2 - New Beginning (1846-1854)

Summary

YOUNG AMERICA

In 1846, New York was a large village. On Broadway as far up as Canal Street, and in the business section east of Broadway, the beginnings of the metropolis were perceptible, but elsewhere it was like a village. Small, insignificant-looking people went in and out of small houses, small shops, small institutions. The first impression that the city made upon me was exceedingly unfavorable. The whole city appeared to me like. a large shop where everyone buys or sells, cheats or is cheated. I had never before seen a city so bare of all art and of every Uace of good taste.

(Reminiscences, p. 17)

There has arrived from Germany a young schoolmaster who also preaches, and is said to possess some Hebrew learning.

(Attributed by Wise to Isaac Leeser)

These quotations express first the impression which in later years Wise says New York made on him when he landed; and secondly the impression left by Wise's arrival. We now leave the shadows and enter a period in which there is always some documentation. When he established himself in Cincinnati in 1854, Wise began to publish two weeklies, for both of which he wrote profusely. For the 1846–54 period the chronicle is less ample, but he did figure in such other Jewish periodicals as appeared at that time, and in other records, for example of synagogues. After his death no diary or other memoranda were found, and few letters had been preserved. In 1874-5 Wise wrote Reminiscences, which begin with his arrival in New York and break off abruptly with the publication of his prayer-book Minhag America in 1857. Naturally, they form the principal guiding lines for a sketch of his career during these eleven years. However, they cannot be accepted without qualification: Wise, like most authors, is the hero of his own memoirs; and to boot, he was prone to write hastily and inaccurately as to detail. The Reminiscences were written at a time when feeling between him and the rabbis of the Eastern seaboard was particularly bitter and the laity of Temple Emanu-El of New York had offered him a personal rebuff. Probably the resentment coloured his recollection of first impressions made.