The Chosen Wars

by Steven R Weisman

  MINHAG AMERICA STRUGGLES FOR ACCEPTANCE

  In the wake of the Philadelphia conclave, Wise and his allies pursued three major new objectives. First was to establish a union of Jewish congregations for reform-minded believers and as many traditionalists as they could encourage to join. Second was to establish a seminary to train rabbis along the same ecumenical lines. Third was to establish Wise’s beloved Minhag America as a prayer book for all American Jews.

  First proposed as a goal by Wise in 1847 shortly after he came to America, Minhag America had its first incarnation in Cincinnati in 1857. Although it was accepted among many congregations, Wise was continually open to making changes to widen its usage. But as previously noted, it started with such reforms as removing references to a “personal” messiah, rebuilding the Temple, and the restoration of the priesthood and the Davidic dynasty. Instead of the resurrection of the dead, the prayer book referred nonspecifically to the immortality of the human soul.

  For all its reforms, Wise’s prayer book hewed to tradition in its structure. It was thus more conservative than a rival prayer book introduced and used by David Einhorn called Olat Tamid (Eternal Offering), first published in 1856. Never one for understatement, Einhorn condemned Wise’s moves to establish Minhag America as a universal prayer book, excoriating it as “an abortion” and Wise as “the Barnum of the Jewish pulpit” who “arrogates to himself the role of dictator.” Yet Wise pressed ahead with negotiations to make more revisions of Minhag America, adopting such additional reforms as an abandonment of the second day of festivals and permitting worshippers to attend without head coverings. His prayer book group decided to complete its revision the next summer in 1871 in Cincinnati. The group also supported Wise’s dream for establishment of a seminary in Cincinnati and still another synod of like-minded congregations.

  Wise’s dreams seemed to be on the verge of fulfillment—until he once again stumbled into controversy. This time it was over his proposals to reconstruct the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) service. To the surprise of even some allies, he declared that the most sacred holiday of the Jewish calendar, a time of Jews atoning their sins and asking God’s forgiveness, was based on a fallacy. Seeking forgiveness for one’s sins on a specific day of the year made no sense, he declared, because of the underlying assumption that God is a “personal” entity who forgives individuals once they atone. Asking forgiveness, and even beseeching God for comfort and blessings, certainly implies that God actually does forgive or provide such sustenance—which Wise denied. In reasoning this way, Wise was getting perilously close to questioning a core principle of prayer itself. Even for Jews moving away from belief in a God who could answer prayers and intercede in the affairs of humankind, it was a jolt to hear Wise belittle such prayers as effectively delusional.

  Wise’s comments were heatedly rejected by numerous colleagues, many of whom declared in the Jewish press that Wise and his supporters were echoing the heresies of Spinoza. Wise responded with a further explanation. God, he declared, is infinite and absolute in embodying love, justice, holiness, and universal values—“unlimited, eternal and infinite” in nature—but not “personal,” in the literal sense of a bearded elder intervening with his fingertips in the manner of Michelangelo’s depiction of God as Zeus. Though these comments might have seemed unobjectionable to any reform-minded Jew who had thought through the implications of a nonpersonal God, the opportunity for Wise’s rivals in the nontraditional camp was irresistible. The animus toward Wise on the left drove many reformers into the camp of traditionalists attacking Wise. It was a historic stumble for him. He may have viewed his remarks as honest, reflecting his willingness to challenge orthodox thinking. But Wise’s enemies seized on his comments to use against him.5

  Leading the charge was an indignant Einhorn. Having been attacked himself as a heretic, Einhorn now could turn the tables and accuse Wise of heresy. In addition, a phalanx of fourteen rabbis of various persuasions denounced Wise as “utterly incompetent to represent Judaism.” It was not the defense of a noncorporeal God that bothered them. Rather it was the implication that prayer was meaningless. They accused him of “flagrant blasphemies,” “impious desecration” of truth, an embrace of “heathen” beliefs, and of renouncing Judaism itself. Judaism, these rabbis asserted, teaches divine grace and mercy through Scripture and holds out forgiveness for the repenting sinner. More rabbis joined the free-for-all as the weeks went on.

