Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

February 22, 2022

The Rabbi Who Met with Presidents

Isaac Mayer Wise and Zachary Taylor.

When Isaac Mayer Wise—the principal architect of Reform Judaism in America—met then-President Zachary Taylor in the White House, he was not meeting a U.S. president for the first time, but Taylor was meeting a rabbi for the first time. At least, that’s what Wise claims in his memoirs, and there is no evidence to the contrary. Allan Arkush describes both this meeting and some of Wise’s other presidential audiences:

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