This chapter turns to Wise’s attempts to set up a synod. Early in 1855, Wise had begun to renew his agitation for a conference. Wise wanted a general ‘get-together’ without regard to theology. He enumerates some of the questions which lay before American Jewry: Zion College, which had been started in Cincinnati; the orphan asylum which had been started in New Orleans; whether or not to have Jewish parochial schools; ‘our standing complaint about the serious want of textbooks for Hebrew schools’. ‘The grand problem-to be solved at present is this’, said Wise, ‘how to unite all these endeavours into one focus’. Here, indeed, the chapter reveals a mind working on a grand design for American Jewry. It is a conference on practical issues, not on ideologies, that Wise is advocating. The note is definitely union, not reform.