he labored for fifty years for the living and liberal presentation of Judaism. His life and career are well known. His name has become a household word in American Israel. As a monument to his genius, there stands in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Hebrew Union College, which he founded in 1876 as an institution for educating American Rabbis in the modern spirit. This college has graduated many rabbis who have gone forth to spread the gospel of a living and liberal Judaism. Nowhere has the Jewish faith flourished more than on this continent, and this result is due to the historic effort of Isaac M. Wise in releasing the spirit of Judaism from its casement in law and ceremony.

Now in the Eighteenth Century, just as later in Germany and America, Rabbinism, officially entrenched, encountered in Russia and Poland its first protest in the Chasidic movement -- which we may regard historically as the pathfinder of Reform Judaism. If later this movement degenerated, it cannot be denied that at the outset, Chasidism was inspired by a sincere and genuine effort to afford a living Jewish faith, and to improve the individual in conduct and character. To again quote the Jewish Encyclopedia, "It aimed not at dogmatic and ritual reform, but at a change in the believer. By suggestion, it created a new type of religious man, who placed emotion above ritual, and religious excitement above knowledge."

The founder of Chasidism was a Podolian Jew, Eliezer Baal Shem Tob. He was also called Besht,