The Damascus Affair

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.

The French consul, the representative of the nation that had given the world the Rights of Man and had been the first to grant Jews the full right of citizenship, was the chief prosecutor. The British consul, serving under the enlightened Lord Palmerston and the new Queen, aided the prosecution. The American consul supported the charges. The Sultan, famed for the excesses of his court and his arbitrary rule of the vast Ottoman empire, and the Austrians, who tightly restricted the rights of Jews in their own empire, defended the accused Jews. The venerable London Times printed reports that defied its liberal reputation, while conservative Austrian and French newspapers took the equally unexpected opposite stand. As news of the Damascus accusations spread, diplomacy and confused loyalties made for strange bedfellows. Misperceptions, mutual fears, and isolation fueled the passions in Damascus.

In 1840s Damascus, Aslan Farhi leads a miserable life. Despised by his wealthy father, bullied by his siblings, and humiliated by his mother, he forms a close friendship with another boy, only for him to mysteriously disappear when their relationship becomes public knowledge. Aslan is horrified when his father arranges for him to be married to the rabbi's daughter, but the ordeal of the wedding is unexpectedly lightened by the presence of an exotic dancer, Umm-Jihan, with whom he becomes entranced. But all is not as it seems and, confused and unhappy, Aslan embarks on an ill-advised relationship with an Italian monk, with disastrous consequences.

Three Jews--Alfred Dreyfus, Mendel Beilis, and Leo Frank--were charged with heinous crimes in the generation before World War I--Dreyfus of treason in France, Beilis of ritual murder in Russia, and Frank of the murder of a young girl in the United States. The affairs that developed out of their trials pulled hundreds of thousands of people into passionate confrontation. Quite aside from the lurid details and sensational charges, larger issues emerged, among them the power of modern anti-Semitism, the sometimes tragic conflict between the freedom of the press and the protection of individual rights, the unpredictable reactions of individuals when subjected to extreme situations, and the inevitable ambiguities of campaigns for truth and justice when political advantage is to be gained from them. This study explores the nature of modern anti-Semitism and the ways that politicians in the generation before World War I attempted to use hatred of Jews as a political device to mobilize the masses. The anti-Semitism surrounding the affairs is presented as an elusive intermingling of real conflict between Jews and non-Jews, on the one hand, and, on the other, fantasies about Jews derived from powerful myths deeply rooted in Western civilization. In attempting to untangle myth and reality and to offer a fresh look at the main personalities in the affairs many surprises emerge; heroes appear less heroic and villains less villainous, while real factors appear more important than most accounts of the affairs have recognized.

“This is a timely contribution to some of the most pressing debates facing scholars of Jewish Studies today. It forces us to re-think standard approaches to both antisemitism and liberalism. Its geographic scope offers a model for how scholars can “provincialize” Europe and engage in a transnational approach to Jewish history. The book crackles with intellectual energy; it is truly a pleasure to read.”- Jessica M. Marglin, University of Southern California, USA Green and Levis Sullam have assembled a collection of original, and provocative essays that, in illuminating the historic relationship between Jews and liberalism, transform our understanding of liberalism itself. - Derek Penslar, Harvard University, USA “This book offers a strikingly new account of Liberalism’s relationship to Jews. Previous scholarship stressed that Liberalism had to overcome its abivalence in order to achieve a principled stand on granting Jews rights and equality. This volume asserts, through multiple examples, that Liberalism excluded many groups, including Jews, so that the exclusion of Jews was indeed integral to Liberalism and constitutive for it. This is an important volume, with a challenging argument for the present moment.”- David Sorkin, Yale University, USA The emancipatory promise of liberalism – and its exclusionary qualities – shaped the fate of Jews in many parts of the world during the age of empire. Yet historians have mostly understood the relationship between Jews, liberalism and antisemitism as a European story, defined by the collapse of liberalism and the Holocaust. This volume challenges that perspective by taking a global approach. It takes account of recent historical work that explores issues of race, discrimination and hybrid identities in colonial and postcolonial settings, but which has done so without taking much account of Jews. Individual essays explore how liberalism, citizenship, nationality, gender, religion, race functioned differently in European Jewish heartlands, in the Mediterranean peripheries of Spain and the Ottoman empire, and in the North American Atlantic world.

"She was my crescent moon. I could not see a future for Syria, but I saw a future for us." Damascus, 2011: Equal parts heartwarming and heart-wrenching, Shawn Tenbrink's unforgettable debut novel captures the essence of modern civil war and love against unimaginable odds. Based on the author's true story, a U.S. diplomat and Syrian woman embark on a journey under the Assad Regime that will change them both forever. Shawn feels everything that a twenty-something feels as they fall in love: nervous, euphoric, and at home. But nothing is normal about this love story. He is 6,000 miles from home, in a desert city that is 5,000 years old, on the brink of a war that would kill over 300,000 Syrians. He has come to love this city as much as he loves this woman. At any moment, he could lose both.

The anonymous Arabic chronicle presented in this book offers a captivating account of a decisive decade in modern Middle Eastern history. It covers, among other events, the Egyptian invasion of Syria in 1831 and a number of popular uprisings, and includes a first-hand account of the so-called 'Damascus Affair' of 1840, when Jewish citizens of Damascus were put on trial for ritual murder. The study highlights that the chronicle not only provides evidence for historical facts, but also documents the ways Arab inhabitants of the Levant discussed the social and political realities of their time. Two different versions of the text have been preserved and both are likely to have been intended for public reading in coffeehouses and literary salons. The variations between them show how the text was revised to take into account the expectations of various readers and listeners. The English part of the book contains an extensive introduction and a translation of the chronicle, together with a chronology, a biographical appendix, maps and a glossary. The Arabic part comprises an edition of the two versions of the chronicle in synoptic form. -- Publisher.

A landmark history of the antisemitic blood libel myth—how it took root in Europe, spread with the invention of the printing press, and persists today. Accusations that Jews ritually killed Christian children emerged in the mid-twelfth century, following the death of twelve-year-old William of Norwich, England, in 1144. Later, continental Europeans added a destructive twist: Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. While charges that Jews poisoned wells and desecrated the communion host waned over the years, the blood libel survived. Initially blood libel stories were confined to monastic chronicles and local lore. But the development of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century expanded the audience and crystallized the vocabulary, images, and “facts” of the blood libel, providing a lasting template for hate. Tales of Jews killing Christians—notably Simon of Trent, a toddler whose body was found under a Jewish house in 1475—were widely disseminated using the new technology. Following the paper trail across Europe, from England to Italy to Poland, Magda Teter shows how the blood libel was internalized and how Jews and Christians dealt with the repercussions. The pattern established in early modern Europe still plays out today. In 2014 the Anti-Defamation League appealed to Facebook to take down a page titled “Jewish Ritual Murder.” The following year white supremacists gathered in England to honor Little Hugh of Lincoln as a sacrificial victim of the Jews. Based on sources in eight countries and ten languages, Blood Libel captures the long shadow of a pernicious myth.