Funeral services were held at the Free Synagogue today for David L. Podell, 62, prominent lawyer and Jewish communal leader, who died yesterday after a two-month illness. Rabbis Edward E. Klein and M.R. Macabee officinted. Interment was at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, N.Y.
Mr. Podell was counsel in important government and civil suits between the two World Wars and prosscuted several precedent-setting anti-trust cases for the Department of Justice. He was called to Washington by President Roosevelt in the early days of the New Deal and helped to draft the National Industrial Recovery Act. He held various government posts during the war, the most recent of which was counsel to the Smaller War Plants Corporation.
He had wide interests in the Jewish philanthropic and communal fields, having served as a trustes of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropics, president of Beth Israel Hospital, co-chairman of the New York campaign of ORT in 1942, and was vice-president of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Mr. Podell was born in Russia and brought to this country in 1893. He was educated at City College, Columbia College and Columbia University Law School.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.