The Chosen Wars

by Steven R Weisman

  While Wise was using his rehiring in Albany to press full steam ahead with his agenda, despite whatever promises he made to stick to tradition, the Orthodox wing of his congregation viewed the same rehiring as a mandate of a different sort. They regarded it as authorization for them to ensure that he not impose his views on the traditionalists. The divergence of their perspectives was a formula for confusion and eventually for breach.

  “AN UPROAR . . . I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED”

  The summer of 1850 brought a perhaps inevitable downward spiral of relations between the rabbi and traditionalist members of his congregation. The central issue continued to be Spanier’s mounting distress over Wise’s denial of the messiah doctrine and refusal to recognize the sensitivity of the matter. Accordingly, Spanier wrote to The Asmonean, citing an affidavit he had obtained from three Orthodox leaders in Charleston, asking whether any rabbi who denied the principles of resurrection and the Messiah could be a “fit and proper person” to serve as spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation. (Wise called Spanier’s letter “a new bull of excommunication.”) The editor of The Asmonean responded by describing Spanier as a “firebrand” who had launched “outpourings of indignation” against Wise.15

  But in his study of the controversy, the historian Naphtali Rubinger notes that while the Orthodox faction in Albany tried to capitalize on the Charleston episode, other factors were creating enmity toward Wise. One was the rabbi’s fervent insistence on enforcing Sabbath laws against work, in keeping with a petition signed years before he first arrived. That document demanded that trustees not “desecrate the Sabbath by either buying or selling,” and that they faithfully attend Sabbath services. A resolution approving that principle was adopted after Wise joined the temple. Indeed, for all his heterodoxy, Wise was a Sabbath absolutist. He had warned one trustee, Solomon Levy, threatening to denounce him publicly. But when Spanier heard about Wise’s threat, he directed Wise not to preach that day, June 1. Ignoring the directive, Wise approached the bima and, according to his memoirs, Spanier came up and tried to stop him. Wise ignored him and continued in a loud voice, provoking several worshippers to leave. “It was probably this incident that provoked the enmity between the president and the rabbi,” Rubinger writes. In his memoirs, Wise claims that following the June 1 episode on the bima, Spanier was asked to resign and even brought before the police magistrate on a charge of disturbing divine worship and was given a mild reprimand by the judge. But Rubinger finds “no documentary evidence to substantiate or negate this aspect of Wise’s recollections of his encounter and difficulties with Spanier.”16

  A related divisive issue centered on kosher butchering practices. It flared when Wise sought to dismiss the synagogue hazan, or cantor, who was also a leading butcher specializing in the ritual slaughter of animals for kosher purposes. Wise maintained that the butcher, Veist Traub, had been seen visiting saloons, drinking, and playing cards. More complaints arose when Wise urged Jews not to purchase meat slaughtered by Traub.

  With these events in the background, distrust between Wise and his Beth-El congregation grew out of control. Traditionalist members of the congregation demanded that Wise release the text of his sermons ahead of their delivery. Wise refused. On June 2, several members wrote Spanier about Wise’s “hellish plans for Judaism” and that they intended to “strive not to let our holy religion be desecrated by an apostate.” For good measure, they termed Wise a “wicked person” bent on installing “a reform temple service” and attempting “to disobey our religion and to declare our forefathers who have instructed us to be stupid and crazy people.” They further accused him of rejecting “the beautiful prayers which our renowned scholars have composed” and dismissing Hebrew as a “dead language.”17 Still another strike against Wise, they said, was his ridicule of the concept of the mikveh, or ritual bath. “Such a man we declare unworthy to occupy the position of Rabbi and preacher,” they added, declaring—in a most telling comment that spoke volumes about this pivotal intellectual passage in Jewish history—that Wise was trying to substitute “a God of reason, while the congregation believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”18

