The Montefiore Collections

This collection of some four hundred written tributes sent to Sir Moses Montefiore, starting in the 1840s and continuing until 1884, is deposited on loan at University College, London. Most are kept in U.C.L.'s Special Collections Library, Euston Road, London: the remaining few testimonials are stored at the Montefiore Library, London, and included in the list of Montefiore Artefacts.

The following is an edited extract from Professor Chimen Abramsky's note on this collection.

This is a unique collection of great historical interest - and not only for students and scholars of modern Jewish history. No other Jew in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries received such warm tributes from so many Jewish communities in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and from very young Jewish communities in the U.S. and Canada. The Jewish communities of Eastern and Central Europe totally disappeared during the Shoah (Holocaust) and so the tributes sent by them to Sir Moses Montefiore are of very great importance.

Historians may differ on Montefiore's influence on Jewish life and on his influence with governments in helping persecuted Jews, but it is an undeniable historic fact that Jews in many countries saw him as their chief spokesman. Bertrand Russell, the eminent philosopher, wrote in his autobiography that, as a little boy, his grandmother (widow of the former Prime Minister) told him that she would 'take him to see the most famous Jew in the world'. Early Zionists (?the Lovers of Zion') who urgently needed funds to settle Jews in the Holy Land, printed thousands of portraits of Sir Moses to sell in Eastern Europe ? a unique act of homage.

Some of the addresses are important because of the prominent personalities who signed them ? such as outstanding rabbis and scholars, famous writers and political leaders. Other addresses are of immense historical significance for the study of the then new and rising Jewish communities of the U.S.A., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

The collection contains a mixture of manuscript and printed tributes, many of which are decorated and illuminated. Most are written in Hebrew, English, Italian, German and Hungarian: others are in Dutch and Swedish, with a few in Arabic and Turkish.

A project is under way to digitise, translate and publish all the testimonials on-line. Research, for eventual publication, is also taking place at University College London on what may be learned from the testimonials about the self-perception, hopes and expectations of those who sent them, and the special position held by Sir Moses Montefiore as a symbol of the aspirations fo the Jewish world of his day.

Details of access to the U.C.L. Special Collections Library may be found on its website at www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/special-coll/.

You can browse the collection of testimonials on this website.