B’nai Jeshurun’s legacy of political action began in the nineteenth century.

On August 19, 1840, a meeting was held at B’nai Jeshurun—one of several gatherings being held worldwide—to protest the blood libel that became known as the Damascus Affair. With New York City Jewry being the largest population of Jews in America, BJ took a leading role in organizing the first public protest meeting in the city at the Elm Street synagogue.

On February 5, 1840, a Catholic monk named Father Thomas, the superior of a Franciscan convent in Damascus, disappeared with his Muslim servant. While there was no evidence to support a claim that Jews were responsible, investigations into the Jewish quarter were launched on the assumption that it was a “ritual murder” case. Jews were arrested, including a Jewish barber named Negrin, who was tortured until he implicated several other innocent Jews and confessed to the crime. After Syrian authorities discovered two sets of bones in the Jewish quarter, eight other Jewish people were tortured and found guilty even though the bones were never confirmed to be from a human. Following their sentencing to prison, a local crowd attacked a Damascus synagogue, pillaging it and destroying its Torah scrolls. Several dozen Jewish children were arrested in order to force their parents to reveal the location of the missing monk’s blood.

When the news of these events reached the Jewish communities of the West, Jews decided they must act both to save their imprisoned co-religionists and to counter European and Russian newspaper stories that were portraying the events as a classic blood libel: a case of Jews murdering a Christian in order to use the blood to bake matzah for Passover.

American Jews, including members of BJ, organized a meeting on August 19. Following the meeting, petitions were sent to the United States government asking it to intervene. This was the first time that the Jews of the United States had sought to enlist the interest of the government in the cause of suffering Jews in another part of the world. Ultimately, the Jews of France and England sent delegations—one of which included Sir Moses Montefiore—to the Middle East, where they were able to secure the release of those prisoners still alive—making it also the first time international Jewish communities had coordinated actions this way.

This kind of collaboration among American Jewish communities in support of Jews living outside of the United States would again prove useful several years later in 1858 during the Mortara case.

Edgardo Mortara, a 6-year-old Jewish boy living in Bologna, Italy, was forcibly taken from his parents by papal guards on the grounds that several years before, the child had been secretly baptized by the household’s Catholic servant girl. Multiple governments and royalty petitioned the Pope to release the kidnapped child to his parents to no avail. Moses Montefiore tried to intercede but all attempts failed this time. Edgardo Mortara lived his entire life as a Catholic separated from his family. The case however once more occasioned international Jewish groups to work together.