Yaakov Moshe Feldman

1895 CE–1981 CE · Acharonim · London

Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Feldman was an early builder of Orthodox Jewish life in Los Angeles. Raised in London—where his father helped found the Machzikei HaDaas congregation and the family traced its roots to Pinsk—he was ordained at the city's Etz Chaim Yeshiva, studying alongside Isaac HaLevi Herzog, later Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, and graduated from the University of London. He grew close to Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, later writing a biographical account of him. After rabbinic posts in London and Llanelly, Wales, he emigrated to Los Angeles in the 1920s, serving Congregation Beth Israel before founding Congregation Bnai Jeshurun and campaigning for Jewish day schools. Much of his lifework concerned Hebrew liturgical and scriptural language: he compiled Areshes Sefaseinu, a multi-volume concordance to Hebrew liturgy, and Meshivas Nefesh, a corrective study of Baruch Epstein's Torah Temimah, left unfinished at his death in 1981 and completed by his son Rabbi David M. Feldman.

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Stop 1 of 21895–1919Born

LondonלונדוןEngland

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About London

London, on the Thames in south-east England, is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. Founded by the Romans as Londinium, it has had a bishop since 604 and is the seat of St Paul's Cathedral. Jews settled there after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and were expelled from England in 1290; a small Sephardi community was allowed to remain from 1656, and London became the centre of British Jewish life. The Royal Society, founded there in 1660, made it a hub of science, and by the nineteenth century it was the world's largest city. In the twentieth century it gained institutions such as the Buddhist Society (1924) and the London Central Mosque (1977).

In London at the same time

Eliezer Gordon, Rav Kook, Joseph Hertz, Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog, Abraham Joshua Heschel

Across the traditions, in London at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Yaakov Moshe Feldman’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

In the same tradition

Eliezer Gordon, Rav Kook, Joseph Hertz, Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog, Solomon M. Neches, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Persian Chief Rabbi, Leonard Cohen