Jewish Clericalism on Trial in Soviet Russia: Murder Charge Against Minsk Mohel: War on Barbaric Cir

Jewish clericalism will be put on trial in Minsk in a few days, the Jewish Communist paper “Emess” here announces (the report was given briefly from Riga in the J.T.A. Bulletin of the 7th. inst.). Jonah Radinski, a local shochet and mohel, has a ritual slaughtering house at 45 Rakova Street, in Minsk, it says. As a side-line he “Judaises” new-born babes. He has been carrying on this profession for a couple of decades, and there is no doubt that he is responsible for the death of scores of children. The investigating authorities have come into possession of his “sacred” tools, and the instruments are all dirty and rusted. It often happened that the child would head on the day of the Brith or the next morning, and I would go and stop it, “the great medico” Radinskiha said, the “Emess” correspondent writes. His neighbours say of him, however, he adds, that Radinski alays poultry and children.

It came to pass, the correspondent proceeds, that the wife of a Jewish building-worker named Tchertock gave birth to her first child. The grandparents induced the mother to have the child circumcised without her husband knowing, because being a worker he is opposed to this old barbaric religous custom. The Rabbi joined in their entreaties, as did also the President of the synagogue, Radinski himself and a group of other “believers”. The agitation was started while the mother was still in the lying-in hospital. They drew up a strategic plan to have the child circumcised quietly, without fuss, so that no one should be any the wiser. On the ninth day they made careful preparations for their sinister ritual. They got together a group of pious Jews, relatives, Beth Midrash habitues. They selected an hour when the father would be away from home, and Rabbi Jonah Radinski came to perform his “good deed”. Having circumcised the child, Radinski got his pay, according to the rates, and few roubles besides from the grandparents. The same evening the child began to bleed. The first-aid was called in, and the child was taken to hospital where on the second day it died from loss of blood, caused by the wound inflicted by the act of circumcision. The parents seeing what a sinister net the Nepmen-clericalist group had spread about them, reported the matter to the Jewish. People’s Court. The news of this sinister ritual which had resulted in the death of a new-born child infuriated the Jewish workers of Minsk. Wherever you go, in the street, in the club, in the factories, you hear nothing but the story of Radinski, the Mohel. The workers demand that he should be found guilty of the death of the child and severely punished, and that a big social trial should be arranged against the counter-revolutionary propagators of the dark Middle Ages. The workers of Minsk have not yet forgotten the trial of the Rabbi who ordered a corpse to be taken into the house of a “sinning” woman. We have not yet forgotten the famous trial of the ritual slaughterers in Minsk and many other things done by this barbaric Jewish clericalism. The workers demand an intensification of the fight against the Jewish religious traditions, against the Jewish religious festivals, against the Jewish customs and all the survivals of an cut-moded way of life, the report concludes.