Jerusalem: The Biography

† On the way to St Petersburg he was welcomed to Vilna, a semi-Jewish city filled with so many Talmudic scholars that it was known as ‘the Jerusalem of Lithuania’, by thousands of enthusiastic Jews, but Nicholas did not moderate his polices and as Jewish life worsened, Montefiore later returned to meet Alexander II. It was said that every Jewish shack in Russia had a portrait, almost a Jewish icon, of their champion. ‘At breakfast (in Motol, a village near Pinsk) my grandpa used to tell me stories of the deeds of mighty figures,’ wrote Chaim Weizmann, a future Zionist leader. ‘I was particularly impressed by the visit of Sir Moses Montefiore to Russia, a visit only a generation before my birth but the story was already a legend. Indeed Montefiore was himself, though then still living, already a legend.’