Isaac Mayer Wise

Isaac Mayer Wise (29 March 1819, Steingrub (now Lomnička), Moravia,Austrian Empire – 26 March 1900, Cincinnati), was an American Reform rabbi, editor, and author.

The son of Rabbi Leo Wise, a school-teacher, Isaac received his early Hebrew education from his father and grandfather, later continuing his Hebrew and secular studies in Prague.

He may have received the hattarat hora'ah from the Prague bet din, composed of Rabbis Rapoport, Samuel Freund, and E. L. Teweles, or from Rabbi Falk Kohn, however there is debate as to whether he was an ordained rabbi at all. It was even a source of controversy with his intellectual rival, Rabbi David Einhorn.

In 1843 he was appointed rabbi at Radnitz (now Radnice, by Pilsen), Bohemia, where he remained for about two years.

Wise emigrated to the United States in 1846. He arrived in New York on 23 July, and in October was appointed rabbi of the Congregation Beth-El of Albany. He soon began agitating for reforms in the service. His was the first Jewish congregation in the United States to introduce family pews in the synagogue. Wise introduced other innovations, including confirmation, a mixed-gender choir. and counting women in forming a minyan or religious quorum.

In 1847, at the suggestion of Max Lilienthal, who was at that time stationed in New York, a bet din was formed, which was to act in the capacity of an advisory committee to the congregations of the country, without, however, exercising hierarchic powers. As members of this bet din, Lilienthal named Wise and two others, besides himself. At a meeting held in the spring of 1847 Wise submitted to the bet din the manuscript of a prayer-book, to be titled the Minhag America, and to be used by all the congregations of the country. Nothing definite was done in the matter, however, until the Cleveland Conference of 1855, when a committee consisting of Wise, Rothenberg and Isidor Kalisch was appointed to edit such a prayer-book. This book appeared under the title Minhag America, and was practically Wise's work; it was adopted by most of the congregations of the Western and Southern states. So pronounced was Wise's desire for union, that when in 1894 the Union Prayer Book was published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, he voluntarily retired the Minhag America from his own congregation.

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