JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

feuer, lewis samuel
proponent of stronger Jewish education requirements in the
Reform movement, particularly with regard to customs, ceremonies,
and Hebrew. Following his term of office (1963–65),
he was appointed a public member of the executive of the
American section of the Jewish Agency, the governing body
of the World Zionist Organization (1966–71). He also served
on an International Commission to study revising the WZO.
Upon his retirement from the pulpit in 1974, Feuer joined the
faculty of Emory University as a visiting professor. He also coauthored
two scholarly works: The Jew and His Religion (1935)
and Jewish Literature since the Bible (2 vols., 1937, 1941).
Bibliography: K.M. Olitzky, L.J. Sussman, and M.H. Stern,
Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook
(1993).
[Bezalel Gordon (2nd ed.)]
FEUER, LEWIS SAMUEL (1912–2002), U.S. educator. Feuer
was born in New York. He taught philosophy and social sciences
at City College of New York, Vassar, the University of
Vermont, and the University of California at Berkeley from
1957 to 1966. In 1966 he was appointed professor of sociology
at the University of Toronto, where he taught sociological theory
until 1976. He is the author of Psychoanalysis and Ethics
(1955), Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (1958), The Scientific
Intellectual: The Psychological & Sociological Origins of Modern
Science (1963), The Conflict of Generations: The Character and
Significance of Student Movements (1968), and Marx and the
Intellectuals (1969). He edited Marx and Engels: Basic Writings
on Politics and Philosophy (1959). His special interest was in
the sociology of ideas. In his study of Spinoza, he related the
philosopher’s thought to the political and economic currents
of his time. In The Conflict of Generations and other works,
he studied the psychoanalytical and personal factors in social
and political thought. He also criticized the theory that the
rise of Protestantism has been mainly responsible for scientific
inquiry and development. Later books by Feuer include
Einstein and the Generations of Science (1974), Ideology and the
Ideologists (1975), Philosophy, History, and Social Action: Essays
in Honor of Lewis Feuer: With an Autobiographical Essay
by Lewis Feuer (1988), and Varieties of Scientific Experience:
Emotive Aims in Scientific Hypotheses (1995).
[Ben G. Kayfetz / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)
FEUERLICHT, MORRIS MARCUS (1879–1959), U.S. Reform
rabbi. Feuerlicht was born in Hungary and ordained at
*Hebrew Union College in 1901. He spent his entire rabbinic
career in Indiana, first as rabbi of Temple Israel in Lafayette
(1901–4) and then of Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation in
Indianapolis (1904–51), where he also was a member of the
faculty of Butler University. Feuerlicht espoused the philosophy
that Judaism’s spiritual heritage could contribute much to
American life and translated this into respected social activism,
to the extent that The Indianapolis Times hailed him as
“a man in whom the qualities of greatness transcend all the
little differences of creed, nationality and sect that divide us.”
The paper went on to call Feuerlicht “…one of the true assets
of the State of Indiana… [a] violent foe of the Ku Klux Klan…
[an] orator who bested the famed attorney Clarence Darrow
in a [public] debate… [and an effective mediator] who settled
many strikes.”
In 1927, Feuerlicht was one of the founders of the National
Conference of Christians and Jews (renamed the National
Conference for Community and Justice in the 1990s).
Locally, he was one of the founders of the Marion County
chapter of the American Red Cross, as well as the founder and
first director of the Indianapolis Family Welfare Society. He
served successive terms as president of a number of civic organizations,
including the Indiana Conference of Social Work,
the Children’s Aid Association of Indianapolis, and the Indiana
Library and Historical Board. He also served as a civilian
chaplain at Fort Benjamin Harrison.
In the realm of scholarship, Feuerlicht, a member of the
American Oriental Society, was a contributor to the Universal
Jewish Encyclopedia and wrote Judaism’s Contribution to
the Founding of the Republic, published by the Jewish Tract
Commission.
Bibliography: K.M. Olitzky, L.J. Sussman, and M.H. Stern,
Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook
(1993).
[Bezalel Gordon (2nd ed.)]
FEUERMANN, EMANUEL (1902–1942), cellist. Born in
Kolomea, Galicia, and taken to Vienna at the age of seven,
Feuermann gave his first public recitals in 1913. He was a
teacher at Cologne Conservatory from 1918 until 1923 and
became well known as a soloist. He was on the staff of the
Berlin Hochschule fuer Musik (1929–33), but emigrated to
the United States in 1938. There he performed as a soloist and
made notable appearances in trios with Jascha Heifetz and
Artur Rubinstein, and was acclaimed as one of the great cellists
of his time.
FEUERRING, MAXIMILIAN (1896–1985), painter. Feuerring
worked as an art teacher and art critic in various countries.
In World War II he served with the Polish Army and was
taken prisoner. In 1948, he organized in Munich the Painters
in Exile exhibition, in which he participated with fellow Jewish
P.O.W.s. A prolific artist, his paintings reflect the continuous
search for problems and conflicts of spiritual or emotional
origin. He struggled to integrate the known and the unknown,
the formed and the unformed into an organic unity. Feuerring,
who lived in Sydney from 1950, twice represented Australia
at the São Paulo Biennial and was awarded the Albury
Art Prize. He is sometimes known by his Polish surname of
Feurring-Emefowicza.
FEUERSTEIN, family of leaders of U.S. Orthodoxy. The
Feuersteins, who made their fortune in textiles in Massachusetts,
trace their history in the United States to the 1893 arrival
in New York of HENRY (Naftali) from Hungary. Instilled
774 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6