  The issue of Wise’s denial of the Messiah and resurrection returned when another group of conservative members of the congregation accused him of blasphemy and declared that he was “not worthy to occupy the position of Rabbi in a Congregation.” They called on Spanier to investigate and suspend Wise from his duties while the inquiry was under way. Three days later, on June 26, still another letter—this one from two Jewish butchers—revived the issue of his hiring a new butcher without approval of the congregation. “Is Rabbi Wise empowered to split the congregation over the matter of food provisions?” they asked.19

  Under pressure from all these fronts, the synagogue board met on July 1 and debated a series of charges against Wise, now including his discarding of the prayer paraphernalia known as tefillin (the two small black boxes with black straps, known as phylacteries, that observant Jewish men place on their head and arm while performing prayers) and tzitzit (fringes or tassels worn by Jewish men). The conservative dissidents demanded restoration of the piyyutim, and they accused him of disloyalty because of his flirtation with Charleston. For good measure, they said they had actually seen him desecrating various bans on work—by writing at a desk over the High Holidays. Improbably, they said he was even seen swinging on a swing during the Sabbath!

  With rising indignation, and with characteristic bombast, Wise responded on July 12, citing such biblical passages as “Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?” which was said by Moses’s accusers after he had separated two fighting Hebrew men (Exodus 2:14). “Am I or anybody else obliged to answer writings in which I am called an apostate, a liar, a hypocrite and so, etc. etc.?” Wise asked. Despite what he said were the “grammatical and spelling mistakes” of his accusers, he vowed to defend himself at a fixed time and place. Wise later claimed in his memoirs that at a subsequent meeting of the board of trustees, there was a vote vindicating him three to two. But Rubinger, who went through the records, concluded instead that on July 24, the board voted three to two to suspend Wise’s salary until his future was brought before the entire congregation.20

  In this boiling atmosphere, Spanier wrote to Charleston to get details of what he surely already knew—what exactly the rabbi had said about the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. Since the events in South Carolina had been fully documented, Spanier’s motive seemed to be to build an airtight case, free of secondary matters like the firing of kosher butchers. The documentation was readily available, since Raphall had published his own “excommunication” against Wise and followed up with articles denouncing him.21 The Asmonean also contained the charge that Wise was a “deist,” meaning someone who espoused the idea that God abandoned the universe after creation and left its operation to natural laws, which could be discerned by science and discovery. The newspaper’s publishing of charges that Wise was a near heretic gave Spanier the doctrinal rationale to proceed with the rabbi’s ouster. Wise continued without his salary through the fall until the congregation could meet on September 5, two days before Rosh Hashanah, to decide Wise’s fate. August passed without any more meetings, but the storm was gathering.22

  By the time of the board meeting on September 5, Wise knew that the odds against him were becoming insurmountable. He later recalled that the session’s being scheduled for the daytime meant that his supporters, many of them local peddlers and businessmen, could not attend, some of them because they were busy at a state fair. At the end of a lengthy session, Wise’s backers moved to adjourn without a vote. Wise recalled in his memoirs that the motion to adjourn, made by the vice president of the congregation, Joseph Sporberg, passed and that Sporberg and many others left. After they had gone, Spanier declared that the meeting was not adjourned and engineered another vote, this time ousting Wise from office along with other officers supporting him.

  As it later happened, Wise’s view th
at the meeting had officially adjourned was upheld the following year in a court ruling, in which it was ruled that Spanier had insulted Wise in the presence of the congregation. (The court ordered Spanier to pay $1,000 to Wise, but Wise refused the award.) But by then, the court decision was moot. On September 6, Spanier and Traub, the aggrieved kosher butcher, informed Wise that his contract with Beth El was “considered void” and that he was discharged as of September 5, without back pay.

