c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Quick now, complete these sentences: “The only good Indian is a …””The Jews control …””All blacks are naturally …” Probably our initial responses were filled with prejudice and embarrassed us. But, in fact, such bigoted answers illustrate how we are victims of the”big lie.”Tragically, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, had it right in knowing the bigger the lie the more people will believe it and the harder it will be to eradicate it from society.

Proclaim a monstrous falsehood long and loud enough, and, like a deadly cancer, it will permanently lodge within the body politic. When confronted with a big lie, even people of good will often say,”Well, I don’t believe that myself, but maybe there’s some truth to it.” And ironically, the more a big lie is refuted by”respectable”religious, political, or academic authorities, the more it is believed by individuals obsessed with conspiratorial theories.

One of the world’s most pernicious big lies is experiencing a revival in Russia. Two years ago, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church submitted 10 questions of historical inquiry to the government’s official commission investigating the 1918 deaths of Czar Nicholas II and his family at the hands of the Bolsheviks. Revolutions frequently claim the lives of royalty, and 80 years ago, Russia followed the earlier examples of England and France in executing the czar and his immediate family.

Today, the church has a renewed interest in the Romanovs because there is a movement within some Russian ecclesiastical circles to make saints of Nicholas and his family.

Incredibly, one of the Holy Synod’s questions put to the government is whether the Russian royals were executed as part of a”ritual murder”carried out by a worldwide Jewish/Masonic conspiracy.

The myth alleging that Jews engage in the”ritual murder”of Christians and use their blood for religious rites dates to 12th-century Europe. Although denounced by many Christian leaders over the centuries, this ugly big lie has repeatedly been used to incite murderous anti-Jewish violence.

My own organization, the American Jewish Committee, was founded in 1906 as a response to the brutal massacre of Jews, including women and children, in the Moldavian city of Kishinev three years earlier. When the local Orthodox bishop was asked to contradict the rumor the massacre was in retaliation for the Jews’ murdering a young Christian man in Kishinev for ritualistic purposes, the bishop publicly said he believed the ritual murder story.

In 1913, a Jew, Mendel Beilis was put on trial in Kiev, Ukraine, for allegedly participating in a”ritual murder.”Although Beilis was acquitted, the case revealed the depth of anti-Semitism in czarist Russia.

Today, of course, Russian Orthodox Church leaders disparage the”ritual murder”charge. In 1997, Moscow Theological Seminary scholars reported to the government investigative commission that”proceeding from the presumption of innocence … the version of the ritual character of the murder … should not be considered proved.” Metropolitan Yuvenali, the chairman of the Synod’s Commission on Canonization, said the inquiry was in response to”multiple publications on this matter, both immediately after the revolution and in our own time.””The church is concerned,”he added, that the religious burial of the royal family’s bones, scheduled for later this year,”should not produce a wave of crazy, anti-Semitic movements.” Church leaders hope the government report on the Romanovs’ deaths will end the”ritual murder”speculation that is believed by Russian ultra-nationalist groups. For the past two years, the investigation has made little progress, but First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemstov, the new commission chair, has announced the inquiry must conclude this month.

That”ritual murder”is even being discussed by top church and government officials in Russia speaks volumes about the enduring pathological nature of the big lie. Because there are a number of scurrilous publications espousing the veracity of”ritual murder,”this wicked anti-Semitic charge has unfortunately become a”rational”matter to be debated by serious people.

But I have little confidence an official government report will end this 800-year-old big lie. On the contrary, because belief in conspiracies is at a fever pitch, such a report, no matter how well documented or well intentioned, will surely be denounced as a cover-up or worse.

And thanks to the increasingly long reach of the World Wide Web, the medieval”ritual murder”calumny is likely to be spread even wider. Goebbels would be most pleased.

MJP END RUDIN