Constitution of the Rabbinical Literary Association of America.

The Rabbinical Literary Association, whose first president was Rabbi Max Lilienthal, was a precursor to the Central Conference of American Rabbis founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. The CCAR is today the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada and the largest and oldest rabbinical organization in the world. The Rabbinical Literary Association was ardently American in tone and although it did publish a journal (The Hebrew Review) “its real objective was to establish a forum where discussion might bring some degree of uniformity if not authority” (Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry, 1776-1985, Volume 3, p. 125). See also J.G. Heller, Isaac M. Wise; His Life, Work and Thought (1965) p. 443.