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For Josh Shapiro, a run for governor borne of Jewish identity and political ambition
(JTA) — On the day before he was set to be sworn in as Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro had somewhere important to be: the Jewish community center in the state capital of Harrisburg.
Shapiro and his family spent Monday volunteering at the Alexander Grass Campus for Jewish Life, which was hosting a Martin Luther King Day celebration for the region.
It was an erev-inauguration stop that made sense for Shapiro, elected in November over a Republican whose campaign was continually mired in antisemitism allegations. From his stint as Pennsylvania’s attorney general to his gubernatorial campaign ads to his victory speech, Shapiro has long woven his Jewish identity into his politics — making him an archetype for a new breed of Jewish politician.
“They seem above politics because they exude pride,” said Scott Lasensky, a professor of American Jewish studies at the University of Maryland, about Shapiro and other Jewish politicians who demonstrate comfort with their identity. “It offers a much-needed respite from the reactive, defense posture that has seized the community.”
As Shapiro is sworn in Tuesday on a stack of three Hebrew Bibles — including the one that was on the bimah when a gunman massacred 11 Jewish worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 — the novelty becomes reality: A Jewish day school grad and dad is now one of the most influential elected officials in the United States.
“You’ve heard me quote my scripture before, that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it, meaning each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game and to do our part,” Shapiro said in his victory speech in November, referring to the famous passage in Pirkei Avot, the compilation of ethical teachings excerpted from early Jewish writings.
It’s a speech that Shapiro’s friends, teachers and associates could have envisioned decades ago. In interviews with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, nearly a dozen of them said Shapiro, 49, has openly melded Jewishness and activism since his early teens, practicing a politics of bringing together disparate communities with his Jewish identity at the core.
“He gets done what he needs to get done, what he wants to get done,” said Robin Schatz, the director of government affairs at the Jewish Federations of Greater Philadelphia. “And it is always in that framework of Jewish values.”
Schatz contrasted Shapiro’s openness about his Jewish identity with one of his Jewish predecessors as governor, Ed Rendell, for whom Schatz worked when Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia.
“Josh shows up for us just by being so proudly Jewish and that is really something because Rendell, who I worked for and who I love, I mean, he never hid his Jewishness, but he didn’t wear it on his sleeve,” she said.
Perhaps Shapiro’s most direct antecedent is Joe Lieberman, the Orthodox former Connecticut senator who was Al Gore’s vice presidential running mate in 2000. Lieberman, the first Jew on a major-party presidential ticket, recalled being ridiculed and questioned by Jewish groups for expressing his faith at campaign events.
That hasn’t happened for Shapiro, who is part of a relatively younger generation including congresspersons Elaine Luria of Virginia and Becca Balint of Vermont who express unabashed Jewish identities when campaigning among the broader public. Luria and two others just left Congress: Andy Levin of Michigan, who was defeated in last year’s primary after redistricting, and Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who last year made the transition this year to leading the American Jewish Committee. None of them wears a kippah on the campaign trail or strictly observes Shabbat, as Lieberman did, but all infuse Jewishness in their public comments and personas.
What separates Shapiro is his outsized success in a competitive race in a swing state — a record that has insiders bandying about his name as a potential presidential candidate one day.
Shapiro’s political orientation was apparent early on. Fresh out of his bar mitzvah, a 13-year-old Shapiro looked forward to his chats with Mark Aronchick, who was a leader with Josh’s parents, Steven and Judi, in the movement for Soviet Jewry in the Philadelphia area.
Shapiro centered his bar mitzvah on a letter-writing campaign to free a refusenik, a Jew whose intended emigration was blocked by the USSR’s cruel bureaucracy, and he liked to ask Aronchick about the movement, about organizing activism. But then the conversations took a turn Aronchick didn’t expect. Josh wanted to know about running a big city.
“I had been the chief lawyer for the city of Philadelphia in the early 80s,” recalled Aronchick, who became a mentor to Shapiro. “He was fascinated when we talked about that.”