  In response, Wise’s supporters hatched a subversive plan. Since the temple had continued the practice—over Wise’s objections—of selling various honors, such as the honor of opening the ark, carrying the Torah to the reading desk, and offering a prayer, they quietly purchased that procedure for Wise for the morning of Rosh Hashanah. Spanier, sensing trouble, first tried to cancel the sale and then asked the Albany sheriff to send in police to monitor the situation. Wise’s description in his memoirs is worth quoting in full:

  I went to the synagogue on New-Year’s morning, appeared in my official garb, but found one of Spanier’s creatures, who had been the cause of the altercation about the Sabbath, sitting in my chair. I took another seat. Excitement ruled the hour. Everything was quiet as the grave. Finally the choir sings [Solomon] Sulzer’s great En Komokho [“There is none like you . . .”]. At the conclusion of the song I step before the ark in order to take out the scrolls of the law as usual, and to offer prayer. Spanier steps in my way, and, without saying a word, smites me with his fist so that my cap falls from my head. This was the terrible signal for an uproar the like of which I have never experienced. The people acted like furies. It was as though the synagogue had suddenly burst forth in a flaming conflagration.23

  In the ensuing melee, worshippers of Polish and Hungarian heritage rushed in to fight on behalf of the rabbi, and the riot was quickly joined by young people in the choir. The Albany sheriff’s force moved in, stopped the rioting, arrested several congregants, and cleared the synagogue as men and women spilled out onto Herkimer Street. The sheriff then locked the doors and took the keys.

  Wise recalled that he confronted the synagogue president and declared that “there is the law to which I can appeal,” whereupon Spanier replied: “I have a hundred thousand dollars more than you. I do not fear the law. I will ruin you.” Wise went home, “bowed with pain and inexpressible grief.” The sheriff’s constables pursued him and arrested him as “the ringleader of a rebellious mob at a public service.” One constable seized Wise by his coat and led him to a nearby police station. “Upon our arrival there, the whole rabble was present in order to feast their eyes on the sight of their rabbi appearing before court on New-Year’s Day,” Wise wrote. “But their hopes were disappointed, for the police judge went into an adjoining room and received me there. My friends had informed him of what had taken place, and he dismissed me on my word of honor. Three months later the constable died of a stroke of paralysis, one day after his discharge. Who can describe that terrible day? Not I. It was agonizing, hellish torture. This victory of orthodoxy proved its grave wherein it was buried. . . . The battle had been fought, and I was prepared to enter upon a new path of life.”24

  The episode made all the papers in the state capital. The Albany Evening Atlas reported that the Hebrew Congregation on Fulton Street was “not at all united in love for the Rev. Mr. Wise,” with the result that “a strife arose” on the morning of September 7 “between the two sections as to whether the Rev. Mr. Wise should, or should not officiate.”25 The newspaper concluded: “Sheriff Beardsley repaired promptly to the spot, accompanied by a strong force, and soon cleared the synagogue of both parties, locked the doors, and took the keys in his possession. This had the desired effect, and the riot and disturbance then terminated.” The paper’s account then said that several in the melee applied to the police for warrants charging each other with assault and battery.

  Wise was not to be deterred. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, he conducted the service in his house, with a choir in the front hall and the congregation in his parlors. His supporters did not fail him. They decided immediately to split off from Beth El and form a new congregation. The congregation, Ansche Emeth (“People of Truth”), held services in a nearby house before purchasing a Baptist church on Herkimer Street for its new location—the same church where an anti-Semitic cleric had earlier delivered sermons against the Jews.

  Ansche Emeth grew as a new place for the “American Judaism” that Wise envisioned. Wise was to leave Albany in 1854 for Cincinnati. In following years, Congregation Beth El instituted reforms and in 1885 merged with Ansche Emeth to form Temple Beth Emeth. Wise returned to Albany in 1889, at the age of seventy, to preside over the dedication of its new synagogue.

