A Synagogue's Second Act

"We have come to Chelsea," Louis D. Brandeis told a large crowd gathered on Wednesday, June 30, 1915—a year before he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Brandeis had delivered one of his earliest speeches on Zionism two years earlier in this Massachusetts city. And now, in 1915, as leader of the Federation of American Zionists, he had moved the group's national convention out of Boston for one day, across the Mystic River to Chelsea. "We have come because, in Chelsea, Jews constitute a larger percentage of the population than in any other city of the United States," Brandeis announced.