In an interview last year with the Forward, after a campaign event with union organizers, Shapiro said he understood organizing as an effective tool when he was 6 and he joined his parents in campaigning for the release of Jews in the Soviet Union. (The refusenik who was the focus of Shapiro’s bar mitzvah activism, made it out in time to attend Shapiro’s bar mitzvah, which earned Shapiro Philadelphia news coverage.) Shapiro’s parents “set a very good example for me to live a life of faith and service,” he said.
From left: Then-Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator John Fetterman, former President Barack Obama, Josh Shapiro and President Joe Biden at a rally at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, Nov. 5, 2022. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
Sharon Levin taught Shapiro government at Akiba Hebrew Academy (now called Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy) and said he stood apart at an age when boys interested in politics tend to flex their intellectual muscles through outspoken opinions and grandstanding.
“This was a pretty difficult group of kids, I don’t mean problematic, but kids who like to argue, to debate every point,” she said. “And Josh believes in cooperation, I think of him in those days as a team-builder.”
Todd Eisenberg, now a Montgomery County judge, recalled playing basketball with Shapiro for the high school team.
“He was the point guard so he was always the leader of everything,” Eisenberg said. “And he would always try to get everybody involved and make everybody feel like they’re a part of the process.”
Eisenberg was impressed by Shapiro’s leadership but not surprised — Shapiro had been pulling together kids from across the playground since first grade, when they first met.
“You know how kids are in cliques or they’re picking on other kids, he was never like that,” he said. “He was always nice to everybody involved in everything.”
In high school, Eisenberg said, Shapiro organized a chapter of Students Against Drunk Driving. “I remember him standing up for everybody and being a part of everything,” he said.
Shapiro ran for student president and lost, to classmate Ami Eden (who is now CEO of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s parent company, 70 Faces Media). Shapiro has for decades told people it was the only race he lost.
Levin, his government teacher at Akiba, said Shapiro had a realistic assessment of his skills and what he needed to do to succeed. He went to the University of Rochester, qualifying for the Division III basketball team, but soon realized that excellence on the Akiba court was mediocrity in an NCAA setting, she recalled.
“So he said, ‘my fallback from school was government,’ and he was the first sophomore ever to be student president at the University of Rochester,” she said. “I knocked on every door,” Shapiro recalled to Philadelphia Magazine in 2007.
From Rochester, he moved to a series of legislative aide positions in the 1990s on Capitol Hill, working for Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Hoeffel and New Jersey Sen. Robert Torricelli. His bosses remember a guy in his early 20s who was soon supervising staffers, and his colleagues recall not minding. Shapiro was pleasant, they say, but clearly on a track for greater things.
“No one ever worked for me who was as bright and focused, with such steely determination,” Torricelli told The Philadelphia Inquirer last year.
By the time he was 31, in 2004, Shapiro was running for his first elected position as a Pennsylvania state representative. He ran against Jon Fox, a Jewish Republican who had been a congressman. Shapiro impressed people in the district with his lowkey straightforwardness, said Betsy Sheerr, a Jewish lay leader and a Democrat who was friendly with both candidates, and that provided a contrast with Fox, who would shift his positions depending on the listener.
“We used to joke that John Fox was multiple choice, you know that one day he was pro-choice and the next day he wasn’t,” Sheerr recalled. “With Josh, there never has been any confusion about where he stands on things.”
Within two years, Shapiro rose to statewide prominence when he brokered a deal to break a deadlock in the state house, where Democrats had a one-seat majority. Under Shapiro’s plan, Democrats would back a moderate Republican, Denny O’Brien, to keep the scandal-plagued incumbent speaker, Republican John Perzel, from reelection. As soon as he got the job, O’Brien named Shapiro deputy speaker.
Shapiro’s backers cite the now-legendary episode as a sign of Shapiro’s leadership; his detractors say it is a signal of his self-promotion and gamesmanship. In 2008, Shapiro turned on a one-time mentor, Democratic state Rep. Bill DeWeese, saying he should step down from the party leadership because of corruption investigations. (DeWeese and Perzel both ended up serving time in prison.)
Schatz said Shapiro remained sensitive to the issues affecting the Jewish community, helping expand Medicare assistance for the elderly, instituting Holocaust education and targeting terrorist-backing countries like Iran for sanctions.
