A. Lolik (Israel) Feinberg

Fanny (Belkind), Israel's wife

C. Lolik died in 1911. In the photo: Fanny, Avshalom and Tzila mourn

D. Avshalom with Fania Chissin (the doctor's wife and his mother Fanny's friend)

E. Shoshana, Fanny and Lolik's eldest daughter, who liked to dress up, in 1910

F. Graduation of Herzliya Hebrew High School's sixth class (Tzila in second row, second from left)

Feinberg family: Back to first days of Zionism

The life's dream of the Feinberg, Belkind and Hankin families more than 100 years ago was to fulfill the Zionist idea in the Land of Israel. Their story is the story of the renewed Land of Israel

Nadav Man|Published: 07.04.08 , 13:59

In the coming weeks, we will present the story of three related families who longed to fulfill the Zionist idea in the Land of Israel: The Feinbergs, the Belkinds and the Hankins.

This new series of articles will feature photos of these families, whose story is the story of the renewed Land of Israel more than 100 years ago. The photos were taken from the album of Tamar Eshel, the daughter of Tzila Feinberg.

Family history

Lolik (Israel) Feinberg, son of Moshe and Luba, was born in Ukraine in 1864. Most of the family's children died in their youth after contracting different diseases. Riots that broke out in Russia against the Jews in 1881 prompted the three brothers – Yosef, Boris and Israel – to immigrate to Israel.

In 1882, they arrived in Israel, purchased land in Ayun Kara, and built their home there. Those were the first houses of Rishon Lezion. At first, Yosef managed to recruit the baron to help build the community, but shortly afterwards a conflict erupted between the settlers and the baron's emissaries, and the Feinberg, Belkind and Hankin families were forced to leave Rishon Lezion.

The Feinberg family: Yosef moved to Lod and then to Jaffa, Boris returned abroad, and Israel moved to Gedera, where his son Avshalom was born. After purchasing the lands of Hadera in 1891, Israel's family moved to Hadera.

Israel's wife, Fanny, was born to Meir and Shifra Belkind in Belarus in 1858. She joined her sister Olga (who later married into the Hankin family) who studied midwifery in St. Petersburg, and sought to study pharmaceutics, but her parents demanded that she return and help them.

In 1882, Fanny decided to join her two brothers Israel and and Shimshon who immigrated to Israel with the Bilu organization. In 1883, the three arrived in Rishon Lezion, where Fanny met Israel Feinberg.

Shoshana, Fanny and Lolik's eldest daughter, was born in Jaffa in 1887. When her parents moved to Hadera she stayed with her maternal grandparents. She studied at a girls' school in Jaffa and later with private tutors in Jerusalem and Rishon Lezion. She studied manual work and was a Hebrew and handicraft teacher. In 1906, she married engineer Nahum Vilboshevitz (Vilbosh). She lived in Haifa till 1982 and was buried in Hadera.

Family photos

1. Lolik and Fanny in their courtyard in Rishon Lezion, 1903

2. Fanny and Lolik's three children, Jaffa 1898. From the right: Avshalom, Tzila and Shoshana. Photo: Sabonji

3. Avshalom Feinberg, 20, with Shaul (Feba), the son of Boris Feinberg (the uncle, Lolik's brother)

4. Avshalom and Tzila photographed in Jaffa, 1910, for their father Lolik who was about to travel to Germany for medical treatment. Photo: A. Soskin

5. Avshalom with his sister's daughter, Shoshana-Zohara (age 4), 1911. Photo: A. Soskin, Jaffa

6. Tzila with her cousin Feba (Shaul), the son of her father's brother Boris, in Hadera next to the cowshed, 1907-8

7. The Feinberg family in Haifa's German Colony, in the courtyard of Shoshana and Nahum Vilboshevitz, 1910. From the right: Shoshana and Nahum Vilboshevitz (Vilbosh), Avshalom, Tzila, granddaughter Zohara and Fanny. (Grandfather Lolik refused to leave the house and join the photo. Zohara 'tricked' him by holding his picture during the photo shoot).

8. Tzila and Pnina Levontin (Horowitz), 1912. Photo: A. Soskin

9. A souvenir from the group of boys who studied in Herzliya Hebrew High School's first class, from a trip to the eastern side of the Jordan River (Trans-Jordan). Member of the Ein Gedi Group who signed their names: Hillel Cohen, Dov Hoz, Moshe Shertok, Yosef Kaizerman, Zerubavel Habib, Yaakov Kavshana, Avraham Semion, Yitzhak Cohen, Moshe Wolfson.

10. 1911 – Graduation of Herzliya Hebrew High School's sixth class, with teacher Metman-Cohen. From top and to the right: Rivka Sharett (Shertok), Yona Papo, Hannah Trachtenberg, Tzila Feinberg, teacher Metman-Cohen, Hannan Chon, Pnina Levontin, Chaya Weiss, Michal Cohen, Shulamit Horwitz.

11. Herzliya Hebrew High School's first class photo with Dr. Metman Cohen. First row on the back, from the right: Behrav, Yitzhak Cohen-Kedmi, Hannah Chon, Nehama Friedman, Yona Papo, Moshe Shertok (Sharett), Zerubavel Habib; second row, from the right: Alexander Malchi, Eliyahu Golomb, Beit Halahmi, Ginsburg, Rivkah Shertok (Hoz), Tzila Feinberg, Matityahu Gruno, Dov Hoz; third row, from the right: Carmi (Janovsky) Berman, Kavshana, Wolfson, Dr. Metman-Cohen, Penny Metman (sitting down), Nahum Rzenik (sitting down), Chaya Weiss; sitting, from the right: Menuchin, Vinokor, Kleinovich, Milotzky.

12. Tzila always wanted to be a boy instead of a girl. She didn’t go to sewing classes but to carpentry classes, she "carried" the clothes of her cousin Feba (Shaul, the son of Boris) and was photographed as a boy in Jaffa 1908. She was the first girl in the Herzliya Hebrew High School who dared to show up in pants to gym class.

13. On the back of the postcard Tzila wrote, "Ohel Hashulamit (Shulamit's tent), Iyyar 5673 (May 1913), trip to Ein Gedi during our last year in high school."

14. Tzila and Zohara (her niece, 4), May 1912

Additional information can be found in the Genealogic Album and in the Khan Museum in Hadera