Obituary for Macey G Feingold
Macey G. Feingold, age 97. Beloved husband of the late Hélène Sultana Feingold; cherished father of Dr. Daniel and Richard Feingold; loving grandfather of Noah and Ethan; dear brother of the late David (the late Batia) Feingold, brother-in-law of Jacques Beynes and the late Margot Benlolo; fond former father-in-law of Lauri Alpern. Navy veteran of WWII. Graveside service Wednesday April 26th, 11 a.m., at Ridgelawn Cemetery, 5736 N. Pulaski Rd., Chicago. The funeral can be viewed on Macey’s webpage on www.mitzvahfunerals.com contributions to Anshe Emet Synagogue-Rabbi Siegel's Discretionary Fund www.ansheemet.org appreciated. Info Mitzvah Memorial Funerals, 630-MITZVAH 630-648-9824
Eulogy for Dad (Macey Gerson Feingold) 4/26/2023 at Star of David Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois
Thank you Rabbi Siegel and all the clergy of Anshe Emet Synagogue; Lloyd Mandel, William Goodman, Ari, and everyone at Mitzvah Memorial Funerals; Carol and everyone at the Star of David Cemetery for making this service possible and allowing us to fulfill the Jewish commandments, rituals, and mitzvot concerning the proper burial of the dead.
As I said on these same grounds at my mother's funeral in 2014, the word eulogy comes from the Greek word eulogia (εὐλογία) to praise. To praise means to admire, approve of and value. And no more authoritative resource than Chat GPT has informed me that the purpose of a eulogy is to honor the memory of the deceased, share their impact upon the world, and celebrate their life and accomplishments. Further, a eulogy should give comfort and support to those who are grieving. I don't know about you, but I certainly am grieving!
Beyond what the English dictionary and internet have told me, I believe that a eulogy should capture the essence of a human being. Essence means one’s intrinsic nature or indispensable quality. It comes from the Latin word "essentia," from "esse," be.
My dad was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on May 26, 1925. He died on April 21, 2023m, at his home, at the ripe old age of 97, about a month shy of 98. He grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, across the street from the author, Sylvia Plath, whom along with his brother David, used to babysit. After Sylvia’s tragic death, he maintained a correspondence with Sylvia’s mother, Aurelia. He went to the Edward Devotion grammar school, Brookline High, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned two degrees in quantitative and qualitative biology. He enlisted in the Navy in World War II and then trained locally at the Naval Station Great Lakes then was a stateside patriot from coast to coast.
His father, Louis Edward Feingold, was a Russian immigrant who graduated from Brown University Phi Beta Kappa, then Harvard Law School, and became a prominent attorney, and supporter of Jewish causes, in Worcester, Massachusetts. His mother, Miriam Young, was the daughter of eastern European Jews, Isaac and Annie Young (shortened from Yanofsky). My father grew up in a multigenerational household with his mother, older brother David, Isaac and Annie, and uncle Jack Young. His parents divorced when he was just a few years old, something unusual for those times according to my father.
He was predeceased by his older brother, David Sydney Feingold, who had three children, Oded, Anat, and Michele, with his wife Batia Haber, a Holocaust survivor from Germany. Oded and Michele made the trip from Grafton, Massachusetts, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, respectively, to be here with us today. Thank you.
My father’s dear wife of about 57 years, my mother, Hélène Sultana Benlolo Feingold, predeceased my father 9 years ago, in 2014. They were inseparable. You can see a photo of them together on today’s program. She was the light of his life and his devotion to her was endless.
He was also the proud grandfather of my children, Noah and Ethan Feingold, and the devoted father-in-law of my ex-wife, Lauri Alpern, all of whom also are here today.
My father was accepted to a medical school out east after World War II, but it closed down and for some reason he didn’t apply to others. He would have been an excellent doctor not only because of his intellect, but because of his kind soul and his desire to help and inspire others. He would have healed his patients not only with his medical skills, but with his genuine interest and faith in them. Although he did not become a doctor, he inspired my brother Dan to become one.