A moderate Democrat, he also stood out for breaking with the establishment. Aronchick recalled Shapiro in 2004 seeking the endorsement of Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who was then a standard bearer for progressives.
“Josh is a consensus builder,” he said. “Others might think, ‘Do I look too progressive?’ It wasn’t a thought on Josh’s mind.”
In 2008, Shapiro was among just a handful of establishment Democrats who endorsed Barack Obama for president in a state that Hillary Clinton won in the primaries. Shapiro defended Obama when his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, came under fire for antisemitic comments.
Obama did well enough in the state, Shapiro told JTA at the time, that he believed he would do well nationally. “I think that demonstrates that the hype that Senator Obama had a problem with the Jewish community was just that — it was hype. It was not reality.” He would be proved right.
The Democratic machine killed off the “deputy speaker” title in 2009, leading the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent to muse, “The Once-Lofty Shapiro; Has He Been Brought Down a Few Pegs?”
But Matt Handel, a onetime Republican activist who left the party after Donald Trump was elected president, said that while Shapiro made enemies in the statehouse, he never let it get to him.
“He can be angry about things, you know, he can find them offensive. But if you watch him speak, he maintains control of what he says and how he responds,” said Handel, who interacted with Shapiro when Handel chaired the Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition, a statewide advocacy body.
Shapiro soon was looking elsewhere: He ran for and won a spot on the three-member Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, where he was elected chairman, effectively the mayor of the populous and prosperous suburban Philadelphia area.
Levin, his high school teacher, recalled a call Shapiro made when he was considering a run for the U.S. Senate.
“What he said was, if, if I end up going to Washington, I’m gonna do a Biden, you know, back and forth on the train, because it’s so important for my kids to remain at the school where I went to school.” A while later he called back.
He said, “You know, I’m not a legislator. I’m an executive.” (Levin remains close to Shapiro and his family; last fall, she ran into Shapiro and his daughter Sophia, who led student outreach during his campaign, at an airport in San Antonio. “Look who I saw!” she said in an email, photos of hugs attached.)
In 2016, Shapiro was elected Pennsylvania attorney general. He led battles against Trump’s efforts to limit entry to the United States of people from a number of Muslim-majority countries, and to keep Trump acolytes from overturning his 2020 loss in the state. He also led a widely publicized investigation of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church.
Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign launch last April was an ad in which he declared, “I make it home Friday nights for Sabbath dinner,” while the camera closed on challahs. (It also stars his four kids and his wife, Lori, whom he refers to as his “high school sweetheart.”)
Josh Shapiro embraces his wife, Lori Shapiro, on stage after giving a victory speech to supporters at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, Penn., Nov. 8 2022. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
Shapiro’s ultimate victory was especially sweet to many Jews because he defeated a Republican, Doug Mastriano, who had centered Shapiro’s Jewishness, but not in a positive way. Mastriano had allied with an outspoken antisemite, Andrew Torba, the founder of the far-right social media site, Gab, paying for promotion on Gab and accepting a donation from Torba. (Mastriano renounced antisemitism, but pointedly, not Torba.) Mastriano also mocked the Jewish school Shapiro attended and where he sends his four children.
It is a source of delight to Shapiro and his backers that his open Jewish identity did not alienate Pennsylvanians; indeed, he fared well in the conservative center of the state, a fact that his campaign boasted about in an email sent to the media a week after the election, when most campaigns are wrapping up business.
“Josh Shapiro won Beaver, Berks, Cumberland, and Luzerne counties — significantly outperforming Joe Biden’s margins in 2020 and flipping those counties blue,” the campaign said, attaching a chart showing the flips. “From the very beginning of his campaign, Josh vowed to go everywhere. That meant campaigning heavily where other Democrats don’t often win and investing in communities across the state.”
Jill Zipin, a longtime Shapiro backer who leads Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania, said Mastriano’s Christian nationalism did not play well in a state that was founded on religious freedoms. “Pennsylvania was founded on religious pluralism, it was founded by Quakers,” she said. “Anyone of any religious stripe was welcome.”
