sions, the directors of the congregation found it impossible to acquiesce with the result that the formal resignation of Rabbi Nathan was announced yesterday. This statement reads as follows:
“Rabbi Marvin Nathan has resigned from Beth Israel after serving this Congregation since his graduation from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1905.
“Had the Congregation decided to move to another neighborhood where it could grow and progress, he would gladly have continued to serve as its Rabbi. He feels that he has done all he can for the Congregation in its present location at 32nd Street and Montgomery Avenue and that conditions existing there today make his withdrawal from Beth Israel necessary.
“At the Congregational semi-annual meeting held on Sunday, April 6th, it was decided not to accept his resignation and a special committee was appointed to wait on him. Rabbi Nathan appreciates this expression of regard that his congregation has for him but he deeply regrets, however, that he must adhere to his decision to sever his connection with Beth Israel.”
Following the issuance of this statement, Rabbi Nathan disclosed that he has made no definite plans for the future.
Rabbi Nathan was born in Buffalo in 1889. Following public and high school he matriculated Cornell University from which he was graduated in 1900, with high honors. He was made a member of the honorary fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa. He entered the Jewish Theological Seminary following his graduation, and was received into the rabbinate five years later. He took post-graduate work at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. He immediately became affiliated with Beth Israel, and has held the post of Rabbi of that congregation continuously since that time.
Rabbi Nathan has played an important role in the organization of the Beth Israel Association for the Deaf and Dumb. His activities in this behalf have won him a country-wide reputation. He was a vice-president of the Jewish Chatauqua Society and has given a lecture course at Penn. State under the auspices of this group. During the World War he was a chaplain at Camp Dix. Rabbi Nathan has been making a study of the Jewish College students and is writing a thesis on “Study of the Religious Attitude of the College Student toward Judaism,” which will win him the Ph.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania.
He is president of the Philadelphia branch of the Religious Association and also heads the “40 Club” which is comprised of rabbis, ministers and priests of all faiths.
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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.
