Research Catalog

Title

The Damascus affair : "ritual murder," politics, and the Jews in 1840 / Jonathan Frankel.

Author

Frankel, Jonathan.

Publication

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 491 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

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.

Subject

• Jews > Persecutions > Syria > Damascus
• Blood accusation > Syria > Damascus
• Blood accusation
• Ethnic relations
• Jews > Persecutions
• Damaskus-Affäre
• Judenverfolgung
• Joden
• Moordaanslagen
• Ethnic relations > Syria > Damascus
• Damascus (Syria) > Ethnic relations
• Syria > Damascus
• Syrien
• Juden

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 449-470) and index.

Contents

1. Introduction: Crisis as a factor in nineteenth-century Jewish history -- 2. Ritual murder: official documents -- 3. The mechanics and motivations of the case -- 4. Beyond Damascus: early reactions to the affair -- 5. The consuls divide -- 6. The press, the politicians, and the Jews -- 7. Restoring the balance: the Middle East -- 8. Political polarization and the genesis of the mission to the East -- 9. The crisis: Jewish perceptions -- 10. The religious polemics -- 11. Christian millennialists, Jewish messianists, and Lord Palmerston -- 12. Jewish nationalism in embryo -- 13. Alexandria on the eve of war: Cremieux, Montefiore, and Muhammed Ali -- 14. The final lap: Cremieux, Montefiore, and public opinion in Europe -- 15. In the wake of the war: the return to routine -- 16. Between historiography and myth: the two primary versions of the affair -- 17. Conclusion.

ISBN

• 0521482461
• 9780521482462
• 0521483964
• 9780521483964

LCCN

96005288

OCLC

• ocm34243750
• 34243750
• SCSB-14427194

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library