The Damascus Affair: 'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840

Description

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 celebre 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.

"...the book can be read with profit by anyone interested in the intellectual and historical vicissitudes of the middle third of the 19th century and their ramifications to the present." S. Bowman, Choice "If any work of history might be termed 'definitive' this one is." Albert S. Lindemann, H-Net Reviews "The Damascus Affair is impressive in many ways. As a riveting story of murder and of some of the most terrifying extremes of human conduct, it also provides a penetrating scrutiny of both Jewish and European politics at the dawn of the modern era. This is a study as worthy for its balance and comprehensiveness as for its liveliness." Donna Robinson Divine, Domes "...a very impressive and well-written account... Frankel provides a particularly impressive review of the reactions to the far-away and long-ago events of his study." Middle East Quarterly "...this rich, detailed, capacious book plunges deeply into what used to be called 'the Eastern Question' from the standpoint of the Damascus Affair of 1840, a clash of local, international, religious, ethnic, and political interests over a charge that dated back to the twelfth century in Europe... This is a learned, thorough, demanding, wide-ranging, and carefully considered work." Michael R. Marrus, Journal of Modern History