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The Rhodes blood libel of 1840, an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence, was initiated by the island’s governor in collusion with Levantine merchants, who charged the local Jewish community with murdering a Christian boy for ritual purposes. An episode in the shared histories of Ottomans and Jews, it was forgotten by the former and, even if remembered, misunderstood by the latter. The 1840 Rhodes Blood Libel aims to restore the place of this event in Sephardi and Ottoman history.
Based on newly discovered Ottoman and Jewish sources it argues that the acquittal of Rhodian Jews is adequately understood only in the context of the Tanzimat and the Sublime Porte’s foreign relations. Contrary to the common view that Ottoman Jews did not experience the impact of the Tanzimat reforms until the mid-1850s, this study shows that their effects were felt as early as 1840. Furthermore, this book offers a window onto life and intercommunal relations in the Eastern Mediterranean during the late Ottoman era.
“Borovaya, a historian of Sephardi history, accurately points out and contextualizes the particular features of [the Blood Libel that] took place on Rhodes. While doing so, she sheds light on the place and experience of Jews in the Ottoman Empire. A valuable contribution to Jewish history…Recommended.” • Choice
Olga Borovaya is an independent scholar who has taught Sephardi history and Ladino literature at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and other US universities. She is the author of Modern Ladino Culture: Press, Belles Lettres, and Theater in the Late Ottoman Empire (Indiana University Press, 2011), which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and The Beginnings of Ladino Literature: Moses Almosnino and His Readers (Indiana University Press, 2017).
Acknowledgments
Note on Translations and Transcriptions
Part I: 1840: Events and Analysis
Chapter 1. Rhodes: The Island and Its Inhabitants
Chapter 2. The Crisis, Rhodes, February–May
Chapter 3. The Rhodes Affair: An Episode in the History of Ottoman Reforms
Part II: 1840-1893: Voices from Rhodes
Chapter 4. Immediate Reactions: The Prose Accounts
Chapter 5. From Collective Memory to History: The Songs and the Notes
Conclusion
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
Appendix IV
Bibliography
Index