Judith Cohen Montefiore

“First Lady of Anglo-Jewry,” Lady Judith Cohen Montefiore was highly educated in languages, literature, and the arts. She was an influential force for Sir Moses Montefiore, whom she married in 1812. Montefiore traveled the world to advocate for Jews in trouble. She accompanied her husband, Moses, to Russia to protest the expulsion of Jews from Polish border areas. Her travel diary preserves a sense of what the Holy Land was like in the nineteenth century, as she sought to alleviate the neediness of its impoverished Jewish community. She published an account of their second visitto Palestine in her Private Journal of a Visit to Egypt and Palestine (an excerpt of which appears in this volume). In 1846 she wrote (or cowrote) the first Anglo-Jewish cookbook, The Jewish Manual by “A Lady.” Montefiore was an active philanthropist who supported Jewish communal organizations. Although not strictly observant in her youth, she later became Orthodox in her practice. Her husband founded Lady Judith Montefiore College in her honor.