Public domain

A German-born banker who rose to lead Kuhn, Loeb & Co. on Wall Street, Schiff helped finance the expansion of American railroads and, in a move that startled contemporaries, provided financing for Japan's war effort against Tsarist Russia in 1904–05 — a deliberate rebuke of a regime that persecuted its Jewish subjects. From roughly 1880 to 1920 he was the most influential Jewish leader in America, organizing relief for Russian Jewish refugees and using his financial standing to press against antisemitism at home and abroad.