JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

FEINSTEIN, ELAINE (1930– ), English novelist, poet, and
translator. Born in Bootle, Feinstein was educated at Cambridge
University. She has worked as an editor for the Cambridge
University Press and lectured in English at Bishop’s
Stortford Training College and the University of Essex until
1970. She is now a full-time writer. Feinstein published her first
novel, The Circle, in 1970. She also translated The Selected Poems
of Marina Tsvetayeva (1971) and Three Russian Poets: Margarita
Aliger, Yunna Moritz, Bella Akhmadulina, (1978). As an
editor she chose the Selected Poems of John Clare (1968) and,
with Fay Weldon, New Stories 4 (1979). She has also published
volumes of short stories and plays, Breath (1975) and Echoes
(1980). The Holocaust is central to Children of the Rose (1975)
and The Border (1984). She also wrote a book on the blues
singer Bessie Smith (1985).
Her prodigious literary output includes volumes of poetry
such as The Magic Apple Tree (1971), At The Edge (1972)
and The Celebrants and Other Poems (1973). Feinstein is regarded
as an important English novelist. She has described
her early fiction as an “extension” of her poetry as her novels
combine the poetic with a larger historical canvas. Her fiction,
therefore, has ranged through European history and,
at the same time, has retained a poetic use of language and
myth. With remarkable economy, several of Feinstein’s novels,
Children of the Rose (1975), The Ecstasy of Dr. Miriam Garner
(1976), The Shadow Master (1978), and The Border (1984),
incorporate the violence, fanaticism, and pseudoapocalyptic
character of modern history. The ever-present themes of exile
and betrayal in Feinstein’s novels are given a wider historical
dimension which shapes the lives of her cosmopolitan characters.
The Survivors (1982), an autobiographical novel, has
an exclusively English setting and uses the compressed form
of a conventional family saga. Feinstein is also a biographer
of note, having written lives of Pushkin (1998), Ted Hughes
(2001), and Lawrence’s Women (1993), about the love life of
D.H. Lawrence.
Feinstein consciously writes in a Central European literary
tradition. She is the first post-war English-Jewish novelist
to successfully eschew the parochial concerns and forms
of expression of the Anglo-Jewish novel and has located her
sense of Jewishness in a wider European context. The Border
is a representative example of Feinstein’s ability to express
in an exciting love story a multifarious vision of the world
made up of history and autobiography, poetry and myth,
literature and science. In this way, Feinstein has managed
to broaden the concerns of the Anglo-Jewish novel and develop
a lasting poetic voice in a distinct and imaginative
manner.
[Bryan Cheyette]
FEINSTEIN, ḤAYYIM JACOB HA-KOHEN (second half
of the 19th century), emissary from Safed who visited the Jewish
communities in the Orient, including Aden, Yemen, and
India. He was in the last country three times, in 1866, 1873, and
1887. While in Calcutta, he noted disapprovingly the practice
feinstein, moses
of the Jews of using the trolley on the Sabbath, and wrote a
treatise, Imrei Shabbat (1874), in which he vehemently opposed
this custom. He published Torat Immekha (1886), in which he
opposed other practices of Baghdadi Jews. In *Cochin (which
he visited twice) he took the side of the “Non-White Jews,” as
he called the “Black Jews,” and fought for their emancipation,
maintaining that they were actually the early settlers while the
“White Jews” were newcomers. He expressed these views in
his Mashbit Milḥamot (1889) which he submitted to the Cochin
Jews and to the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Meir Panigel.
His report appeared as a supplement to the second edition of
his Imrei Shabbat (1889).
Bibliography: A. Yaari, Ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Arẓot ha-
Mizraḥ, 2 (1940), 29, 30; idem, in: Sinai, 4 (1939), 416–21; 26 (1950),
342–4; D.S. Sassoon, Ohel Dawid, 2 (1932), 966–7; Bar-Giora, in: Sefunot,
1 (1947), 265–6.
[Walter Joseph Fischel]
FEINSTEIN, MEIR (1927–1947), Jew condemned to death
by the British in Palestine. Feinstein was born in the Old City
of Jerusalem. In his youth he went to work in the kibbutz of
Negbah, where he joined the *Palmaḥ, and at the age of 16
volunteered for service in the British army. In 1946 he joined
the I.ẓ.L. and on Oct. 30 took part in an attack on the railway
station of Jerusalem. During his get-away, fire was opened on
him from a passing car and he was badly wounded in his left
hand. As a result, whereas his companions managed to escape,
he took refuge in a house and the bloodstains enabled his pursuers
to find him. After his left hand was amputated he was put
on trial and sentenced to death on Apr. 3, 1947. He shared the
condemned cell with Moshe *Barazani, and the date of their
execution was fixed for the morning of the 21st. At 9 p.m. on
the previous evening, they placed an explosive charge, which
had been smuggled into the cell, between their hearts and set
it off, thus cheating the gallows.
Bibliography: Y. Nedava, Olei-ha-Gardom (1966); Y. Gurion,
Ha-Niẓẓaḥon Olei Gardom (1971).
FEINSTEIN, MOSES (1895–1986), rabbi and leader of American
Orthodoxy. Feinstein was born in Uzda, near Minsk, Belorussia,
where his father, from whom he received his early
education, was rabbi. In 1921 he became rabbi of Luban, near
Minsk, where he served until he immigrated to the United
States in 1937. There Feinstein was appointed rosh yeshivah of
New York’s Metivta Tiferet Jerusalem. Under his guidance, it
became one of the leading American yeshivot. Feinstein arrived
in America with three children: Faye Gittel, who married
a distinguished rabbi, Moses Shisgal; Shifra, who married
Rabbi Dr. Moses Tendler, long-time rabbi in Monsey, New
York, as well as teacher of Talmud and professor of biology
at Yeshiva University; and David, who succeeded his father
as the head of Metivta Tiferet Jerusalem. A son, Reuven, was
born in America. He became the head of the Metivta Tiferet
Jerusalem branch in Staten Island, New York City.
After World War II, Feinstein became one of the leading
figures in Orthodox Jewry in America. After the death of the
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 741