Hearts, Hats & Ham

Judaism was once defined, by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, as "a religion without mysteries or miracles, rational and self-evident ... in perfect harmony with modern science, criticism and philosophy, and in full sympathy with universal liberty, equality, justice, and charity."

Bohemia-born Rabbi Wise arrived in the U.S. in 1846 to find the country's Jews scattered and unorganized, and falling away from their ancient faith. For half a century he traveled up & down the land preaching and organizing a new, liberalized Judaism; it laid less stress on traditional forms and observances than on cutting the vital principles of the Old Testament to the democratic measure of the New World. "American Judaism" which he founded is today called "Reform," and numbers 350 U.S. congregations.*

Most of the rabbis of these Reform congregations have been trained at Hebrew Union College, which Dr. Wise started in Cincinnati in 1875. Last week, on the Tudor Gothic campus of Hebrew Union, 1,000 leaders of Reform Judaism met to celebrate the inauguration of the college's fourth president, Rabbi Nelson Glueck, 47. Handsome, dark-eyed Nelson Glueck (rhymes with click) became a rabbi at 23, but he is better known as one of the world's foremost archeologists. He spent ten of the last 15 years in Palestine, where he discovered and mapped 1,000 biblical cities in the Trans-Jordan area.

Hebrew Union's new president" is no dogmatist in theology: "I am more interested in hearts than in hats or ham," he says. "As never before, mankind needs pioneers of the spirit. . . . The sense and hope of survival for us and mankind bespeak and demand an all-enveloping passion on our part for the principles and precepts of ... an American Judaism, strengthening and being strengthened by the aims ... of the colonial fathers who called this country 'the new Jerusalem.' "

*U.S. Orthodox Jewish congregations number 3,000; Conservative, 550.

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