Benjamin Disraeli served as chancellor of the exchequer beginning in 1852. Between 1858 and 1859, Parliament came to officially allow Jews—an act that paved the way for Disraeli. As prime minister, he purchased the Suez Canal and represented Great Britain in the Congress of Berlin in 1878, at which he officially acquired Cyprus for the British. Disraeli, who was born a Jew, is thought to have converted to Christianity after his father had a quarrel with their synagogue. As a result, Disraeli invented what The New York Times
called a “bogus pedigree” for himself—telling people he had originated in Spain. “Disraeli’s Jewishness,” writes Adam Kirsch in
Benjamin Disraeli, was “the central fact about him.” It was “both the greatest obstacle to his ambition and its greatest engine.”