant 'other' is under constant suspicion.
