In the warm Petersburg summer of 1738, a notice was prominently displayed on the facades of houses and lampposts throughout the city: “On the 15th day of this July, that is on Saturday, by the decree of Her Imperial Majesty, an execution is to be carried out on Admiralty Island, near the new Gostiny Dvor, upon a certain criminal and apostate against the true Christian law. Therefore, this is published so that people of all ranks may gather at the designated place on the specified date from 8 o’clock in the morning to witness the execution.” The “criminal” was the thirty-seven-year-old retired captain-lieutenant Alexander Artemyevich Voznitsyn, who had renounced Orthodoxy, and the “apostate” was the seventy-five-year-old Jewish tax farmer Borukh Leibov, who allegedly converted him to Judaism. These “lawless ones” were to be “put to death and burned.”

The execution took place on the day of Saint Vladimir, when even hardened murderers could be pardoned, but not enemies of the Christian faith. And for the two condemned men—a sturdy fair-haired man and a gray-haired broad-bearded elder—it was a Divine Saturday, a day on which, as the Torah teaches, devout Jews are forbidden to work. Moreover (as the Königsberg rabbi Leib Epstein rightly noted!), in the summer in this Petersburg, it was simply impossible for a Jew to live—the White Nights come, and try to figure out when the morning prayer ends and the evening prayer begins. Yet the rabbi did not utter a word about whether it was permissible for a Jew to die in this Northern Venice! He seemed not to mention it, and what is not explicitly forbidden is permitted. And so now, on Saturday, they—glory to the Almighty!—do not break the commandments, for they do no work at all, but only resignedly go to the scaffold as to a sacrifice, amid the jeering and howling of the crowd of unbelievers. Meanwhile, the fair-haired man encourages the broad-bearded one: “Borukh, do not hurry!” (in the language of that time meaning: do not be afraid, Borukh, be brave!).

No drawings of the execution have survived. Even in the 18th century, the Russian authorities did not wish to loudly announce the burning of “blasphemers.” Even the newspaper “Saint Petersburg Gazette,” widely read in Europe, remained silent on the matter. Meanwhile, during the reign of the orthodox Anna Ioannovna, who strictly punished all religious dissenters, burning alive was not so rare.

To imagine how it was, there is a description of an auto-da-fé that took place in 1736. The testimony of the burning of two malefactors was left by the Scottish doctor John Cook: “Each man was chained to the top of a large mast embedded in the ground; they stood on small scaffolds, and on the ground around each mast was piled a pyramid of thousands of small logs… The men stood in their shirts and drawers. They were sentenced to be burned to ashes in this way… A torch was brought to the wood pyramid, and since the wood was very dry, the pyramids instantly turned into a terrible fire… The men would have died quickly if the wind had not often blown the flames away from them; both died in terrible agony in less than three-quarters of an hour.”

How did this happen?

Borukh Leibov was originally from Dubrovna, a Polish township 80 versts from Smolensk, which at that time played a notable role in the public life of Jews. He was a successful tax farmer, engaged in customs and tavern leases and collections in Smolensk region, conducting trade in Moscow and Petersburg. He was admitted to the house of the financier of Anna Ioannovna, the Jew Levi Lipman.

Borukh was a keen connoisseur of religious rites and was involved in the life of religious Jews in both capitals, whose inspiration and peculiar center was the influential “court Jew Lipman.” Leibov had already been under investigation several times; the first denunciation was registered on November 28, 1722. Smolensk townsmen Gerasim Shila and Semyon Paskin reported that Vice-Governor Prince Vasily Gagarin had arbitrarily allowed Jews into Smolensk region. They “turn Christians into Judaism by their Old Testament,” “turning them away from the Church of God.” And the tax farmer Borukh Leibov had become so brazen that he dared to build a “Jewish school” (synagogue) in the village of Zverovichi right next to the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. And when the local priest Father Avraam “reproved them in the building of the school for their infidel faith,” Borukh “mortally beat the said shepherd of God, broke his head, and kept him in irons,” and although he later released him, “the priest was afflicted by illness from that Jewish torment and died without recovering.” There was also a blood libel in another denunciation, concocted by Father Nikita Vasilyev and deacon Grigory Nikiforov, claiming that Jew Borukh and his wife tortured their peasant maid Matrena Emelyanova with pins and needles to extract “ores” from her—they desired Christian blood!

As historian Ilya Orshansky noted, the multitude of crimes attributed to Leibov “involuntarily raises doubts about their reality.” Indeed, there is information that Father Avraam died simply from chronic drunkenness. These accusations are familiar anti-Semitic clichés borrowed from neighboring Poland and apparently attributed to Leibov by informers to remove a competitor from tax farming. Meanwhile, the Holy Synod took the denunciations seriously. It issued an order to destroy the synagogue “contrary to the Christian faith” and to burn the books “without exception.” The Holy Fathers appealed to the Senate, demanding to deal with Leibov and “to diligently and truthfully investigate what blasphemous acts against piety were committed by these Jews.” The Senate complied regarding the synagogue. But Leibov found a defender in General Reketmeister (he “managed the affairs of petitioners”) Matvey Voyeykov. He stated that Leibov was known to him, as the Jew sometimes came to Petersburg on important state business. Voyeykov took him under his guarantee and thus saved him from prosecution.

