1. Figures Derived from Arthur Ruppin, the Jewish Fate and Future (London: 1940), Table 1, P
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Notes 1 'BARBARISM AND BIGOTRY' 1. Figures derived from Arthur Ruppin, The Jewish Fate and Future (London: 1940), Table 1, p. 29. Ruppin's figures are for 1850. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. On the emancipation of the Jews, see Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (New York: 1978). 5. See M.C.N. Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain: The Question of the Admission of the Jews to Parliament, 1828-1860 (London: 1982). 6. See Jonathan Sarna, 'The Impact of the American Revolution on American Jews', in idem., ed., The American Jewish Experience (New York: 1986); Eli Faber, A Time for Planting: The First Migration 1654-1820 (Baltimore: 1992) and Hasia R. Diner,v4 Time for Gathering: The Second Migration 1820-1880 (Baltimore: 1992; vols. 1 and 2 of The Jewish People in America series). Recent works on American anti- semitism which, in our view, overstate its volume and importance include Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York: 1994), and Frederic Cople Jaher, A Scapegoat in the Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of Anti-Semitism in America (Cambridge, Mass.: 1994). On Australia, see Israel Getzler, Neither Toleration nor Favour: The Australian Chapter of Jewish Emancipation (Melbourne: 1970); Hilary L. Rubinstein, The Jews in Australia: A Thematic History. Volume One: 1788-1945 (Melbourne: 1991), pp. 3-24, 471-8. 7. See W.D. Rubinstein, A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain (London: 1996), pp. 1-27. 8. For a comprehensive account of events see Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: 'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: 1997). The Jewish population of Damascus is believed to have been about 5,000; the total Syrian population was perhaps 100,000. Ibid., p. 32. 9. See ibid., pp. 69-72 for an overview of the Rhodes case. 10. Ibid., pp. 145-6, 207-11 quotation at p. 144. In addition to the press comment cited by Frankel, see Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, 4 July 1840, which called the blood libel and arrest a 'barbarous atrocity'; Protestant Magazine, 1 June 1840; Morning Post, 23 August 1843, quoted in Voice of Jacob, 1 September 1843. 11. For a survey of the religious polemics surrounding the allegation, see Frankel, op. cit., pp. 262-9. The British businessman and banker referred to, E. Kilbee, who transmitted charitable donations (chalukhah) collected by European Jewry for the benefit of Jews in 204 Notes 205 Palestine, had alerted a Jewish contact in Amsterdam about develop- ments in Damascus in a letter received on 18 March. See ibid., pp. 66, 75, 84, 201, 299. 12. The Times of 25 June 1840 went so far as to observe that if it was indeed true that Jews made use of Christian blood, 'the Jewish religion must at once disappear off the face of the earth'. This came in reaction to the allegations of a Romanian Jewish apostate, first made in 1803, which appeared in The Times on the same day. These remarks should be seen in context amid general goodwill towards Jews in the paper's editorials and its correspondence columns. 13. Frankel, op. cit, pp. 211-12; Christian Observer, November 1840, pp. 702-2; Protestant Magazine, 1 June 1840; Tablet, 6 June 1840. The (anonymous) editor of the Protestant Magazine, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, had earlier declared in the Christian Lady's Magazine (January 1840, p. 89) that Protestants had a two-fold purpose: 'With one hand to throw a shield over the Jew, with the other to aim a vigorous thrust at Papal Rome.' A few Christian leaders, such as 'A Minister of the Established Church' writing in The Times (26 August 1840), supported the allegations, while the occurrences at Damascus and Rhodes were ignored by some religious journals. 14. See W.T. Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, from 1809 to 1908 (London: 1908); Mel Scult, 'English Missions to the Jews - Conversion in the Age of Emancipation,' Jewish Social Studies, vol. 35 (1973), pp. 3-17. The Jewish Chronicle, 22 February 1850, in a scathing attack upon McCaul, called the Hebrew College 'the Conversion College - the school for educating conversion missionaries'. 15. Alexander McCaul, Reasons for Believing that the Charge lately Revived against the Jewish People is a baseless Falsehood (London: 1840); The Times, 15 July 1840. 16. The British Magazine, and Monthly Register of Religious and Ecclesiastical Information, 1 August 1840. 17. Frankel, op. cit., p. 126 et seq. Ten years later Palmerston ordered a blockade of the Greek coast in support of the compensation claim of the pillaged, Athens-based, Jewish moneylender Don Pacifico, who claimed British citizenship since he had been born in Gibraltar. Times, 26 June 1850; Jewish Chronicle, 5 November 1903. 