[2] Philipson lodged with a prominent Jewish family during his time taking classes both at HUC and Hughes High School.

He was also one of four men ordained as Reform Rabbis in that year, and was one of those feted at the Trefa Banquet that HUC hosted for its first ordination class.

[4] Philipson did not intend to go directly into the ministry, but instead chose to spend time in Dallas to aid in the growth of Reform Judaism there.

Additionally, he gave a eulogy for Henry Ward Beecher to his congregation as a sermon, an action considered noteworthy at the time because it was a speech on a non-Jew for a Jewish audience.

Within Jewish circles, Philipson drew acclaim for acting as secretary at the famous Pittsburgh Platform meetings in 1885.

These meetings established "Classical Reform Judaism" and rejected Jewish laws that had a ritual, rather than moral basis.

Rufus Smith and future president William Howard Taft in person and in print, filling the editorial pages of The Cincinnati Enquirer with anti-imperialist columns.

His politically oriented sermons were famous and often controversial; they often found him at odds with other rabbis and important congregational figures.

During World War I, Philipson worked to ensure local politicians that the Jewish community were not sympathizers to the German cause.

However, he aided in organizing an anti-Nazi protest march (1933) and wrote in 1940 that the United States should join the war against Nazi Germany.

Believing that "...no man can be a member of two Nationalities", Philipson used his power to counter what he saw as the exclusionary and zealous acts of Zionists.

These speeches, when coupled with his prodigious authorship, had a tremendous effect in establishing Cincinnati as the center of Reform Jewish intellectualism.

He died at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston after collapsing at a convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1949.