JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

feiwel, berthold
third-ranking civilian position in the U.S. Department of Defense.
Following the September 11, 2001, attack on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, Feith played an important
role in developing U.S. government strategy for the war on
terrorism, advising Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on policy
issues relating to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other aspects of the
war. Feith was instrumental also in other defense initiatives,
including realigning the U.S. global defense posture, adding
new members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
reforming NATO’s military and civilian structures, creating
new U.S. defense ties in South Asia, launching of the Global
Peace Operations Initiative to increase the capacity of various
countries to send forces abroad to keep or enforce the peace
and negotiating with Russia the Moscow Treaty on offensive
nuclear weapons.
Like a number of Jewish intellectuals who grew up in
liberal, pro-Franklin Delano Roosevelt homes, Feith came to
identify himself with a group of “neo-conservatives” serving
in or supporting the Reagan Administration who viewed the
Cold War as a clash of basic philosophical principles, not just
a great power contest. Feith also staked out contrarian views
on such issues as the “oil weapon” (he thought its power exaggerated
and the financial costs would be high for whatever
state tried to use it), arms control treaties (he thought their
benefits were illusory), and the Oslo peace process (he predicted
it would fail as a result of Arafat’s deficient statesmanship
and lack of commitment to peace). Those views generated
controversy and helped make him a lightning rod later
for critics of the Iraq War of 2003. While rejecting the label of
Wilsonian idealism, Feith, along with Natan *Sharansky and
Paul Wolfowitz, has helped elaborate the idea, which President
George W. Bush has made central to U.S. foreign policy,
that democratic institutions are the route to peace and prosperity
and that peoples in the Middle East, as elsewhere, will
choose freedom and democratic political institutions if given
the chance.
Feith’s community work included service as president of
the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School.
[Mark Feldman (2nd ed.)]
FEIWEL, BERTHOLD (1875–1937), Zionist leader and poet.
Born in Pohrlitz, Moravia, Feiwel began his higher education
in Brno, where he founded the Zionist student organization
Veritas. In 1893 he studied law at Vienna University and
became Herzl’s close associate, helping to organize the First
Zionist Congress in 1897. He contributed to the central organ
of the Zionist Organization, Die Welt, and became its editorin-chief
in 1901. In his articles he emphasized that Zionism
cannot content itself with the political and diplomatic activity
of its leaders; it must also bring about the renewal of Jewish
spiritual and social life in the Diaspora. At the first Conference
of Austrian Zionists at Olmuetz (1901), Feiwel introduced
a program of Zionist Diaspora activity, arguing that Zionism
means not only the Jewish people seeking refuge in Ereẓ Israel,
but also preparing itself (in the Diaspora) for its future com-
monwealth. Diaspora work covered the whole range of Jewish
life in the countries of dispersion: political, economic, cultural,
and sporting activities. When his program was rejected by
the Zionist Executive, Feiwel resigned as editor of Die Welt
and, together with Martin Buber, Chaim Weizmann, and
others, created the Democratic Fraction as an opposition
group at the Fifth Zionist Congress. Together with Martin
Buber, Davis Trietsch, and the painter E.M. Lilien, Feiwel
founded the *Juedischer Verlag, a publishing house that distributed
mainly German translations of Hebrew and Yiddish
literature.
In 1903, after the *Kishinev pogrom, Feiwel published
Die Judenmassacres in Kischinew under the pseudonym Told.
Based on an on-the-spot investigation, this book shocked
public opinion. Feiwel had close contacts with Jewish authors
in Eastern Europe and became a gifted translator of their
works. In the book Junge Harfen (1914) he presented their
modern poetry. The Juedischer Almanach (1902), an anthology
edited by Feiwel, as well as Lieder des Ghetto (1902, 1920),
translations of poems of the Yiddish poet Morris Rosenfeld
with drawings by E.M. Lilien, also had considerable literary
influence. After World War I (1919), Feiwel’s friend Weizmann
summoned him to London to become his political and economic
adviser. When Keren Hayesod was founded (1920),
Feiwel became one of its first directors. In 1933 he settled in
Jerusalem.
Bibliography: Berthold Feiwel ha-Ish u-Fo’alo (1959); Ch.
Weizmann, Trial and Error (1949), index. Add. Bibliography:
A. Schenker, Der juedische Verlag 1902–1938 – Zwischen Aufbruch,
Bluete und Vernichtung (2003).
[Samuel Hugo Bergman]
FEJÉR, LEOPOLD (1880–1959), Hungarian mathematician.
Fejér was educated in Budapest and Berlin. He spent a year
in Berlin where he met H.A. Schwarz who had a decisive influence
on his mathematical career. He was appointed professor
at Budapest in 1911 and elected to full membership in the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1930. After being dismissed
from his chair during World War II he narrowly escaped being
killed by the fascist regime. Fejér’s Ph.D. thesis contained
the classic result now known as Fejér’s theorem that “a Fourier
series is Cesàro summable (C,1) to the value of the function
at each point of continuity.” This key result gave great impetus
to further developments in Fourier and divergent series.
A complete list of his publications is given in Matematikai
Lapok (vol. 1 (1950), 267–72).
Bibliography: G. Pólya, in: Journal of the London Mathematical
Society, 36 (1961), 501–6.
[Barry Spain]
FEJTÖ, FRANÇOIS (Ferenc; 1906– ), author, critic, and
journalist. Fejtö was born in Zagreb. Together with P. Ignotus
and A. József, he was a founder of the Hungarian literary
journal Szép Szó (Budapest, 1935). In 1938 he was accused by
the Budapest police of being a Communist and fled from Hun-
744 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6