Shelma Feingold
Due to his religious beliefs and his unconventional lifestyle and customs, Feingold faced negative attitudes from his Jewish contemporaries.
While primarily Christian, the sect focused its religious endeavors on finding evidence of Britain’s Hebrew origins through philology, archaeology, and biblical interpretation.
While married to Elizabeth, who never appeared in public, he conducted his business openly accompanied by Palmer, an unmarried woman who lived with him and his wife.
In June 1896, a group of young men called "Bnei Yisrael" organized anti-missionary activities and broke the windows of his house one night.
S. Y. Agnon describes "the apostate" (a portrayal of Feingold) in his novel Temol Shilshom (Only Yesterday):[2] He was a tall and robust man and something of a writer.
If the person said they were poor and without livelihood, Feingold would give them wages and even travel expenses to London, where they could convert a second time and earn double the pay.
In 1898, Feingold constructed a building in Jerusalem on Jaffa Road, near the Nahalat Shiv'a neighborhood, on land purchased from the Armenian Patriarchate.
According to the Palestine Post, it featured 13 rooms on each floor - symbolizing the Tribes of Israel - shaped like the letter "L" and centered around an internal courtyard with a rose garden.
Starting in 1909, the building also hosted the "HaMitzpeh" printing press, which published numerous newspapers of the time, including those by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.
Part of it was leased to Histadrut institutions, while Gatling used another portion to publish the newspaper New Jerusalem from 1922 to 1923, promoting the principles of Christian Science.
[5] In 1937, Gatling left Palestine and returned to the United States, selling the building to Jewish entrepreneurs Isaac Peretz and Avraham Hassidof.
The building underwent many transformations and, by the 1990s, as tourism and gastronomy flourished in Nahalat Shiv'a, "Feingold Courtyard" became a hotspot for restaurants and cafes.
The intellectual and moral side of the newspaper is the sacred domain of the editor alone, which will be preserved in its full sanctity and purity, free from any foreign influence.
Once again, the old question arises: When will we finally have our own newspaper that is literarily respectable, upholds public principles, and is reasonably assured of long-term, stable existence?Ben-Avi, however, denied Feingold's involvement in editorial matters, attributing the breakup to an incident between the Russian consul and Jewish youths.
In 1904, Feingold established several rental houses and a hotel named "Bella Vista" (Beautiful View) north of Jaffa, in the Manshiya neighborhood, along the seafront.
Some say the solitary figure in the famous photograph by Avraham Soskine, which depicts the lottery for land at Ahuzat Bayit, is Feingold, shouting to the crowd, "Crazy people – there's no water there.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Zionist figures, inspired by Herzl's unpublished Al-Arish plan, attempted to acquire land in the Rafah plain area to settle Jews there.
In 1912, they approached Margaret Palmer and Salim Ayoub, the General Consul of Persia in Jerusalem and a wealthy banker, with an offer to invest a large sum in purchasing the land.
Had she agreed and joined the project, her British citizenship would have been highly beneficial for a plan that included founding a company in Cairo and opening a branch in Jerusalem.
She is completely under the influence of a Jew with a questionable reputation named Feingold, who seems to have gained full control over her affairs, to the extent that she cannot be considered an independent person...McGregor succeeded in convincing Palmer to withdraw from the deal, but Knezvich, who had already invested significant capital and several years of work into the project, was determined.
[16] When World War I broke out, Feingold, a Russian subject, was forced to move to Alexandria, where he opened a laundromat and continued publishing his newspaper HaEmet.
He resumed his real estate dealings and even tried to establish a settlement for Jews and British Israelites in the Jiftlik area, but this plan failed.
Eventually, only the "Feingold House" was built—a two-story building in the shape of the letter L, with a closed courtyard behind it, and its front facing a boulevard lined with Washingtonia palms.
On 1 February 1929, the hotel was inaugurated in the presence of the High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir John Chancellor, and the President of the Supreme Court, Michael McDonnell.
The hotel, located at the corner of the streets of Ehad Ha'am and Bialik, also served as a cinema and became a focal point for residents of the Jordan Valley and Lower Galilee.
[24] After the fire, the Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel and the Tiberias Municipality initiated the renovation of the hotel, which was carried out by a company called "Yehuda Farhi.
Feingold's activities left behind several magnificent buildings, still standing today in the city centers of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Afula, and Tiberias.
During important years for the Zionist enterprise, Feingold served as an investing and initiating force, providing livelihood for Jews in the land and development for its cities.
His connections with the British Israelites and his ambiguous relationship with Margaret Palmer and his two wives, Elizabeth and Yehudit, left him with a somewhat questionable reputation.
On his tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Tiberias, the following words were inscribed, which many, including Itamar Ben-Avi, believed to reflect his work: "A loyal pioneer to the Land of Israel and its inhabitants.