Mastriano’s team, toward the end of the campaign, appeared to notice the resonance Shapiro’s beliefs had among Pennsylvanians. His surrogates pivoted to claiming Shapiro was not a genuine Jew, with one consultant saying Shapiro’s defense of abortion rights made him inauthentic, and Mastriano’s wife claiming she and her husband loved Israel more than Jews did.
The moves may have backfired, said Schatz. Shapiro’s Jewish expression, she said, “was a way of actually relating to religious conservatives. They say that ‘maybe he doesn’t follow our religion, but because he does have a belief, he’s a religious person.’”
In a sign of his polish with Pennsylvanians, Shapiro’s margin of victory was substantially wider than that of John Fetterman, the Democrat elected to the state’s open Senate spot.
“While we won this race — and by the way, we won it pretty convincingly — I want you to know, the job is not done, the task is not complete,” Shapiro said during his victory speech, prompting 15 seconds of cheers and applause.
Shapiro has stayed largely out of the public eye since his election, instead focusing on putting together a transition team and preparing for his inauguration on Tuesday. He did not respond to JTA’s requests for an interview.
That transition team bears signs of Shapiro’s long and deep Jewish ties. Marcel Groen, a retired attorney on the economic development advisory committee, first met the new governor because he attended synagogue with Shapiro’s father. He became a mentor to the inchoate politician, who several years ago recruited Groen’s mother, a Holocaust survivor, to speak to incarcerated teens.
During the encounter, which Groen and Shapiro did not make public at the time, the teens went from standoffish to hugging 93-year-old Sipora Groen after hearing her story. (Sipora died in 2017.) It was, Groen said, typical of Shapiro’s approach to changing hearts and minds: “Josh realized that’s how you reach kids who got in trouble and who needed to understand life in a different manner,” he recalled.
Shapiro’s plans for his inauguration are laced with Jewish significance. In addition to the Tanakh from the Tree of Life synagogue, his swearing-in will reportedly take place on a Bible used by a Jewish soldier from Pennsylvania in World War II.
But asked by CNN’s Dana Bash after the election if he wanted to make history as America’s first Jewish president, Shapiro demurred.
“I have an ambition to get a little bit of sleep, to reintroduce myself to my kids, and then to serve the good people of Pennsylvania as their governor,” he said.
—
The post For Josh Shapiro, a run for governor borne of Jewish identity and political ambition appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Palestinian Islamic Jihad Said to Be Expanding Military Presence in Syria With Government’s Knowledge
Terrorists stand during the funeral of two Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunmen who were killed in an Israeli raid, in Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank on May 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist group is reportedly expanding its military presence in Syria, a move that could put the Syrian government in violation of US conditions for restoring full diplomatic ties and lifting additional economic sanctions.
According to Israeli public broadcaster Kan News, PIJ has expanded its military wing — the al-Quds Brigades — within Syria in recent weeks, notably increasing activity in Palestinian refugee camps near Damascus, apparently with the full knowledge of the Syrian government.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is said to have appointed an envoy to oversee PIJ’s activities in the country, responsible for facilitating communications between the Palestinian terrorist group and the government, Kan reported.
However, a government security source denied such accusations, saying there is “no intention to allow military operations against Israel,” which borders Syria.
PIJ also denied reports of intensified activity in Syria, saying they are entirely fabricated and intended to provoke hostility against the Palestinian people and their refugee camps
Following the United States’ recent statements that it does not support Israeli airstrikes in Syria, the embattled Middle Eastern country could now provide a particularly convenient base for PIJ, allowing the group to expand its operations with less risk of Israeli retaliation.
Under the Trump administration, Washington has lifted sanctions on the Syrian government to support the country’s reconstruction efforts and pushed for Damascus to normalize relations with Israel. Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump hosted Sharaa for the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to Washington, DC, vowing to help Syria as the war-ravaged country struggles to come out of decades of international isolation.
To pave the way for the full restoration of US diplomatic relations, deeper economic ties, and the lifting of additional economic sanctions, Washington has set five conditions for the Syrian government, including deporting Palestinian militants, joining the Abraham Accords with Israel, and expelling foreign terrorists.