On his business trips, Leibov often visited the capital, where he met a Russian who spoke exclusively about God and was interested in the dogmas and rites of the Jewish faith. His name was Alexander Artemyevich Voznitsyn, a scion of an ancient noble family. At thirteen, Alexander was sent to the Naval Academy, upon the recommendation of his brother-in-law, the husband of his half-sister Matrena, Rear Admiral Ivan Sinyavin. He had no success in studies, had no soul for the sea, listened to lectures half-heartedly, but was known as an avid bookworm and homebody. In 1733, he was expelled from the navy “for lack of real naval skill.” Voznitsyn’s subsequent behavior indicates that he did not want to serve anywhere and feigned illness. In December 1733, he submitted a resignation petition, and by the final decision of the Senate on October 2, 1735, Voznitsyn was “retired from affairs and sent home for good.”

Voznitsyn also refused to manage his estate. Apparently, by then he had already begun to depart from Christian dogmas; his servant Andrey Konstantinov testified that his master “never prayed to holy icons anywhere and did not make the sign of the cross on himself.”

Undoubtedly, he studied the dogmas of various religions and, apparently as a result of long spiritual searches, converted to Judaism. According to the serf Alexander Konstantinov, on a fine July day in 1736, his master ordered him to go to the German Quarter, find a “learned Jew” there, and persuade him to visit; which he, Konstantinov, precisely did, finding the apartment of a scholarly man, the Jew Glebov.

Russian nationalist historians and some writers tirelessly repeat that Leibov almost forced Voznitsyn to accept Judaism, and that he, “distinguished neither by intellect nor education” (although in reality it was quite the opposite), succumbed to his dictate. In fact, the Jewish view on proselytism is most clearly expressed in the concise formula of Shlomo Luria: “Let the tribe of Israel continue to live and occupy its own place among other peoples in the days of our exile, and let strangers, those not of our people, not join us.” If individual conversions occurred, as noted by the “Jewish Encyclopedia,” “the neophyte was pointed out all the disadvantages of his transition to Judaism and the burden of Jewish law. The convert was asked: what led him to take this step? Was he not aware of the sad condition in which Israel now finds itself? The convert answered: ‘I know, but I am not worthy to share their glorious fate.’ Then he was shown all the restrictions in food and drink… If the neophyte remained firm, he was circumcised in the presence of three scholars, and then led to immersion, after which he was considered a Jew.”

But let us return to Alexander Voznitsyn. There is every reason to believe that he embraced the Jewish faith not “by the cunning slanders of the Jew Borukh Leibov” (as official documents would later state), but by his own reason. At the same time, he clearly understood with what undisguised malice and hatred this step would be received by those around him and tried to protect himself as much as possible.

Voznitsyn’s relationship with his wife became even more strained, and in a complaint she filed on May 4, 1737, to the chancery of the Moscow Synodal Administration, Elena Ivanovna clearly and quite eloquently recounted all his “crimes.” The complaint stated that her husband, Voznitsyn, had long ceased to wear a cross and “having abandoned the holy Orthodox Greek confession, holds the Jewish faith and does not honor any lordly holidays. And during Holy Week he ate unleavened cakes and mutton… This same husband prays according to Jewish law, facing the wall… He observed the Jewish Sabbath and thought to appease God thereby… He slaughtered animals according to Jewish law… He baked and ate unleavened bread according to Jewish law.” But most importantly, her husband “was circumcised by the Jews and had close friendship with the Jew Borokh Glebov.”

The case of “the seduction of retired captain-lieutenant Alexander Artemyevich Voznitsyn into the Jewish faith by the tax farmer Borokh Leibov” was set in motion. The unfortunate men were seized, one in Moscow, the other in Zverovichi, and brought to Saint Petersburg with orders to keep them in shackles “under the strictest arrest.”

Borukh Leibov, despite obvious facts, denied everything. Voznitsyn initially behaved similarly, but after being put on the rack, he confessed that the circumcision was “done by his own will” and that he “swore to observe Jewish law,” and “uttered important and blasphemous words against the Holy Church.” And this last act alone was punishable in the harshest manner—the first chapter of the first article of the 1649 “Sobornoye Ulozheniye” stated: “If anyone, whether a foreigner or a Russian, blasphemes the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ, or the Most Holy Lady our Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, or the honorable cross, or His holy saints, and that blasphemer is exposed, he shall be executed and burned.”

The case was transferred to the Senate, and then to the Justice Collegium, which ordered “to carry out the indicated investigations.” Leibov was also decided to be subjected to torture. However, the zeal of the executioners was cooled by the Empress. She suddenly decreed: although Borukh Leibov is subject to interrogation with severity, it is not necessary to carry it out. For otherwise, from his “inconsistent statements,” undesirable consequences for the interests of the state might arise. There is a version that the Empress’s favorite Biron was under the influence of Ober-Hoffaktor Levi Lipman, called the “favorite of the favorite,” i.e., Biron’s beloved. Lipman and Leibov had close relations. Biron supposedly feared that Borukh Leibov, raised on the rack, would blurt out something extra about their financial dealings with Lipman, and therefore spoke a word for him to the monarch. But all Levi Lipman could do for his co-religionist was to free him from the rack and torture.

The royal resolution stated: “So that this godless affair does not continue further, and such blasphemers as Voznitsyn and the apostate to Judaism Borukh do not dare to seduce others: therefore, for such their godless crimes, without further delay, by the power of State laws, both shall be executed by death and burned, so that others, seeing this, ignorant and blasphemers, may not dare to depart from the Christian law and convert to their own laws.”

“Execute by death and burn!”—these merciless words echoed over the crowd of onlookers who came to watch the execution of Leibov and Voznitsyn.

Meanwhile, the number of such “mad and daring ignoramuses” who converted to Judaism in Russia was growing; there were hundreds of thousands of them. From the late 19th century, many of these Russian people emigrated to Palestine, and later to Israel, where they took an important place in the country. Many legendary officers and generals came from these families; for example, the mothers of Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan were Russian.

Source:

Lev Berdnikov, Burned Alive