Israeli currency 1 Sheqel banknote 1978 Bank of Israel
Obverse: Portrait of Moses Montefiore; the Mishkenot Sha'ananim quarter in Jerusalem with the Montefiore Windmill; the denomination "One Sheqel" and "Bank of Israel" in Hebrew.
Reverse: Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem; "Bank of Israel" in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
Watermark: Profile of Moshe Montefiori.
Sign for the blind: Two black dots in the lower left-hand corner of the front.
Colour of numbering: Black.
Signatures: Governor of the Bank Arnon Gafni; Chairman of the Advisory Council David Horowitz.
Design: Paul Kor, Adrian Senger.
Year: 1978.
Date of issue: February 24, 1980.
Ceased to be legal tender: September 4, 1986.
Size: 135 X 76 mm.
Dominant colour: Purple.
Israel Banknotes - Israel Paper Money
Currency reform 1980, 10 Lirot = 1 Sheqel.
1 Sheqel 5 Sheqalim 10 Sheqalim 50 Sheqalim 100 Sheqalim
500 Sheqalim 1000 Sheqalim 5000 Sheqalim 10000 Sheqalim
Moses Montefiore
Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet (Leghorn, Italy, 24 October 1784 – 28 July 1885) was a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London. Born to an Italian Jewish family, he donated large sums of money to promote industry, business, economic development, education and health amongst the Jewish community in the Levant (modern day Israel), including the founding of Mishkenot Sha'ananim in 1860, the first settlement of the New Yishuv. As President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, his correspondence with the British consul in Damascus Charles Henry Churchill in 1841-42 is seen as pivotal to the development of Proto-Zionism.
Moses Montefiore was born in Leghorn (Livorno in Italian), Tuscany, in 1784, to a Sephardic Jewish family based in Great Britain. His grandfather, Moses Vita (Haim) Montefiore, had emigrated from Livorno to London in the 1740s, but retained close contact with the town, then famous for its straw bonnets. Montefiore was born while his parents, Joseph Elias Montefiore and his young wife Rachel, the daughter of Abraham Mocatta, a powerful bullion broker in London, were in the town on a business journey; he was their first child.
The family returned to Kennington in London, where Montefiore went to school, but because of his family's precarious situation, Montefiore did not complete his schooling and he went out to work to help with the family's finances. He worked for a wholesale tea merchant and grocer and then entered a counting house in the City of London. In 1803 he entered the London Stock Exchange, but lost all of his clients money in 1806 in a fraud perpetrated by Elkin Daniels. As a result, he probably had to sell or hand in his broker's license. Between 1810 and 1814 Montefiore was part of the Surrey Militia. In 1815, Montefiroe bought again a broker's license, operated briefly a joint venture with his brother Abraham until 1816, and largely closed down his trading activities in 1820.
In 1812, Moses Montefiore married Judith Cohen (1784–1862), daughter of Levy Barent Cohen. Her sister, Henriette (or Hannah) (1783–1850), married Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777–1836), for whom Montefiore's firm acted as stockbrokers. Nathan Rothschild headed the family's banking business in Britain, and the two brothers-in-law became business partners. Montefiore retired from his business in 1820, and used his time and fortune for communal and civic responsibilities. In 1836 he became a governor of Christ's Hospital, the Bluecoat school, after assisting in the case of a distressed man who had appealed to Montefiore to help his soon-to-be-widowed wife and son. Physically imposing at 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m), he was elected Sheriff of London in 1837 and served until 1838. He was also knighted that same year by Queen Victoria and received a baronetcy in 1846 in recognition of his services to humanitarian causes on behalf of the Jewish people.
Though somewhat lax in religious observance in his early life, after his first visit to the Holy Land in 1827, he became a strictly observant Jew. He was in the habit of traveling with a personal shohet (ritual slaughterer), to ensure that he would have a ready supply of kosher meat. Following this shift he exerted a strong influence in limiting the growth of the Reform Jewish movement in England of the time.
In 1831, Montefiore purchased a country estate with twenty-four acres on the East Cliff of the then fashionable seaside town of Ramsgate. The property had previously been a country house of Queen Caroline, when she was still Princess of Wales. It had then been owned by the Marquess Wellesley, a brother of the Duke of Wellington.
