Tephiloth B’nei Yeshurun kephi Minhag Amerika. The Divine Service of American Israelites for the New Year. * For the Day of Atonement. According to the Custom of America. Prepared by Isaac M. Wise. Two volumes.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Bloch & Co

Cincinnati

1866

Hebrew and English face-`a-face, with original hymns and prayers in English and German.

Singerman 1949 and 1952; Goldman 53.

This is the first Reform Festival prayer-book printed in America following the appearance in 1857 of Rabbi Isaac Wise’s prayers for the week-day and Sabbath. Isaac Mayer Wise was born in Steingrub, Bohemia, in 1819 and immigrated to America in 1846. At first a rabbi in Albany, in 1854 he moved to Cincinnati. There he established the institutional structure of American Reform Judaism: the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Hebrew Union College. Wise, who desired to publish an “American” prayer book from his earliest years in the country, believed that the acceptance by all American Jews of a single liturgical rite would represent a great step toward unity. This first Reform prayer-book retained a Hebrew text and the traditional framework of the liturgy, though certain passages relating to a personal Messiah, the priesthood and a return to and restoration of a political Israel were altered, shortened or excised in accordance with Reform doctrine. See J.G. Heller, Isaac M. Wise; His Life, Work and Thought (1965) pp. 302-5 and 385.