  As usual, Wise ignored the substantive charge and attacked the motives, fitness, and competence of his critics. “They started from falsehoods, progressed in wickedness, and landed in a hell of absurdity,” he wrote. “We pity the innocent poor individuals who have been beguiled by Satan to set their names to that protest.” He even went so far as to accuse them of waging an Inquisition.6

  Wise had his defenders, but the planned Cincinnati meeting of 1871 foundered on the issue of—of all things—God. Supporting Wise was Rabbi Jacob Mayer of Cleveland, a well-known radical who had himself been accused of apostasy. “I believe not in a personal God, neither do I address my prayer to a personal God,” Mayer said. But so many other leaders denounced Wise that his scheme for a congregational union and seminary was set back, at least for the time being.7

  FATEFUL PARLEY IN CINCINNATI

  Immobilized by controversy over his ill-advised comments on prayer, Wise was compelled to yield in the 1870s to the lay president of the Bene Yeshurun congregation to propose another conference to set up a union of Jewish congregations, a seminary, and a body of laws that all could accept. This parley was to involve leaders from the Midwestern and Southern regions. Chagrined and feeling sidelined, Wise still expected to manipulate events to his advantage. His reasoning was that his ideas might gain better currency and be less toxic if promoted by lay leaders rather than by himself.

  The call went out, accordingly, from Moritz Loth, president of Bene Yeshurun and a successful businessman, author, and traditionalist, to set up a conclave that would bring these issues to a head. The conference then called for a Union of American Hebrew Congregations, provided that no doctrines or rules be imposed on any of its members. The proposed seminary, or theological institute, would also be careful not to promote one doctrine over another.

  The seminary proposal was part of an American trend that coincided with efforts by many Protestant denominations to set up their own religious academies. The Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and the Warburg Theological Seminary (Lutheran) in Dubuque had been established in 1854, and the Wesley Theological Seminary (Methodist) was planned for 1882 in Washington, D.C. Loth called for the Jewish seminary to publish teaching materials and, for the most part, to adhere to traditional laws on the Sabbath, circumcision, and diet. These conservative principles had the effect of bringing at least some Orthodox congregations in the city into the process. Previously, all American rabbis had been trained in Europe.

  The proceedings also led to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), born in Cincinnati in July 1873, which brought together thirty-four congregations and two thousand members from thirteen states and proudly boasted that it was the first such body in Jewish history. (The Union later changed its name to the Union for Reform Judaism in 2003 and represents, through congregations, about a third of American Jews who consider themselves to be members of a synagogue.) But in its inception, the Union was more of a regional than a national organization. Most members were from smaller towns throughout the West and South. Loth was elected president of the new union, and the board was dominated by Cincinnati representatives. Though not its progenitor, Wise recognized that Loth had fulfilled one of his dreams, likening it to the coming of the Messiah or at least the restoration of the rule of King David.

  The Union quickly grew to seventy-two congregations by 1874, though congregations in New York and other parts of the East looked askance and remained holdouts until a few years later. A major step forward occurred when the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, the East Coast Orthodox
grouping founded before the Civil War, and previously derided by Wise, merged with the Union in 1878. (The Board had opened its own seminary, Maimonides College, in 1867 in Philadelphia with Leeser as provost, but the college foundered after Leeser’s death and none of its students ever received rabbinical ordination from that seminary.) By the end of the decade of the 1870s, the Union commanded allegiance from 118 congregations, including some more traditional in nature and had become one of the largest Jewish organizations in the United States.