My father worked as a food technologist in the food industry for a number of major companies as the director of quality control, such as for Mogen David wines, based here in Chicago at the time, the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI) where he worked on a number of research projects, even one for the Apollo space program, and IGA, the Independent Grocers Alliance. He was the director of quality control and new product development for Kronos Foods. He was a brilliant man who could solve any problem with the concentrated focus of his keen, analytical mind.
He had an intense and insatiable curiosity about just about everything. His favorite books were the dictionary and the World Book Encyclopedia, and later the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He often ordered special reports from the Encyclopedia Britannica just to read up on areas of special interest to him. When the internet became available to him, he had a field day, printing articles on massive amounts of varied topics. The depth of his knowledge was unfathomable. I really wanted him to go on a TV show like Jeopardy, but he never wanted to, for some unknown reason. I believe he would have cleaned up, and would have had the chance to meet Alex Trabek!
One of his areas of interest was people. Oh, man, did he love people! In such a diverse city as Chicago, he often would start a conversation, particularly to Uber drivers, by asking, “Where are you from, or what languages do you speak?” He really took an interest in people! He studied the lives of outliers, such as Hetty Green, once the richest, and most miserly woman, in America, and those who possessed hyperthymesia, from the Ancient Greek roots hyper - excessive, and thymesis - remembering. This is an extraordinarily rare condition of which only 62 people have been diagnosed as of 2021. It leads them to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences, such as every day of their lives, in vivid detail. He was just fascinated by this condition, and humans in general. People would open up to him because he was so genuinely interested in them. And his life was an open book; there were no secrets, especially after my mother, the light of his life, died. He made friends easily and people loved him. And he maintained contact with high school friends and girlfriends and others, over the decades of his life.
And although I do not believe that my father was hyperthymesic, he did have an incredible memory. He would tell me how he met so and so and then proceed to basically tell me this human being’s whole biography starting with where they were born, the composition of their family, etc. But not everyone was enthralled by his excessive interest. He told me how he had been speaking with a woman he had met at the grocery store recently, and that she said to him in no uncertain terms, “Will you please leave me alone?!” He remembered and recited long passages of poetry that he had learned 80 years before!. I think Noah and Ethan can attest to that especially.
Besides my mother, people, ideas and general knowledge, and life in general, one of his other great loves, like his brother David, was languages. Not only was he a master of English vocabulary and grammar, he learned to speak fluent Hebrew at an ulpan in Israel where he lived with his brother David in the early 1950s. He also spoke grammatically correct French, of course with the most American of accents. He helped my mother, whose first languages were French and Spanish, to write the papers necessary for her to earn a master’s degree from Roosevelt University here in Chicago.
He also studied health. It was no accident that he lived so long - he maintained his health! In his younger years he would exercise on the Nordic Track cross country ski machine and make his own yogurt. Decades ago, he used to talk about getting his aerobic points and steps in through his walks and daily activities. He took great care of himself and his appearance, and always looked about 20 years younger than his age. He subscribed to multiple health publications such as the Harvard Health Letter, and Worst Pills, Best Pills It was no accident then, that he lived such a long life. Even recently, through the power of his discipline, he took off around 20 pounds or so, which just amazed me.
He was a great father, patiently helping me with my homework, and proofreading papers that I had written in school. He helped me to learn to write and to put grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs together into a cohesive whole, which advanced a thesis or argument. I would not be the lawyer I am today without the influence of my father.
And that is another thing about him, he loved to be humorous and tell jokes. He had an incredible sense of humor and loved to make people laugh, sometimes to excess. I am sure my children would say that I inherited that trait, or defect, if you will.
I truly would be remiss, though, if I did not touch on perhaps two of his most essential qualities, his inner fortitude and his gratefulness for the smallest things in life, such as shelter, clothing and food. He really was a grateful individual and always counted his blessings. He often would say that there were many people in the world who would feel as if they were in heaven if they could live the life we were living, with all that we had and all that we experienced. I think this is true and is very important for all of us to keep in mind.
