Sustaining the College (1875–1883)

1998 ◽  
pp. 281-286
Author(s):  
Sefton D. Temkin
Keyword(s):  
Prayer Book ◽  
American Judaism ◽  
Rabbinical School ◽  
Union College

This chapter discusses Isaac Mayer Wise’s attempts to keep his college in operation. In a sense, the Hebrew Union College, like Minhag America, was a vestige of a more comprehensive scheme. The all-embracing synod, which would legislate for American Judaism and authorize an official prayer-book as well as an official seminary for training rabbis, had been laid on one side. From time to time Wise still tried to raise the wind in its favour, but he found no support. The union, as established in 1873, was a deliberately circumscribed body, both as to the scope of its powers and as to the area of its membership. Wise’s presence was felt, but in the wings rather than the centre of the stage. The college itself, limited to the preparatory department of a rabbinical school, was only a first instalment of the comprehensive institution Wise had planned. If, as his critics charged, Wise was bent on becoming a ‘western pope’, being given the presidency of Hebrew Union College was hardly a coronation.

Creating American Reform Judaism

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sefton D. Temkin
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
New World ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Reform Judaism ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Jewish Prayer ◽  
Union College

Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900), founder of the major institutions of Reform Judaism in America, was a man of his time — a pioneer in a pioneer’s world. When he came to America from his childhood Bohemia in 1846, he found fewer than 50,000 Jews and only two ordained rabbis. With his sense of mission and tireless energy, he set himself to tailoring the vehicle of Reform Judaism to meet the needs of the growing Jewish community. Wise strove for unity among American Jews, and for a college to train rabbis to serve them. The establishment of Hebrew Union College (1875) was the crowning achievement of his life. His quest for unity also led him to draw up an American Jewish prayer-book, Minhag America, to found the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and to edit two weeklies; their editorials, breathing fire and energy, were no less important in his quest for leadership. Here as elsewhere, it was his persistence that won him the war where his impetuosity lost him many battles. This book captures the vigour of Wise’s personality and the politics and concerns of contemporary Jewish life and leadership in America. The biography is a lively portrait of a rabbi whose singular efforts in many fields made him a pivotal figure in the naturalization of the Jew and Judaism in the New World.

Seventieth Birthday: Central Conference of American Rabbis

1998 ◽  
pp. 297-301
Author(s):  
Sefton D. Temkin
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
70Th Birthday ◽  
Seventieth Birthday ◽  
American Judaism ◽  
Harvest Year ◽  
Time Of Harvest ◽  
Union College

This chapter details the occasion of Isaac Mayer Wise’s seventieth birthday. By this time the quarrels within the camp of what he called American Judaism simmered down, and time, the ever-active healer, transformed the ‘great Cincinnati agitator’ into the grand old man of American Judaism. He was still equal to the labours he had undertaken, but was now entering the time of harvest. Year by year the Hebrew Union College brought Wise to the centre of the stage at a grand ceremony. Six years after the first such ceremony, the Plum Street temple resounded with one with which he was yet more intimately connected, and which marks his entry into a golden age — the celebration of his 70th birthday, on 5 April 1889.

From the Tower of London to the Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires: “Give me thy grace, good Lord, to set the world at nought”

Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 164) (4) ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Clare M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Short History ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Tower Of London ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Book Of Hours ◽  
Almost All

The Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires begins or ends almost all its events by reciting in both English and Spanish a prayer written by More in the margins of his Book of Hours probably while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. After a short history of what is called Thomas More’s Prayer Book, the author studies the prayer as a poem written in the form of a psalm according to the structure of Hebrew poetry, and looks at the poem’s content as a psalm of lament.

Book Reviews and Review Essay

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-156
Author(s):  
Melissa Raphael ◽  
Dorothea Magonet ◽  
Frank Dabba Smith
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
The Real ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
Union College

Tony Bayfield, Being Jewish Today: Confronting the Real Issues, Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019, £18.99 Marika Henriques, The Hidden Girl: The Journey of a Soul, Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd., 2018, £25.00 Marc Saperstein, Agony in the Pulpit: Jewish Preaching in Response to Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder 1933–1945, Hebrew Union College Press, 2018, $95.00

Out of the Whirlwind Reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Michael Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mutual Accountability ◽  
Union College

This article argues that Albert Friedlander’s edited book, Out of the Whirlwind (1968), should be recognised as pathbreaking. Among the first to articulate the idea of ‘Holocaust literature’, it established a body of texts and contextualised these as a way to integrate literature – as well as historical writing, music, art and poetry – as critical to an understanding of the Holocaust. This article also situates Out of the Whirlwind through the personal history of Friedlander and his wife Evelyn, who was a co-creator of the book, his colleagues from Hebrew Union College, and the illustrator, Jacob Landau. It explores the work’s connection to the expansive, humanistic development of progressive Judaism in the United States, Britain and continental Europe. It also underscores Friedlander’s study of Leo Baeck as a means to understand the importance of mutual accountability, not only between Jews, but in Jews’ engagement with the wider world.

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hefling
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Book Of Common Prayer ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Prayer ◽  
The Church

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.

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