Minhag Amerika. Tephiloth B’nei Yeshurun. The Daily Prayers. Part I. Revised and Compiled by the Committee of the Cleveland Conference. Translated by Isaac M. Wise, along with Wolf Benjamin Rothenheim and Isidor Kalisch.

<<First edition of Minhag Amerika, exceptionally rare. The first daily Reform prayer-book issued in America.>> Isaac Mayer Wise had long desired to publish an “American” prayer book, as he believed that acceptance by all American Jews of a single liturgical rite would represent a great step forward toward unity. In 1855 the Cleveland Conference assigned the task of preparing a new Reform prayer book to a committee chaired by Wise. The 1857 text is the very first appearance of this revolutionary prayer-book. Although it retained the Hebrew text and the traditional framework of the liturgy, certain “objectionable” texts were altered or shortened; that is, passages relating to a personal Messiah, the priesthood and a return to and restoration of a political Israel. The Minhag Amerika prayer book was published in three versions. A Hebrew only edition, Hebrew with German translation, and the present edition: Hebrew with English translation - which, was in fact solely written by Isaac Mayer Wise. The title “Minhag Amerika” holds special significance: Wise, born in Bohemia in 1819, chose to immigrate to the United States in 1846 due to his devout beliefs in the American ideals of democracy and freedom. He felt that Judaism in America would freely develop in a way that it never could in Europe, as the Jews there had to cope with the constant whims and vagaries of oppressive and often anti-Semitic governments. Wise’s uniquely American prayer book, was not just an attempt to issue another Reform prayer book, but rather to create a new form of Reform Judaism unique to American Jewry. Just as there were Jewish prayer books specific to Germany, Spain and Poland, so too there would now be a prayer book unique to America and a newly developing, vibrant form of American Judaism. (See Centenary Papers and Others by David Philipson (Cincinnatti 1919) pp. 25, 49-51).