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Daniel Mendoza (1764-1836)
Mendoza was the heavy-weight boxing champion of England and is considered ’the father of scientific boxing’. He was the first boxer to devise ways of defending himself and, contrary to his height and weight, beat all those he faced. Mendoza changed a lot of stereotypes about Jews being weak and not being able to look after themselves.
Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885)
Montefiore was Sheriff of London, knighted by Queen Victoria and head of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. However, it is for his work abroad that Montefiore is most remembered. He interceded with the Russian government to stop its persecution of Jews and was also a massive benefactor for the Jews of Eretz Yisrael, founding the first Jewish community outside the Jerusalem Old City walls.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Although he was Jewish by birth and circumcised, former British prime minister Disraeli was baptized by his father at the age of thirteen. To be allowed to sit in the British Parliament, Disraeli had to belong to the Church of England, but his allegiance to his ancestors was an open secret.
When responding to an attack on his Jewishness, Disraeli replied: “Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon." Disraeli first became
Prime Minister in 1868 and served again from 1874-1880.
Lionel Nathan De Rothschild (1808-1879)
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Lionel Nathan
De Rothschild | In 1847, Rothschild was first elected to sit in the British Parliament but could not do so as he refused to take the oath that spoke of Christianity as ’the true faith’.
After many attempts to change the law in 1858, Rothschild with a covered head and using the Hebrew term for God was able to claim his seat and became the first openly Jewish parliamentarian.
Paul Reuter (1816-1899)
When telegraphy was evolving, Reuter founded an institute that used carrier pigeons. In 1851, Reuter established one of the first international news agencies in the world (Reuters) establishing a telegraphic link between Britain and the world through the English Channel.
Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952)
Although born in Russia, Weizmann, the first president of the State of Israel, moved to England and massively aided the Allies efforts in WWI with his scientific assistance. While doing so he also made contacts with high ranking British officials. Weizmann was a key component behind the Balfour Declaration, which contained British support for a Jewish state in Palestine. Weizmann was perhaps the most influential political Zionist leader and the Zionist movement’s point man in many negotiations.
Anna Freud (1895-1982)
Continuing the work of her father, Sigmund, Anna Freud pioneered the work of psychoanalysis of children. In an influential 1937 work, she argued that the ego had an active role in resolving conflict and tension. Many child therapists to this day use Freud’s work as the starting point for their research.
Ernst Boris Chain (1906-1979)
Although Chain is less well known than his counterpart, he shared the Nobel Prize with Alexander Fleming for isolating and purifying penicillin.
Philip Green (1952-)
He is one of the wealthiest men in Britain, placing 5th in the latest Sunday Times Rich List. He has amassed an estimated 4.85 billion pound (7.13 billion euros) fortune in the clothing business, and has become famous for spending his money extravagantly. Just this May the billionaire businessman flew more than 300 guests to an exclusive resort in the French Riviera last weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of his son Brandon.
Green became a millionaire at the age of 33 when he sold the Jean Jeanie chain for 3 million pounds (4.4 million euros) a year after buying it for 65,000 pounds (95,000 euros). He now owns the BHS and Arcadia clothing chains and recently purchased the British branch of Etam. The fashion mogul lives in a house in Monaco with his wife and children, Brandon and Chloe, but spends the week at a London hotel allowing him to control his ever increasing business empire.
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