The Damascus Affair by Jonathan Frankel - 9780521482462

The Damascus Affair'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840\nAuthor(s): Jonathan Frankel\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521482462, 978-0521482462\nSynopsis\nIn 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 clbre across much of the western world, even becoming a factor in the major diplomatic conflicts of the period, and produced an explosion of polemics, fantastic theories, and strange projects. The religious revival and romanticism of the period provided fertile soil for every speculation. This 1997 book, the first since 1840 to analyse the affair, assesses the Damascus affair as a factor in European and Jewish politics of the time, as a chapter in Jewish history and historiography, and as the stuff of radically conflicting myths - myths whic.