Jerusalem: The Biography

* During his voyage home, a fearsome storm struck the Montefiores’ ship. The sailors feared that the vessel would sink. Montefiore carried, for luck, from the previous year’s Passover, a piece of unleavened matzah, known as the afikoman, which, at the height of the tempest, he cast into the waves. The sea instantly became miraculously quiet. Montefiore believed that this was God’s blessing on a Jerusalem pilgrimage. The Montefiore family today read his account of this event every Passover