Soon afterwards, Montefiore purchased the adjoining land and commissioned his cousin, architect David Mocatta, to design a private synagogue, known as the Montefiore Synagogue. It opened with a grand public ceremony in 1833.
Montefiore died in 1885, at age 100. He had no known children and his principal heir in both name and property was a nephew, Joseph Sebag Montefiore.
Communal leadership
After retiring from business in 1820, Montefiore devoted the rest of his life to philanthropy. He was president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1835 to 1874, a period of 39 years, the longest tenure ever, and member of Bevis Marks Synagogue. As president, his correspondence with the British consul in Damascus Charles Henry Churchill in 1841–1842 is seen as pivotal to the development of Proto-Zionism.
In business, he was an innovator, investing in the supply of piped gas for street lighting to European cities via the Imperial Continental Gas Association. He was among the founding consortium of the Alliance Life Assurance Company, and a director of the Provincial Bank of Ireland. Highly regarded in the City, he was elected as Sheriff of the City of London in 1836, and knighted by Queen Victoria in 1837.
From retirement until the day he died, he devoted himself to philanthropy, particularly alleviating the distress of Jews abroad. He went to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1840 to liberate from prison ten Syrian Jews of Damascus arrested after a blood libel; to Rome in 1858 to try to free the Jewish youth Edgardo Mortara, who had been seized by the Catholic Church after an alleged baptism by a Catholic servant; to Russia in 1846 and 1872; to Morocco in 1864 and to Romania in 1867. It was these missions that made him a folk hero of near mythological proportions among the oppressed Jews of Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Levant.
Montefiore is mentioned in Charles Dickens' diaries, in the personal papers of George Eliot, and in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. It is known that he had contacts with non-conformists and social reformers in Victorian England. He was active in public initiatives aimed at alleviating the persecution of minorities in the Middle East and elsewhere, and he worked closely with organisations that campaigned for the abolition of slavery. A Government loan raised by the Rothschilds and Montefiore in 1835 enabled the British Government to compensate plantation owners and thus abolish slavery in the Empire.
Montefiore's 100th birthday was celebrated as a national event in Britain and by Jews around the world. His birthdays, activities, and death were closely covered in the British press of the time.
Montefiore’s life was also bound up with the town of Ramsgate, Kent, on the southeastern coast of England. In the 1830s he and Judith had bought East Cliff Lodge, a country estate (then) adjacent to the town, very much in the manner of the Victorian Jewish gentry. He played an important role in Ramsgate affairs, and one of the local ridings still bears his name. In 1845 he served as High Sheriff of Kent In 1873, the year of his 89th birthday, a local newspaper mistakenly ran his obituary. "Thank God to have been able to hear of the rumour", he wrote to the editor, "and to read an account of the same with my own eyes, without using spectacles." The average British life expectancy in Montefiore's time was less than 50 years.
The town celebrated his 99th and his 100th birthdays in great style, and every local charity (and church) benefited from his philanthropy. At East Cliff Lodge, he established a Sephardic yeshiva (Judith Lady Montefiore College) after the death of his wife in 1862. On the grounds he built the elegant, Regency architecture Montefiore Synagogue and mausoleum modeled on Rachel's Tomb outside Bethlehem (whose refurbishment and upkeep he had paid for). Judith was laid to rest there in 1862, and Montefiore himself was buried there in 1885. In recent years, the site has become a source of controversy as real-estate developers are eyeing it for commercial development.
The estate was sold to the Borough of Ramsgate around 1952, and the Lodge was demolished in 1954. All that remains today is a new building housing a firm of architects which incorporates parts of the original structure, called the Coach House. There are also some outbuildings (including the Gate House) and the Italianate Greenhouse has been restored to its former glory in recent years. The Greenhouse and the rest of the estate has been turned into King George VI Memorial Park. On the Gate House, is a plaque to Sir Moses.
Philanthropy in Ottoman Palestine
Jewish philanthropy and the Holy Land were at the center of Montefiore's interests. He traveled there by carriage and by ship seven times, sometimes accompanied by his wife. He visited there in 1827, 1838, 1849, 1855, 1857, 1866, and 1875. In Montefiore's time, these voyages were arduous and not without danger. He made his last journey there at the age of 91.
