The canard, “Jews use Christian blood to…

The canard, “Jews use Christian blood to make Passover matzos” has plagued Jewish communities worldwide for centuries.

The blood libel led to many massacres of Jews throughout the Middle Ages. (The blood libel will also serve as the basis for the late nineteenth century pogroms in Russia; revived by the Nazis, it will be used by anti-Semites into present times).

Following the disappearance in February 1840 of elderly Italian monk Tomaso de Camangiano and his servant in Damascus, Tomaso's fellow monks deliberately ignore the rumor of the monk's violent quarrel with a Turkish mule driver, and prefer to spread the story that their Superior had been murdered by the Jews for ritual purposes.

The French Consul in Syria initiates the accusation.

Many Jews in the city, including the most distinguished leaders of the Jewish community, are charged with ritual murder and subjected to hideous tortures until they confess.

Seven are severely mutilated, four die, and only two escape injury.

The case turns into a cause célèbre across much of the western world, even becoming a factor in the major diplomatic conflicts of the period, and produces an explosion of polemics, fantastic theories, and strange projects.

Sultan Abdülmecid graciously issues a decree proclaiming that ritual murder is a base libel on the Jewish people, and that henceforth he will protect them from such accusations throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Nevertheless, the Damascus Affair emphasizes to Jewry how precarious their situation is, and motivates them to establish a network of international communications and cooperative organizations to protect themselves from anti-Semitism worldwide.