The government must also help prevent an Islamic State (ISIS) resurgence and take responsibility for detention facilities holding ISIS fighters, supporters, and their families in the northeast.
If the Syrian government is aware of the reported PIJ activity, it risks jeopardizing its relationship with Washington by effectively endorsing the operations of a designated foreign terrorist organization — in open defiance of a key condition for improving bilateral ties.
As Damascus seeks to restore international credibility and strengthen its standing on the global stage, Israeli officials have remained highly cautious of Syria’s new leadership.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has previously described the current Syrian regime as “a jihadist Islamist terror group from Idlib that took Damascus by force.”
He has even warned senior European officials that Hamas and PIJ were operating in Syria to create an additional front against Israel
“We will not compromise the security on our border. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are acting in Syria to create another front against Israel there,” the top Israeli diplomat said earlier this year.
According to Hebrew media reports, Defense Minister Israel Katz warned lawmakers in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week that armed groups operating inside Syria, including the Yemen-based Houthis, are considering launching attacks on the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria.
Hamas, PIJ, and the Houthis are all backed by Iran, which provides the internationally designated terrorist groups with arms and funding.
Israel has consistently vowed to prevent the Syrian government from deploying forces in the country’s southern region, along its northeastern border.
Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who until recently was sanctioned by the US as a foreign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head, became Syria’s transitional president earlier this year after leading a rebel campaign that ousted long-time Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, whose brutal and authoritarian Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al Qaeda affiliate.
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state.
The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Now, Israel and Syria are reportedly in the final stages of months-long negotiations over a security agreement that could establish a joint Israeli, Syrian, and US presence at key strategic locations.
Jerusalem and Damascus have agreed to form a joint Israeli-Syrian–American security committee to oversee developments along their shared border and uphold the terms of a proposed deal.
Al-Sharaa told The Washington Post earlier this month that his government has expelled Iranian and Hezbollah forces from Syria and is ready for a new phase of ties with the United States. However, Syria’s reported knowledge of PIJ activity may be a hurdle as talks between Washington, Damascus, and Jerusalem proceed.
Earlier this year, tensions escalated after heavy fighting broke out in Sweida between local Druze fighters and Syrian regime forces amid reports of atrocities against civilians.
At the time, Israel launched an airstrike campaign to protect the Druze, which officials described as a warning to the country’s new leadership over threats to the minority group. The Druze, an Arab minority who practice a religion originally derived from Islam, live in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. In Israel, many serve in the military and police, including during the war in Gaza.
Jerusalem has pledged to defend the Druze community in Syria with military force if they come under threat — motivated in part by appeals from Israel’s own Druze minority.
But the Syrian government has accused Israel of fueling instability and interfering in its internal affairs, while the new leadership insists it is focused on unifying the country after 14 years of conflict, which began with Assad violently cracking down on anti-government protests in 2011.
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The Dangerous Legacy of the 1840 ‘Damascus Affair’ Blood Libel (PART ONE)
Smoke rises from a building after strikes at Syria’s defense ministry in Damascus, Syria, July 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
According to a recent article in Aish:
On November 11, 2025, Dr. Samar Maqusi, a researcher at the University College London (UCL) proudly stated that in 1838 a group of Jews kidnapped and murdered a priest in Damascus and used his blood in order to make special pancakes for their Feast of the Tabernacles (Sukkot). She added that for Jewish people the blood used in their pancakes must be from a gentile. She asserted that a group of Jews admitted to murdering this priest in order to use his blood in their food.
Her lecture was hosted by UCL’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) titled “The Birth of Zionism.”
The Damascus Affair of 1840 (not 1838) was an infamous blood libel that became international news and led to one of the first instances in which Jewish communities around the world worked together to demand justice for another Jewish community.
The Damascus blood libel is recognized as one of the turning points of modern Jewish history, when Jews around the world realized the importance of uniting to advocate for each other.
The Blood Libel
On February 5, 1840, Father Thomas, an Italian Friar of the Capuchin Order who lived in Damascus, disappeared with his Muslim servant Ibrahim Amara.
