Claude Montefiore

Claude Montefiore
A 1925 painting by Christopher Williams.
Born	1858
Died	1938
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Scholar
Spouse(s)	Florence Fyfe Brereton Ward
Parent(s)	Nathaniel Montefiore
Relatives	Sir Moses Montefiore (paternal great-uncle)

Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore (1858 - 1938) was son of Nathaniel Montefiore, and the great-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore. He was the intellectual founder of Anglo-Liberal Judaism and the founding president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature and New Testament, an influential anti-Zionist leader in the communal body, the Anglo-Jewish Association, and an educator. He was a significant figure in the contexts of modern Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, and Anglo-Jewish socio-politics.

Part of Montefiore's childhood was spent at his family's Coldeast estate in Sarisbury Green, Hampshire.

He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained a first-class honours degree in the classical final examination, and where he came under the influence of Benjamin Jowett and T. H. Green. Intended originally for the ministry of the West London Synagogue, he studied theology in Berlin, but finding himself unable to sympathize with the arrest of the Reform Movement, he devoted himself instead to scholarly and philanthropic pursuits. He nevertheless continued to be a spiritual teacher and preacher, though in a lay capacity, and published a volume of sermons, in conjunction with Israel Abrahams, entitled "Aspects of Judaism" (London, 1894). In 1886, he was selected by the Hibbert trustees to deliver their course of lectures for 1892 ("The Origin of Religion as Illustrated by the Ancient Hebrews"). In these lectures, Montefiore made a permanent contribution to the science of theology. In 1896, he published the first volume of his "Bible for Home Reading," forming a commentary on the Bible with moral reflections from the standpoint of the "higher criticism"; the second volume appeared in 1899. In 1888 Montefiore founded and edited, in conjunction with Israel Abrahams, the "Jewish Quarterly Review", a journal that stood on the very highest level of contemporary Jewish scholarship, and in which numerous contributions from his pen have appeared.