Feinberg, David
FEINBERG, DAVID
FEINBERG, DAVID (1840–1916), Russian communal leader. Born in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, Feinberg studied law at St. Petersburg University. While in his twenties he attained a responsible position in the St. Petersburg-Warsaw railroad company and was active in promoting the organization of a community in St. Petersburg. Feinberg was instrumental in obtaining, with the support of Baron Horace Guenzburg, Samuel *Poliakoff, and others, authorization for building the first synagogue as well as for the establishment of a Jewish cemetery there. He enlisted the support of Adolphe Crémieux, Baron Maurice de Hirsch, and Sir Moses Montefiore in the struggle of Russian Jewry for rights. When the *Jewish Colonization Association (ica) was founded in 1891 Feinberg became its secretary-general and was active in promoting Jewish agricultural settlement in *Argentina, where one of the settlements was named after him. During World War I he did much to relieve the sufferings of refugees.
bibliography:
S. Ginsburg, Amolike Peterburg (1944), 111–24; Feinberg, in: He-Avar, 4 (1956), 20–36; I. Halpern, Yehudim ve-Yahadut be-Mizraḥ Eiropah (1969), 372–3.