Although Montefiore only spent a few days in Jerusalem, the 1827 visit changed his life. He resolved to increase his religious observance and to attend synagogue on Shabbat, as well as Mondays and Thursdays when the Torah is read. While his observance of Jewish law was not as strict in his younger years (evidenced by Judith’s descriptions of the meals they enjoyed in inns along the south coast of England on their honeymoon in 1812), from then on, he lived a life of piety and Jewish observance.
In 1854 his friend Judah Touro, a wealthy American Jew, died having bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential settlement in Palestine. Montefiore was appointed executor of his will, and used the funds for a variety of projects aimed at encouraging the Jews to engage in productive labor. In 1855, he purchased an orchard on the outskirts of Jaffa that offered agricultural training to the Jews.
In 1860, he built the first Jewish residential settlement and almshouse outside the old walled city of Jerusalem, today known as Mishkenot Sha'ananim. This became the first settlement of the New Yishuv. Living outside the city walls was dangerous at the time, due to lawlessness and bandits. Montefiore offered financial inducement to encourage poor families to move there. Later on, Montefiore established adjacent neighborhoods south of Jaffa Road, the Ohel Moshe neighborhood for Sephardic Jews and the Mazkeret Moshe neighborhood for Ashkenazi Jews.
Montefiore donated large sums of money to promote industry, education and health amongst the Jewish community in Palestine. The project, bearing the hallmarks of nineteenth-century artisanal revival, aimed to promote productive enterprise in the Yishuv. The builders were brought over from England. These activities were part of a broader program to enable the Old Yishuv to become self-supporting in anticipation of the establishment of a Jewish homeland.
Montefiore built the Montefiore Windmill in an area which later became the Yemin Moshe neighbourhood, to provide cheap flour to poor Jews, a printing press and textile factory, and helped to finance several Bilu agricultural colonies. He also attempted to acquire arable land for Jewish cultivation, but was hampered by Ottoman restrictions on land sale to non-Muslims. The Jews of Old Yishuv referred to their patron as "ha-Sar Montefiore" ('The Prince' or simply 'Prince' Montefiore), a title perpetuated in Hebrew literature and song.
A major source of information about the Yishuv, or Jewish community in Palestine during the 19th century, is a sequence of censuses commissioned by Montefiore, in 1839, 1849, 1855, 1866 and 1875. The censuses attempted to list every Jew individually, together with some biographical and social information (such as their family structure, place of origin, and degree of poverty).
Commemoration
The Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, is named for him. On the second floor of the East Wing (Silver Zone, North Building/Foreman Pavilion), there is a bust of Montefiore. The nose on the bust is still a bright polished brass because many will rub the nose as they pass for luck. A branch of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also bears his name. Chicago's West Side is home to a reform school of higher education, Moses Montefiore Academy, named in honor of him.
A number of synagogues were named in honor of Montefiore, including the 1913 Montifiore Institute, now preserved as the Little Synagogue on the Prairie, Moses Montefiore Congregation in Bloomington, Illinois, Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah in Baltimore, Maryland and Temple Moses Montefiore in Marshall, Texas, the first Reform temple in East Texas.
The Montefiore Club was a private social and business association, catering to the Jewish community, located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
In Israel, Montefiore is commemorated in several cities by streets named after him. He was also commemorated on two Israeli banknotes. These were the 10 lirot, which was in circulation from 1970-1979, and the 1-shekel, which was legal tender from 1980 to 1986. Both had the same design, showing the Jaffa Gate on the reverse.
The Dolphin's Barn Jewish cemetery in Dublin, Ireland, is dedicated to Montefiore.
Anecdotes
Montefiore was renowned for his quick and sharp wit. A popularly circulated anecdote, possibly apocryphal, relates that at a dinner party he was once seated next to a nobleman who was known to be an anti-Semite. The nobleman told Montefiore that he had just returned from a trip to Japan, where "they have neither pigs nor Jews." Montefiore is reported to have responded immediately, "in that case, you and I should go there, so it will have a sample of each" (a similar anecdote is told of Israel Zangwill.)
