JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

allowed some men to accumulate great wealth at the expense
of others. In 1905 he was converted to Henry George’s “single
tax” philosophy, which Fels preferred to call “Christianity.” Fels
believed that God had given land to all the people of the earth,
and tax on the unearned increments of landowners would enable
all society’s members to share the land’s bounties. Substantial
financial contributions by Fels helped the single tax
movement throughout the world, especially in England, where
he and his wife lived during 1901–11. He proselytized for the
single tax wherever he traveled, as well as for various political
reform movements. Fels financed colonies in the United
States and England that provided work for the unemployed;
he supported the women’s suffrage movement in the Western
world, and helped social welfare agencies in England.
Fels organized the first mass deputation of English women
to present petitions to Parliament describing the plight of the
poor in London’s East End. He was one of the first American
manufacturers to institute profit sharing for his workers. Fels
backed the Zionist movement and was active in the Jewish
Territorial Organization.
MARY FELS (1863–1953). a distant cousin of her husband
Joseph, was born in Sembach, Bavaria, and was taken to the
U.S. in 1869. She helped her husband with his projects until
his death, after which she concentrated her efforts on Zionist
activities. She organized the Joseph Fels Foundation in 1925 to
advance human welfare through education and to promote the
exchange of culture and ideas, especially between the United
States and Ereẓ Israel. Mary Fels edited the magazine The Public
(1917–19) and wrote a biography of her husband (1916).
SAMUEL SIMEON FELS (1869–1950), Joseph’s younger
brother, was born in Yanceyville, N.C. A partner in the Fels-
Naphtha Company, he funded the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia
(1934). In 1936 he established the Samuel S. Fels Fund
to promote research in the natural and physical sciences. He
also created the Fels Institute of Local and State Government
at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bibliography: Steffens, in: American Magazine (Oct. 1910),
744–6; M. Fels, Joseph Fels, His Life-Work (1916); Howe, in: Survey
(March 28, 1914), 812–3; Zangwill, in: Voice of Jerusalem (1921),
337–49; New York Times (May 17, 1953), 88; Kellogg, in: Survey, 86
(1950), 135.
[Robert Asher]
FELSENTHAL, BERNHARD (1822–1908), U.S. Reform
rabbi. Felsenthal was born in Munchweile, Germany. He intended
to enter the Bavarian civil service, but seeing no prospect
of being admitted, he attended a teachers’ seminary at
*Kaiserslautern and taught in Jewish schools before settling
in the U.S. in 1854. There Felsenthal served a congregation
in Madison, Indiana, as officiant and teacher; then in 1858
he moved to Chicago as clerk in a banking house, while also
devoting himself to rabbinical and theological study. Deeply
influenced by David *Einhorn, Felsenthal became one of the
first protagonists of Reform Judaism in the Midwest. He was
a strong opponent of slavery and refused to accept a pulpit
felzenbaum, michael
in Mobile, Alabama. He was a founder and secretary of the
Chicago Juedisches Reformverein. A statement of Reform
views which he published in 1859, Kol Kore ba-Midbar: Ueber
Juedische Reform, attracted some attention, and when the
Reformverein developed into the Sinai Congregation, he became
its first rabbi (1861). He was ordained by Einhorn and
Samuel Adler. In 1864 Felsenthal became rabbi of the newly
formed Zion Congregation, which he headed until his retirement
in 1887. Felsenthal was a constant student and, though
he wrote no books, wielded a ready pen. When questions on
ritual came to him, he generally took an advanced Reform
view. In several instances he dissented from the proposals of
Isaac M. *Wise. Thus, he strongly opposed the establishment
of a rabbinical seminary, believing that conditions in America
did not provide a satisfactory foundation. On the other hand,
he advocated Jewish day schools. In 1879 he declined a professorship
at Hebrew Union College. In later years Felsenthal became
concerned with the threat to the Jews in America posed
by religious indifference, and feeling that the course taken by
Reform was preparing a “beautiful death” for Judaism, became
an enthusiastic supporter of the Zionist movement. Felsenthal
was a founder of the Jewish Publication Society of America
and of the American Jewish Historical Society.
Bibliography: E. Felsenthal (ed.), Bernhard Felsenthal,
Teacher in Israel (1924), includes extracts from his writings and bibliography;
Stolz, in: CCARY, 18 (1908), 161; idem, in: AJHSP, 17 (1909),
218–22. Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (1941) 4: 273–274. Add. Bibliography:
K. Olitzky, L. Sussman, and M.H. Stern, Reform Judaism
in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1993).
[Sefton D. Temkin]
FELZENBAUM, MICHAEL (Mikhoel; 1951– ), Yiddish
writer. Born in Vassilkoe (Ukraine), Felzenbaum studied
drama in Leningrad (1968–74) and then founded the Yiddish
Cultural Society in Belz, where he was active in the theater and
the Pedagogical Institute (1974–88). In 1991 he immigrated to
Israel. As co-founder and later editor of the annual Naye Vegn
(1992), executive director of the Yiddish Culture Center in Tel
Aviv, and head of the H. Leyvik Publishing House, he won the
Dovid Hofshteyn Prize (1999) for his multifaceted and socially
provocative work. His dramatic and narrative œuvre, which
unites the Jewish, modern Yiddish, and European and American
literary traditions, is marked by a postmodern, “post-Yiddish”
character. An antithetical process operates in his improvised
intertextual world that strives toward primordial chaos,
where nothing begins at the beginning, but everything is revealed
in its grotesque and absurd dimensions. Traditional
myths and fairy tales function as empty, anachronistic vessels
without creative-metaphorical significance in the post-Holocaust
world. While the prose works display earthy and mordant
qualities, his poems exhibit a sensitivity and thoroughly
developed spontaneity characteristic of folk songs. His works
appeared in the most important Yiddish literary journals; his
book publications are Es Kumt der Tog (“Day Arrives,” 1992),
A Libe Regn (“Rain of Love,” 1994), Der Nakht-Malekh (“An-
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