Frankel, Lee Kaufer, 1867-1931

Lee Kaufer Frankel (1867-1931)

Dr. Lee Kaufer Frankel was born in Philadelphia on August 13, 1867, the son of Louis and Aurelia Lobenburg Franken. He attended public schools as the Rugby Academy of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1887 with a B.S. and again in 1891, when he received a Ph.D. He specialized in chemistry and was an instructor in chemistry at the university from 1888 until 1893. He practiced as a consulting chemist in Philadelphia from 1893 to 1899, and was vice president and then president of the chemical section of the Franklin Institute between 1895 and 1898. He came to New York in 1899 as manager of the United Hebrew Charities. A year earlier, he married Alice Reizenstein of Philadelphia and they had two children, Lee K. Frankel Jr. and Eleanor Frankel (Mrs. Richard Rafalsky). In 1908 he went to the Russell Sage Foundation as a special investigator. Frankel's friendship with Rabbi Henry Berkowitz helped arouse his interest in Jewish community affairs and social work.

From 1909, Dr. Frankel had been associated with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, where his work regarding the promoting of health won wide recognition. President Roosevelt appointed him a member of the Ellis Island Commission in 1903. He served as commissioner of the State Board of Charities and in 1921 and 1922 was welfare director of the Post Office Department.

Dr. Frankel helped introduce professional social work standards into Jewish philanthropy. He stressed the importance of adequate relief geared to rehabilitation, the development of a pension program for such dependents as widowed mothers, and a program of assisted migration to reduce the concentration of the Jewish population in New York City. He became interested in the potential contribution of social insurance to the prevention and relief of poverty.

At Metropolitan, Frankel pioneered the development of social and health programs under private insurance auspices. These included the distribution of many pamphlets on communicable diseases and personal hygiene, the organization of public health nursing services, and community health demonstrations.

Dr. Frankel was a director and, in 1914, vice president of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. He also had served as treasurer of the American Public Health Association and was its president in 1919. In 1912 he was president of the National Conference of Jewish Charities. He was a member of the national council of the Survey Associates, and a member of the hygiene reference board of the Life Extension Institute.

In 1917, Dr. Frankel was president of the New York State Conference of Charities and Corrections. He was made chairman of the Special European Relief Commission of the American Jewish Relief Commission in 1922, and was chairman of the National Health Council from 1923 to 1925. In 1923 and 1924, Dr. Frankel was vice president of the National Conference on Social Work. He served as chairman of the commission of experts that made a survey of Palestine under the auspices of the Jewish Agency in 1927. The honorary degree of Doctor of Hebrew Laws was conferred upon him by the Hebrew Union College at Cincinnati in 1928.

President Hoover named Dr. Frankel a member of the planning committee for the White House conference on child health and protection.

Dr. Frankel served on the Palestine Joint Survey Commission with Felix M. Warburg and the late Lord Melchett. At a meeting of so-called non-Zionists held here in October, 1928, Dr. Frankel pleaded for agreement between Zionists and non-Zionists and for the support of all Jews in the development of the higher economic, spiritual and cultural life of the ancient home of that people.

Dr. Frankel's appeal was so successful that at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Council at Zurich, Switzerland, the following August, Zionists and non-Zionists united to carry on the work of establishing a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Mr. Warburg was chosen chairman of an administrative committee of forty, composed of twenty Zionists and twenty non-Zionists and Dr. Frankel was a member of the American group.

In November 1929, moved by a declared interest and concern for the Zionist movement, Associate Justice Louis D. Brandeis of the United States Supreme Court joined with Dr. Frankel, Mr. Warburg, Bernard Flexner and other prominent Jews at a conference in Washington, in a decision to form an American business corporation for the investment of funds with a view to furthering the economic development of Palestine.

Dr. Frankel was chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Communal Survey of Greater New York, which, after an exhaustive study of three years, made a report in the Fall of 1929 urging greater hospital and clinical facilities, the establishment of a central council for the development of a unified recreational program for the Jewish community, the concentration of communal expenditures for research and the standardization and development of sound educational practices. As a result, the present city wide Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies became the unified and coordinated agency that it is today.

Dr. Frankel prepared a review of the medical and sanitary work of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which conducted a campaign to raise $2,500,000 from America Jews to carry on its work of rehabilitating the Jewish suffering in Central and Eastern Europe. Dr. Frankel, who was chairman of the medical and sanitary committee of the organization, said its work had been largely responsible for the health improvement of millions of persons and saved many who suffered from tuberculosis, typhus and other diseases.

At a meeting of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in April of 1930, Dr. Frankel described a world fifty years from then in which he said the main problem would be "the adequate use of leisure."

"The picture of the future is clear," Dr. Frankel said. "Orphan asylums will, we hope, become things of the past. There will be less need for welfare organizations for the indigent. Year by year we shall have fewer hospitals. Industry, in view of our constantly increasing development of technological processes, will be able to maintain efficient production with a marked reduction in the length of the working week."

"Because of the stabilized population resulting from the lower birth rate and the advancing age of the future population, the laborer at 40 will not be looked at askance when he seeks work; nor will he be discharged at 50 to be replaced by a younger man with less skill and less experience. The maintenance of a larger number of men in industry as a result of this may change our industrial system. The world will have more leisure."

Throughout his career Frankel kept an interest in Jewish affairs. He served on the board of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and in 1927 was chairman of the commission that surveyed Palestine for the Jewish Agency. Frankel published many articles on health and welfare issues and was the coauthor of several books, including The Human Factor in Industry (1920), A Popular Encyclopedia of Health (1926), and Health of the Worker, How to Safeguard It (1924).

Dr. Frankel died on July 25, 1931. He was almost 64 years old. His death was due to heart disease.

Sources: Encyclopedia Judaica, Second Edition New York Times, "Dr. Lee K. Frankel Dies On A Tour", July 26, 1931 Dr. Lee K. Frankel by Solomon Lowenstein ( http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1932_1933_5_SpecialArticles.pdf )