Abraham Feinberg
In his obituary, The New York Times declared about him: "He was always ready to march, lend his name or send a telegram if there was a protest for disarmament or for a treaty on a nuclear test ban, or against racism in South Africa, radical injustice in America and United States policy in Vietnam.
[7] In 1964, Feinberg recalled: "Full of youthful idealism, I found myself increasingly disillusioned with the role I was expected to play—more a promoter and social director of a complex organization than a pastor of human souls".
"[6] Newspapers stories in the 1930s portrayed him as an eccentric who never sang without the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám in his pocket, that he spent vast sums of money on buying clothing, that he was planning to build a castle in the Berkshires, and that he had an obsession with barrel organs.
[6] Feinberg recalled about his singing career: "My repertoire ran the gamut from the products of flash-in-the-pan tunesters who were pounding out romance for Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee, to Victor Herbert and Stephen Foster: from Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and Noël Coward to Schubert, Puccini and Verdi: from Valentina, Siboney, La Cucaracha and The Night Was Made for Love to The Rosary and Kol Nidrei, from tender lullabies to sombre lyrics of passion in every tongue.
[12] An extremely charismatic man and an excellent speaker, Feinberg soon became the best known rabbi in Canada, who hosted a weekly radio show where he spoke about various political and social issues.
[2] Feinberg condemned not only antisemitism in Canada, but also criticized the Liberal Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, for interning the entire Japanese-Canadian population in 1942.
[2] The internment of the Japanese-Canadians greatly offended Feinberg's sense of justice and in one of very first sermons at Holy Blossom he excoriated Mackenzie King for locking up an ethnic group without even trials on the mere suspicion of treason.
In Easter 1944, Feinberg gave a speech in Toronto saying:"A surprising large number of scholars regards the stigma on Jews as the alleged murderers of Christ to be the underlying cause of anti-Semitism.
Taught in Sunday Schools, it becomes an integral part of the sub-conscious mental inheritance and intrudes on every judgement...In recognition of this danger, as an obligation to truth and because of the need to establish a common groundwork for mutual fellowship in youth first of all, a group of 155 Protestant ministers in the United States last year agreed to revise the text-books now used in Christian Sunday Schools, in order to expunge hatred-inciting, unauthentic and prejudiced accounts of the Jewish roles in the crucifixion.
[23] In a calculated risk, a Jewish group, the Workers' Education Association (WEA) had purchased a property in Toronto known to have a "restrictive covenant" in order to build a home for veterans of World War Two.
[26] At the same summit of the CJC leaders, Feinberg argued that all racism must be fought, not just antisemitism, saying: "The French-speaking Catholic in Ontario, the Japanese deportee from British Columbia, the Negro economic pariah are no less a Jewish obligation than we are a moral crisis for the Christian".
[28] Concerned that the Jews might be accused of having dual loyalties, at the same time Feinberg told the Globe & Mail: "Palestine has always been the center of our pristine Jewish culture and faith and the shrine of our sacred memory.
[32] In December 1950, Feinberg set off a notable row in Toronto when he delivered a sermon denouncing as an injustice that Jewish children in public schools were being forced to sing Christmas carols.
[33] Three Orthodox rabbis in a public letter denounced Feinberg's sermon, saying that Canada was a "Christian country" and Jews should respect the wishes of the majority least it give rise to antisemitism.
[34] The Globe and Mail in an editorial on 5 December 1950 entitled "A Deplorable Proposal" condemned Feinberg, asking how it was possible for a rabbi to want "to eliminate Christmas from public schools".
[38] In his article, Feinberg wrote the "recreation of a sovereign secure homeland in Palestine for the Jews...has been since the dispersion an inextricable part of a sacred Messianic hope at the core of Judaism".
[2] A colorful character, Feinberg's liberal views on social issues such as legalizing abortion and a frank acceptance of human sexuality as normal made him very controversial.
Even the warlike Fiji Islanders, who barbecued their last missionary eight decades ago, are now, according to Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins, the most warmhearted, generous and trusting of human tribes".
[43] Feinberg wrote: "In some Southern states, however, and in South Africa, sexual relations between persons of different races are proscribed by law; to me, this fact underlines the close connection between the fear of mixed marriages and the humiliation of full-scale segregation.
[13] On his way back to Toronto, Feinberg stopped in London to give a press conference, where he stated that Ho had told him that he was willing to meet Johnson in Hanoi to discuss peace "but without a gun at his hip".
By 1967, Feinberg had emerged as the chairman of Vietnam Coordinating Committee in Toronto that organized protests against the war and pressed the Canadian government to grant asylum to American draft-dodgers who had fled to Canada.
[47] In 1967, an article by Feinberg recounting his recent visit to Moscow in October 1966 was published in the Globe & Mail, which was entered into Congressional Record by the Republican Senator Jacob Javits, as illustrating the current state of Soviet Jewry.
[48] Feinberg reported almost all of the older male Jews were World War Two veterans who proudly wore their Red Army medals and that many were horribly wounded, missing limbs such as their arms and/or legs.
[48] Feinberg called Birobidzhan, the Soviet Jewish "homeland" located in the desolate countryside along the banks of the Amur river that formed the border with China as being a sort of cruel joke.
[49] Feinberg criticized the Cold War, writing that tensions with the Western powers, especially the support for West German rearmament given by the United States, hindered the case for liberalization in the Soviet Union.
[54] At the time, Feinberg told The Montreal Gazette that he had gone to join the "Bed-In" out of admiration for Lennon, saying "he is one of the most powerful influences in the modern world, and I feel he is doing a phenomenal thing for peace.
"[55] On 1 June 1969, in their room at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Lennon and Ono recorded the version of Give Peace A Chance alongside a chorus of their friends that was released to the public.
[56] Feinberg served as one of the backup singers making up the chorus in Give Peace A Chance together with Timothy Leary, Petula Clark, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Smothers, Kyoko Cox, Derek Taylor and many others.
[59] On 11 March 1970, Feinberg was a lead speaker at a Toronto fundraiser hosted by Red, White and Black group that sought raise money for the defense lawyers of the "Chicago 7".
[68] Feinberg argued that such cults increased the male fear of women in Judaism, observing the Prophets of the Tanakh denounced with great vehemence the licentious religion practiced by the peoples of Canaan and Phoenicia.
