Overview

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.

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9781805396864

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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).

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