When Hans Andersen, beloved Danish poet, grew old, he wrote in wonder and gratitude: “My life was a beautiful fairy-tale; so rich, so full of color.”
Maud Nathan (Mrs. Frederick Nathan), looking back upon a long life of splendid endeavor and success, can say the same thing; indeed, she has said it most enchantingly in a book of memoirs “Once Upon a Time and Today” that has all the flavor and mellowness of a ripe fruit sweetened in sunshine. A second book of hers, “The Story of an Epoch Making Movement,” dealing with the founding and the development of the Consumer’s League, is likewise full of dramatic interest, and perhaps the most thrilling contribution to the economic history of our times.
Mrs. Nathan. daughter of an old Spanish-Portuguese family, whose ancestors settled in America in 1654, inherited from her forbears not only worldly goods. but cultural treasures which she has guarded jealously. Many great and good men and women have been members of this distinguished family—one of them is United States Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, and Maud Nathan holds a worthy place among her illustrious relations.
AIDED WORKING GIRLS
Married very young to a cousin whose unfailing love and sympathy enriched her life, meeting the most brilliant minds, the most fashionable members of American and European society, no one would have wondered had she become merely a worldly society leader. Yet always she had a clear eye for social injustice and the moral courage to protest against them. When tragedy darkened her days and she lost her only child, she did not selfishly bury herself in her grief, but devoted her life to the task of making this world of ours a better place to live in.
Though always strongly conscious of her Jewish heritage and proud to belong to a race that has given the world the first conception of ethical duties toward stranger as well as neighbor, she did not limit her activities to purely Jewish causes. There was not one worthy movement, political, philanthropic or economic, to which she did not give generous help and support, though the Consumers League of which she is honorary president is perhaps nearest to her heart.
Through this League she was instrumental in bettering the lot of the working girl, in abolishing child-labor and the menace of the sweat-shop, and in insuring for the saleswomen in department stores reasonable hours, a half-holiday in summer, and the privilege to rest between sales.
WITH NATIONAL COUNCIL
In the Jewish philanthropic field Mrs. Nathan was and is most closely allied with the National Council of Jewish Women. The New York Section of the Council, of which Mrs. Nathan is an honorary vice-president, celebrates this year the fortieth anniversary of its inception, and Mrs. Nathan tells fascinating tales of the early days of Council activities when the social welfare worker went over to Blackwell’s Island in an open boat to bring cheer and succor to the unfortunates there.
Equally interesting is her description of the work done by the Council in the cause of religious education, the protection and Americanization of immigrants, the physical and moral regeneration of the unmarried mother which culminated in the Lakeview Home, the probation work in Night Court as well as the various female penal institutions.
What Mrs. Nathan specially values in the work of the National Council of Jewish Women is the fact that it is never static but always dynamic. It never becomes standardized but always moves on to new problems and is continually ready to meet new social and political conditions with new methods of endeavor. “We give the necessary impetus,” says Mrs. Nathan, “and when once the movement is established we leave it to others to continue the routine.”
WOMEN LOOK UP TO HER
At present the Council is occupied with three main projects: settlement work in The Bronx, centering around the Council House at 1122 Forest avenue; the Service for Foreign Born at 1776 Broadway where the German refugee situation is handled with competence and sympathy, and finally the work on Welfare Island, where, as the official organization appointed by the City, the New York Section directs the activities of the Jews in the City Home and Hospitals.
When Mrs. Nathan was graduating from high school, she was chosen salutatorian and her essay was written around the title: “Awake, ’tis day!” This choice of topic was not accidental; it represented her inmost nature which always urged her to be awake and to work for social betterment. And to a younger generation of women, who look up to her with true veneration, she hands on this slogan with the torch she has carried so long and so valiantly. Mrs. Nathan feels that if every woman will listen and respond to the clarion-call of “Awake, ’tis day!” we will yet live to see a world in which peace and social justice reign and in which Jew and Gentile join hands to build the Kingdom of Heaven in the Here and Now.
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.
