Moses Montefiore
Sir Moses Montefiore (also: Montefiori ) ( born October 24, 1784 in Livorno, Italy, † July 28, 1885 in Ramsgate, Kent) was a British businessman and Sephardic Jewish philanthropist who is considered a pioneer of Zionism.
Life
Montefiore grew up in London. After school he began to work in the tea trade, and was one of the twelve Jew brokers the City. In 1812 he married Judith Cohen, whose sister Nathan Mayer Rothschild married. In 1824 he withdrew from the run with his brother Abraham business and devoted himself to political activities.
After his first trip Palestine in 1827, he was a devout Jew and made the plan to promote the emigration to the Promised Land financially as well as by industrial and agricultural settlements. As chief administrative officer (Sheriff of London from 1837) of almost two meters measured Montefiore in 1838 was knighted by Queen Victoria, appointed High Sheriff of Kent, 1845 and 1846, the first British Jew, appointed a baronet. Montefiore also strove for the interests of Russian Jews and traveled in 1846 from England to Russia to prevent the Tsar Nicholas I planned forced confiscation of the Jews in the Russian Army. From 1839, he was accompanied on his journeys from the orientalist Louis Loewe, who served as his interpreter and secretary in all oriental languages , including Hebrew, and an assistant in his public activities.
In 1857, he was outside the Old City of Jerusalem twenty houses and a sixty-foot high windmill - in today's writers Fellows are housed - build. In order to prevent the persecution of Jews, he also traveled to Morocco in 1863 and 1867 to Romania.
Montefiore was a member of the Federation of the Freemasons, his Mother Lodge was the Mount Moriah Lodge in London. Even today wearing Masonic lodges such as the Lodge was founded in London in 1864, the Lodge was founded in 1888 in Glasgow and the Lodge was founded in 1996 in Tel Aviv his name.
Honors
- From living in Warsaw Zionist community, the Ohel Moshe Synagogue (Warsaw) was founded and named after him.