Montefiore coat of arms
According to Arthur Charles Fox-Davies in Armorial Families, Montefiore's blazon reads as follows: Argent, a cedar tree between two mounts of flowers proper, on a chief azure, a dagger erect proper, Pommel and hilt or, between two mullets of six points gold. Mantling—vert and argent. Crest—On a wreath of the colours, two mounts as in the arms, therefrom issuant a demi-lion or, supporting a flagstaff proper, thereon hoisted a forked pennant flying towards the sinister azure, inscribed "Jerusalem" in Hebrew characters gold. Motto—"Think and thank." Supporters—According to a Royal Warrant, 10 Dec. 1886, to descend with Baronetcy, Dexter, a lion guardant or; sinister, a stag proper attired or, each supporting a flagstaff proper, therefrom flowing a banner to the dexter azure, inscribed "Jerusalem" in Hebrew characters gold.
Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem
Jaffa Gate (Hebrew: Sha'ar Yafo; Arabic: Bab el-Khalil, "Hebron Gate"; also Arabic, Bab Mihrab Daud, "Gate of the Prayer Niche of David"; also David's Gate) is a stone portal in the historic walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is one of eight gates in Jerusalem's Old City walls.
Jaffa Gate is the only one of the Old City gates positioned at a right angle to the wall. This could have been done as a defensive measure to slow down oncoming attackers, or to orient it in the direction of Jaffa Road, from which pilgrims arrived at the end of their journey from the port of Jaffa.
Both the Jaffa Gate and Jaffa Road are named after the port of Jaffa, from which the Prophet Jonah embarked on his sea journey and pilgrims debarked on their trip to the Holy City. The modern-day Highway 1, which starts from the western end of Jaffa Road, completes the same route to Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
The Arabic name for the gate, Bab el-Khalil (Gate of the Friend), refers to Abraham, the beloved of God who is buried in Hebron. Since Abraham lived in Hebron, another name for the Jaffa Gate is "Hebron Gate". The Arabs also called this gate Bab Mihrab Daud (Gate of the Prayer Niche of David), since King David is considered a prophet by Islam. The Crusaders, who rebuilt the citadel to the south of Jaffa Gate, also built a gate behind the present location of Jaffa Gate, calling it "David's Gate".
Architecture
Like the stones used for the rest of the Old City walls, the stones of Jaffa Gate are large, hewn, sand-colored blocks. The entryway stands about 20 feet (6 meters) high, and the wall rises another 20 feet above that.
Immediately next to the old gate, which is used only by pedestrians, is a breach in the wall, through which the roadway passes. According to legend, this was made in 1898 when German Emperor Wilhelm II insisted on entering the city mounted on his white horse. Local legend said that Jerusalem would be ruled by a king who entered the city's gates on a white horse, so to satisfy the emperor's vanity and avoid the fate foretold by legend, a breach was made in the wall rather than allow him to ride through a gate. However, photographs from 1880 show that the city wall was never continuous at that point owing to a moat around the Citadel / Tower of David that interrupted the wall's path. The moat has since been filled in, leaving the gap today.
Tower of David / the Citadel
The Tower of David is an ancient citadel located near the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem. Built to strengthen a strategically weak point in the Old City's defenses, the citadel that stands today was constructed during the 2nd century BCE and subsequently destroyed and rebuilt by, in succession, the Christian, Muslim, Mamluk, and Ottoman conquerors of Jerusalem. The strong bulwarks still seen today surrounding the base of the tower are believed to have been built by king Herod, in memorial of his brother, and was formerly named the Tower of Phasael (Hebrew: מגדל פצאל). During the Jewish war with Rome, Simon bar Giora made the tower his place of residence. Of the original tower itself, some sixteen courses of the original stone ashlars can still be seen rising from ground level, upon which were added smaller stones in a later period, which added significantly to its height. The site contains important archaeological finds dating back 2,700 years, and is a popular venue for benefit events, craft shows, concerts, and sound-and-light performances.
Kilometre Zero of Israel
After the recapture of Jerusalem in CE 132 the emperor Hadrian had the city rebuilt as a Roman city called Aelia Capitolina and a tall pillar in the plaza inside the Damascus Gate was the starting point for measurements to other cities, as indicated in the mosaic Madaba Map. This pillar appears to have fallen or been demolished during the Byzantine period.
