1932 — League of Jewish Women [Jüdischer Frauenbund]

Whoever ventures to become a leader of youth must follow a strict path for herself while remaining indulgent toward others. These days, it is terribly hard to kindle in others the ner tamid, the Eternal Light, but that is our duty. Today Jews believe that they have the right to find their own way and need not, as in earlier days, submit themselves to moral prescriptions. For someone such as me, who forty years ago, innocent, bathed in the spirit of my parents’ house, protected by my jichus [illustrious lineage], began my social work, it has been a frightful shock to the soul to discover that Jews, too, in the last decades have strayed from the line laid down for them, also in sexual matters . . .

People have denied that there are unmarried mothers and children even in the Jewish community. It meant a lot in those days to say it out loud, and it was difficult to organize women to abolish these things. Today these ways of thinking are alive in the entire civilized world; they are common to all mankind. but we must never forget that bringing these ideas and the demand for the strictest morality to the world was Jewish.

Source: “Einführung in den Arbeitskreis für Gefäbrdeten-Fürsorge,” in Blätter des Jüdischen Frauenbundes für Frauenarbeit und Frauenbewegung, Berlin, 1932.