Morris Weinfeld
American politician
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Morris Weinfeld (December 28, 1898 – April 13, 1988) was a Jewish-American lawyer, politician, and judge from New York.
Life
Weinfeld was born on December 28, 1898, in New York City, New York, the son of Abraham Weinfeld and Fannie Singer.[1] His brother was United States District Judge Edward Weinfeld.[2]
Weinfeld graduated from New York University School of Law in 1921.[3] He had a law office on 25 Broadway.[4]
In 1923, Weinfeld was elected to the New York State Assembly as a Democrat, representing the New York County 6th District. He served in the Assembly in 1924,[5] 1925,[4] 1926,[6] and 1927.[7] He later served as Deputy Attorney General of New York, and in the 1930s he worked for the National Labor Relations Board. He served as a judge for the Criminal Court from 1960 to 1968. After he retired from the bench, he joined the Manhattan law firm Blum, Haimoff, Gersen, Lipson, Garley & Neidergang and was involved with the firm until his health declined in 1987.[3]
Weinfeld was a member of the Odd Fellows and Phi Sigma Delta.[4] In 1925, he married Beatrice Margel.[1] They had a son, Bernard. In 1929, they lived separately, and by 1932 she was seeing singer Arthur Tracy.[8] When Weinfeld found out, he had Tracy arrested for violating the Mann Act.[9] In 1938, he married widow Beatrice Ladin Block in a ceremony performed by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.[10] Block was the first national secretary of the American Jewish Congress, a delegate to the first World Jewish Congress, and an organizer of the Bundles for Britain Agency.[11]
Weinfeld died from a cardiac arrest in a Queens nursing home on April 13, 1988.[3] He was buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery.[12]