Martha Selig, who died Saturday at 93, was a path-forging social worker who helped set up Jewish community services in the New York metropolitan area for the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and other social agencies.

As executive director of community services at the federation (now UJA-Federation), Selig controlled the allocation of $24 million annually to 130 social service agencies. She also served on several state and city mental health commissions, and was an important part of the mayor’s Committee for Children that helped to abolish orphanages in favor of foster care in the early 1950s.

After leaving the federation in 1974, Selig helped oversee the merger of two other Jewish agencies, the Jewish Board of Guardians and the Jewish Family Service. The newly created Jewish Board of Family and Children Services, one of the largest child and family agencies in the nation, named its educational institute in her honor.

“She considered herself a program director and not a fund-raiser, but she certainly attracted the interest of people with money,” her daughter, Judith Rubenstein, said. “She hated waste. Her father saved string, and she literally cut napkins in half at home.”

Martha Keiser grew up in Manhattan, the daughter of a Russian father and a Polish mother. The family was observant, and valued education; when Martha graduated from Hunter College in 1932, she was the family’s first college graduate. She began work as a caseworker that same year, and in 1939 received a diploma from the New York School of Social Work.

Selig became executive director of community services at the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in 1946. When the time came to choose a new executive for the federation in 1974, Selig seemed like a natural choice for the job, but, she told the Forward in 2000, a glass ceiling intervened. “They told me that they couldn’t offer me the executive position because I was a woman,” Selig said in a recent interview.” One of the men asked, ‘Well, how would it look if you walked out of the president’s home late, at 11 o’clock at night after a meeting?'”

Selig retired from the federation in 1974, and became a consultant for several agencies, including the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services, where she helped raise funds for residential programs in Westchester. She also helped create the Center of the Study of Social Work Practice at Columbia University, a joint project in co operation with the Jewish Board of Guardians.

Selig enjoyed a long and productive marriage to her former Hebrew school tutor, Kalman Selig, whom she married in 1935. He became a psychologist with a practice in Irvington, N.J., and as members of allied professions they had plenty to talk about. After the arrival of two daughters, the family moved to Maplewood. After her husband retired, they moved back to Manhattan. Kalman Selig died in 1987.

Although famous among friends and family for the parties she put on for national and religious holidays, Selig was not much of a cook, her daughter said. But her gefilte fish, a recipe learned in exact detail from her mother-in-law, was an exception.

Martha Keiser Selig

Born December 25, 1912, in Manhattan; died April 8 in her sleep at home of heart failure; survived by her daughters, Judith Rubenstein and Elaine Gould, and seven grandchildren.