  Was the debacle in Albany avoidable? Wise had, after all, lost favor with a considerable number of congregants and acted perhaps arbitrarily to dismiss the ritual slaughterer and hire another in his place without consulting the congregation. He had gotten himself embroiled in a lawsuit with Traub and been charged with libel. He was accused of heresy on several grounds and had created turmoil in the congregation, with Traub threatening to resign as cantor and secretary. Spanier was perhaps understandably concerned that Wise’s behavior was overbearing and disruptive, making the president’s job of keeping peace within the congregation all but impossible. “The story is not the black and white one depicted by Wise and repeated by his admirers,” writes Seftin D. Temkin, noting that Wise seemed to be spoiling for a fight and had a tendency to bluster and to be evasive on embarrassing details.26

  Only in retrospect has the significance of the riot loomed large in the history of American Judaism. The cause of “reforming,” modernizing, or “Americanizing” Judaism was hardly the only thing dividing the rabbi and his congregation. There were many other sources of the breach, which would flare up over many periods of time and over many issues.

  Nevertheless, the strife in Albany marks an undeniable turning point in American Jewish history, accelerating American Judaism down its path toward division. Though Wise was still evolving in terms of the specific practices and beliefs of Judaism that would be kept or discarded, he nonetheless clung to his dream of establishing a universally accepted American religion, though such a goal would seem obviously difficult in light of the Albany fracas.

  Because of the coverage of the controversy in The Occident and The Asmonean, Wise’s name became known throughout the American Jewish community, putting him in the forefront of the cause of “reform.” His notoriety, however, made it all the more difficult for him to be accepted as the unifying figure he wished to become.

  The rabbi who posed the strongest challenge was an accomplished but awkward and withdrawn traditionalist in Philadelphia.

  Eight

  THE “TWO ISAACS”

  I do not pretend to be a great Talmudist,” Isaac Leeser wrote later in life. “At fourteen years old I left the Hebrew school and learned worldly things.”1

  But Leeser emerged in the nineteenth century as the most important figure in American Judaism to stand athwart the onrush of history and yell Stop! His opposition to reform adjustments did not rule out accommodating to the pressures of American contemporary life. Though not a formally trained rabbi, Leeser is thus considered a founder of what today is called modern Orthodoxy and also a contributor to the establishment of the Conservative movement later in the twentieth century. Leeser emigrated from Westphalia in 1824 at the age of eighteen and first took up work in Richmond and then later became hazan at Mikveh Israel, the Sephardic congregation of Philadelphia. There he pioneered in the delivery of sermons in English and then did English translations of German texts, prayers, and other commentaries, winning considerable fame as a writer. A favorite subject was his campaign against missionaries. To the shock of some German Jews, he supported the establishment of the first Jewish Sunday school—controversial because it was a clear attempt to mimic a Protestant tradition on the Christian Sabbath.

  Beyond Sunday schools, Leeser was an ad
vocate of all-day religious schools, necessary in his view to counter Christian attempts at conversion. Wise and others disliked the idea, favoring secular education for Jews, supplemented by religious education in the afternoon or weekends. Leeser went further, developing special materials for children. Among the popular works studied by Jewish children were Leeser’s Catechism, Elementary Introduction to the Scriptures for the Use of Hebrew Children by Simha Peixotto, and Max Lilienthal’s Sabbath Visitor. Jewish schools were frequently started by women in such places as Atlanta; Petersburg, Virginia; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Woodland, California; and Calvert, Texas. The best-known pioneer was Rebecca Gratz, who worked with Leeser to establish the first Jewish Sunday school, in Philadelphia, in 1838, seizing control of education that was a province of men in Europe.

  A nationwide Jewish protest led by Leeser over the treatment of a group of Jews in Damascus accused of murdering a Catholic priest in 1840, allegedly for using his blood for rituals, also helped to vault him into prominence in the United States. He later published a monthly journal in English, The Occident and American Jewish Advocate. But though he tirelessly sought to produce texts and journals for observant Jews, Leeser received little support from his own congregation, in part because of his aloof and didactic manner and in part because of disputes over getting members to pay their dues and Leeser’s demand to deliver sermons without prior approval of the board. In the end, he was forced out of his congregation in 1850. But his influence was immense. His prominence illustrates the fact that well before the much later immigration of Yiddish-speaking Jews in the 1880s, many Jews in America sought to establish more conservative congregations in reaction against the advocates of reform.