The First Edition of The Israelite (1854)

On July 15, 1854, Isaac M. Wise published the first edition of his weekly newspaper The Israelite, which would later become The American Israelite. At the time of its creation, there was no Jewish publication west of the Alleghenies. In its first pages, Wise detailed the goals of the newspaper, saying that it will “favor enlightenment, education, a moderate and rational progress, and improvement of our national institutions, will cherish the spread of knowledge, the progress of learning, and the triumph of truth, will respect liberty of conscience, thought and speech, and therefore open its columns to opposing and conflicting views.” The paper remains in publication today and is the oldest English-language Jewish weekly in the United States.