The Damascus affair : "ritual murder," politics, and the Jews in 1840

In February of 1840, an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in Damascus. Many Jews in that city were charged with ritual murder and tortured until they confessed. The case turned into a cause célèbre across much of the Western world and produced an explosion of polemics, fantastic theories, and strange projects. This book, the first since 1840, assesses the affair as a factor in European and Jewish politics of the time, a chapter in Jewish history and historiography, and the stuff of radically conflicting myths that eventually led to the Holocaust and the establishment of the Israeli state. Contents 7 List of Illustrations 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction: Crisis as a factor in nineteenth-century Jewish history 17 Part I The Dynamics of Ritual Murder (The First Two Months 31 Ritual murder: official documents 33 The mechanics and motivations of the case 47 Beyond Damascus: early reactions to the affair 81 The consuls divide 102 Part II: In Search of Support (April - August) 123 The press, the politicians, the Jews 125 Restoring the balance: the Middle East 164 Political polarization and the genesis of the mission to the East 201 Part III: 1840 - Perceptions, Polemics, Prophecies 247 The crisis: Jewish perceptions 249 The religious polemics 273 Christian millennialists, Jewish messianists and Lord Palmerston 300 Jewish nationalism in embryo 327 Part IV: Last Things 345 Alexandria on the eve of war: Cremieuxy Montefiore, and Muhammed Ali 347 The final lap: Cremieux, Montefiore, and public opinion in Europe 378 In the wake of the war: the return to routine 401 Part V: In Retrospect 415 Between historiography and myth: the two primary versions of the affair 417 Conclusion 448 Abbreviations 463 Bibliography 465 Index 487 In February 1840 an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in Damascus. Many Jews in that city were charged with ritual murder and tortured until they "confessed." The case turned into a cause celebre across much of the Western world, even becoming a factor in the major diplomatic conflicts of the period. Jews in many countries groped for ways to save the surviving prisoners in Syria and their own good name. A Jewish delegation led by Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux was sent to the Middle East in the hope of discovering the real murderers. Jonathan Frankel assesses the affair as a factor in European and Jewish politics, as a chapter in Jewish history and historiography, and as the stuff of radically conflicting myths - myths that eventually fed into the extraordinary events of the mid-twentieth century: the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. This is the first book since the 1840s to analyze the Damascus affair.