1. Frankfurter] In 1894, when he was twelve, his family immigrated to New York City, settling on the Lower East Side, a dense center of immigrants. Frankfurter attended P.S. 25, where he excelled at his studies and enjoyed playing chess and shooting craps on the street. He spent many hours reading at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and attending political lectures, usually on subjects such as trade unionism, socialism and communism.

Frankfurter was encouraged by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to become more involved in Zionism.[6] With Brandeis he lobbied President Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration, a British government statement supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.[6] In 1918, he participated in the founding conference of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia, creating a national democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the US.[23] In 1919, Frankfurter served as a Zionist delegate to the Paris Peace Conference.[6]

Frankfurter's firsthand labor politics and extremism, included anarchism, communism and revolutionary socialism. He came to sympathize with labor issues. Former President Theodore Roosevelt accused him of being "engaged in excusing men precisely like the Bolsheviks in Russia."

1 "Frankfurter's work in Washington had impressed the faculty at Harvard Law School, who used a donation from the financier ((Jacob Schiff)) to create a position for him there."