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.