The Nebraska Czechs of Lincoln are proud to sponsor the Czech/American Reading Circle. Started in January, 2019, the Reading Circle shares significant books about, by, for, and important to, people of Czech Heritage.
Attendees are not required to have read the book being discussed, however, it helps to have some familiarity with it, and we encourage all participants to contribute any relevant information they may have.
Attendees are not required to have read the book being discussed, however, it helps to have some familiarity with it, and we encourage all participants to contribute any relevant information they may have.
Please join us! The circle meets the last Tuesday of each month (except December) at 6:15 pm central time
on ZOOM. Everyone is welcome.
Please contact the following or any Board Member for additional information and/or to get your Zoom Link.
Lois Shimerda Rood
on ZOOM. Everyone is welcome.
Please contact the following or any Board Member for additional information and/or to get your Zoom Link.
Lois Shimerda Rood
402-570-2333 lois@loisrood.com
Layne Pierce
402-770-5029 layne.pierce@yahoo.com
Mila Saskova-Pierce
402-770-4624 msaskova-pierce1@unl.edu
The Czech/American Reading Circle is continuing with its eighth year of reviewing great books.
Please join us the last Tuesday each month.
The Czech/American Reading Circle is continuing with its eighth year of reviewing great books.
Please join us the last Tuesday each month.
The March 31, 2026 Reading Circle is a film, Velký vlastenecký výlet —The Great Patriot Trip, which is a 2025 Czech documentary road movie by director Robin Kvapil. Martina Klicperová's will lead the discussion
Click here for a high resolution copy of the 2026 Reading Circle Brochure.
MEETING INFORMATION:
Join Zoom: 6:15 p.m. Presentation: 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.THE ZOOM LINK:
Our Zoom Link is the same for ALL of the Reading Circle Sessions.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87384971615?pwd=anI0UXQ4T0I3Qk44RE16emhISGI5QT09
Meeting ID: 873 8497 1615; Passcode: 123553
Please Join Us for our February 24, 2026
Nebraska Czechs of Lincoln Reading Circle!
Nebraska Czechs of Lincoln Reading Circle!
Past Reading Circle Brochures:
2026 Reading Circle Brochure
2026 Reading Circle Brochure
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SUMMARY:
Blood Inscriptions (2022) by Hillel J. Kieval
Blood Inscriptions (2022) by Hillel J. Kieval
Although the Enlightenment had seemed to bring an end to the widely held belief that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes, charges of the so-called blood libel were surprisingly widespread in central and eastern Europe on either side of the turn to the twentieth century. Well over one hundred accusations were made against Jews in this period, and prosecutors and government officials in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia broke with long established precedent to bring six of these cases forward in sensational public trials. In Blood Inscriptions Hillel J. Kieval examines four cases—the prosecutions that took place at Tiszaeszlár in Hungary (1882-83), Xanten in Germany (1891-92), Polná in Austrian Bohemia (1899-1900), and Konitz, then Germany, now in Poland (1900-1902)—to consider the means by which discredited beliefs came to seem once again plausible.
Kieval explores how educated elites took up the accusations of Jewish ritual murder and considers the roles played by government bureaucracies, the journalistic establishment, forensic medicine, and advanced legal practices in structuring the investigations and trials. The prosecutors, judges, forensic scientists, criminologists, and academic scholars of Judaism and other expert witnesses all worked hard to establish their epistemological authority as rationalists, Kieval contends. Far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, these ritual murder trials were in all respects a product of post-Enlightenment politics and culture. Harnessed to and disciplined by the rhetoric of modernity, they were able to proceed precisely because they were framed by the idioms of scientific discourse and rationality.
Kieval explores how educated elites took up the accusations of Jewish ritual murder and considers the roles played by government bureaucracies, the journalistic establishment, forensic medicine, and advanced legal practices in structuring the investigations and trials. The prosecutors, judges, forensic scientists, criminologists, and academic scholars of Judaism and other expert witnesses all worked hard to establish their epistemological authority as rationalists, Kieval contends. Far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, these ritual murder trials were in all respects a product of post-Enlightenment politics and culture. Harnessed to and disciplined by the rhetoric of modernity, they were able to proceed precisely because they were framed by the idioms of scientific discourse and rationality.
Source: PennPress.org
AUTHOR/LEADER:
Hillel J. Kieval is the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor Emeritus of Jewish History and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis. Over the course of his career, has held visiting appointments at Charles University in Prague, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Par-is, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Universidad Hebraica in Mexico City, Vilnius University in Lithuania, and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Hillel J. Kieval is the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor Emeritus of Jewish History and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis. Over the course of his career, has held visiting appointments at Charles University in Prague, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Par-is, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Universidad Hebraica in Mexico City, Vilnius University in Lithuania, and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Hillel Kieval’s research interests focus on Jewish culture and society in Central and East-Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His books include Blood Inscriptions: Science, Modernity, and Ritual Murder at Europe’s Fin de Siècle (2022); Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands (Co-editor, 2022); Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (2000); and The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918 (1988).
In May 2022 Prof. Kieval was awarded the Silver Medal of the Faculty of Arts, from Charles University of Prague. In May 2024 he received the Moses Mendelssohn Award from the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.
The Czech/American
Reading Circle
Český čtenářský kroužek