  The Union of American Hebrew Congregations begat its sister institution, Hebrew Union College, which had only one paid instructor and Wise as part-time head of the faculty. In 1873, Wise had persuaded Henry Adler, a wealthy businessman in Lawrenceberg, Indiana, to put up $10,000 as a challenge grant to establish the seminary. Adler agreed, provided that the seminary opened in two years; otherwise he would take back the funds. As a result, a grand total of nine teenage students showed up when classes started in the fall of 1875. Most of them attended regular studies in their secular schools, but at the College they were confronted with a rigorous classical Jewish education and taught to read the Talmud and other commentaries. Again, at least at the outset, Wise did not want to stir controversy with a wholesale abandonment of ancient teachings. The seminary’s formula for success was its determination to bring in both conservatives and radicals to teach and participate in panels. Wise and his cautious tactics drew praise even from long-standing skeptics such as Rabbi Bernhard Felsenthal, a Chicago-based Reform advocate who declared that with the new institutions established in Cincinnati, Wise had become head “of all Israel in the United States. . . . It is he who gives shape and color and character to our Jewish affairs. He is the central sun, around which the planets and trabants [satellites] are moving, some near to him, some more distant. That is all right, and we submit to the hard facts. He has succeeded, and ‘nothing is so successful as the success.’ ”8 Proud of his triumph in including the Board of Delegates and other traditionalists, Wise later declared: “I managed very well with Orthodoxy, with which later I ate very heartily, drank and launched toasts.”9

  Yet signs of restiveness persisted among traditionalists in this same period. In the nation’s capital, the citadel of reform was Washington Hebrew Congregation, established in 1852 by twenty-one German-speaking worshippers as the city’s first Jewish congregation. They first met at a private home on Pennsylvania Avenue. Fearing that Jews might be denied the right to build a synagogue, they petitioned President Franklin Pierce for permission to build one and he signed an order establishing it in 1856. In 1863, a converted church at Eighth and I Streets became its first permanent location. The congregation quickly adopted mixed seating and other reforms, but when an organ was added in 1869, thirty-eight members resigned in displeasure and established Adas Israel (Congregation of Israel). Adas located itself in a series of rented buildings, including a loft over a carriage factory near the Capitol. By 1873, though struggling over funds, the members managed to build a brick synagogue with a small cupola at Sixth and G Streets, NW, and President Ulysses S. Grant—his record of anti-Semitism during the Civil War apparently forgiven—attended the dedication in 1876. (The location is today the Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum.)10

  Another schism opened in 1871 in Baltimore, where conservatives established Congregation Chizuk Amuno (Strengthening the Faith) and broke away from Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, which had started out as strictly Orthodox in 1845 under Rabbi Rice but more recently had adopted a variety of reforms over the objection of conservatives. In Rochester, New York, Congregation Beth Israel was founded in 1874 by traditionalists seeking to differentiate themselves from Reform-oriented Berith Kodesh.

  By the mid-1870s, Wise could surely take some satisfaction over the trend toward both unity and reform in the mid-1870s. But he was also feeling restless. His wife, Theresa, was suffering with a debilitating illness beyond his ability to handle. (She died in 1874 after a long and painful decline.) He changed the name of his newspaper from The Israelite to The American Israelite, signaling a belief that he was fulfilling his dream of an American Judaism. In late 1873, despite his triumphs, he flirted with quitting Bene Yeshurun, but eventually decided to stay and build on his accomplishments.

  Instead, the 1870s brought a conflict between Wise and Jewish establishment reformers on one side and a surprising new force on the other—one that rejected tradition so thoroughly that it broke from Judaism altogether. To Wise, Einhorn, and other mainstream Jewish figures, this threat was potentially more lethal to American Judaism than the rearguard actions of the traditionalists.

  CHALLENGE FROM THE ATHEISTS: THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION

  The origins of the new conflict between the Jewish establishment and those who rejected God altogether had been long in coming. One might even trace its roots to Spinoza. But one modern point of origin occurred in the spring of 1867, when Ralph Waldo Emerson—the essayist, lecturer, poet, and founder of the Transcendental movement—was invited to address the opening session of a new organization called the Free Religious Association. In the audience in Boston were adherents of a wide range of religious views, from Quakers and Unitarians to agnostics, feminists (including the abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucretia Mott), and spiritualists. Also in attendance and embracing Emerson were Rabbis Isaac Mayer Wise and Max Lilienthal.