His quality of gratefulness was one of the sources of his inner strength and his long life. He was very encouraging to me and sought to instill this quality in my brother and me, too. And I believe he succeeded to a large extent. This is a quality that I am always seeking to develop and enhance. It makes for a much happier and peaceful life.
I believe his sense of gratefulness was born of his knowledge that we are all just passing ships in the great eternity of life and that our lives are merely parentheses in eternity. We all have to be mindful of hubris, excessive pride or self-confidence which, as referenced in Greek Tragedy, leads to our nemesis, our downfall.
My dad used to recite the poem, Ozymandias, from the great English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, which illustrates this point:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
We all have to remember that as it is said in Genesis (Beresahit) 3:19, that we will, “return to the ground, for you were taken therefrom, for dust you are, and to dust you will return."
And finally, his life is defined by his inner strength, fortitude, and determination. First, by just living so long. It takes courage to live so long. He lived a remarkably healthy life, his health deteriorating only a few weeks before his death after he had fallen a few times and hurt himself, making it difficult to walk. Otherwise, he had been out and about daily, even during the pandemic, shopping daily and running errands.
But his fortitude was much larger than his physical strength. He had a never say die, never give up, attitude, which drove him forward each and every day, with courage and determination. His indomitable will is illustrated by another poem which was also was one of his favorites, Ulysses, by Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, the final verses of which read:
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
I believe this is the difference he made in the world, his personal Tikkun Olam - how he repaired the world - one person at a time, touching the soul of each and every individual with whom he came in contact by sparking within them his love and utter enchantment with life and all things holy therein, which for him was his love of people his love of words, in any language, his love for his family and his hopes for humanity, which though shaken, still much abided.
As a Kohen, may his soul, and my mother’s soul, be lifted up and be shown mercy and protection under the tallit of God and be blessed by the priestly blessing from Numbers, chapter 6, verses 24 through 26:
Yivarechecha Adonai viyishmirecha
Ya'er Adonai panav elecha veechuneka
Yeesa Adonai panav elecha viyasem lecha shalom
May G‑d bless you and keep you.
'May G‑d shine His face upon you and be gracious to you.
'May G‑d turn His face toward you and grant you peace.
Amen.
Thank you.
Eulogy for Dad (Macey Gerson Feingold) 4/26/2023 at Star of David Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois
Thank you Rabbi Siegel and all the clergy of Anshe Emet Synagogue; Lloyd Mandel, William Goodman, Ari, and everyone at Mitzvah Memorial Funerals; Carol and everyone at the Star of David Cemetery for making this service possible and allowing us to fulfill the Jewish commandments, rituals, and mitzvot concerning the proper burial of the dead.
As I said on these same grounds at my mother's funeral in 2014, the word eulogy comes from the Greek word eulogia (εὐλογία) to praise. To praise means to admire, approve of and value. And no more authoritative resource than Chat GPT has informed me that the purpose of a eulogy is to honor the memory of the deceased, share their impact upon the world, and celebrate their life and accomplishments. Further, a eulogy should give comfort and support to those who are grieving. I don't know about you, but I certainly am grieving!
Beyond what the English dictionary and internet have told me, I believe that a eulogy should capture the essence of a human being. Essence means one’s intrinsic nature or indispensable quality. It comes from the Latin word "essentia," from "esse," be.
My dad was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on May 26, 1925. He died on April 21, 2023m, at his home, at the ripe old age of 97, about a month shy of 98. He grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, across the street from the author, Sylvia Plath, whom along with his brother David, used to babysit. After Sylvia’s tragic death, he maintained a correspondence with Sylvia’s mother, Aurelia. He went to the Edward Devotion grammar school, Brookline High, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned two degrees in quantitative and qualitative biology. He enlisted in the Navy in World War II and then trained locally at the Naval Station Great Lakes then was a stateside patriot from coast to coast.
