Isaac Mayer Wise

Artist unknown
Oil on canvas, after 1879
Cincinnati Skirball Museum 

At his death in 1900, Isaac Mayer Wise was described as “the foremost rabbi in America.” His major achievements were the establishment of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (today’s Union for Reform Judaism) in 1873, the Hebrew Union College in 1875, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1889.  

The oldest son of Regina and Leo Weiss, Isaac was born in 1819 in Steingrub, Bohemia (currently a part of Czechoslovakia). He was a brilliant student, and at the age of nine, his father, a teacher, had taught him all he knew about the Bible and the Talmud. He then went to study with his grandfather, a physician, who died three years later. Weiss continued his studies in the Talmud and the Bible at various schools. He completed his formal education by attending the University of Prague and the University of Vienna for three years. After immigrating to American in 1846, he first served a congregation in Albany, New York before coming to Cincinnati in 1854 to become rabbi of K. K. B’nai Yeshurun (today’s Wise Temple), which he built into the largest and most prominent congregation of its time. It was under his leadership that the congregation outgrew its Lodge Street location and built Plum Street Temple, an architectural marvel of Byzantine and Moorish style that is on the National Register of Historic Places and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975. A painting of Plum Street Temple by Henry Mosler can be seen in the Skirball’s second floor gallery. 

This portrait of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise appears to have been made from a photograph in which the sitter assumes the exact pose, is wearing the same clothing, is seated in the same chair and leans his right elbow on a side table. The background of the painting is less defined than that of the photograph, and Wise appears to be younger in the painting than in the photograph, likely a bit of artistic license. In his signature fashion, apparent in so many likenesses of the sitter, he wears his eyeglasses on his forehead. An issue of his newspaper, The American Israelite, is visible under the open book on the table beside him. The photograph, made in 1879, appears in a book by Wise’s grandson, Max B. May, Isaac Mayer Wise the Founder of American Judaism: A Biography, published in 1916.