Book Description

Excerpt from Isaac Mayer Wise, the Founder of American Judaism a Biography In 1846, when Isaac Mayer Wise arrived in America, he found the Jews in this country with but little secular culture, many of them drifting away from Judaism, and what religious institutions they had, entirely unorganized. Their religious life was an intolerable imitation of that which existed in the old Ghettos of Europe - a condition so inconsistent with the spirit of American institutions as to make positively impossible its survival. Dr. Wise realized that if Judaism in America was to be preserved, it would be necessary not only to Americanize the Jew, but also his Judaism. This was his life work. But for this work the Jews in America would either have been lost to Judaism or their mode of life and worship an empty continuation of that brought with them from their narrow European environment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.