In the 20th Century the plaza outside the Jaffa Gate served the same purpose. During the British Mandate for Palestine a marker outside the doorway served as the zero point for distances to and from Jerusalem. There is no such marker today.
Bezalel Pavilion
Bezalel Pavilion near Jaffa Gate was a tin-plated wooden structure with a jagged roof and tower, built in 1912 at a shop and showroom in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. It was designed specifically for tourists and passersby on their way to and exiting the Old City. The pavilion was destroyed six years after it was established.
Clock Tower
In 1907 a clock was built on the roof of the Jaffa Gate and in 1908 a clock tower was built over the gate to serve the developing business district in the upper part of the Hinnom Valley. It was meant to be one of approximately one hundred such clock towers built throughout the Ottoman Empire in 1900 in celebration of the 25th year of rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The tower cost 20,000 francs; such was the poverty of the city that the money was not raised – and therefore the clock tower was not completed – until 1908.
Seven such clock towers were erected in what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories – in Safed, Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Jerusalem, and the famous tower in Jaffa. The fact that the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem was selected for the clock tower indicates the gate's importance at the time, even more than the Damascus Gate.
The clock tower was built of limestone quarried from the nearby Zedekiah's Cave. It stood 13 feet tall, and was topped by four clock faces, oriented to the cardinal compass points. The eastern and western faces showed official time (European time) while the northern and southern faces showed local time. Above the clock faces was a bell and the crescent and star symbol of Ottoman rule.
The Turkish clock tower only lasted for a decade and was knocked down by the British in 1922 – for aesthetical reasons. The clock itself was re-erected on a modern, far less decorated tower at Allenby Square near the British Post Office and City Hall; this British-built tower was itself ultimately demolished in 1934.
Turkish-Ottoman Sebil
At the entrance to Jaffa Gate, near the Bezalel Pavilion, was a sebil built by the Sultan.
History
Jaffa Gate was inaugurated in 1538 as part of the rebuilding of the Old City walls by Suleiman the Magnificent.
Just inside the gate, behind an iron grating on the left, lie two tombs. These are believed to be the graves of the two architects whom Suleiman commissioned to construct the Old City walls. According to legend, when Suleiman saw that the architects had left Mount Zion and the tomb of King David out of the enclosure, he ordered them killed. However, in deference to their impressive achievement, he had them buried inside the walls next to Jaffa Gate.
In 1917, British general Edmund Allenby entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate, giving a speech at the nearby Tower of David. Allenby entered the city on foot in a show of respect for the city and a desire to avoid comparison with the Kaiser's entry in 1898. The British demolished other buildings adjoining the city wall in 1944 in an attempt to preserve Jerusalem's historic vistas.
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Israeli forces fought hard to connect the Jewish Quarter of the Old City with Israeli-held western Jerusalem by controlling the Jaffa Gate. Israeli forces were not able to gain control of the gate until the Six Day War in 1967.
In 2000, Pope John Paul II came through Jaffa Gate to the Old City during his visit in Israel in the Holy Year.
The street leading east from the Jaffa Gate was once called "Capital Street" but today is known as "David Street" and is one of the principal streets for souvenir shopping.
Topography
Inside Jaffa Gate is a small square with entrances to the Christian Quarter (on the left), Muslim Quarter (straight ahead) and the Armenian Quarter (to the right, past the Tower of David). A tourist information office and shops line the square. The entrance to the Muslim Quarter is part of the suq (marketplace).
The gate's location is determined by the city's topography, located along the valley followed by Jaffa Road into the old city, between the northern hill of the Acra and the southern hill of Mount Zion. The road and the valley it follows continue eastward and down into the Tyropoeon Valley, bisecting the northern and southern halves of the city, with the Christian and Muslim Quarters to the north, and Armenian and Jewish Quarters to the south.
South of the Jaffa Gate is the Tower of David, one of Jerusalem's distinctive landmarks. It is believed to be built on the site of Herod the Great's tower Phasael, but the present fortress was built during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. It is called the Tower of David because of an association with a tower described in the Hebrew Bible.
