On a Friday afternoon in March 1865, Hartford’s Jewish community gathered to dedicate a new synagogue. The sanctuary glowed with walnut woodwork, a green carpet, and a heavy white curtain drawn across the Torah ark. Hundreds crowded inside—an assembly the congregation had prepared for by issuing tickets in advance and sending cards of welcome to “citizens of all denominations.” Nearly every church in Hartford was represented by its pastor.

At the center of the ceremony was the youngest generation: nineteen girls, dressed in white, processed up the aisle carrying wreaths and scarves. One stepped forward and presented the synagogue’s key with a poem:

Here is the key of Heaven’s gate—
For all, who for its mercy wait!
Here shall the Nations call the Lord
And enter in to hear his word!

This was not just a dedication for one community. It was a civic moment for the entire city, deliberately universal in tone. And then came the sermon.

The speaker was Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, a pioneering Jewish leader in America. Preaching in English, Wise rejected one of Christianity’s core doctrines: Original Sin. Humanity, he argued, was not cursed at birth but blessed with freedom. Every person, he declared, is “a free agent. He must be free to be perfect, and the powers are given him to cast off sin, to live truly, avoiding all the evil influences which corrupt society and give the world its sorrows and afflictions.”

The Hartford Courant published his words in full, adding that “its moral teachings........

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