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Why is Anglo-Jewry intent on selling an anti-Semitic 'study'on human sacrifice?
Eric Silver

ERIC SILVER

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is defying critics and continuing to seek a buyer for a virulently anti-Semitic manuscript that has been locked in its safe for nearly a century.

The 300-page document, by the 19th-century explorer, author and diplomat Sir Richard Burton, purports to be a study of "human sacrifice" among Sephardi Jews. It perpetuates the libel that Damascus Jews slaughtered a Capuchin priest and his servant before Pesah in 1840 and used their blood for baking matzah.

Burton, remembered for his translations of the "Arabian Nights" and the "Kama Sutra," served as British consul in Damascus in the late 1860s and swallowed whole the local Catholic claim that the Jews had been caught red-handed.

Until recently, even bona fide scholars were denied access to the manuscript, which came into the Board of Dep-uties' possession in 1910, after the death of Burton's widow. Just how the Board acquired it is not recorded, but successive heads of the Board were briefed on its existence and kept it hidden.

This spring, the Board decided to sell the work at Christie's in London. It came up for auction on May 6, but was withdrawn after failing to reach its reserve price of �150,000. The highest bid was �140,000. Jo Wagerman, the Board's president, told The Report afterwards: "We are considering all possible options, which include selling it." She explained that the Board wants the money to use for a deposit on new offices, after the rent on the organization's present HQ on New Oxford Street was quadrupled.

The proposed sale provoked fierce criticism among Board members, who feared that the Burton book would be published and foment hatred of Jews. Lord Janner, a former president, said: "It was contrary to the interests of both the Board and our community to put it on sale. We wouldn't sell pornography, and this is worse. It was a terrible, grotesque error."

Wagerman was unrepentant. Before deciding to sell, she said, the Board sent the manuscript to the Community Security Trust, the British equivalent of the Anti-Defamation League. "They went through it with a fine-tooth comb," she said. "They came back and said there was nothing in it that didn't appear on every racist Internet site. They said it posed no threat to the Jewish community."

A day before the auction, the Board rejected an offer from an anonymous Jew, who was ready to pay the Board �150,000 to keep it under lock and key. Wagerman explained that the Board would have had to pay Christie's a �50,000 cancellation fee. Now the auction house would get only about �6,000 if the Board were to sell privately.

(July 2, 2001)

Reporter