[6] He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained a first-class honours degree in the classical final examination, and where he came under the influence of Benjamin Jowett and T. H. Green.
Intended originally for the ministry of the West London Synagogue, he studied theology in Berlin, but finding himself unable to sympathise with the arrest of the Reform Movement, he devoted himself instead to scholarly and philanthropic pursuits.
He nevertheless continued to be a spiritual teacher and preacher, though in a lay capacity, and published a volume of sermons, in conjunction with Israel Abrahams, entitled Aspects of Judaism (London, 1894).
Inter alia, he wrote a two-volume commentary on the Synoptic gospels in the early part of the twentieth century, What A Jew Thinks about Jesus, published in 1935, and Judaism and St. Paul (1914).
Montefiore was mainly instrumental in enabling Jewish pupil teachers at elementary schools to enjoy the advantages of training in classes held for the purpose at the universities.
As a revered scholar, philanthropist and spiritual authority, Claude Montefiore belongs to that important group of learned laymen who have sought to revolutionise Judaism.
He was a founder of British Liberal Judaism at the turn of the 20th century, considered to be the most original Anglo-Jewish religious thinker of his day, and still remains a highly controversial figure.