They were assumed murdered, possibly by businessmen with whom Thomas had had shady dealings, or by a Muslim who was infuriated by an insult to Islam that Father Thomas had uttered.
But the Jews were to bear the blame, as the Capuchin friars began spreading rumors that the Jews had murdered the two men to use their blood for Passover. This led to one of history’s most famous blood libels, the Damascus Blood Libel, better known as the Damascus Affair of 1840.
Damascus was then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Since the Ottoman Empire was weak, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, primarily ruled over both Egypt and Syria as quasi-independent principalities, with just nominal subordination to the Ottoman Empire. France also retained some measure of control in Syria, as the French had maintained a presence in the region since the time of the Crusades. The Catholics of Syria, including Father Thomas, were officially under French protection.
Due to the French jurisdiction over this case, the French consul, Ulysse de Ratti-Menton, known for his anti-Jewish views, presided over the investigation.
Along with the governor-general, Sharif Pasha, he conducted a short investigation, and a barber named Shlomo Negrin, among others, was arbitrarily arrested and tortured.
They managed to extort a “confession” from Negrin that the monk had been killed in the house of David Harari by seven Jews. The men whom he named were arrested and tortured. Two of the detained men died, one converted to Islam to be spared, and the statements made under torture by the others were considered adequate as an admission of guilt.
Bones that were discovered in a sewer were “identified” as those of the monk and buried in a funeral on March 2nd, which increased the anger against the Jews. The inscription on the monk’s tombstone stated that this was the grave of a saint tortured by the Jews.
After the “funeral,” attacks began against the Jews, and Sharif Pasha had to move hundreds of soldiers to protect the Jewish quarter.
The focus of the “investigation” was now on the servant, Ibrahim Amara. More torture extracted the “confession” that he had been murdered by Jews, among them members of the prominent Farhi and Picciotto families, and the authorities sought to arrest them.
Knowing the torture that they would be subjected to, some of the accused tried to hide or escape. Rabbi Yaakov Antebi, accused of having received a bottle of the blood of Thomas, was arrested and tortured, yet he held strong under the torture and would not confess to anything.
More bones were found, and the investigators claimed they were the remains of Ibrahim Amara. However, the physician in Damascus, Dr. Lograso, did not believe they were human bones and, considering the pressure on him, requested that the bones be sent to Europe for examination. Ratti-Menton refused and instead announced that based on the confessions of the accused and the remains found of the victims, the guilt of the Jews in the double murder was proven beyond a doubt.
One of the Jews who was arrested during the second round of accusations was Isaac Levi Picciotto, an Austrian citizen and thus under the protection of the Austrian consul. Initially, he was also subject to torture, but on March 8th, there was a sudden turnabout.
The Austrian vice-consul, Caspar Giovanni Merlato, a personal friend of Picciotto, demanded that Picciotto be returned to Austrian jurisdiction and that the investigation be carried out at the Austrian consulate.
With Merlato’s involvement, things changed dramatically. Picciotto proved he was in a different place the evening of the murder, and a Christian corroborated this. Picciotto now moved from the defensive to the offensive and began accusing officials of instigating this blood libel, carrying out investigations under torture, and openly accusing Ratti-Menton of murder.
He demanded that the Austrian authorities carry out the investigation. As torture methods were seen as unjust, cruel, and backward by Western countries, his accusations put Ratti-Menton and his aides on the defensive.
The Blood Libel Spreads
The predictable result of the accusations was that the Jews of Damascus and other parts of Syria began to suffer from antisemitic mobs. Synagogues were destroyed and looted, cemeteries were desecrated, and Jews were attacked all over the country.
News of the atrocities spread throughout the Jewish world, causing waves of shock and anger at what was going on in Syria.
The first Jewish attempt to intervene in the tragic situation came via a petition initiated by Israel Bak addressed to Muhammad Ali, as he was the governor of Syria. At the same time, the Austrian Consul General in Egypt, Anton Laurin, received a report from the Austrian consul in Damascus. Recognizing the tremendous injustice, Laurin became very involved in the case, and he began by using his influence to petition Muhammad Ali to stop the torture methods used by the investigators.
