The paper offers a micro‑history study of the case of insulting the Orthodox priest Aleksey Orlov by the Jewish merchants Isai and Leonty Prezman and Moise Haimovich in Tomsk, 1858–1863. The paper draws upon the archival sources from the State Historical Archive of the Omsk Region. It explores the materials of the trial, the correspondence between the Governor‑General of Western Siberia and the Tomsk Civil Governor, copies of the Senate’s decisions, numerous petitions of the defendants and their relatives.

Based on the extensive collection of interviews with Soviet, mostly Ukrainian, Jews born before World War II, the essay examines changes in their reading experience and reading priorities from Bible-centered religious booklore to kulturnost’ — a broad bookish culture of the Soviet intelligentsia.