Dorian Feigenbaum

Dorian Feigenbaum (1887–1937)
was the first physician, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist in Israel.
He served as a psychiatric consultant to the heads of the British government
and was the first director of the Ezrat Nashim Hospital (as a psychiatric hospital)
in Jerusalem

Feigenbaum was born in Lvov, Eastern Galicia (Austro-Hungary) to Menachem Mendel, a wealthy banker who taught his sons a Torah and general education. His younger brother is Arie Feigenbaum and his sister is Malka Weiss, the mother of Muhammad Assad.

Feigenbaum studied medicine in Lvov and graduated in Munich, where he graduated in psychiatry. Was one of Sigmund Freud’s first students

Feigenbaum was drafted as a military doctor in World War I, and served on the Italian and Russian fronts. After completing his military service, he moved to Vienna, Austria, and worked as a psychiatrist at the Military Neurological-Psychiatric Hospital.

In 1920 he immigrated to Eretz Israel. In 1921 he began working as a psychiatrist at the Women’s Aid Hospital [8] and was soon appointed its first director. “Ezrat Nashim” was during this period the only psychiatric institution in Eretz Israel (in 1922 the psychiatric hospital was established in Bethlehem).

Feigenbaum, who studied the psychiatric status of hundreds of pioneers who came from Russia and Poland between 1921 and 1923, stated that the pioneers’ mental shock, loosening of ties with family members left in Europe and shortages and hunger in Israel created fertile ground for a variety of disorders, especially in the first year.