By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – As speakers at his funeral told stories on Wednesday, Jan. 5, of Jonas Feurzeig’s seemingly magical abilities, more than a few attendees looked at his simple pine casket waiting to be lowered into a grave in the King David section of Greenwood Cemetery. It would have been shocking, yes, but maybe not all that surprising if somehow Feurzeig, 102, who had died three days earlier, performed one last trick.
Feurzeig didn’t. However, who would have believed some of the things he actually had done in lifetime?.
Delivering Feurzeig’s eulogy, Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal recounted his “unusual way with metals.” After watching a performance by mentalist Uri Geller, Feurzeig said to his wife, Ray, “I can do this.” According to the rabbi, “He promptly took one of her sterling silver spoons and broke it. She was none too happy. However, Jonas soon mastered the art of manipulating metals. He always called it a trick. Others were not so sure.
“His family bought him a whole bunch of cheap spoons which he happily bent or rubbed one end to make it fall off. He could get into any lock or any door. He was able to crash computers simply by walking by them. Zander (a great-grandson) remembers the time a truck pulled into (a family-owned) warehouse with sealed crate from France. French customs had forgotten to take off the padlock. Everyone in the warehouse voted to cut it off, but Jonas told them to wait. He grabbed the shank of the padlock and physically pulled it down to open the lock. Even though he ended up with blisters on his hands, to this day no one has figured out how he did it.”
Intrigued, the funeral attendees—friends, family, fellow congregants of Tifereth Israel Synagogue, along with co-officiant Cantor Sheldon Merel, cantor emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel — leaned forward with anticipation as Rabbi Rosenthal continue to recount some of Feurzeig’s better-remembered feats.
“One day he took one of (his daughter Lee “Bunny” Amos)’s employees to lunch,” Rosenthal related. “She asked him to do his spoon trick. He declined and said he was unable to. But when she looked down at her plate she saw her bent knife upon it. Legend has it that she ran out of the restaurant in terror.”
Besides bending spoons, Feurzeig seemed to have the ability to heal himself and sometimes others, said Rosenthal.
“A few years ago he was using a blowtorch. An unexpected gust of wind threw the flame backwards and caught his shirt on fire. Jonas quickly beat it out with his hands but hia hands were badly burned. The burnt skin was literally hanging off his arm, and the doctors told him without several surgeries not only would he not heal but his fingers would be fused together. He refused surgeries and skin grafts and went home. Ilana and Adina (granddaughters) changed his dressings and they were surprised to see how quickly his skin regenerated. Not only was his return to health speedy, but he never even had a scar from the injuries.
“Another time,” continued the rabbi, “he was taken to the hospital with internal bleeding with no apparent cause. The doctors wanted to operate to seek out the cause, and Jonas, to appease them and his family, agreed. The next morning, before the surgery, he was not supposed to eat. What did Jonas do? He walked into the hallway and ate another patient’s breakfast. The surgery was postponed and Jonas announced that it was unnecessary anyway because within twenty-four hours he would be cured. During the time leading up to his cure he was treated with transfusions. Jonas didn’t want the transfusions and kept fouling up the lines. The nurses had to change them over and over again until Ray shouted for him to stop messing with it, which he did.
“Zander remembers the time that Ray almost completely cut off her fingertip. She figured it was gone for good, but Jonas held her finger together, and somehow it healed so well that not even a scar remained.
“Adina told me that when Ilana graduated High School, Adina had a migraine and thought she wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony. Jonas put his hand on her head and told her to count to ten. Adina reluctantly agreed and found her headache lifting by the time she reached ten, though she was annoyed that he made her feel better. She had been prepared to show him that it wouldn’t work.”
David Amos, son-in-law of the deceased, told of working up the nerve to ask Feurzeig for Bunny’s hand in marriage. Though they subsequently talked about many other subjects, Feurzeig didn’t answer him – not for four months!
He described Feurzeig as a man who was a slow talker, but a fast thinker. A man who was tenacious in arguing his point of view.
One time, after a splinter was lodged in his shoulder, Feurzeig reluctantly agreed to a medical checkup. In the course of the full physical, it was found that he had an enlarged prostate—not cancerous, but needing surgery. While being wheeled on the gurney to the operating theatre, Feurzeig looked up to Amos and counseled: “Never get a splinter.”
Born January 11, 1908, in Chicago, he was raised in a family of seven children. The family maintained its Orthodoxs Jewish life style even after moving to a farm in Barris, Wisconsin. Not afraid of a scrap, he fought as a boxer for a time, losing two front teeth in the process – teeth that he had replaced. He and Ray, who predeceased him, were married for 57 years. During the Depression, his Central Distribution Company provided a variety of products for independent peddlers, to whom he extended credit. After moving to the San Diego area, Feurzeig worked for a company making jet engines at the North Island Naval Air Station.
Rabbi Rosenthal noted that in the last years of his life, Feurzeig was assisted by caretakers Martha Valadez and Marco Gonzalez, who came to be looked upon by the Amoses, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren as part of the extended family. Beside those family members already mentioned, Feurzeig’s direct descendants include Piper, his great-granddaughter.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World