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The Damascus Affair: "Ritual Murder," Politics, and the Jews in 1840. By Jonathan Frankel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xiv + 491 pp.
Jonathan Frankel has written the first book length study of the Damascus Affair. The book is divided into five parts. Parts one and four contain narrative descriptions of the 1 840 blood libel in Damascus and of another which occurred in Rhodes at the same time. Part two shows how the Damascus Affair was transformed into a world-wide cause célèbre and how it became intertwined in the struggle of the European powers for influence in the East. It also describes how the Western public perceived the affair and analyzes the extensive press coverage it received in France, England, and Germany. Part three, a thematic section, explores the vast literature spurred by the affair. Here Frankel discusses how the Jewish world understood the affair, which prompted American Jewry to petition the United States government to intercede, and the place of the affair in the history of blood libels. He also analyzes how contemporary Jewish messianic expectations surrounding the year 1840, and especially Christian millenialist views, influenced and were influenced by the affair. This very rich section shows how the affair stimulated an upsurge in Jewish nationalist and proto-Zionist sentiment. In part five Frankel analyzes how historians and publicists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have dealt with the affair. In the conclusion he presents his views on its long-term significance for modern Jewish history.
Frankel's major contribution is his analysis of the multi-dimensional nature of the affair. The alleged murder of Father Thomas and his servant in Damascus in 1840, the charge that Damascus Jews committed the murder for ritual purposes, and the confessions extracted under torture from prominent members of the Damascus Jewish community became entwined in the diplomatic intrigue surrounding the struggle of Muhamed Ali, viceroy of Egypt and ruler of Syria, to assert virtual autonomy from the Ottoman Empire. The European powers...