
Zionism started with Orthodox Rabbis, initially it was a response
to a wave Arab Pogroms in the region:
Influence of the incident and reactions to it[edit]
The incident and its repercussions were considerable. According to
Hasia R. Diner, in
The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000, "For the Jews, the Damascus affair launched modern Jewish politics on an international scale, and for American Jews it represented their first effort at creating a distinctive political agenda. Just as the United States had used this affair to proclaim its presence on the global scale, so too did American Jews, in their newspapers and at mass meetings, announce to their coreligionists in France and England that they too ought to be thought of players in global Jewish diplomacy."
[8]
According to Johannes Valentin Schwarz, the events also encouraged the growth of the modern Jewish press. "As a result, a sense of solidarity was evoked among the Jewish communities of Europe they had never experienced before. Thus, the Damascus Affair gave birth to modern Jewish press especially in Western Europe, such as to the long-lived papers
Les Archives Israélites de France (1840-1935) in Paris or
The Jewish Chronicle (1841 ff.) in London."
[9]
One major repercussion of the 1840 Damascus Affair was the introduction in the Middle East of the French education system later integrated into
Alliance Israélite Universelle. Following his 1840 visit to Damascus and review of the social and education system in Damascus, he decided to give all the Jews of the Ottoman Empire a European education based on the French model to replace the Arabic and Hebrew (mainly religious) curriculum. In a few generations, almost all of the Jewish minorities of the Middle East learned several languages (French, English, Italian & Hebrew among other) and acquired academic skills that proved extremely valuable to their subsequent integration in the World's economies and emigration to Western countries in the 20th century.[
citation needed]
Damascus affair - Wikipedia