JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Abraham Wouk Family Professor of Classics and Literature.
Feldman served as associate editor of Classical Weekly from
1955 to 1957 and as managing editor of Classical World from
1957 to 1959.
Feldman is renowned as a scholar of Hellenistic civilization,
specifically of the works of Josephus. A fellow of the
American Academy for Jewish Research, he received numerous
fellowships and awards, including a Ford Foundation fellowship
(1951–52), a Guggenheim fellowship (1963), a grant
from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (1969), and
a grant from the American Philosophical Association (1972).
He was named a senior fellow of the American Council of
Learned Societies in 1971, a Littauer Foundation fellow in 1973,
and a Wurzweiler Foundation fellow in 1974.
Feldman’s works include Scholarship on Philo and Josephus,
1937–1962 (1963), Josephus and Modern Scholarship,
1937–1980 (1984), Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes
and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (1993),
Studies in Hellenistic Judaism (1998), and Studies in Josephus’
Rewritten Bible (1998). He was editor and translator of Jewish
Antiquities, Books 18–20 (1965) and editor of Jewish Life and
Thought among Greeks and Romans: Primary Readings (1996).
He coedited, with Gohei Hata, Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity
(1987) and Josephus, the Bible, and History (1989). Feldman
contributed extensively to journals in his field, and he
was departmental editor of Hellenistic literature for the first
edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica and a contributor to the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
[Dorothy Bauhoff (2nd ed.)]
FELDMAN, MARTIN (“Marty”; 1934–1982), British comedian
and scriptwriter. Born in London to Orthodox Jewish
parents, Marty Feldman left school at 15 and, in 1957, joined
the BBC as a staff writer, continuing for ten years as a television
and radio comedy scriptwriter for such shows as BBC radio’s
Round the Horne. From 1967 he was chiefly an actor, his trademark
bulging eyes and gangling frame being instantly recognizable.
He became internationally famous in the five years
after he moved to Hollywood in 1974, co-starring with Gene
*Wilder in such cult comedies as Young Frankenstein (1974),
in which he played “Igor,” and Silent Movie (1976). Like many
clowns, in private life Feldman was a sad, unhappy man. His
bulging eyes were caused by a chronic thyroid deficiency, and
his manic-depressive personality led to dependence on drugs
and alcohol. He died of a heart attack at the age of 48.
Bibliography: ODNB.
[William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)]
FELDMAN, MIROSLAV (1899–1976), Yugoslav poet and
playwright. A practicing physician, Feldman was born in Virovitica.
His first poems appeared in 1920. Later collections
included Ratna lirika (“War Lyrics,” 1947) and Pitat će kako
je bilo (“They Will Ask How It Was,” 1959). Among his successful
dramas were Zec (“Rabbit,” 1932), Profesor Žić (1934),
U pozadini (“Behind the Lines,” 1939, 19532), and Doći će dan
feldman, sandra
(“The Day Will Come,” 1951). Feldman, who dealt mainly with
war and love themes, was president of the Croatian Writers’
Association (1955). He also wrote theatrical pieces and in 1976
was awarded the AVNOJ prize (the highest literary award). At
first a Zionist, he later embraced Communism.
FELDMAN, MORTON (1926–1987), U.S. composer. Born in
New York City, Feldman began studying the piano with Vera
Maurina-Press at the age of 12 (the work Madame Press Died
Last Week at Ninety was written in 1970 in her memory), and
later studied composition and counterpoint with Wallingford
Riegger and Stefan *Wolpe. With composers John Cage, Earle
Brown, and Christian Wolff and pianist David Tudor, he became
part of an American avant-garde group interested in
bringing to music the same aesthetic concepts of art and expression
that had marked the abstract expressionist American
painters (such as de Kooning and Pollock) of the early 1950s.
His earliest works, Projections (1950–51), explored the field
of indeterminacy in music and the use of graphic notation.
Although Feldman later varied and combined his methods
of notating works, he was always concerned with examining
the extreme limits of slowness (in durations and tempi) and
softness (of dynamic range) of which music is capable, and
with timbres created by non-traditional methods, e.g., piano
sounds produced without traditional forms of attack. His output
was large: many piano pieces for soloist and combinations
of two and three pianos, notably Last Pieces; and orchestral
and ensemble works – Numbers, for nine instruments; Atlantis
(1958); Structures for Orchestra (1960–62); Out of Last Pieces;
For Franz Kline, for soprano and four other players; Rabbi
Akiba, for soprano and ten instruments; On Time and the Instrumental
Factor, for small orchestra (1969); and the series
of pieces for solo viola and various groupings of accompanying
instruments entitled The Viola in My Life. He worked
on films, and collaborated on the ballet Summerspace (1966)
with choreographer Merce Cunningham and painter Robert
Rauschenberg. In 1971 Feldman wrote Rothko Chapel for soloists,
chorus, and instrumental ensemble which was commissioned
as a tribute to the painter, who had died a year before.
Some of the composer’s late works reflected his interest
in the woven patterns in Anatolian rugs and in Jasper John’s
crosshatch paintings (Why Patterns, 1978, Crippled Symmetry,
1983). Coptic Light (1986), Feldman’s last orchestral work, was
inspired by the early Coptic textiles at the Louvre. Feldman
defended his aesthetics in a number of essays (Essays, ed. W.
Zimmermann, Kerpen, 1985).
Add. Bibliography: NG2; MGG2; T. DeLio (ed.), The Music
of Morton Feldman (1985).
[Max Loppert / Yulia Kreinin (2nd ed.)]
FELDMAN, SANDRA (1939–2005), U.S. teacher, trade union
activist, and labor union executive. Born in New York City to
Milton and Frances Abramowitz, Feldman earned an M.A.
degree in English literature from New York University. Active
in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, she also taught
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 747