Identifier: jewsinancientmed00hosmuoft (find matches)
Title: The Jews in ancient, mediaeval and modern times
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Hosmer, James Kendall, 1834-1927
Subjects: Jews
Publisher: London : T. Fisher Unwin
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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hundredth birth-day. He united in himself all that is most charac-teristic of his race in mental and physical respects.A close-observer of the old Mosaic law, he showed inhis body the astonishing vigor which a faithful fol-lowing of the sanitary provisions of Pentateuch andTalmud may bring to pass. In mind he had thecharacteristic Jewish sharpness which won for him onthe exchange a colossal fortune ; in spirit he had theJewish intensity, manifested in his case not in anynarrow or selfish way, but in a humanity broad asthe world ; at the same time he cherished with per-fect devotion the traditions and faith of his fore-fathers, and anticipated with enthusiasm the daywhen the throne of David should be again establishedon the holy mountain at Jerusalem. Few biogra-phies can be cited which offer so much that isextraordinary as the varied story of this elder of theHebrews, from his youth to his retirement in hisquiet home by the sea, in Kent. * Life of Sir Moses Montefiore, by Simon Wulfe.
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28o THE STORY OF THE JEWS. His blood was of the best Israelite strain. Anancestor of his was the bold sailor, Lamego, thatcaptain of Vasco de Gama, who brought back toEurope the first intelligence that his admiral hadfound the passage about the Cape of Good Hope.Of his particular family, whose Italian origin is madeplain by the name, Montefiore, the earliest memorialpreserved is a silk ritual curtain in the synagogue atAncona, magnificently embroidered and fringed withgold ; this was the work of an ancestress as far backas 1630, and is suspended before the ark on thegreat festivals. Like the Disraelis, the Montefiorescame to England, when at length, through Cromwell,the bars had been removed, and with the presentcentury reached fame and wealth. Moses Monte-fiores way to fortune was smoothed by his marriagewith the sister-in-law of Nathan Meyer Rothschild.His brother, also, was married to a sister of NathanMeyer ; still a third link bound the families together,for the second son of Nat

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