Muhammad Ali agreed, and instructions were issued accordingly to Damascus by express courier. As a result, the use of torture came to an end on April 25, 1840, which caused a new round of riots in Damascus.
The accusation of murder and blood libel remained, and the investigation against the Jews continued, albeit without torture. Now, Austrian Consul General Laurin attempted to influence the French Consul General in Egypt to order his subordinate, Ratti-Menton, to stop the libel, but this effort was unsuccessful.
At this point, Laurin went against all procedures and decided to send the information he received from Damascus to Baron James de Rothschild, the honorary Austrian consul in Paris.
Baron Rothschild appealed to the French government to stop the injustice, but when his appeals were ignored, he chose to turn to the media and publish the report in newspapers worldwide, creating public pressure to halt this travesty of justice.
His brother in Vienna, Solomon Rothschild, worked alongside him and used his influence to speak to Chancellor Klemens von Metternich about the situation. Metternich ultimately supported his consul, Laurin, since the negative publicity for France, archenemy of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was to his benefit. The British also chose to support the Jews in fighting the libel, and the British Consul General of England in Egypt expressed those policies.
As a result of the advocacy, a message was sent to Damascus on May 3, 1840, ordering protection for the Jews from the violence of Muslim and Christian mobs.
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was first published at: https://aish.com/the-damascus-affair/
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A Personal Perspective From Israel: The Signs Are Small, But We Are Still at War
An Israeli police officer investigates a crater at the site of a missile attack, launched from Yemen, near Ben Gurion Airport, in Tel Aviv, Israel May 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Avshalom Sassoni
Israel is an unusual place, where we balance war and daily life on a constant basis. So today, I’m taking a moment away from deep analysis, and instead sharing something a bit more personal — my weird/normal life as an Israeli.
In addition to my work at RealityCheck, I also teach as an Adjunct Professor at Reichman University (formerly the “IDC”) in Herzliya, Israel. I absolutely love my students — who are enthusiastic, intelligent, and in many cases, actively risking their lives to protect mine.
Last week, a student came to class in uniform — not מדי א׳ , which is the dress uniform that soldiers typically wear when traveling home for the weekend, but מדי ב׳, which is the full combat uniform. I asked if he was in מילואים (reserves) and he said yes, that he’s serving in Syria right now.
Only later I realized that when he said “right now,” he meant RIGHT now: his commander had given him a special pass to come to class for a few hours, after which he was leaving my classroom and returning straight to Syria. I don’t know what’s more impressive — that my students are out there protecting our safety, or that when they have a moment away from combat, their first priority is to come to class.
This is Israel. These are Israelis.
Though it’s not strictly speaking a part of my course, students ask about the legal status of Israel at The Hague so often that I prepared several slides on the topic. Once, a student asked whether she should expect that her boyfriend (a combat soldier) would get arrested on their upcoming trip to Europe. Fortunately, I had the knowledge to explain that topic, and to recommend certain precautionary measures, which gave her a degree of comfort. Sadly, those same precautionary measures may soon be relevant in New York City.
I sometimes enjoy sitting on my balcony, eating dinner, and watching passenger planes fly across the Mediterranean into Israel on their standard flight path toward Ben Gurion International Airport. Yet the other evening, I noticed something unusual: several aircraft turned away from the Tel Aviv shore at the last moment, and took strange detours. Minutes later I saw (and mostly heard) several fighter jets heading northward, intersecting the commercial flightpath.
Perhaps air traffic control needed to clear the skies for the fighter jets? I may never know for certain, but the next morning, I read about an unusually large IDF operation in Lebanon, across Israel’s northern border.
Other days, I see helicopters heading south, most likely to Gaza. But on one special day, October 13, 2025, I saw the very helicopters that were bringing the hostages back home. All this, right from my window.
These small but striking experiences serve as a constant reminder that we are not really at peace.
For the moment we aren’t dodging rockets, running to bomb shelters, or watching the ominous orange glow of Iranian missiles as they heat up upon re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere — on their way to strike our cities and communities. Yet Israel is very much still at war on multiple fronts: we see and feel it every day, in the most unusual and ordinary ways.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.