4 - Fulfilment: Years Of Harvest

Summary

DUTIES OLD AND NEW

Dr. Wise writes to inform his friends that up to twelve o'clock daily, Saturdays and Sundays excepted, he is to be found at No. 126 Day ton Street; from one to four p.m. at his office No. ISO West Fourth Street; from four to six in the Hebrew ·Union College; Saturdays and on Sundays up to twelve p.m. and from five to six p.m. in the Benai Yeshurun Temple.

American Israelite, 25 (8 October 1875), 4

If not before, when the glow of this ceremony had faded, Wise may have realized that his was the task to trudge on, now with one more burden on his shoulders. He was 56; he had fought his way upwards (as made clear in the dream) despite all the opposition of inferior beings, but the plateau. he had reached was still not the summit. Over and above his duties to his congregation and his two weekly newspapers, he had to make Hebrew Union College mean something, lest the predictions of his enemies be confirmed and the presidency which had been vested in him with all the external marks of confidence was to go down as an empty and ephemeral title, with no more significance in the life of American Jewry than that of the other institutions which he had vainly attempted to bring to life.

Apart from these tasks, during the remaining quarter-century of his life Wise continued to travel and lecture, now being more in demand on account of his new office, and he added several books to his list of publications. At the outset Wise remarried. His old causes he continued to advocate, and he showed no abatement of vigour in contesting opposing views or in replying to his critics (or, as he would put it, enemies); but there is less of the unbridled passion and exhibitionist self-pity which figure so prominently in his earlier diatribes. The outbursts of frenzy he indulged in usually had a relationship to Hebrew Union College. He drummed up its virtues and paraded its achievements; he struck out at the failure of individuals to join a congregation, and the failure of congregations to join the union, as treachery to Judaism. Perhaps this mellowing can be attributed to the new satisfaction in his domestic life as well as to the broader responsibilities arising from his new office.