Having been brought up in the Church of England, he reverted in the 1930s to his family's original Judaism and became a champion of Zionism, hoping that the Jews and Arabs could live harmoniously alongside each other. He advocated the evacuation of Jews from Germany to Palestine and supported the formation of an independent state of Palestine as part of the British Commonwealth. He was chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and took an interest in the Maccabi Jewish youth organisation.

The death occurred on Sabbath at Miami. Florida, at the age of 50, of Lord Melchett. who had been ill for some years. He was formerly deputy chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries, resigning from the Board in 1947. Lord Melchett’s career of public service on behalf of Jewry was not a Jong one, yet he achieved a position of considerable influence. He can be counted as one of the group of modern Jews (of whom Herzl is the supreme example), who, dissociated from the Jewish people in early life, were later inspired to take up their cause and rose to leadership.
Henry Ludwig Mond, as he was born, had a Christian mother, and was brought up in her faith. He veered towards Jewish life after the espousal of the Jewish national movement by his late father, the first Baron, and adopted Judaism formally in 1933, together with his sister, Lady Reading, by joining the Liberal Congregation.
In 1930 he succeeded his father as a member of the Upper House, but this was not his first appearance at Westminster, for he had been M.P., in the Liberal interest, for the Isle of Ely, in 1923-24. and, as a Conservative, for the East Toxteth Division of Liverpool, in 1929-30.
In the 1914-18 war, young Mond served in the South Wales Borderers, leaving Winchester School to join up; be was wounded in 1916.
Lord Melchett's first public speech in support of Zionism was made in 1931. About this time also began what was to be his chief service to the Jewish people: his support of the Maccabi movement He was Hon. President of the Maccabi World Union and devoted himself energetically to that office in the conviction (as he put it in an interview with The Jewish Chronicle in 1932) that “ in a physically fit world Jewry is essential if the great work of rebuilding the National Home Is to be achieved.”
The European Maccabi tour which he made the following year together with Dr. Lelewer. was a, tremendous success and developed Maccabi from a sporting association into a symbol of Jewish renaissance. Poland, Galacia, Rumania and Bulgaria were visited before the tour ended in Palestine. The masses of young Jews, subjected to numerous clauses at the universities or to organised anti-Semitism in the towns, were fired by the Maccabi idea: 8,000 of them mobbed Lord Melchett in the streets of Warsaw, more thousands packed into meetings at Bucharest, Sofia, and Czernowitz. and smaller gatherings welcomed the train at almost every little station on the route of the tour. On reaching Eretz Yisrael, Lord Melchett was given a great ovation by the crowds who heard his stirring speeches, and parades were held ia his honour.
Proposed for Presidency
Later that year -the Maccabiah (sports festival) was held at Prague. At the same time, the 18th Zionist Congress met there, and Lord Melchcrett's repute was so high, chiefly as a result of his tour, that his candidature for the Presidency of the Zionist Movement was promoted, and was supported by the General Zionists and the Polish Mizrachists, while in Palestine the proposal was warmly greeted. Sokolow, however, was re-elected.
At the second Maccabiah, in Tel Aviv in 1935, the parade of athletes numbered 5,000, the spectators 40,000; and Lord Melchett, in stirring Hebrew speeches, said that they represented a movement of 200,000 young men and women. (Nazism and the war destroyed most Maccabi groups, but many have since been revived, and more groups added.) At the headquarters of London Maccabi which be opened in West Hampstead in 1937, the main hall was named in Lord Melchett's honour.
He supported Zionism both as speaker —frequently in the House of Lords—and author: "Thy Neighbour,” published in 1936, was a challenging book on the Jewish problem. Very valuable support was his Chairmanship of the King George Jubilee Forest Fund in 1935; and he served as Chairman of the Council of the Jewish Agency. He was Hon. VicePresident for many years of the Zionist Federation of Oreat Britain and Ireland, and Treasurer of the Children and Youth Aliyah since its inseption and he was re-elected a Vice-President of the World Jewish Congress.
Lady Melchett, who was formerly Miss Amy Gwen Wilson, of Klerksdorp, Transvaal, married Lord Melchett in 1920, and was received into the Jewish faith in 1940. Two sons were born to them: the eider was killed on active service in the R.N.V.R, in 1945; the heir to the title, the Hon. Julian Mond. who is 24. married Miss Sonia Elizabeth Graham in 1947