Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Includes: “An Act To Incorporate the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia.”

(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

J.M.G. Lescure

Harrisburg

1849

The Dawn of Jewish Education in the United States. Noted on pp. 484-85, the State Legislature approved the incorporation of the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia on April 7th, 1849. The Society Officers noted include community leaders: Abraham Hart, Moses Dropsie, Solomon Carvalho, Isidore Binswanger and Isaac Leeser. The object of the Society was to establish "a school to provide for the instruction of Hebrew language, literature and religion." Leeser, in particular, had been pivotal in the organization of the Society, whose school eventually opened in 1851. At Leeser's behest, two years after it was organized in 1847, the Hebrew Education Society obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature "to furnish its graduates and others the usual degrees of bachelor of arts, master of arts, and doctor of law and divinity, as the same is exercised by other colleges established in this commonwealth." This charter paved the way for the eventual opening of Maimonides College in Philadelphia, the first rabbinical seminary in America at the end of October 1867. See L.J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (1995), pp. 157, 238-40.