JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Bibliography: E. Weiss, in: F.G. Alexander et al. (eds.), Psychoanalytic
Pioneers (1966), 142–59. Add. Bibliography: M.T.
Melo de Carvalho, Paul Federn – une autre voie pour la théorie du moi
(1996); E. Federn, “Thirty- five Years with Freud – 100th Anniversary
of Paul Federn, October 13, 1971,” in: Psyche, 10 (1971), 721–37.
[Louis Miller]
FEFER, ITZIK (1900–1952), Soviet Yiddish poet. Fefer was
born in the Ukrainian shtetl of Shpola. He first joined the Jewish
Labor Bund but, in 1919, became a member of the Communist
Party. Soon after his debut as a Yiddish poet (1920),
he became prominent in Soviet-Yiddish literature. In 1922 he
formulated his literary credo of proste reyd (“simple speech”).
By nature lyrical and even sentimental, his Yiddish was rich
and idiomatic and his verses rhythmic and musical. He harnessed
himself to the party line, and played a central role in
the Soviet-Yiddish literary hierarchy. His works, which appeared
in Soviet-Yiddish magazines, were often collected and
published. Though he wrote the well-known poem “Stalin,”
he also wrote “Ikh bin a Yid” (“I Am a Jew”) during World
War II when the party permitted such poems. His poems Shotens
fun Varshever Geto (“Shadows of the Warsaw Ghetto”)
are a valuable contribution to the literature of the Holocaust.
He also wrote poems about Birobidzhan, the Jewish autonomous
region in the Russian Far East, as well as nature poetry
and poems for children.
In 1943 Fefer visited the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the
U.K. with Shloyme *Mikhoels, as a representative of the Jewish
*Anti-Fascist Committee. Arrested in the Stalinist anti-
Jewish purges in 1948, he was killed on August 12, 1952. In the
1990s, the publication of archival materials revealed his role
as an informer for the Soviet secret police.
Bibliography: S. Niger, Yidishe Shrayber in Sovet-Rusland
(1958); J. Glatstein, In Tokh Genumen (1960); I. Yonasovitch, Mit
Yidishe Shrayber in Rusland (1949); S. Bickel, Shrayber fun Mayn Dor
(1964); Y.Y. Cohen (ed.), Pirsumim Yehudiyyim bi-Verit ha-Mo’aẓot
(1917–1960) (1961); M. Basok, Mivḥar Shirat Yidish (1963); S. Meltzer
(ed. and tr.), Al Naharot (1956); J. Leftwich, The Golden Peacock (1939,
1961); B.Z. Goldberg, The Jewish Problem in the Soviet Union (1961),
index. Add. Bibliography: I. Howe et al. (eds.), The Penguin Book
of Modern Yiddish Verse (1988); J. Rubenstein and V.P. Naumov (eds.),
Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee (2001); G. Estraikh, in: Shofar, 3 (2002), 14–31.
[Melech Ravitch / Gennady Estraikh (2nd ed.)]
FEIBELMAN, JULIAN BECK (1897–1980), U.S. Reform
rabbi. Feibelman was born in Jackson, Mississippi. After
serving in the army during World War I, he was ordained
at Hebrew Union College (1926). Feibelman served as assistant
rabbi of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Philadelphia,
and from 1936 he was rabbi of Temple Sinai in New Orleans,
Louisiana. Active in New Orleans community life, he was
the spokesman for the Jewish community and a central
figure in ecumenism in the area. Feibelman was a lecturer at
Tulane University. He served as president of the Louisiana
Society for Social Hygiene and the New Orleans Family Ser-
feidman, giora
vice Society. His book The Making of a Rabbi appeared in
1980.
Add. Bibliography: B. Klein, An Oral History of the Jewish
Community in the South: interview with Julian Feidelman (1968).
[Abram Vossen Goodman]
FEIBUSCH, HANS (1898–1998), English painter, sculptor,
and lithographer. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, the son of a
dentist, he served in World War I and in 1930 was awarded the
German state prize for painters. His early work was destroyed
by the Nazis. Feibusch came to England in 1933 and was naturalized
in 1940. He is especially well known for his murals in
churches – including Chichester Cathedral – public buildings,
and private houses. These depict classical mythology as well as
religious subjects. Emphasizing the human figure, they are elegant
and decorative, with a feeling for gesture and rhythm. He
also executed colored lithographs and wrote Mural Painting
and The Revelation of St. John (both 1946), and produced Old
Testament figures as well for Stern Hall, London. For much of
his life in Britain Feibusch was closely associated with Anglicanism;
at the end of his long life he returned to Judaism, and
died three weeks short of his hundredth birthday.
Add. Bibliography: P. Foster (ed.), Feibusch Murals: Chichester
and Beyond (1997); ODNB online.
FEIDMAN, GIORA (1936– ) clarinetist, fourth generation
of a klezmer dynasty. Born in Argentina, he studied clarinet
with his father, a well-known Klezmer, and from age 14
played with his father at Jewish weddings. He studied at the
Buenos Aires conservatory and at 18 was leading clarinetist of
the Colon theater orchestra. On the recommendation of Paul
*Kletzki, Feidman joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
in 1957, playing with it until 1974. During this period he taught
at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music and participated in radio
recordings of Israeli folk music. Feidman turned to Klezmer
music only in the mid-1960s. When recording for Kol Israel,
he decided spontaneously to record the popular tune “Silk Pyjamas”
in Klezmer style; it was received so well that Feidman
repeated his initiative several times. Feidman concluded that
“this is what the Israeli public yearns for.”
In 1969 Feidman was a soloist at the first ḥasidic music
festival. There he met the well-known, self-taught Klezmer
Moshe (Musa) Berlin, who invited him to play at Meron,
where Giora was introduced to Israeli Klezmers and encountered
a repertoire influenced by Greek, Turkish and Arab music,
new to him. From the outset his playing was distinguished
by two styles of performance: one, the familiar eastern European
enriched by Feidman’s restrained, gentle style with which
he performed Ḥasidic tunes, and improvisatory pieces which
he termed “tefillah” (prayer); the other, his innovative use of
a bass-clarinet in addition to clarinet, in the course of a single
tune. He toured abroad popularizing Klezmer music among
Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, bringing it to concert halls
and even to churches and monasteries. His Master classes in
Israel and abroad helped entice young musicians, Jewish and
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 729