The American Jewish Congress this week rejected as “astonishing” an editor’s defense of an article in the N.Y. State Journal of Medicine suggesting that a 12th-century homicide may have been a ritual murder by Jews. The defense of the article–and the Congress’ rejection of it–came in the wake of a protest by Joseph B. Robison, general counsel of the Congress, that the author had restated the “monstrous accusation” that Jews may have been guilty of ritual murder.
The article, entitled “The Strange Murder of William of Norwich, 1144,” appeared under the byline of Dr. William D. Sharpe, director of laboratories at Columbus Hospital in New York. The journal is published by the New York State Medical Society. In his original protest, Robison had stated:
“Dr. Sharpe apparently starts with the assumption that the practice (of ritual murder) existed. He even goes to the trouble of supplying citations of reports of other instances. Then, on the basis of a thousand-year-old record of the flimsiest kind of evidence, he comes to the solemn conclusion that maybe it happened. How long is the Jewish community to put up with this monstrous accusation? Library shelves have been filled with volumes refuting the libel, case by case. No pretense of objectivity or neutrality can possibly justify treating this as an open question.”
In response to the Congress’ protest, Dr. William Hammond, editor of the Journal, wrote to Mr. Robison: “The author quite plainly absolves the Jewish community of any crime of murder, ritual or otherwise. You have read an intent into the article which does not exist and could not possibly exist.”
In reply to Dr. Hammond this week, Robison wrote: “I fail to see how you can regard the article as absolving the Jewish community. It comes to the firm conclusion that the Jewish community leaders engaged in bribery and ‘were at least accessories after the fact’ to some kind of murder.” The Journal article by Dr. Sharpe represents his “medicolegal analysis” of an account by Thomas of Monmouth of the murder of a 12-or-13-year-old Christian boy, William, during Holy Week of 1144 in the Jewish quarter of Norwich.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
