American Jewry in the early days of the United States was a small community, numbering only a few synagogues. All of them followed the Spanish and Portuguese minhag and used Sephardic prayerbooks. The New World was ripe for change, isolated from the old communities in Europe and with a steady stream of immigrants, it wasn’t long before efforts to create change in the Jewish tradition were being pushed. By the 1850s, immigrants from Germany outnumbered the older Sephardic communities, bringing with them ideas of the reform movement that took hold in their native country.
Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900), a Bohemian-born and trained Reform rabbi, started his American Rabbinical career in Albany, NY and from there he took the pulpit in B’nai Yeshurun in Cincinnati, OH, where he remained until his passing. Wise envisioned a new Judaism in the new world to reflect his own new ideas and attempted to create a new set of laws and a new prayerbook that would be accepted as universal in America, replacing Minhag Polin, Sepharad or Ashkenaz that people were using. He named his nusach “Minhag America,” and believed that if everyone used his prayerbook this would be a unifying force for American Jewry.
In the periodical The Occident in 1847, Wise wrote about American Jews: “from different countries, and, brought with them diverse minhagim; and this circumstance must always prove a source of confusion and disagreement in the various Synagogues” and that the new Minhag was to “bring unity among… all the American Synagogues” and to “uphold the Word of the Living G-d… in the free country of America”, without “the desire for innovation, nor the thirst for fame, nor a giddy disposition for reform”. Wise wrote elsewhere about his attempts:
“It was out of the question to retain the old prayers unchanged, because the belief in the coming of a personal Messiah descended from the house of David had disappeared from among the people. The return to Palestine, the restoration of the Davidic dynasty, of the sacrificial cult, and the accompanying priestly caste, were neither articles of faith nor commandments of Judaism, while the lamentations over oppression and persecution, and the accompanying cry for vengeance were untrue and immoral as far as American Jews were concerned. The cabalistical portions which had crept into the prayer-book, and the obstinate adherence to the doctrine of the bodily resurrection, were regarded as unjustified. We were also agreed that the Sabbath service, including the sermon, should not last longer than two hours. And this was made quite possible by our adopting the triennial cycle of readings from the Torah. We determined further that as little change as possible should be made in the order of the prayers and in the typical prayers; in fact, no more than the principles we had adopted and the length of time of the public service made necessary. We resolved to publish an English and German, as well as a Hebrew, version of the prayers, and that it should be left to the congregation to decide upon what language it wished to use in the rendition of the service… [We] wished to recast the old and traditional prayers reverently, so that they might be brought into accord with the religious consciousness of the time and the democratic principles of the new fatherland.”
Recently I acquired several early editions of his prayerbooks, printed in 1857-1864. While the first editions retained much of the Hebrew core, Wise made some drastic changes to the prayers, including changing the Hebrew word goel (redeemer) to geulah (redemption), reflecting a removal of references to a personal Messiah. Wise’s attempt to get acceptance for his “Minhag America” had only limited success though. Within a few years, the floodgates to allow change to tradition that he opened threatened to upend everything that Jews held sacred. Within a few decades, there were individual Reform American Congregations that gave their Torah scrolls to museums, finding them useless and attempts were made to move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday to accommodate the members’ work schedules. By the end of the 19th century, the reform movement moved to a newer “updated” prayerbook, the Union Prayerbook and by then, the Conservative movement was gaining many new members in America, using their own prayerbooks. Mass immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe brought with it many Orthodox and Hasidic Jews with their own customs and siddurim which they continued to use and eventually publish in America. Today, Wise’s Minhag America is all but forgotten and as with the many attempts at revolutionizing Judaism throughout history, no longer is perceived as a threat to the traditionalists.