  Emerson, the son of a Unitarian minister, had seemed destined from his early age to follow in his father’s footsteps. After his graduation from Harvard, he spent time in South Carolina and Florida and became an ardent foe of slavery. He then attended Harvard Divinity School and became a pastor in Boston. The death of Emerson’s beloved wife, Ellen, in 1830 was one of many blows to his faith, however. Complaining about the church’s outdated practices and doctrines, he resigned the ministry in 1832 and founded the Transcendental Club with like-minded intellectual skeptics of religion in 1836. In a speech at Harvard Divinity School in 1838, Emerson challenged the existence of miracles in the Bible and proclaimed that Jesus was not divine.

  Now at the Free Religious Association in 1867, Emerson went even further. He declared that churches and religious creeds had become obsolete. The audience, he said, should look elsewhere for spiritual sustenance. “The church is not large enough for the man,” he declared. “It cannot inspire the enthusiasm which is the parent of everything good in history, which makes the romance of history. For that enthusiasm, you must have something greater than yourselves, and not less.”11

  Revered as the apostle of individualism and New England rectitude—and a friend of Melville, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson—Emerson was a magnetic but seemingly unlikely figure for Jews seeking common cause. In fact, Wise was paying careful attention to the Free Religious Association and had maintained strong ties with some Protestant religious reformers as he rose to prominence. His acquaintances included Octavius Brooks Frothingham, a prominent Unitarian and the first president of the Free Religious Association. Wise, no doubt flattered to be asked to find common ground with the Protestant aristocracy, became a board member of the association and a vice president. Wise had also been in regular contact with the reform-minded abolitionist minister, the Reverend Theodore Parker of the Unitarian Church in Boston, whose advocacy of “a church without tyranny, a society without ignorance, want, or crime, a state without oppression” influenced Wise’s writings about modernity and the origins of Christianity.12

  But another Jewish intellectual eager to become involved in the association was destined to play a divisive role in American Judaism. That figure was Felix Adler, son of the chief rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in New York. Expected by his family to succeed his father in that position, Felix Adler had other plans and broke with Judaism altogether. He later established the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1876, to the consternation of his family and also of Rabbi Wise.

  The story of the fraught relationship between Wise and Adler begins, however, with the legacy of the Second Great
Awakening of the early nineteenth century in America. Advances in science and philosophy had accelerated the trend of religious believers rethinking some of their most basic assumptions. Along with their more skeptical view of religious dogma, Emerson and like-minded reformists opposed what they saw as the crass materialism of contemporary life. They believed in the power of the individual to discern right and wrong and defy authority, including the church. This liberationist view led to Thoreau’s retreat to Walden Pond and his paean to civil disobedience in 1849. But Emerson and other transcendentalists did not seek withdrawal from society—they wanted to ameliorate it. The documentary evidence that their fervor influenced Wise and other Jews is scant, but there is little question that Wise was familiar with their beliefs, and that his own agenda was aligned with theirs.

  Jews and Christians of a liberal bent had also been powerfully affected by startling scientific developments in the first half of the nineteenth century. The study of geology led the way in shaking up inherited religious beliefs. In 1788, the Scottish scientist James Hutton had published his Theory of the Earth, and Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830–32) studied prehistoric patterns of Earth formation and fossils. These works provided powerful evidence that the earth was hundreds of millions of years old, overthrowing the Bible’s account of Creation.

  Various Americans of faith had earlier wrestled with these findings. Benjamin Silliman, professor of chemistry and natural history at Yale (whose son Benjamin Jr. later discovered how to refine and distill petroleum into fuel), was one of those religiously inclined scientists who pioneered in the reinterpretation of Scripture in light of irrefutable scientific facts. Silliman, a protégé of the Yale president Timothy Dwight (who was himself a grandson of Jonathan Edwards), argued in 1836 that in light of these geological truths, the Bible should not be taken literally. He proposed instead that the concept of a “day” in the Creation story should be understood as an “aeon” in the eyes of God. His pupil, the geologist Edward Hitchcock, later president of Amherst, wrote The Religion of Geology in 1851, echoing this view, explaining that the earth’s long history was evidence of God’s glory. It was what some historians call the “Silliman-Hitchcock compromise” to the conflict between science and religion.13