Moshe Montefiori and his wind mill. 1975 Israeli banknote.

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. Image File history File links Moshe_Montefiori,_1975_banknote. ... Image File history File links Moshe_Montefiori,_1975_banknote. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... October 24 is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 68 days remaining. ... 1784 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... July 28 is the 209th day (210th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 156 days remaining. ... 1885 (MDCCCLXXXV) is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses and organizations raise, allocate and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. ... A stock broker or stockbroker or stock brokerage is someone or a firm who performs transactions in financial instruments on a stock market as an agent of his/her/its clients who are unable or unwilling to trade for themselves. ... A philanthropist is someone who devotes his/her time, money or effort towards helping others. ... Look up Sheriff in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. ...

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. Livorno, sometimes in English Leghorn, (population 170,000) is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. ... Nathan Mayer Rothschild (September 16, 1777 - July 28, 1836) was a London financier and one of the founders of the international Rothschild banking dynasty. ...

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 recognition of his services to humanitarian causes on behalf of the Jewish people. The silver Anglia knight, commissioned as a trophy in 1850, intended to represent the Black Prince. ... Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and the first Empress of India from 1 January 1877, until her death in 1901. ... A baronet (traditional abbreviation Bart, modern abbreviation Bt), is the holder of an hereditary title awarded by the British Crown, known as a baronetcy. ...

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 39 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. The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jewry. ... Map of the British Mandate of Palestine. ... Eastern Europe is the eastern region of Europe variably defined. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ...

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. Natural gas is commonly referred to as gas. ...

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 liberate from prison ten Syrian Jews of Damascus found guilty of ritual murder; 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. 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. The Sultan in Disneys Aladdin A Sultan (Arabic: سلطان) is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Nickname: The Eternal City Location within Province of Rome in the Region of Latium Coordinates: Region Latium Province Province of Rome Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni Area    - City 1,285 km²  (496. ... Edgardo Mortara (August 27, 1851–March 11, 1940), a Jewish-born Italian Catholic priest, became the centre of an international controversy when, as a six-year-old boy, he was seized from his Jewish parents by the Papal authorities and taken to be raised as a Catholic. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent. ... The Levant Levant is an imprecise geographical term historically referring to a large area in the Middle East south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and by the northern Arabian Desert and Upper Mesopotamia to the east. ...

Montefiore on his 100th birthday.

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. Image File history File links Montefiore100. ... Image File history File links Montefiore100. ... Dickens redirects here. ... George Eliots birthplace at South Farm, Arbury George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Anne Evans[1] (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), who was an English novelist. ... James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an expatriate Irish writer and poet, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. ... Ulysses is a 1922 novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from 1918 to 1920, and published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach in 1922, Paris. ... This French poster depicting the horrific conditions on slave ships was influential in mobilizing public opinion against slavery. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

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 flaws in construction, the windmill has never worked. Jerusalem (Hebrew:  , Yerushaláyim or Yerushalaim; Arabic:  , al-Quds (the Holy); official Arabic in Israel: أورشليم القدس, Urshalim-al-Quds (combining the Hebrew Bible and common usage Arabic names) is the capital and largest city of the State of Israel with a population of 724,000 (as of May 24, 2006[1... Spanish Windmills at La Mancha A windmill is an engine powered by the wind to produce energy, often contained in a large building as in traditional post mills, smock mills and tower mills. ... Judah Touro (Newport, Rhode Island, June 16, 1775 — New Orleans, January 13, 1854) was an American Jewish businessman and philanthropist. ... Yishuv is a Hebrew word meaning settlement. ...

Montefiore's windmill in Jerusalem's Yemin Moshe neighborhood.

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). Image File history File linksMetadata Montefiorewindmill. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Montefiorewindmill. ...

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." Ramsgate is an English seaside town on the Isle of Thanet in East Kent. ... Kent is a county in England, south-east of London. ...

Synagogue and tomb of Montefiore, Ramsgate.

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. In recent years there has been controversy over efforts by real estate developers to destroy his and his wife's graves to build a commercial site, in spite of his strongly expressed desire that his grave be preserved Image File history File links Montefioretomb. ... Image File history File links Montefioretomb. ... Sephardim (ספרדי, Standard Hebrew SÉ™fardi, Tiberian Hebrew ardî; plural Sephardim: ספרדים, Standard Hebrew Sfaradim, Tiberian Hebrew ) are a subgroup of Jews, generally defined in contrast to Ashkenazim and/or . ... A yeshiva (Hebrew, pl. ... Bethlehem (Arabic بيت لحم house of meat; Standard Hebrew בית לחם house of bread, Bet léḥem / Bet láḥem; Tiberian Hebrew Bêṯ léḥem / Bêṯ lāḥem; Greek: Βηθλεέμ) is a city in the West Bank under Palestinian Authority considered a central hub of Palestinian cultural and tourism industries. ...

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). Yehoram Gaon, informally spelled Yoram Gaon (1939-) is an Israeli singer and actor. ...

A well-known hospital in the Bronx, New York is named for him. Montefiore Medical Center, in the Bronx, New York, the university hospital of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is one of the 50 largest employers in New York State[1]. Located in Norwood, it was founded in 1884 as the Home for Chronic Invalids, housing mainly tuberculosis patients. ... The Bronx is one of the five boroughs of New York City. ... Official language(s) English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  Ranked 27th  - Total 54,520 sq mi (141,205 km²)  - Width 285 miles (455 km)  - Length 330 miles (530 km)  - % water 13. ...

Anecdotes

Seal of Montefiore purchasing the land

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 noblemen 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.^[1] Image File history File links 1886_seal_Moses_Montefiore's_land_purchase_in_Jerusalem. ... Image File history File links 1886_seal_Moses_Montefiore's_land_purchase_in_Jerusalem. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Time magazine, September 17, 1923 Israel Zangwill (February 14, 1864 - August 1, 1926) was a British-born Zionist and writer. ...

• Sir Moses Montefiore is featured as a character in the novel "Some Danger Involved" by Will Thomas.

Will Thomas (Born 1958 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania) is a novelist who writes a Victorian mystery series featuring Cyrus Barker, a Scottish detective or private enquiry agent, and his Welsh assistant, Thomas Llewelyn. ...

References

1. ^ Novak, William. The Big Book of Jewish Humor. Harper, 1981. p.83.

See also

• History of the Jews in England

This article is about the history of the Jewish people in England. ...

References

External links

• The Sir Moses Montefiore & Lady Judith Montefiore Heritage Site
• Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore: Part 1 Part2 (PDF).
• Short biography of Sir Moses Montefiore