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February 5, 2010
An extraordinary, inspiring life
Sir Moses Montefiore advocated to better the lives of Jews in the Middle East and Europe.
EUGENE KAELLIS
If fate were somehow to grant you several wishes, which would you choose? Sir Moses Montefiore, one of the most famous Jews of the 19th century, had whatever he needed to mark him as a “success” in life. He was attractive, invariably polite and thoughtful, educated, well regarded by his colleagues, and both rewarded and honored by Queen Victoria herself, who, on the advice of Lord Palmerston, made him a baronet.
Nonetheless, at least two things markedly distinguished Montefiore from his peers. One was that, no matter with whom or where he was, he faithfully and punctiliously followed Jewish rituals and prayers. A person who could put duty before ordinary attitudes of distaste, Montefiore was a member of the Chevra Kadisha of his synagogue, those who prepare the dead for proper Jewish burial.
His other distinction was that, on reaching the age of 43, with a fine house, servants, a profitable business and a loving family, he decided to leave the financial world behind him and devote the rest of, what turned out be, his very long life to advocating for Jews, distributing munificence among them, and diminishing their distress. This involved him taking many far-flung journeys, most to the Middle East.
His successes were many. He traveled to Damascus to personally petition Mohammed Ali, sultan of Egypt, hoping Jews would be allowed to settle in Syria, which was then part of Egypt’s domain. He successfully pleaded for the release of Jewish victims in Damascus, in what was one of the last known cases of “blood libel,” a centuries-old method of criminalizing and dehumanizing Jews. He wrung a decree from the Ottoman emperor that Jews would be granted the privileges of aliens, rather than placed under more onerous restrictions and subjected to further ignominies.
He interviewed the czar, remarkably persuading him to relinquish a ukase (decree) that would have forced Russian Jews to move away from the German and Austrian borders, where they were heavily concentrated. He journeyed to the Vatican; again seeking to right unfair actions against Jews. He traveled to Morocco trying to calm an outbreak of violent antisemitism. Once more, he returned to Syria to provide relief from the consequences of a plague of locusts and the spread of cholera.
In Britain, Montefiore worked hard to eliminate remaining legal restrictions evidently discriminatory against Jews. He repeatedly petitioned Parliament for removal of the Christian oath required for being seated in the House of Commons. Lionel Rothschild, for example, had been elected three times to the House and three times was denied a seat because he declined to take the oath. Finally, in 1858, an act of Parliament removed this requirement.
Montefiore was a man of unquestionable charm, culture and persuasiveness, a philanthropist without peer. He was also an imposing man: six feet, three inches tall, he had a muscular figure. Montefiore was appointed the second Jewish sheriff of “The City” (the financial centre in London). In 1838, Montefiore and his wife took their first trip to Palestine, and went again to Syria with the hope of convincing Ali to permit Jewish colonization in the Middle East.
The Turks were interested in seeing Jews colonize Palestine but they wanted only affluent Jews who could afford to pay financial tribute to the government. But Montefiore persisted and, in 1863, the sultan liberalized his requirements.
A major problem for the settlers in Jerusalem was the scarcity of water in the summer months. Montefiore resolved to renovate and expand the water supply. After a period
of drought in 1865, famine and plague swept across Palestine. A new Holy Land Relief Fund, motivated and in part financed by Montefiore, helped alleviate the suffering.
In 1846, he went to St. Petersburg for an audience with Czar Nicholas I. To mark the occasion, in a highly unusual move, the czar ordered that for that day only the Palace Guard would be composed entirely of Jewish soldiers, 100,000 of whom had been conscripted into the army – how this was supposed to impress Montefiore is not known. He went on to visit Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement, greeted with great joy and dispensing largess. “I was pained,” he wrote, “to witness how some labor for a bit of bread.” There were thousands working on the roads, breaking stones and truly happy when they could get even that humiliating employment.”
In a separate report to Count Kisseleff, a central figure in the Russian court, Montefiore tabulated serious injustices perpetrated on Jews, who comprised one quarter of the Polish population (then part of the czarist empire): they were denied land ownership, could not employ apprentices, had to pay excessive tax on kosher food and were prohibited or severely limited in participating in certain professions. The list was long. The only easements attainable were through bribery. When Montefiore returned to Russia in 1872, he noted that 12,000 wealthy Jews had been able to settle in St. Petersburg. Otherwise, things had not improved.
His repeated trips to Palestine and other areas of the Middle East were always made under difficult circumstances. Aside from the usual 19th-century vagaries of travel, such as banditry, the more remote areas of Europe and the Middle East were often the sites of endemic cholera, malaria, typhoid, smallpox and dysentery.
In spite of discouragement, skepticism in the Jewish communities of the West, and lethargy in the East, Montefiore persevered. By mid-century there were Jewish majorities in Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed. Their conditions were so poor, however, that some of their children were sold to monasteries to save them and their parents from starvation. Montefiore was appalled by these circumstances and, though he often gave charity spontaneously and on the spot, his plan was to create self-sustaining agricultural communities. He envisioned towns around a central square, with spaces allotted equally to Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. Each house would have a garden with grape vines, vegetables and olive trees. A large windmill in Jerusalem for grinding grain, still a tourist attraction in Jerusalem, was built with Montefiore’s financial assistance.
In 1862, Lady Judith Montefiore, Moses’ wife for 50 years, who had accompanied him on many of his trips and had engaged in her own philanthropy in the field of education, died.
For the remainder of his life – he died in 1885 in his 101st year – Sir Montefiore was lauded by all who knew him, including Queen Victoria, and by the many thousands of people whom he had benefited, not only with his endowments, but with the example of offering himself in the struggle for justice and dignity for the Jewish people.
Dr. Eugene Kaellis is the author of Face Off or Interface? (2009), a book that deals with the relationship between science and religion. It is available at lulu.com.
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