July 8 1873 – 13 Tammuz 5633
Dr. Isaac Mayer Wise set up the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, uniting scattered communities in America that had adopted “reforms” of the synagogue services and prayer-book under one organisational umbrella, based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Reform soon became the largest Jewish religious denomination in America. In sharp contrast with the German Jewish Reform movement, American Reform was broadly supportive of the Zionist movement from its outset. Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, of New York’s Temple Emanu-el, attended the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1898, and prominent Reform rabbis such as Hillel Silver, Stephen Wise and Dr. Nelson Glueck were fervent Zionists who actively lobbied for American support of a Jewish state.