Isaac Mayer Weiss was born in 1819 in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. From a young age, he proved to be a brilliant student. He studied the Bible and Talmud, especially with his father, Leo Weiss, and his grandfather. He graduated from the Universities of Prague and Vienna, and at age 23, a rabbinical court awarded him the title of rabbi. In 1846, Weiss emigrated to the United States, finding it difficult to be a rabbi in Bohemia due to a series of government restrictions against Jews. Once in America, Weiss changed his surname to Wise.

He initially served as a rabbi in Albany, New York, but due to differences with the congregation’s president, he resigned and moved to Cincinnati. There, he was offered a lifelong position as rabbi of the Bnei Jeshurun ​​congregation. In 1847, he presented to the Bet Din (rabbinical court) a project for a prayer book to be used throughout the country, which he called «Minhag America.» The proposal remained pending until 1855, when a conference of rabbis in Cleveland asked him and two other rabbis to edit and publish it. «Minhag America» ​​became the prayer book of most Jewish synagogues in the South and West of the United States.

Wise used his newspaper, «The American Israelite,» to spread his ideas of unifying the country’s Jewish congregations and their rabbis. In 1848, he called on «all Israelite ministers» in the United States to unite and thereby end the prevailing religious anarchy. To this end, he summoned them to a meeting in Philadelphia the following year, but it did not take place. His idea was more widely accepted among the congregations, who organized themselves in 1873 into the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, headquartered in Cincinnati.

Wise did not relent in his efforts to unite the rabbis. To this end, he called a conference in Cleveland in 1855, but this not only failed to unite them, but instead divided them into two camps: Wise and his followers on the one hand, and a group of prominent rabbis from the East Coast on the other. At the conferences in Philadelphia in 1869, New York in 1870, and Cincinnati in 1871, differences were gradually smoothed over, until the Central Conference of American Rabbis was formed in 1889. Wise served as its first president and served for eleven years, until his death.

He was equally tireless in his insistence on creating a seminary to train rabbis. He criticized many who posed as spiritual guides, saying they were not properly prepared. He attempted to establish a seminary in Cincinnati, but failed after a year. He remained undeterred and continued to propagate his seminary idea through his newspaper. On October 3, 1875, Hebrew Union College opened its doors. The first four rabbis graduated eight years later.

Despite his great leadership abilities, Wise was considered an unprepared colleague. This was echoed by some German rabbis who had earned doctorates from Central European universities and arrived in America in the 1850s. Nevertheless, Wise represented the pragmatic approach to American Judaism. The tripartite structure he devised—the union of congregations, the association of rabbis, and the rabbinical seminary—was the basis for organizing Jewish religious movements in the United States. Wise was primarily an institution-builder rather than an ideologue. His greatest merit was having laid the foundation for Jewish-American religious movements.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.