His father, Louis Edward Feingold, was a Russian immigrant who graduated from Brown University Phi Beta Kappa, then Harvard Law School, and became a prominent attorney, and supporter of Jewish causes, in Worcester, Massachusetts. His mother, Miriam Young, was the daughter of eastern European Jews, Isaac and Annie Young (shortened from Yanofsky). My father grew up in a multigenerational household with his mother, older brother David, Isaac and Annie, and uncle Jack Young. His parents divorced when he was just a few years old, something unusual for those times according to my father.
He was predeceased by his older brother, David Sydney Feingold, who had three children, Oded, Anat, and Michele, with his wife Batia Haber, a Holocaust survivor from Germany. Oded and Michele made the trip from Grafton, Massachusetts, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, respectively, to be here with us today. Thank you.
My father’s dear wife of about 57 years, my mother, Hélène Sultana Benlolo Feingold, predeceased my father 9 years ago, in 2014. They were inseparable. You can see a photo of them together on today’s program. She was the light of his life and his devotion to her was endless.
He was also the proud grandfather of my children, Noah and Ethan Feingold, and the devoted father-in-law of my ex-wife, Lauri Alpern, all of whom also are here today.
My father was accepted to a medical school out east after World War II, but it closed down and for some reason he didn’t apply to others. He would have been an excellent doctor not only because of his intellect, but because of his kind soul and his desire to help and inspire others. He would have healed his patients not only with his medical skills, but with his genuine interest and faith in them. Although he did not become a doctor, he inspired my brother Dan to become one.
My father worked as a food technologist in the food industry for a number of major companies as the director of quality control, such as for Mogen David wines, based here in Chicago at the time, the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI) where he worked on a number of research projects, even one for the Apollo space program, and IGA, the Independent Grocers Alliance. He was the director of quality control and new product development for Kronos Foods. He was a brilliant man who could solve any problem with the concentrated focus of his keen, analytical mind.
He had an intense and insatiable curiosity about just about everything. His favorite books were the dictionary and the World Book Encyclopedia, and later the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He often ordered special reports from the Encyclopedia Britannica just to read up on areas of special interest to him. When the internet became available to him, he had a field day, printing articles on massive amounts of varied topics. The depth of his knowledge was unfathomable. I really wanted him to go on a TV show like Jeopardy, but he never wanted to, for some unknown reason. I believe he would have cleaned up, and would have had the chance to meet Alex Trabek!
One of his areas of interest was people. Oh, man, did he love people! In such a diverse city as Chicago, he often would start a conversation, particularly to Uber drivers, by asking, “Where are you from, or what languages do you speak?” He really took an interest in people! He studied the lives of outliers, such as Hetty Green, once the richest, and most miserly woman, in America, and those who possessed hyperthymesia, from the Ancient Greek roots hyper - excessive, and thymesis - remembering. This is an extraordinarily rare condition of which only 62 people have been diagnosed as of 2021. It leads them to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences, such as every day of their lives, in vivid detail. He was just fascinated by this condition, and humans in general. People would open up to him because he was so genuinely interested in them. And his life was an open book; there were no secrets, especially after my mother, the light of his life, died. He made friends easily and people loved him. And he maintained contact with high school friends and girlfriends and others, over the decades of his life.
And although I do not believe that my father was hyperthymesic, he did have an incredible memory. He would tell me how he met so and so and then proceed to basically tell me this human being’s whole biography starting with where they were born, the composition of their family, etc. But not everyone was enthralled by his excessive interest. He told me how he had been speaking with a woman he had met at the grocery store recently, and that she said to him in no uncertain terms, “Will you please leave me alone?!” He remembered and recited long passages of poetry that he had learned 80 years before!. I think Noah and Ethan can attest to that especially.
