Redeeming Books from the People of the Book: Politics of Rescue from 1840 to the Legacy of a Zionist Mission in Damascus

Abstract

Abstract:The Damascus Affair of 1840 has often been interpreted as one the finest hours of modern Jewish solidarity. This essay probes an unexplored legacy of that chain of events, a sense of entitlement to spoils in the form of cultural artifacts, especially Hebrew manuscripts, a Jewish mutation of "informal imperialism" in the Ottoman East. Among others, scholars and institutions associated with the Wissenschaft des Judentums, a transnational but highly occidental republic of letters, became a beneficiary of this migration of primarily Hebrew books from the Jewish Orient. The geographical orbit of this study extends north to Aleppo, to the imperial capital of Istanbul, as well as to both Cairo and Alexandria in Khedival and subsequently British-ruled Egypt. The primary focus, however, is on Damascus, where a communal sense of custodianship regarding local textual treasures failed to materialize over time. Subsequent Zionist efforts directed at the Jews of post-Ottoman Damascus reveals continuity with the above pattern and eventually two important Bibles, the Aleppo Codex and Crown of Damascus, were smuggled out of Syria to Jerusalem. The essay concludes by reflecting on the fortunes of native Shami agency in these changing contexts.