Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise יצחק מאיר וייז
organiser of American Reform
Born in Bohemia in 1819, he came to America in 1846 and served in Albany, where a quarrel with his congregation ended in a fight at the ark on Rosh Hashanah. Moving to Cincinnati, he set about building institutions: the prayer book Minhag America (1857), the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1873), Hebrew Union College (1875), the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1889).
Wise wanted not a schism but a single American Judaism, and believed a moderate Reform would be its form. It went otherwise. At the banquet for the college's first graduating class in 1883 oysters and crabs were served; some guests rose and left. The "trefa banquet" gave the affair its name and marked the break: three years later his opponents founded their own seminary in New York.
The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, declaring the dietary laws no longer binding, Wise called "the Jewish Declaration of Independence". It also fixed the split he had not wanted.
On the timeline
Places
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Minhag America, Cincinnati, 1857 — a single prayer book as an attempt at a common American rite
Basis: documents and evidence.