JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

eak of World War II he was put on trial by the Russians for
Zionist activities and taken to Russia where he disappeared
without trace. A regular contributor to the Hebrew press from
his youth, Fahn wrote poetry, articles, and stories, particularly
on the Karaites, and studies of Haskalah literature. Two volumes
of his collected works were published: Sefer ha-Kara’im
(1929) and Pirkei Haskalah (1937). A book of his essays, Massot,
appeared in Jerusalem in 1943 (preface by Dov Sadan).
His Mivḥar Ketavim (selected works), ed. by N. Govrin, appeared
in 1969.
Bibliography: Genazim, 1 (1961), 115–8, includes bibliography;
Kressel, Leksikon, 2 (1967), 571f.; Arim ve-Immahot be-Yisrael;
Stanislav, 5 (1952), s.v.
[Getzel Kressel]
FAIN, SAMMY (1902–1989), U.S. songwriter. Born in New
York and named Samuel Feinberg, Fain was a trained pianist
who worked in vaudeville and in the music-publishing business
before achieving success as a composer in the mid-1920s.
In a six-decade career, he wrote the music for such well-loved
popular songs as “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “That Old Feeling,” “Secret
Love,” and “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” He won
Academy Awards for the latter two and his songs received
eight other Academy Award nominations. Among his other
major songs were “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” with his frequent
lyricist-partner, Irving Kahal, “Dear Hearts and Gentle People,”
and the title song from the film April Love. Earlier, he had
hits with “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella on a Rainy (Rainy)
Day,” “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of
Mine,” and “When I Take My Sugar to Tea.” Called to Hollywood,
the team of Fain and Kahal wrote songs for a number
of movie musicals. One of their most successful movie songs,
“You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me,” was introduced by
Maurice Chevalier. “That Old Feeling,” one of the great torch
ballads, was introduced in the movie Vogues of 1938. Perhaps
his most famous song was “I’ll Be Seeing You,” which
was popularized in nightclubs in the 1940s and went on to
become one of the most romantic signature songs of World
War II. During the 1950s, with the lyricist Bob Hilliard, Fain
composed the songs for the 1951 Disney film Alice in Wonderland,
including “I’m Late.” With Paul Francis Webster, he
wrote the music for the films A Certain Smile (1958) and Tender
Is the Night (1961). Some of the other movies for which he
wrote the music include Call Me Mister (1951) and a remake
of The Jazz Singer (1953).
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
FAIRSTEIN, LINDA A. (1943– ), U.S. prosecutor and author.
Fairstein grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., a suburb of
New York City. She went to Vassar College and the University
of Virginia Law School. In 1972 she began working in the office
of Frank Hogan, the Manhattan district attorney. At the
time, the office had seven women among 170 prosecutors. By
2001, when she left, half of the office’s 600 prosecutors were
women. In a 30-year career of major cases, legislative reforms,
faïtlovitch, jacques
and best-selling books that explored the legal and emotional
realities of rape, Fairstein became the nation’s best-known
prosecutor of sex crimes. She became chief of the sex-crimes
unit in 1976, two years after it was created as the first such
unit in the country. It had four prosecutors at the time; when
she left it had 40. In 1977 Fairstein was a principal advocate
of New York’s so-called rape shield law, which prohibited, in
most cases, what had long been a common defense practice in
rape and sexual assault cases: exploring the sexual history of
victims to suggest promiscuity. Later she lobbied successfully
for a similar law in rape-homicide prosecutions. Fair stein was
also credited with a major role in the passage of a law in 1983
that struck down a requirement that victims of rape and other
sex crimes prove that they had offered “earnest resistance.” She
also was a principal advocate of the Sexual Assault Reform Act
of 2001, which facilitated the prosecution of date rape and of
rapes involving the use of drugs.
As chief of the sex-crimes unit in the district attorney’s
office, she oversaw the disposition of 500 to 700 cases a year
involving rape and other sexual abuses. Between 125 and 175
of those cases were prosecuted as felonies. Fairstein played a
key role in a notorious 1986 case involving Robert E. Chambers
Jr., who killed Jennifer Levin in Central Park after an
evening in a “preppie bar.” Fairstein doggedly prosecuted the
case and used the defense’s own witness to demonstrate that
Chambers’s choke hold on the victim could have been intentionally
lethal.
Fairstein served as the model for several no-nonsense
prosecutors in the movies Farrell for the People (1982) and
Presumed Innocent (2001). The author Robert Daley dedicated
his 1985 novel, Hands of a Stranger, to Fairstein, and
fictionalized many of her well-known cases. It was made into
a television movie.
In 1996, Fairstein published her first novel, Final Jeopardy,
which introduced the character Alexandra Cooper,
who bore a striking resemblance to the author. The book was
a critical and commercial success and was followed the next
year by Likely to Die, which was an international bestseller. By
2005 she had published six novels. Her nonfiction book, Sexual
Violence: Our War Against Rape, published in 1994, was a
New York Times notable book.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
FAÏTLOVITCH, JACQUES (1881–1955), Orientalist, devoted
to *Beta Israel (Falasha) research and relief work. Faïtlovitch
was born in Lodz. He studied Oriental languages at the Ecole
des Hautes Etudes in Paris, particularly Ethiopic and Amharic
under Joseph *Halévy, who aroused his interest in the
Beta Israel. He made 11 missions to Ethiopia (1904–5, 1908–9,
1913, 1920–21, 1923–24, 1926, 1928–29, 1934, 1942–43, 1943–44,
1946). In 1904 he went to Ethiopia for the first time and spent
18 months among the Beta Israel, studying their beliefs and
customs. The results were published in his Notes d’un voyage
chez les Falachas (1905). In his view the Beta Israel were Jews
needing help to resist Christian missionary activity, which
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 677