Sir Moses Montefiore משה מונטיפיורי

A Livornese by birth, he grew rich on the London exchange and at forty withdrew from business to occupy himself only with Jewish affairs. He was born in 5545 (1784) and died in 5645 (1885), three months short of a hundred years. British citizenship and an acquaintance with the queen gave him what the shtadlanim of earlier centuries never had: he came before a sovereign not as a supplicant but as Sir Moses Montefiore.

The Damascus affair. In 5600 a monk disappeared in Damascus and Jews were accused of killing him for his blood; confessions were extracted under torture and several men died. Montefiore, with Adolphe Crémieux, went to Alexandria and Constantinople and obtained the release of the survivors and a firman of the sultan declaring the blood libel false. This is the first affair in which European Jewry acted as one body.

Morocco. In 5623 two Jews of Safi were accused of poisoning a Spaniard and put to death. Montefiore went there, obtained the release of the other prisoners and was received by Sultan Muhammad IV; on 5 February 5624 (1864) the sultan issued a dahir ordering that the Jews of his realm be dealt with justly. The dahir was poorly enforced and changed little on the ground.

The Land of Israel. He went there seven times, beginning in 5587, and commissioned five name-by-name censuses of the Yishuv—of 1839, 1849, 1855, 1866 and 1875; it is by these that we know today who lived there. He wanted the Yishuv to live by work rather than the halukkah: he bought an orchard near Jaffa, put up a windmill outside Jerusalem, and built houses.

And what did not work. The windmill barely turned, the orchard languished, the Yishuv did not come off the halukkah. The Mortara case—a boy secretly baptised and carried off by the church—he lost: in Rome he was not received. He went to Russia as well, and back, and achieved less than he wanted. His measure is not in his successes: he showed that one may intercede openly, in the name of all, and without humiliation.