18. Frankel, op. cit., pp. 194-6. 19. See Louis Loewe, ed., Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, 2 vols. (London: 1890); Voice of Jacob, 29 October 1841. 20. For discrimination against Jews in the City of London and its gradual erosion, see David Kynaston, The City of London, Volume 1:A World of its Own, 1815-1890 (London: 1994), pp. 20-1, 23, 53-4, 62, 92, 252-3, 270; Voice of Jacob, 26 May 1843; Jewish Chronicle, 8 January 1847; Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper (n.d.), quoted ibid., 16 July 1847. The change was partly ascribed to the influence with the urban middle class of the philosemitic Duke of Sussex. See also W.D. Rubinstein, A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain (London: 1996), pp. 54-5, 74-6. 206 Philosemitism 21. See, for example, Hereford Town Council meeting, ibid., 14 March 1851; Norwich Town Council petition, ibid., 28 April 1853; text of peti- tion from Lord Mayor, Alderman and Common Council of the City of London, ibid., 11 March 1853. 22. For Salomons, see Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 17 (London: 1909), pp. 700-1; Jewish Chronicle, 18 October 1844. See Hans W. Spiegel, 'An Early English Intervention on Behalf of Foreign Jewry', Proceedings of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 35 (1939), pp. 213-17, for British government initiatives in the 1740s regarding the threatened expulsion of Jews from Bohemia and Moravia. 23. David Salomons, An Account of the Recent Persecution of the Jews at Damascus (London: 1840). Pieritz's findings are itemized in Frankel, op. cit., p. 40. 24. Cf. ibid., p. 225, which claims that 'a broad, interdenominational char- acter' was lacking at the meeting. 25. The Times, 4 July 1840; Jewish Chronicle, 23 October 1874. Some of those mentioned as attending cannot be precisely identified. For example, the 'Mr. Dent' named in The Times report might have been the publisher Joseph Dent, but was in all likelihood the merchant banker Thomas Dent. 'Mr Took' was presumably either the noted economist and free trade advocate Thomas Tooke, or his younger brother, solicitor William Tooke F.R.S., a former Reformer MP; both were prominent in the City. 26. The Times, 4 July 1840; Hansard, vol. 54 (May-June 1840), 22 June 1840. 27. The Times, 4 July 1840. On the envoy's responses see ibid., 24 July 1840; Frankel, op. cit., p. 224. 28. The Times, 21 July 1840; Frankel, op. cit., p. 225. 29. Isaac Marcus Jost (editor) in Israelitische Annalen, 24 July 1840, and article in Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, 1 August 1840; both quoted in Frankel, op. cit., p. 253. 30. Persecution of the Jews in the East. Containing the Proceedings of a Meeting held at the Synagogue Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia ... 27th of August, 1840 (Philadelphia: 1840), pp. 20-3. 31. Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, eds., The Jews of the United States: A Documentary History, vol. 3 (New York: 1963), pp. 940, 942-3; Frankel, op. cit., p. 224. 32. Ibid, pp. 212-13; Blau and Baron, op. cit., pp. 926-32; Persecution of the Jews in the East, pp. 27-30. The ensuing enhanced awareness of Jewish sufferings overseas led to an invitation by Yale University to a New York Jewish minister to address the student body on the 'Past, Present and Future of the Jews', a breakthrough hailed by the New Haven press. See Voice of Jacob, 13 February 1846. 33. For example, Franz Kobler, The Vision Was There: A History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine, London, 1956; Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword: How the British came to Palestine (New York, 1956); Mayir Verete, 'The Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought, 1790-1840', Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (January 1972), pp. 3-50; Michael Polowetzky, Notes 207 Jerusalem Recovered: Victorian Intellectuals and the Birth of Modern Zionism (Westport, Ct.: 1997). 34. Ashley's diary entry for 24 August 1840, quoted in Frankel, op. cit., p. 303. 35. Edward Bickersteth, The Restoration of the Jews to Their Own Land in Connection With Their Future Conversion and the Final Blessedness of Our Earth (London: 1840, and 2nd edn, enl., 1841). Bickersteth was Rector of Watton, Herts. 36. The Destiny of the Jews, and their connexion with the Gentile Nations, viewed practically, in a course of lectures delivered at St. Bride's Church, Liverpool By several Clergymen of the Church of England (London: 1841), pp. 298, 310, quoted in Frankel, op. cit., p. 300. 37. The Times, 17 August 1840. According to Kobler, op. cit., p. 61, followed by Tuchman, op. cit., p. 195, the full text of the memorial is given in The Times, 9 March 1840, but we find only brief mention there.