Diaries…Comprising Their Life and Work as Recorded in Their Diaries From 1812 to 1883… 2 vols.
[Judaica]. Montefiore, Sir Moses and Lady. Diaries…Comprising Their Life and Work as Recorded in Their Diaries From 1812 to 1883...Chicago: Belford-Clarke Co., 1890.
Two vols.; 8vos.; frontispiece portraits of the Montefiores in both volumes; decorated endpapers; some pages lightly foxed; previous owner’s signature in the front of both volumes; blue cloth, stamped in gilt, front covers with elaborate gilt silhouette of Sir and Lady Montefiore; covers lightly worn, edges browned, else good.
First edition of this two volume diary-history of the Montefiore family, champions for international Jewish rights. More than 600 pages of text, providing details of the Montefiores’s political and philanthropic missions on behalf of Jews worldwide and particularly in Palestine. Very scarce.
Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) was born into a prominent and distinguished Italian-English-Jewish family. Although himself a staunch Sephardi, in 1812 Montefiore braved current prejudices by marrying an Askenazi, Judith, the daughter of Levi Barent Cohen and a sister of Mrs. Nathan Meyer Rothschild. (Mrs. Montefiore was born the same year as her husband; she lived until 1862.) Together, the Montefiores became important financial and intellectual contributors to the international Jewish cause. Following its formal establishment in 1836, Moses Montefiore became first president of the London Committee of Deputies of British Jews and was six times elected chief warden of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation. The Montefiores made repeated visits to Palestine from 1827 on; they made personal representations to the Pasha of Egypt concerning the notorious blood-libel and massacre at Damascus, securing an official repudiation of the charge and the release of Jews wrongfully accused; and they visited Russia, Romania, and Morocco rallying for the fair treatment of Jews. Besides their public charities, the Montefiores gained a reputation for personal benevolence. “It is recorded in his [Montefiore’s] diary that on a single evening he responded to as many as sixty requests for aid from indigent Jewish widows, while his support of impoverished Jewish scholars was constant throughout his long life...” (UJE, Vol. 7, pp. 630-1).
Montefiore loved his wife deeply, and after her death he established, in 1866, the Judith Montefiore College in Ramsgate, with Louis Loewe, his amanuensis and the editor of these companion volumes, as its first principal.
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