JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Farhi, Daniel
FARHI, DANIEL (1941– ), French reform rabbi. Farhi was
born in Paris to a Jewish family of Turkish descent. He was
hidden and protected by a Protestant family during the war,
began rabbinical studies in 1959, and was ordained a rabbi
in 1966. He chose to join the reform Union Libérale Israélite
de France, France’s first liberal Jewish congregation, located
in Paris and known as “rue Copernic,” the street where its
main synagogue is located. In 1970, he became first rabbi
at the Copernic synagogue, a position that he left in 1977 to
create a new liberal movement, the Mouvement Juif Libéral
de France (MJLF), originally comprised of just 50 families
and subsequently growing to a few hundred. Dedicated to
the promotion of Reform Judaism, Farhi also emphasized in
his rabbinical activity the importance of inter-religious dialogue,
especially with Islam and Christianity. Another main
axis of Farhi’s concerns was the memory of the Shoah and its
transmission, being himself an “enfant caché ” (hidden child).
Farhi was the first to introduce in France the celebration of
Yom Ha-Shoah in 1990, with a 24-hour-long recitation of the
names of French Jewish deportees and Holocaust victims. He
worked in close association with Serge and Beate *Klarsfeld
to foster public awareness of the Shoah. Farhi was imprisoned
in Germany for trying to pursue Nazi criminals but managed
to organize a number of pilgrimages to Auschwitz. He was
eventually able to merge his two main concerns – religious
dialogue and transmission of the Shoah – when he joined
the inter-religious pilgrimage set up by Emile Shoufani, an
Arab-Israeli priest from Nazareth, which brought together at
Auschwitz Muslims, Christians, and Jews, Israeli and French.
Farhi wrote several books on Israel and the transmission of
Judaism (Parler aux enfants d’Israël), the problematics of liberal
Judaism (Un judaïsme dans le siècle), and the Shoah (Au
dernier survivant), as well as two prayer books for Reform
communities, Siddour Taher Libénou and Mahzor Anénou.
Fahri also served on the editorial board of the MJLF review,
Tenou’a-Le Mouvement. He was awarded several prestigious
honors, including chevalier de l’ordre national du Mérite and
chevalier de l’ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, a distinction
that he received in 1993 from Simone *Veil, state minister
and Holocaust survivor.
[Dror Franck Sullaper (2nd ed.)]
FARHI, GABRIEL (1968– ), French reform rabbi. Son
of leading reform rabbi, Daniel *Farhi, Gabriel completed
liberal rabbinical studies in London (Leo Baeck College),
where he was ordained in 1996. Subsequently he was the
rabbi of the MJLF-Est synagogue, an offshoot of the movement’s
main congregation. An advisor to the BBC for Jewish
affairs, Farhi also serves as the Israelite chaplain at the Georges
Pompidou European hospital and headed there a think tank
on medical ethics. He was the first non-Orthodox rabbi to
be appointed as a chaplain in a French hospital. His keen
interest for bioethics, his intimate knowledge of the medical
world, and his proximity to the sick and suffering
also led him to promote a liberal Jewish viewpoint on bio-
ethics as a teacher at the Faculties of Medicine in Reims and
Paris.
[Dror Franck Sullaper (2nd ed.)]
FARHI, MORIS (1935– ), writer, poet, and artist. Born in
*Ankara, Farhi graduated from Robert College in *Istanbul
in 1954 and from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London
in 1956. A British subject since 1964, he pursued an acting
career for several years and began writing in the 1960s. Between
1960 and 1983 he worked primarily in television, writing
numerous scripts for both the BBC and ITV. Many of his
poems have appeared in various U.S. and international publications.
He became a member of English PEN in the mid-
1970s and joined its Writers in Prison Committee in 1988. In
2001 he was made a member of the Order of the British Empire
in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for “services to literature.”
In November 2001 he was elected a vice president of
International PEN. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of
Literature and the Royal Geographical Society. His published
works include The Pleasure of Your Death (1972); The Last of
Days (1983), a thriller played out in the Middle East against
the backdrop of Arab terrorism; Journey Through the Wilderness
(1989), dealing with a Holocaust survivor’s search in
South America for the Nazi who murdered his father; Children
of the Rainbow (1999), about a gypsy survivor of Auschwitz;
and Young Turk (2004), a series of interrelated stories
set in *Turkey.
[Rifat Bali (2nd ed.)]
FARIA, FRANCISCO DE (b. c. 1650), Marrano adventurer.
Faria, who was born in Brazil, lived subsequently in Antwerp
as an artist, in Holland as an officer in the army, and in England
as an interpreter to the Portuguese embassy. In 1680, at
the time of the so-called “Popish Plot,” he made some startling
but unfounded disclosures accusing the Portuguese ambassador
of having attempted to bribe him to murder the Earl of
Shaftesbury and others. He was rewarded for his revelations,
but subsequently disappeared from view.
Bibliography: Friedman, in: ajhsp, 20 (1911), 115–32 ( =
his Early American Jews (1934), 127–45, 205–9); Roth, Mag Bibl, 125,
248.
[Cecil Roth]
°FARINACCI, ROBERTO (1892–1945), leading antisemite
in the Italian Fascist regime. A socialist until 1914, Farinacci
became one of the founders of the Fascist movement
in March 1919. He served as a member of the Gran Consiglio
del Fascismo, as a member of parliament, and, between 1925
and 1926, as Fascist Party secretary. Farinacci represented the
fanatic and extremist element in the Fascist leadership. In 1921
he founded a daily newspaper, Cremona Nuova, later renamed
Il Regime Fascista, which he edited until 1945. In this newspaper
he advocated a strong line against the opponents of the
regime, closer relations with Nazi Germany, and the adoption
of a racist, antisemitic policy. From 1938 he was one of those
who directed the Fascist government’s racist policy. His anti-
716 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6