Besides my mother, people, ideas and general knowledge, and life in general, one of his other great loves, like his brother David, was languages. Not only was he a master of English vocabulary and grammar, he learned to speak fluent Hebrew at an ulpan in Israel where he lived with his brother David in the early 1950s. He also spoke grammatically correct French, of course with the most American of accents. He helped my mother, whose first languages were French and Spanish, to write the papers necessary for her to earn a master’s degree from Roosevelt University here in Chicago.
He also studied health. It was no accident that he lived so long - he maintained his health! In his younger years he would exercise on the Nordic Track cross country ski machine and make his own yogurt. Decades ago, he used to talk about getting his aerobic points and steps in through his walks and daily activities. He took great care of himself and his appearance, and always looked about 20 years younger than his age. He subscribed to multiple health publications such as the Harvard Health Letter, and Worst Pills, Best Pills It was no accident then, that he lived such a long life. Even recently, through the power of his discipline, he took off around 20 pounds or so, which just amazed me.
He was a great father, patiently helping me with my homework, and proofreading papers that I had written in school. He helped me to learn to write and to put grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs together into a cohesive whole, which advanced a thesis or argument. I would not be the lawyer I am today without the influence of my father.
And that is another thing about him, he loved to be humorous and tell jokes. He had an incredible sense of humor and loved to make people laugh, sometimes to excess. I am sure my children would say that I inherited that trait, or defect, if you will.
I truly would be remiss, though, if I did not touch on perhaps two of his most essential qualities, his inner fortitude and his gratefulness for the smallest things in life, such as shelter, clothing and food. He really was a grateful individual and always counted his blessings. He often would say that there were many people in the world who would feel as if they were in heaven if they could live the life we were living, with all that we had and all that we experienced. I think this is true and is very important for all of us to keep in mind.
His quality of gratefulness was one of the sources of his inner strength and his long life. He was very encouraging to me and sought to instill this quality in my brother and me, too. And I believe he succeeded to a large extent. This is a quality that I am always seeking to develop and enhance. It makes for a much happier and peaceful life.
I believe his sense of gratefulness was born of his knowledge that we are all just passing ships in the great eternity of life and that our lives are merely parentheses in eternity. We all have to be mindful of hubris, excessive pride or self-confidence which, as referenced in Greek Tragedy, leads to our nemesis, our downfall.
My dad used to recite the poem, Ozymandias, from the great English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, which illustrates this point:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
We all have to remember that as it is said in Genesis (Beresahit) 3:19, that we will, “return to the ground, for you were taken therefrom, for dust you are, and to dust you will return."
And finally, his life is defined by his inner strength, fortitude, and determination. First, by just living so long. It takes courage to live so long. He lived a remarkably healthy life, his health deteriorating only a few weeks before his death after he had fallen a few times and hurt himself, making it difficult to walk. Otherwise, he had been out and about daily, even during the pandemic, shopping daily and running errands.
But his fortitude was much larger than his physical strength. He had a never say die, never give up, attitude, which drove him forward each and every day, with courage and determination. His indomitable will is illustrated by another poem which was also was one of his favorites, Ulysses, by Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, the final verses of which read:
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
I believe this is the difference he made in the world, his personal Tikkun Olam - how he repaired the world - one person at a time, touching the soul of each and every individual with whom he came in contact by sparking within them his love and utter enchantment with life and all things holy therein, which for him was his love of people his love of words, in any language, his love for his family and his hopes for humanity, which though shaken, still much abided.
As a Kohen, may his soul, and my mother’s soul, be lifted up and be shown mercy and protection under the tallit of God and be blessed by the priestly blessing from Numbers, chapter 6, verses 24 through 26:
Yivarechecha Adonai viyishmirecha
Ya'er Adonai panav elecha veechuneka
Yeesa Adonai panav elecha viyasem lecha shalom
May G‑d bless you and keep you.
'May G‑d shine His face upon you and be gracious to you.
'May G‑d turn His face toward you and grant you peace.
Amen.
Thank you.