Police Find Body of Rabbi Floating in Bay off Brooklyn By JOHN T. McQUISTON Published: March 20, 1989 The body of a 66-year-old Hasidic rabbi, the leader of a small Orthodox congregation on the Upper East Side who has been missing since mid-January, was found yesterday floating in the Gowanus Bay about 200 yards from the Brooklyn shore, the police said. The discovery of the body of Rabbi Felix Friedlander was made at 2:50 P.M. by a city police harbor patrol boat, said a police spokesman, Sgt. Raymond O'Donnell. Rabbi Friedlander, who 11 years ago founded the Lisker Congregation at his home at 163 East 163d Street, was last seen at 3:40 P.M. Sunday, Jan. 15, by his 19-year-old son, Harold, about a block from the synagogue. The rabbi was returning home after a walk with Harold, the police said. They parted, the son going to a store and the father continuing toward home, where he failed to appear. Remains Badly Decomposed His fully clothed body was found floating face down near the police harbor patrol unit headquarters at 52d Street and First Avenue in the Bay Ridge section. The badly decomposed remains had no visible wounds, Sergeant O'Donnell said. The clothing was recognized as similar to that worn by Rabbi Friedlander when he was last seen. Relatives identified the body at the city morgue last night. Sergeant O'Donnell said an autopsy would be performed to determine the exact cause of death. When the rabbi was reported missing by his wife, Judith, on the evening of Jan. 15, she said that he was suffering from a heart condition and diabetes and that he had been ''feeling low'' recently because he had been unable to raise enough money to complete a ritual bath in the synagogue basement. She said the project was far from complete. While he had spent $120,000 on the bath project, it needed at least that much more money to be finished, she said. Search Parties Formed His disappearance led many people who had slept or eaten as guests in the synagogue over the years to organize search parties for the rabbi, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who was the heir to a Hasidic dynasty known as Lisker. Because the synagogue has an open-door policy and is near large hospitals, some Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews, who do not travel on the Sabbath, sleep and eat there without charge on Friday nights to be near relatives in the hospitals. The volunteers posted thousands of black-and-white ''Missing'' signs on lampposts and in store windows around the city. The police said there had been only one reported sighting of the rabbi, walking near the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, not far from his home, on the afternoon of his disappearance. 'Very Giving Man' Steven Lipman, a friend of the Friedlander family and a reporter for The New York Jewish Week, was among those who gathered last night at the synagogue to support the family and to help plan for the funeral. He said the funeral would be held at 1:30 P.M. today at the synagogue. ''He was a very quiet and very giving man,'' Mr. Lipman said. ''He was a Holocaust survivor, but he was never embittered by what happened to him. He came to this neighborhood so that people could learn and pray and have counsel.'' Mr. Lipman said that the rabbi ''had an open-door policy for the homeless and others down on their luck'' and that he ''led more through example than oratory.''