Renovation
Jaffa Gate is heavily used by pedestrians and vehicles alike. In the early 2000s (decade), the road straddling the gate was moved further west and a plaza constructed in its stead to connect Jaffa Gate with the soon-to-be-built Mamilla shopping mall across the street.
In 2010, the Israel Antiquities Authority completed a two-month restoration and cleaning of Jaffa Gate as part of a $4 million project begun in 2007 to renovate the length of the Old City walls. The clean-up included replacing broken stones, cleaning the walls of decades of car exhaust, and reattaching an elaborate Arabic inscription erected at the gate's original dedication in 1593. Bullet fragments in the gate, from fighting in the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, were preserved. Infrastructure work beside Jaffa Gate also uncovered an ancient aqueduct dating from the 2nd or 3rd century CE.
Mishkenot Sha'ananim
Mishkenot Sha’ananim (Hebrew: משכנות שאננים, lit. Peaceful Habitation) was the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, on a hill directly across from Mount Zion. It was the first area of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem outside the Old City walls, and was one of the first structures to be built outside the Old City of Jerusalem, the others being Kerem Avraham, the Schneller Orphanage, Bishop Gobat school and the Russian Compound,
History
Ottoman era
Mishkenot Sha'anim was built by British Jewish banker and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore in 1860 as an almshouse, paid for by the estate of an American Jewish businessman from New Orleans, Judah Touro. Since it was outside the walls and open to Bedouin raids, pillage and general banditry rampant in the region at the time, the Jews were reluctant to move in, even though the housing was luxurious compared to the derelict and overcrowded houses in the Old City. As an incentive, people were even paid to live there, and a stone wall was built around the compound with a heavy door that was locked at night. The name of the neighborhood was taken from Book of Isaiah 32:18: "My people will abide in peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places."
Jordanian era
After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, when the Old City was captured by the Arab Legion, Mishkenot Sha'ananim bordered on no man's land in proximity to the armistice line with the Kingdom of Jordan, and many residents left in the wake of sniper attacks by Jordanian Arab Legionnaires. Only the poorest inhabitants remained, turning the complex into a slum.had left, with Arabs from the surrounding towns and villages (particularly Hebron) buying the homes and land the émigrés left behind.
Restoration after 1967
The no-man's-land bordering Mishkenot Sha'ananim was occupied by Israel during the 1967 War, together with the rest of Eastern and Old Jerusalem.
In 1973, Mishkenot Sha'ananim was turned into an upscale guesthouse for internationally acclaimed authors, artists and musicians visiting Israel. Apart from guesthouse facilities, it is now a convention center and home of the Jerusalem Music Center. The music center was inaugurated by Pablo Casals shortly before his death.
The Jerusalem Center for Ethics was established in Mishkenot Sha’ananim in 1997. The board of directors is headed by Prof. Yitzhak Zamir, a retired justice of the Israeli Supreme Court.
Montefiore Windmill
The Montefiore Windmill is a landmark windmill in Jerusalem, Israel. Designed as a flour mill, it was built in 1857 on a slope opposite the western city walls of Jerusalem, where three years later the new Jewish neighbourhood of Mishkenot Sha'ananim was erected, both by the efforts of British Jewish banker and philanthropist Moses Montefiore. Jerusalem at the time was part of Ottoman-ruled Palestine. Today the windmill serves as a small museum dedicated to the achievements of Montefiore. It was restored in 2012 with a new cap and sails in the style of the originals. The mill can turn in the wind.
The windmill and the neighbourhood of Mishkenot Sha'ananim were both funded by the British Jewish banker and philanthropist Moses Montefiore, who devoted his life to promoting industry, education and health in the Land of Israel. Montefiore built the windmill with funding from the estate of an American Jew, Judah Touro, who appointed Montefiore executor of his will. Montefiore mentions the windmill in his diaries (1875), noting that he had built it 18 years earlier on the estate of Kerem-Moshe-ve-Yehoodit (lit. "the orchard of Moses and Judith"), and that it had since been joined by two other windmills nearby, owned by Greeks. The project, bearing the hallmarks of nineteenth-century artisan revival, aimed to promote productive enterprise in the yishuv.
