The Damascus affair
Subtitle: "ritual murder," politics, and the Jews in 1840
By: Jonathan Frankel.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 491
Subjects: Jews -- Persecutions -- Syria -- Damascus.; Blood accusation -- Syria -- Damascus.; Damascus (Syria) -- Ethnic relations.
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 449-470) and index.