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Moses Montefiore
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Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, Kt (October 24, 1784-July 28, 1885) was one of the most famous British Jews of the 19th century. Montefiore was a financier, banker, philanthropist and Sheriff of London.
efiore was born in Livorno, Italy in 1784.
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Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, Kt (October 24, 1784-July 28, 1885) was one of the most famous British Jews of the 19th century. Montefiore was a financier, banker, philanthropist and Sheriff of London.
Biography
Montefiore was born in Livorno, Italy in 1784. He began his career as an apprentice to a firm of grocers and tea merchants. He later left for London, and became one of the twelve "Jew brokers" in the City of London. There he went into business with his brother Abraham, and their firm gained a high reputation.
In 1812, Moses Montefiore married Judish Cohen(1784-1862), daughter of Levi Barent Cohen. Her sister, Henriette (or Hannah) (1791-1866), married Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836), for whom Montefiore's firm acted as stockbrokers. Nathan Rothschild headed the family's banking business in Britain, and the two brothers-in-law became business partners.
Montefiore retired from his business in 1824, and used his time and fortune for communal and civic responsibilities. Physically imposing at , Montefiore enjoyed enormous prestige. He was elected Sheriff of London in 1837 and served until 1838. He was also knighted that same year by Queen Victoria and received a baronetcy in 1846 in recognition of his services to humanitarian causes on behalf of the Jewish people.
Though somewhat lax in religious observance in his early life, after his first visit to the Holy Land in 1827, he became a strictly observant Jew. He was even in the habit of traveling with a personal shohet (ritual slaughterer), to ensure that he would have a ready supply of kosher meat. His determined opposition played an important role in limiting the growth of the Reform Movement in England.
In 1831 Montefiore purchased a country estate with twenty-four acres on the East Cliff of the then fashionable seaside town of Ramsgate. The property had previously been a country house of Queen Caroline, when still Princess of Wales. It had then been owned by Marquess Wellesley, a brother of the Duke of Wellington.
Soon afterwards, Montefiore purchased the adjoining land and commissioned his cousin, architect David Mocatta, to design a private synagogue, known as the Montefiore synagogue. It opened with a grand public ceremony in 1833.
Montefiore never had children. He died in 1885, at the age of 100.
Communal leadership
After retiring from business in 1824, Montefiore devoted the rest of his exceptionally long life to philanthropy. He was president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1835-1874, a period of 39 years, the longest tenure ever, and member of Bevis Marks Synagogue.
In business, 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, and knighted by Queen Victoria in 1837.
From retirement until the day he died, he devoted himself to philanthropy and alleviating the distress of Jews all over the world. The details of his journeys overseas are well-documented. He went to the Sultan of Turkey in 1840 to liberate from prison ten Syrian Jews of Damascus arrested after a blood libel; to Rome in 1858 to try and free the Jewish youth Edgardo Mortara, baptised by his Catholic nurse and kidnapped by functionaries of the Catholic Church; to Russia in 1846 and 1872; to Morocco in 1864 and to Romania in 1867. It was these missions that made him a folk hero of near mythological proportions among the oppressed Jews 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 in James Joyce’s novel 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.
Montefiore's 100th birthday was celebrated as a national event in his adopted homeland, Britain and by Jews all over the world. His birthdays, activities and death were closely covered in the British press of the time.
Montefiore’s life was also inextricably bound up with the town of Ramsgate, Kent, on the southeastern coast of England. In the 1830s 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 an important role in Ramsgate affairs, 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 yeshiva (Judith Lady Montefiore College) after the death of his wife in 1862. On the grounds he built an ornate Italianate synagogue and a mausoleum modeled on Rachel's Tomb outside Bethlehem (whose refurbishment and upkeep he had paid for). Judith was laid to rest there in 1862, and Montefiore himself was buried there in 1885. In recent years, the site has become a source of controversy as real-estate developers are eyeing it for commercial development.
Philanthropy in the Holy Land
Jewish philanthropy and the Holy Land were at the center of Montefiore's interests. He traveled there by carriage and ship seven times, sometimes accompanied by his wife. He visited for the first time in 1827, followed by visits in 1838, 1849, 1855, 1857, 1866, and 1875. He made his last trip at the age of 91. Montefiore donated large sums of money to promote industry, education and health. Montefiore left an indelible mark on the Jerusalem landscape with the Moses Montefiore Windmill in Yemin Moshe, named after him, which was the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the Old City walls. The funding came from the estate of an American Jew, Judah Touro, who appointed Montefiore executor of his will. The project, bearing the hallmarks of nineteenth century artisanal revival, aimed to promote productive enterprise in the Yishuv. The builders were brought over from England.
These activities were part of a broader program to enable the Jews of Palestine to become self supporting in anticipation of the establishment of a Jewish homeland. In addition to the windmill (to provide cheap flour to poor Jews), he built a printing press and textile factory, and helped to finance several agricultural colonies. He also attempted to acquire land for Jewish cultivation, but was hampered by Ottoman restrictions on land sale to non-Muslims.
Following a devastating cholera outbreak in Jerusalem in 1861 due to overcrowding, Montefiore built Mishkenot Sha'ananim outside the Old City. Living outside the city walls was dangerous at the time, due to lawlessness and bandits. Montefiore offered financial inducement to encourage poor families to move there. Later on, Montefiore established the two Knesset Yisrael neighborhoods, one for Sephardic Jews, one for Ashkenazim, which were even further away.
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 Montefiore only spent a few days in Jerusalem, the 1827 visit changed his life. He resolved to increase his religious observance and to attend synagogue on Shabbat, as well as Mondays and Thursdays when the Torah is read. While his observance of Jewish law was not as strict in his younger years (evidenced by Judith’s descriptions of the meals they enjoyed in inns along the south coast of England on their honeymoon in 1812), from then on, he lived a life of piety and Jewish observance.
The Jews of Palestine referred to their patron as "ha-Sar Montefiore" (Minister Montefiore), a title perpetuated in Hebrew literature and song.
Commemoration
The Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York is named for him. On the second floor of the East Wing, there is a bust of Montefiore. Temple Moses Montefiore in Marshall, Texas, the first Reform temple in East Texas was named for him. A branch of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania also bears his name.
Anecdotes
Montefiore was renowned for his quick and sharp wit. A popularly-circulated anecdote, possibly apocryphal, relates that at a dinner party he was once seated next to a nobleman who was known to be an anti-Semite. The nobleman told Montefiore that he had just returned from a trip to Japan, where "they have neither pigs nor Jews." Montefiore is reported to have responded "in that case, you and I should go there, so it will have a sample of each" (a similar anecdote is told of Israel Zangwill.)
See also
Bibliography
- Yemin Moshe - The Story of a Jerusalem Neighborhood, Eliezer David Jaffe, Praeger and Greenwood Press Publishers, 1988, New York
External links
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- Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore: (PDF).
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