Michael Feldberg
The day President Van Buren helped rescue Syrian Jewry
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"All who preserve a single soul of Israel . . .it is as if he
preserved an entire world." -- The Babylonian Talmud
The earliest collective action by American Jews on behalf
of their overseas brethren came in 1840, in response to a
false "blood libel" charge in Damascus. That spring, in the
ancient capital of Syria, an Italian friar and his Muslim
servant mysteriously disappeared. The Capuchin order of
monks charged that Jews had kidnapped and ritually
murdered the two men to fulfill a supposed Jewish
injunction that non-Jewish blood be used in making
Passover matzoh. Under torture, two "witnesses" named
several prominent Damascus Jews as the "killers." The
accused were arrested, tortured and sentenced to
death. Knowing the suggestibility of child witnesses, local
officials then seized 63 Jewish children to compel them to
"reveal" where the blood was hidden.
Word of these outrages reached the United States in the
summer of 1840. American Jews were dismayed that the
ancient blood libel - the charge that Jews were ritual
murderers - had reared its ugly head. What was
American Jewry, so few in number and weak in
international influence, to do? While the English and
French Jewish communities sent delegations to the
Ottoman Sultan protesting the treatment of Damascus's
Jews, American Jewry -- numbering no more than 15,000
individuals scattered across a vast nation -- had no
national organization or recognized leader to speak for it.
American Jewry had no experience at presenting a united
front on any issue of national or international moment.
Rabbi Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, America's leading
traditionalist rabbi, joined by communal leaders from
other major American cities, filled the breach. Leeser
helped organize public rallies, meetings of synagogue
congregations and committees of correspondence in New
York, Philadelphia, Richmond and Cincinnati, among other
cities. The rallies called on President Martin Van Buren to
intervene on behalf of the Jews of Damascus.
The American Jewish petitions argued that "the moral
influence of the Chief Magistrate of the United States
would be, under Heaven, the best aid we could invoke for
the protection of our persecuted brethren under the
Mohammedan domain." The New York protesters did
"most emphatically and solemnly deny as well in our own
name as in that of the whole Jewish people, 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 or any part of a human being in the ceremonies
of our religion."
Van Buren ordered American diplomats in Constantinople
and Alexandria to inform Ottoman officials of the "horror"
felt by all Americans at the "extravagant charges
strikingly similar to those which, in less enlightened ages,
were made pretexts for the persecution and spoliation of
these unfortunate people." Van Buren cited America's
institutions, which "place upon the same footing,
the worshipers of G-d, of every faith and form." American
values compelled him to protest "in behalf of an
oppressed and persecuted race, among whose kindred
are found some of the most worthy and patriotic of
[American] citizens."
Bowing to pressure from the governments of the United
States, Britain and France, Pasha Muhammed Ali,
Ottoman overlord of Syria, ordered an end to the torture
and confinement of Jewish prisoners and instructed
Damascus officials to protect the city's Jewish
community. The American ambassador helped Sir Moses
Montefiore secure from the Ottoman Sultan an imperial
decree in November declaring that the blood libel had
"not the least foundation in truth" and that Jews "shall
possess the same advantages and enjoy the same
privileges" as his other subjects, especially the free
exercise of their religion.
American Jewry had experienced its first taste of
successful united action on behalf of its brethren
overseas. Rabbi Leeser expressed the thinking of many
American Jews of that time, as well as the spirit of the
Babylonian Talmud, when he observed: "As citizens we
belong to the country we live in; but as believers in one
G-d, as the faithful adorers of the Creator, as the
inheritors of the law, the Jews [of other lands] are no
aliens among us, and we hail the Israelite as brother, no
matter whether his home be the torrid zone, or where
the poles encircle the earth with impenetrable fetters of
icy coldness." These words remain the credo of American
Jewry to the present day.
Michael Feldberg is the director of the American Jewish Historical Society. Comment on this article by clicking here.
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