Last year, Temple Beth-El celebrated its 125th anniversary. Our congregation also has the distinction of being a charter member of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, known also as the UAHC. It is the parent body of Reform synagogues in the United States and Canada.

The UAHC was the brainchild of Isaac Mayer Wise. Wise was American Reform Judaism’s leading organizational genius and chief architect. He founded two other Reform Jewish institutions that continue to this day. In 1875, he established the Hebrew Union College, the seminary for Reform Judaism, and in 1889, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Reform rabbinical association.

This weekend, we observe Wise’s 100th yahrzeit. His life was a fascinating one. He was born in 1819 in Bohemia, which is now part of the Czech Republic. His formal education was extensive and varied, but it was also somewhat eclectic and haphazard. He acquired an impressive knowledge of the Bible and Talmud as a child. At the age of twelve, he set out for a yeshiva in Prague and then studied at a famous rabbinical school in Jekinau. Eventually he attended the University of Prague for two years and the University of Vienna for one year. He was ordained a rabbi at the age of 23.

At 27, he came to the United States to serve an Orthodox synagogue in Albany, New York. Almost from the beginning there were tensions in his relationship with his congregants. Wise tended to be impulsive, combative, and impatient in dealing with them.

He swiftly brought reforms into the worship service but the people were not psychologically nor religiously ready for them. He eliminated the chanting of the prayers and the Torah reading. He introduced a choir. He banned the auctioning of aliyot, honors to go up to the Torah, a practice which was common in Orthodox synagogues at that time. He also substituted Confirmation for Bar Mitzvah.

Tensions were reaching a boiling point between him and the leaders and members of his congregation. During his fourth year there, in July, 1850, Wise ordered all his congregation’s board members to close their stores on the Sabbath. One board member defied him. Wise gave him an ultimatum: Either close the store or resign from the board.

The congregational president feared that Wise would denounce this board member from the pulpit and forbade him to preach. The congregation was split between Wise’s detractors and his supporters. Paradoxically, the people who opposed Wise because of his reforms now objected to his demand that they close their businesses on the Sabbath. The officers and board members held a rump meeting on the morning of the eve of Rosh Hashanah and dismissed Wise.

However, Wise refused to leave and insisted on conducting High Holy Day services. As a result, he and the congregational president came to blows on the bimah. A riot broke out in the synagogue and police had to be called in to quell the disturbance.

Wise and his supporters then resigned and founded a new congregation in Albany with Wise as the rabbi. Embracing his reforms, it grew rapidly and Isaac Mayer Wise remained its rabbi for four years until 1854.

That year, Congregation Bene Jeshurun in Cincinnati, called him to become its rabbi for life. His ministry to them was far more harmonious than it had been at his first pulpit in Albany. Bene Jeshurun was quite traditional when he arrived. Yet Wise introduced his reforms more judiciously and slowly there. Under his leadership, in the 1860's, Bene Jeshurun built the magnificent, Moorish-style Temple on Plum Street in Cincinnati, which is still in use today.

Relative peace did prevail within the walls of the Temple. However, Wise’s life outside the Temple was filled with acrimonious ideological battles and controversies. He edited two publications in which he articulated his revolutionary views. One was the English-language American Israelite, which is still published in Cincinnati today. He also edited Die Deborah, which he wrote in German. On their pages, he battled not only for changes in Jewish religious practice. He also defended the Jewish people against bigotry and abuse.

In 1856, the governor of Ohio issued a Thanksgiving proclamation, which he addressed to the “Christian People” of Ohio. Wise became incensed and wrote to the governor. He reminded the governor that the people of Ohio are “neither Christian nor Jewish; they are a free and independent people.”

In 1862, the Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, issued an order expelling all Jews from his department within 24 hours. Wise swiftly became Grant’s formidable opponent. Wise also fought the attempt, during the Civil War, to bar Jewish and Catholic chaplains from serving in the Union army. In addition, Wise campaigned, with others, for our government to reject a proposed treaty with Switzerland, limiting the rights of American Jews living there.

Unfortunately, there was one issue on which he did not take a stand in his publications: slavery. Other prominent rabbis were lined up on either side of the issue. Rabbi Morris Raphall sanctioned slavery and found Biblical precedents for it, while Rabbi David Einhorn bitterly opposed it. Wise rode the fence.

