The Damascus Affair and the Awakening of American Jewry

In February 1840, a dark shadow fell over Damascus. On February 5, Father Thomas, a Capuchin friar who had lived in the city for decades, vanished with his Muslim servant, Ibrahim Amara, after visiting the Jewish quarter. Accusers claimed that Jews had murdered both men for ritual purposes. French consul Ulysse de Ratti-Menton backed the charge, and Sherif Pasha, the Egyptian governor of Damascus, ordered the arrests. Authorities detained a Jewish barber, who named seven prominent men under torture, and then arrested those men too.

Interrogators tortured the prisoners. At least two of them died in custody, and Rabbi Moses Abulafia converted to Islam to escape the torment. Officials also seized 63 Jewish boys and held them as hostages to pressure their parents into confessing. The scandal quickly drew in the European powers, whose attention was occupied by the Oriental Crisis of 1840. Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt, had rebelled against his nominal sovereign, the Ottoman Sultan. France backed Muhammad Ali, while Britain and Austria worked to preserve Ottoman power.

News of the Damascus accusations crossed the Atlantic slowly and reached the United States in the summer of 1840. American Jewry then numbered no more than 15,000 people, with no national organization and no recognized leader to speak for it. Yet the reports from Syria sparked the first organized protest by American Jews on behalf of their embattled brethren abroad. Meetings and petitions spread through synagogues in New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Cincinnati, and the organizers lobbied President Martin Van Buren to intervene.

The protest gained further stream in August. In Richmond, the Jewish community convened and adopted resolutions expressing sympathy for “their innocent and unoffending brethren of Rhodes and Damascus.” On August 19, New York Jews gathered at the Elm Street synagogue of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. Israel Baer Kursheedt chaired the meeting, and Theodore J. Seixas served as secretary.

At the New York meeting, Mordecai Manuel Noah, a prominent editor and the best-known American Jew of his day, addressed the assembly. The gathering adopted a petition that did “most emphatically and solemnly deny… that murder was ever committed by the Jews of Damascus, or those of any other part of the world, for the purpose of using the blood … in the ceremonies of our religion.” The petitioners asked President Martin Van Buren to intervene for the accused, arguing that “the moral influence of the Chief Magistrate of the United States would be, under Heaven, the best aid we could invoke.”

The protest soon spread to Pennsylvania. On August 27, a large crowd gathered at Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, where Hyman Gratz called the meeting to order and John Moss presided. Isaac Leeser, the era’s leading traditionalist Jewish voice in America, served as chief orator. He made his case by arguing that if Judaism taught ritual murder, then Christianity and Islam, which both grew out of it, would stand equally guilty. He also highlighted the sense of Jewish solidarity behind the protests, observing that “as citizens we belong to the country we live in; but as believers in one God … the Jews [of other lands] are no aliens among us, and we hail the Israelite as brother.” Several Christian clergymen spoke in solidarity with World Jewry in this instance. Jews in Charleston, Cincinnati, Savannah, and Richmond held similar meetings.

These gatherings also created committees of correspondence to carry resolutions across state lines, the first coordinated network of its kind among American Jews. Local styles differed. In Charleston, citizens met at City Hall on August 28, and Jewish residents held their own meeting at the Hall of the Hebrew Orphan Society the following evening. Despite those differences, the communities displayed an unprecedented degree of solidarity, and the Damascus Affair became the first occasion on which American Jews organized on behalf of beleaguered Jews abroad.

In Washington, the petitioners found that the administration had already acted. On August 14, Secretary of State John Forsyth instructed the American consul, John Gliddon, in Alexandria to employ “good offices and efforts” for the Jews of Damascus. On August 17, he told the American minister in Constantinople, David Porter, to “do everything in your power with … the Sultan … to prevent and mitigate these horrors.” Forsyth’s instructions, written for President Martin Van Buren, cited a nation whose institutions “place upon the same footing, the worshipers of God, of every faith and form” as grounds for speaking “in behalf of an oppressed and persecuted race, among whose kindred are found some of the most worthy and patriotic of [American] citizens.” On August 24, Israel Baer Kursheedt and Theodore J. Seixas sent the New York petition to Van Buren. Forsyth replied on August 26 and told them that the Gliddon instructions had gone out on August 14, before their appeal arrived.

American officials acted quickly, but distance blunted any immediate effect. Transatlantic mail took about 30 days, and the real leverage lay with the European missions on the ground. A delegation led by Sir Moses Montefiore of Britain and Adolphe Crémieux of France persuaded Muhammad Ali on August 28, 1840, to free the surviving prisoners, and nine were released on September 6. Montefiore then traveled to Constantinople, where Sultan Abdülmecid I issued a firman (royal decree) on November 6 declaring that the charges against the Jews and their religion were “nothing but pure calumny.” The decree also said Jews “shall possess the same advantages and enjoy the same privileges” as the Sultan’s other subjects. Accounts differ on how much the American protests mattered. Jewish Virtual Library credits pressure from the United States alongside Britain and France for moving the needle in this instance.

The lasting significance lay in American Jewish public life. The rallies showed that American Jews could organize across congregations, petition their government on behalf of Jews abroad, and win a hearing without compromising their civic standing. In April 1843, Isaac Leeser launched The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, the first successful Jewish periodical in the United States, and used it to advocate national Jewish institutions. When the Mortara case (concerning a child baptized without the consent of his Jewish parents) broke in Bologna in 1858, Leeser signed a circular letter on November 23 urging congregations to organize protests, and Jews held emergency meetings in New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and other cities. The effort helped produce the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, formed in November 1859 to represent American Jews to the government in Washington.

The Damascus Affair exposes a brutal reality. Jewish power is not an accident of history but the product of persistent agitation. The gravest error made by the early architects of this Republic was the granting of civic breathing room to an organized minority with a biological predilection for racial solidarity and often working against the interests of the state-building majority. They mistook tolerance for harmony and failed to see that they were nurturing the very hands that would one day tighten around the throat of the nation.

Sadly, Western nations are currently reaping the harvest of that misplaced benevolence.

José Niño is a freelance writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can contact him via Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to his “Substack” newsletter by visiting “José Niño Unfiltered” on Substack.com.