Blood Libel
By Ronald Florence
(Other Press, Paperback, 9781590512395, 258pp.)
Publication Date: October 17, 2006
Categories: Jewish - General, Judaism - General, Middle East - General
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"This is great material, and Florence . . . handles it with dramatic flair. . . . An excellent work of popular history."
–Publishers Weekly
Damascus, February 1840. A Capuchin monk and his servant disappear without a trace. By the end of the day, rumors point to the Jewish community, a tiny minority in the city's rich but delicate balance of religions and ethnicities. Within weeks, the rumors turn to accusations of ritual murder, the infamous "blood libel." Fiendish tortures in the pasha's dungeons, coerced confessions, manufactured evidence, and the fury of the crowds are enough to convict the accused Jews. By the time the rest of the world learns of the events in Damascus, the entire leadership of the Jewish community is awaiting execution.
Narrating with a novelist's skill, Ronald Florence recounts the unexpected twists of the story and the strange alliances forged by mutual fears and misperceptions as the Damascus affair became a worldwide cause—the Moslem majority were not the accusers of the Jews; the French consul, representative of the nation that had first recognized Jews as citizens, was the chief prosecutor; the Sultan defended the accused Jews; the liberal London Times considered whether the accusations might be true. The legacies of the growing rift among the minorities, the dominant Arab society, and the outside world are the divisions in the Middle East today and the myths that continue to feed and sustain anti-Semitism.
Blood Libel is a gripping historical narrative that explores the fragile social fabric of a society as it stretches and ultimately rips into shreds of hatred and fear.
Ronald Florence
Ronald Florence is a historian and novelist, the author of The Gypsy Man and The Perfect Machine. This is his eighth book. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Washington Jewish Week
Well-written and researched, [Blood Libel] takes the reader inside a pogrom to see how it developed.
...Blood Libel also shows how Big Power politics and the welfare of Western Jews impinged on the well-being and salvation of a small, beleaguered Jewish community.
This is an important book for American Jews to read to understand what it means to be Jewish in a hostile environment in a non-Western country.
Washington Post
Rachel Hartigan Shea
Ronald Florence's Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840 narrates how [Damascus] quickly spiraled out of control, with its Jewish leaders accused of ritual murder and the French foreign consul leading the prosecution.
The Providence Journal
Richard J. Ring
There is an ancient accusation, the "blood libel," about a secret Jewish ritual involving the sacrificial murder of Christians and the use of Christian blood for various rites. It was a common trope of anti-Semitism from the 12th century until the Second World War.
Brown professor Ronald Florence has produced an engaging book on this accusation using what professional historians term "micro-history" — an approach to the past through one exemplary event or person.
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