Levy, Felix Alexander

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LEVY, FELIX ALEXANDER

LEVY, FELIX ALEXANDER (1884–1963), U.S. Reform rabbi and scholar. Levy was born in New York, son of parents of Alsatian origin. He was ordained at Hebrew Union College (1907). From 1908 until his retirement in 1955, Rabbi Levy served Emmanuel Congregation, Chicago. He influenced his colleagues in modifying the attitude of Reform Judaism to halakhah and the nature of Jewish identity. These changes were embodied, inter alia, in the 1937 Columbus Platform adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis under Levy's leadership as president (1935–37). After his retirement, Rabbi Levy served as editor of Judaism and as dean of the Academy for Higher Jewish Learning in New York. A selection of his papers and sermons appeared in His Own Torah (ed. S.D. Temkin, 1969).

bibliography:

S.D. Temkin (ed.), His Own Torah (1969), 3–43.

[Wolfe Kelman]