Sir Moses Montefiore
(1784 - 1885)
Sir Moses Haim Montefiore (October 24, 1784 - July 28, 1885) was one of the most famous British Jews in the 19th century. Montefiore was a financier, stockbroker, philanthropist and also the Sheriff of London.
Life
Born in Livorno, Italy, Montefiore grew to be 6 ft 3 at the age of 20. In London, in 1812, Moses Montefiore married Judith (1784-1862), daughter of Levi Barent Cohen. They had no children. Her sister, Henriette (or Hannah) (1791-1866), married Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836), who headed up the family's banking business in Britain and was a business partner of Moses Montefiore.
Montefiore was elected as the Sheriff of London in 1837 and served until 1838. Montefiore was knighted that same year by Queen Victoria and received a baronetcy in 1846 in addition to his services to humanitarian causes on behalf of the Jewish people.
Leader
After retiring from business in 1824, at the age of forty, Montefiore devoted the rest of his exceptionally long life to philanthropy and good deeds.
He was president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1835-1874, a period of 29 years, the longest tenure ever. Montefiore's 100th birthday was celebrated as a national event in his native Britain, by the Jewish community in Palestine, and by Jews throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
At the age of forty, he was able to retire from the City of London, where he worked closely as a broker with his brother-in-law, Nathan Mayer Rothschild. In his business life he was an innovator, investing in the supply of piped gas for street lighting to European cities via the Imperial Continental Gas Association. He was among the founding consortium of the Alliance Life Assurance Company, and a Director of the Provincial Bank of Ireland. Highly regarded in the City, he was elected as Sheriff of the City of London in 1836, in which capacity he was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1837.
From the time of his retirement until the day of his death, he devoted himself to philanthropy and alleviating the distress of Jews all over the world. He presided over the community in England for decades. The details of his journeys overseas are relatively well-known –- to the Sultan of Turkey in 1840 to defend the Jews of Damascus against a blood libel; to Rome in 1858 to try and free the Jewish youth Edgar Mortara, kidnapped and baptised by his Catholic nurse; to Russia in 1846 and 1872; to Morocco in 1864 and to Romania in 1867. In every case he went armed with the full panoply of British Victorian diplomacy. While history debates the practical efficacy of these trips, they were indisputably the forerunners of Jewish representation across borders for the welfare of Jewish communities in distress. It was these missions more than anything which made him a folk hero of near mythological proportions in the depressed Jewries of Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Levant.
Little is known about his public and political life in general Victorian society. Indicative of his civic and society standing, Montefiore is mentioned in Charles Dickens' diaries, in the personal papers of George Eliot, and is even mentioned in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. It is known that he had contacts with non-conformists and social reformers in Victorian England. He was active in public initiatives aimed at alleviating the persecution of minorities in the Middle East and elsewhere, and he worked closely with organisations that campaigned for the abolition of slavery. A Government loan raised by the Rothschilds and Montefiore in 1835 enabled the British Government to compensate plantation owners and thus abolish slavery in the Empire. His birthdays, his activities, and certainly his passing, drew considerable comment in the British press of the time.
But it was the Holy Land that was dearest to his interests. Accompanied on several of the trips by Judith, a lady of delicate health, he made his way by carriage and ship to the Land of Israel no less than seven times – the first time in 1827, and then in 1838, 1849, 1855, 1857, 1866, and 1875. (Note that he was ninety-one years of age when he made his last trip.) He dispensed liberal philanthropy to many supplicants, but always sought to promote industry, education and health. Montefiore’s indelible mark on the Jerusalem landscape is, of course, the windmill and adjacent cottages and almshouses opposite the Old City, built by him as the executor of a fund left by the American Jewish pioneer Judah Touro. The project, bearing some of the hallmarks of nineteenth century artisanal revival, aimed to promote productive enterprise in the Yishuv. The builders were brought over from England. Unfortunately, because of the lack of wind in Jerusalem, the windmill has never worked.
A major source of information about the Yishuv, or Jewish community in Palestine, during the 19th century is a sequence of censuses commissioned by Montefiore, in 1839, 1849, 1855, 1866 and 1875. The censuses attempted to list every Jew individually, together with some biographical and social information (such as their family structure, place of origin, and degree of poverty).
Although he only spent a few days in Jerusalem, his 1827 visit changed his life. He resolved to increase his religious observance and to attend synagogue on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. And indeed, while his observance of Jewish law was perhaps not strict in his younger years -- the most often quoted evidence being Judith’s descriptions of the meals they enjoyed in inns all along the south coast of England on their honeymoon in 1812 -- from that time on he lived a life of dignified and devoted piety and observance.
Montefiore’s life was also inextricably bound up with the city of Ramsgate, Kent, on the southeastern coast of England. In the 1830’s he and Judith had bought East Cliff Lodge, a country estate (then) adjacent to the town, very much in the manner of the Victorian Jewish gentry. He played a huge part in the affairs of Ramsgate and one of the local ridings still bears his name. In 1873 a local newspaper mistakenly ran his obituary. "Thank God to have been able to hear of the rumour," he wrote to the editor, "and to read an account of the same with my own eyes, without using spectacles."
The town celebrated his 99th and his 100th birthday in great style, and every local charity (and church) benefited from his philanthropy. At East Cliff Lodge he established a Sephardi Yeshivah (The ‘Judith Lady Montefiore College’) after the death of Judith in 1862. In the grounds of the house he built a beautiful and ornate Italianate synagogue; next to it he built a mausoleum modelled on Rachel’s Tomb outside Bethlehem (whose refurbishment and upkeep he had paid for). There in 1862 Judith was buried; and there in 1885 he too was laid to rest.
For his philanthopy, the Jews of Palestine, and later Israel, referred to him as "ha-Sar Montefiore", or "Prince Montefiore". A popular song by that title was sung in the 1960's by Yehoram Gaon. (lyrics by Chaim Chefer, music by Dov Seltzer).
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