The Maccabaean

PHILADELPHIA may of right be termed the historic centre of the United States, for from within its midst the nation was born. While other cities, notably Boston, occupy prominent places in the events of those stirring times that brought into life and ensured existence to a nation of freemen, the city of William Penn was the scene of the greatest episodes of the Revolutionary period. The Continental Congress met there in Independence Hall; the Declaration of Independence had its coinage and its signing there; the Old Liberty Bell—that treasured relic of our country's freedom—first rang out from the summit of the same building the gladsome news that reverberated round the world, and whose echo will be felt in every uprising for human liberty. Philadelphia saw in gathering a galaxy of men, the like of whom no other city has beheld. She was the first to wave to the breeze "the Stars and the Stripes," the first to proclaim again to moderns in the language of the Holy Bible, "liberty throughout the land, and unto all its inhabitants." Her Carpenters' Hall and her Independence Hall will ever remain sacred memories, while her other evidences of a spirit thoroughly American are so manifold that they cannot be mentioned within the prescribed limits of a brief description.

Neither is the Zionistic cause a new thing in the city of "brotherly love." Among the earliest were our people to espouse the ideas set forth by Theodore Herzl, and a number of the largest and strongest societies in the land testify to

their interest. More so; this Annual Convention of the Federation of American Zionists is the second called in Philadelphia, the first having convened there in Maennerchor Hall, in June, 1901, while its public meeting brought together a vast multitude at the historic Musical Fund Hall. It may be said that from that time on, the cause of Zion "went from strength to strength," and increased numbers with increased enthusiasm and larger gain in the work from within and without, will bring together again a meeting of notable importance.

As a centre of Jewish interest, Philadelphia originally shared honors with the City of New York, and to-day she occupies a place but second to the metropolis. The steadily augmenting Jewish population, the number of her congregations, her educational, charitable and other communal institutions, the influence of her Jewish citizens upon the welfare of the body-politic, and upon the upbuilding of her commerce, her manufactures, her trade, her social life, and, in a measure, of her municipal position, are shown in nearly every walk.

There were Jews in Philadelphia in the early part of the eighteenth century. They were active in trade and in mercantile affairs, and when a sufficient number was found to assemble in meeting, the nucleus of a congregation was forthcoming already in 1745, and in this way the beginnings of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation Mickveh (Hope of) Israel were made visible. But the influx from abroad was not so marked as in our