WISE, ISAAC M. (1819–1900), pioneer and leading organizer of American Reform Judaism. Born near Eger, Bohemia (now Cheb, Czech Republic), Isaac Mayer Wise led an impoverished childhood. He received a traditional Talmudic education, which, though irregular, gave him an extensive acquaintance with rabbinic literature and an appetite for wider knowledge. In 1846, after holding a minor rabbinical position in Radnitz, he left for America.

Essentially Wise was an autodidact. He appears to have imbibed Mendelssohnian ideas in Europe, but on his arrival in New York there was nothing to distinguish him from conventional Orthodoxy. The mainspring of his Reform inclinations, which surfaced in America, appears to have been a sense of the needs of Judaism in the New World. He became the rabbi at a synagogue in Albany, New York, and not only instituted reforms there but began to write and lead efforts designed to bring...