OneI knew Mary Fels well, being the son of her attorney, who, with my mother, served on the Fels Foundation board from the 1930’s, and assumed leadership of the foundation from Mary’s death until it’s planned dissolution some 20 years later. This article contains some gaps in this extraordinary woman’s life, such as her and Joseph’s communal life in Philadelphia with “Red Emma” Goldstien, their warm friendship with next-door neighbor Walt Whitman, associations with British Fabian Socialists Beatrice and Sidney Webb, their friendships with Sir George Bernard Shaw, Stafford Crips and other pivotal intellectual and political figures of the day. One important omission, or, rather, error, in this article, is the assertion that Mrs. Fels believed Palestine should be “given to” the Jewish people. Rather than assert my primary knowledge of her, and of the political faction in the Yeshuv which she bankrolled, namely, the Nilim, I refer the sceptical reader to the document Mary Fels signed, which she had helped compose, on behalf of the Zionist Organization of America, along with Stephen S. Wise, Chaim Weizmann, Lord Walter Rothschild and others, which explicitly states, “...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which shall orejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine....”
OneI knew Mary Fels well, being the son of her attorney, who, with my mother, served on the Fels Foundation board from the 1930’s, and assumed leadership of the foundation from Mary’s death until it’s planned dissolution some 20 years later. This article contains some gaps in this extraordinary woman’s life, such as her and Joseph’s communal life in Philadelphia with “Red Emma” Goldstien, their warm friendship with next-door neighbor Walt Whitman, associations with British Fabian Socialists Beatrice and Sidney Webb, their friendships with Sir George Bernard Shaw, Stafford Crips and other pivotal intellectual and political figures of the day. One important omission, or, rather, error, in this article, is the assertion that Mrs. Fels believed Palestine should be “given to” the Jewish people. Rather than assert my primary knowledge of her, and of the political faction in the Yeshuv which she bankrolled, namely, the Nilim, I refer the sceptical reader to the document Mary Fels signed, which she had helped compose, on behalf of the Zionist Organization of America, along with Stephen S. Wise, Chaim Weizmann, Lord Walter Rothschild and others, which explicitly states, “...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which shall orejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine....”