Tephilah - Prayer Offered Up in the Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews…In Consequence of the Approaching Departure of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore on their Mission to Rome.

<<THE EDGARDO MORTARA AFFAIR.>> This mission to Rome was undertaken by the celebrated English philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore who sought to intercede with Pope Pius IX in order to release young Edgardo Mortara back into the custody of his Jewish parents. Sir Moses co-ordinated his actions with the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, the first Jewish civil and political rights organization in the United States. Gershom Kursheedt who represented the Board, traveled from America to accompany Sir Moses on his mission to Rome. The abduction of six-year old Edgardo Mortara from his home in Bologna, Italy, and his subsequent forced conversion to Catholicism with the connivance of Papal authority, appalled Jews around the world, who demanded the return of the child to his parents. Despite extensive agitation, the Pope would not relent and the child was never returned. Indeed “Pius” Mortara died as an ordained priest in a Belgian abbey in 1940, aged 88 years old. See D. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (1997).