ABSTRACT
In the foregoing chapters, pogroms have been studied and presented in terms of the evidence they have left behind, derived from some kind of record, public or private. Throughout, antipathy and hatred toward Jews has been the all-too obvious motivation and common denominator of pogroms, and few studies have sought to go beyond that blanket explanation for the animus and violence directed at Jews, not only in Russia, but in all of Europe, not only in the 20th Century but at least since the Middle Ages. Yet pogroms have certainly always involved more than what studies have drawn from the written record. Behind the observable events, pogroms were driven by social forces that embodied unspoken, unconscious, and semi-conscious motives, enacted in patterned, repetitive behavior that suggests forces at work other than antipathy toward Jews. This postscript attempts to unlock and reveal one source of such unspoken forces by exploring the role of ritual in the origin and carrying out of pogroms. Ritual is not a consideration separate from antisemitism or pogroms; it is one manner in which, and an alternate perspective from which, they can be considered and understood. 1
