Background
Moses was born on the 24th of October, 1784, in Tuscany, Italy. He was the eldest son of Joseph Elias Montefiore, a London merchant, and of Rachel, daughter of Abraham Lumbroso de Mattos Mocatta.
banker Businessman Financier philanthropist
Moses was born on the 24th of October, 1784, in Tuscany, Italy. He was the eldest son of Joseph Elias Montefiore, a London merchant, and of Rachel, daughter of Abraham Lumbroso de Mattos Mocatta.
In 1837, Moses Montefiore was elected sheriff of London, the second Jew so honoured, and in 1847 he became high sheriff of Kent. He was knighted in 1837 and became a baronet in 1846.
An Orthodox Sefardic Jew (a Jew of Portuguese-Spanish descent), Montefiore is best remembered as a philanthropist and as a zealous fighter for the rights of oppressed Jews all over the world. Besides visiting such countries as Italy, Russia, and Romania on behalf of his co-religionists, he also made seven journeys to Palestine. During his first pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1827 he established a friendship with Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha, sultan of Egypt. In 1840 Montefiore utilized this relationship when he helped secure the release of a number of Damascan Jews (Damascus was then part of ʿAlī’s domain) who had been falsely accused of using Christian blood for religious rites. That year he also persuaded the Turkish sultan to extend to Jews the maximum privileges enjoyed by aliens, privileges he persuaded a later sultan to reaffirm in 1863. In Russia he convinced Tsar Nicholas I to rescind a decree of 1844 that had ordered all Jews to withdraw from the western frontier areas of Russia. In addition he performed a great many private acts of charity, and he contributed a fortune to establish hospitals and charitable institutions in Palestine
Montefiore made a final pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1875 and retired thereafter to his house, East Cliff Lodge, where he maintained a centre of religious observance and theological research.
In the synagogue, Montefiore became the first member of London’s Sephardic Bevis Marks congregation which he faithfully attended Mondays, Thursdays, and Sabbaths to be accepted before the statutory age of twenty-one in 1804. For a time he was even a member of its Lavadores, who washed the dead and prepared bodies for burial.
Moses Montefiore was marred to Judith.