He probably evaded this burning issue for the sake of expediency. Some have explained that Wise’s silence on slavery by the fact that many of the subscribers to The Israelite lived in the South. He feared that any condemnation of slavery would hurt his ultimate goal of establishing a united network of American Jewish congregations.

Wise’s writings were not confined just to these two journals. His literary output was prolific. He wrote over ten books on Jewish history and theology, eight novels in English and three in German, and two plays.

Wise also produced a prayer book called Minhag America, meaning “the custom of America.” Its contents were much more conservative than those of today’s Reform prayer books. Wise hoped that Minhag America would become a uniform liturgy for all American Jews. However, the Orthodox criticized it for being too liberal, while some Reform Jews charged it was too traditional. Nonetheless, Isaac Mayer Wise held steadfastly to the dream of fashioning a unified American Judaism, that would combine both traditional and liberal elements.

In 1873, he founded the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Note that he did not use the term Reform. He hoped to make it more inclusive. Then in 1875, to train rabbis for American congregations, he founded the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He wanted this seminary to produce both Orthodox and Reform rabbis.

Wise became the first president of the College. His workload must have been staggering. He was simultaneously the rabbi of a large congregation, the full-time president of a burgeoning rabbinical seminary and the editor of two publications.

Wise’s dream for a pluralistic seminary was soon shattered. In 1883, it happened at a banquet celebrating the first ordination of the rabbis of the Hebrew Union College. When the first course of forbidden shrimp was brought to the tables, the more traditional rabbis who were present stormed out of the room.

Within a short time, they founded the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, which today is the fountainhead of American Conservative Judaism. By this time, Wise realized that unifying all of American Jewry religiously was impossible. He had to accept the reality of Jewish denominations. He then became an avowedly Reform spokesperson.

In 1885, he presided over a conference of rabbis in Pittsburgh, which produced the famous Pittsburgh Platform. This is the statement of eight planks, which clearly define Classical Reform Judaism. Among them is the view that Judaism is strictly is a religion and not a nationality. Judaism is to be stripped of all ethnic features. Emphasis is to be on Judaism, not Jewishness. Furthermore, Judaism is a rational faith. Nothing in Judaism can conflict with the discoveries of modern science.

Though Wise personally observed a form of the dietary laws, the platform calls for the abolition of all distinctive forms of Jewish diet and dress. The document is also militantly anti-Zionist. It does not favor the efforts to build a Jewish homeland, in what is today Israel.

Wise had lived with discrimination and prejudice in Bohemia and now tasted the boundless freedoms of the United States. Thus Wise became a passionate American patriot. He firmly believed that it is in America that the new Judaism can be best lived. He was convinced that God had ordained America as the arena to fulfill the ideals of our ancient Jewish prophets and sages.

To realize this dream, America’s Jews must be God’s “priest people,” a light to the other nations, bringing the ethical message of our Bible to all human beings on earth. The platform also stresses the social justice. It insists that the task of the Jew is to correct all societal ills, like poverty and discrimination.

Wise’s founding of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Hebrew Union College, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis represented massive personal achievements. This three-fold organizational scheme of a congregational body, a seminary, and a rabbinic organization was copied even by the Orthodox and Conservative movements within a short time. Wise continued to work full-time until his last days.

On Shabbat morning, March 24, 1900, 100 years ago today, Wise preached his final sermon at the Plum Street Temple. He was already nearly 81 years old. Early that afternoon, he met with one of his classes when he was felled by a sudden stroke. He lost his power of speech and writing and soon slipped into a coma, from which he never recovered. His funeral was one of the largest in Cincinnati. Surviving Wise were a wife and eleven children. He had fathered fourteen children, ten from his first wife who had died, and four from his second wife. Three of his children had predeceased him.

Wise’s enduring legacy was not only his brilliant organizational scheme but also his philosophy of American Judaism. Reform now stresses more ritual observance and is pro-Zionist. Yet Wise’s concepts still form the basis of Reform Judaism today.

Wise defined American Judaism as follows: “A religion, without mysteries or miracles, rational and self-evident, eminently human, universal, liberal, and progressive, in perfect harmony with modern science, criticism, and philosophy, and in full sympathy with universal liberty, equality, justice, and charity.”

Tonight, on his 100th yahrzeit, we pray that Isaac Mayer Wise’s memory will always be a blessing. Amen.

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