The mill was designed by Messrs Holman Brothers, the Canterbury, Kent millwrights. The stone for the tower was quarried locally. The tower walls were 3 feet (0.91 m) thick at the base and almost 50 feet (15.24 m) high. Parts were shipped to Jaffa, where there were no suitable facilities for landing the heavy machinery. Transport of the machinery to Jerusalem had to be carried out by camel. In its original form, the mill had a Kentish-style cap and four patent sails. It was turned to face into the wind by a fantail. The mill drove two pairs of millstones, flour dressers, wheat cleaners and other machinery.
The construction of the mill was part of a broader program to enable the Jews of Palestine to become self-supporting. Montefiore also built a printing press and a textile factory, and helped to finance several agricultural colonies. He attempted to acquire land for Jewish cultivation, but was hampered by Ottoman restrictions on land sale to non-Muslims.
The mill was not a success due to a lack of wind. Wind conditions in Jerusalem could not guarantee its continued operation. There were probably no more than 20 days a year with strong enough breezes. Another reason for the mill's failure was technological. The machinery was designed for soft European wheat, which required less wind power than the local wheat. Nevertheless, the mill operated for nearly two decades until the first steam-powered mill was completed in Jerusalem in 1878.
In the late 19th century the mill became neglected and abandoned and it was not until the 1930s that it was cosmetically restored by British Mandate authorities together with the Pro-Jerusalem Society. During this restoration decorative, non-functional fixed sails were placed at the top of the structure. Over the years the building's condition had deteriorated again and following the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War another cosmetic restoration was carried out, as part of which a decorative bronze cap was also added to the structure. In 2012 these decorative elements were removed and the mill was completely restored to full working order using the original 1850s plans (which were located in the British Library) as a guide.
Anecdotes
Two anecdotes about the windmill appear in a 1933 book, which refers to it as the Jaffa Gate Mill. The first is that there was much opposition from among the local millers to the windmill, who looked upon it with the evil eye and sent their head man to curse it. Predictions were made that the mill would be washed away during the rainy season; after it survived intact, it was declared to be the work of Satan. The second is that the Arabs developed a taste for the lubricating oil on the bearings and would lick them, prompting fear the mill would burn down from the resulting friction. The solution was said to be placing a leg of pork in the oil barrel, whereafter the Arabs lost a taste for the oil.
1948 War of Independence
During the 1948 blockade of Jerusalem the Jewish Haganah fighters built an observation post at the top of the tower. In an attempt to impede their activities, the British authorities ordered the windmill be blown up in an operation mockingly dubbed by the population "Operation Don Quixote." By chance however, the unit tasked with destroying the windmill happened to be from Ramsgate, home to Montefiore's long-time residence. When the soldiers observed the name of their hometown next to Montefiore's on a plaque displayed on the building, they "re-interpreted" their orders and blew up only the observation post at the top of the tower, rather than the entire structure.
Montefiore carriage
In a glassed-in room at the windmill is a replica of the famous carriage Sir Moses Montefiore used in his travels. The original carriage was brought to Palestine by Boris Schatz, the founder of the Bezalel Academy of Art, but was destroyed in an arson fire at the site in 1986.
Restoration
The mill was restored in 2012 as part of the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. A Dutch organisation, "Christians for Israel" (Dutch: Stichting Christenen voor Israël), is behind the scheme. A model of Stelling Minnis windmill, built by Tom Holman, was temporarily taken to the Netherlands to help raise funds for the restoration. None of the original machinery survives. Millwright Willem Dijkstra rebuilt the floors, sails, cap and machinery in his workshop in Sloten, the Netherlands in cooperation with Dutch construction company Lont and British millwright Vincent Pargeter. The windshaft was cast and machined at Sanders’ Ijzergieterij en Machinefabriek B.V. (Sanders foundry and machines factory) in Goor, the Netherlands. The parts were then shipped to Israel and reassembled on site. Dijkstra, his family and employee temporarily moved to Israel to help with the restoration. The cap and sails were lifted into place on July 25, 2012, and the mill was turning for the first time again on August 6. The first bag of flour was ground in May 2013.