Stephen Samuel Wise

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Stephen Samuel Wise (1874-1949), American Jewish religious leader and Zionist, played an important role in Jewish communal affairs.

Stephen S. Wise was born on March 17, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary, into a family with a long tradition of rabbinic leadership. He was brought to the United States in 1875. After graduating from Columbia University in 1892, he pursued postgraduate studies at Oxford and rabbinical studies in Vienna, where he was ordained by the chief rabbi of Vienna. He received his doctorate from Columbia in 1902. In 1900 he married Louise Waterman. Wise's scholarly work included an English translation (1901) of the Book of Judges for the Bible published by the Jewish Publication Society of America in 1917.

Wise's first ministerial post was Congregation Bnai Jeshurun in New York City (1893-1899). He then became rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Portland, Ore. In 1906 he returned to New York City and founded the Free Synagogue, of which he was spiritual leader until his death. Feeling a need for a seminary in New York to train students for the liberal rabbinate, Wise founded the Jewish Institute of Religion in 1922 and served as its president until it merged with Hebrew Union College in 1948.

Political Activist

Wise's career was marked by a long and distinguished record of service to the American public. In Oregon he had been active in civic affairs and served as commissioner of child labor. In New York City he became active in efforts to improve municipal government and served as a member of the City Affairs Committee. He fought to better the lot of the workingman and was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Active in interfaith activities, he inaugurated, with his close friend Protestant minister John Haynes Holmes, a series of nonsectarian services. Wise participated actively in various presidential campaigns, supporting Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. He was appointed to the President's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (1940) and to the President's Commission on Higher Education (1946). He numbered among his friends the Supreme Court justices Benjamin Cardozo and Louis Brandeis, both of whom worked with Wise in the Zionist movement.

It was in the area of Jewish communal affairs that Wise made his greatest contributions. He was a lifelong Zionist and devoted much time to the development of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1897 he was among the founders of the Federation of American Zionists. In 1898 he attended the Second Zionist Congress in Basel and met - and was greatly influenced by - Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement. Herzl appointed him American secretary of the Zionist Organization. Wise first visited Palestine in 1913, returning again in 1922 and 1935. In 1914, with Brandeis, he established the Provisional Committee for General Zionist Affairs. In 1918 he was elected to a 2-year term as president of the Zionist Organization of America and served a second term in 1936.

Zionist Leader

As a leader of the Zionist movement, Wise represented the movement on many historic occasions. He advised Woodrow Wilson with regard to the British government's Balfour Declaration, which supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine (1917). He attended the Paris Peace Conference (1918) and the London Conference of Arabs and Jews (1939). Also, he testified before the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine (1946). When British policy in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s became increasingly anti-Jewish, Wise fought against it, and as early as 1930 he had written The Great Betrayal, with Jacob de Haas. In 1947 Wise fought for the adoption of the Palestine Partition Plan, which brought about the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

In 1916, together with Brandeis and others, Wise founded the American Jewish Congress, and in 1936 he founded the World Jewish Congress. He served both congresses as president until his death. In the 1930s he played a leading role in mobilizing American opposition to the Nazis and in focusing attention on the Jewish refugee problem created by Nazi persecution. During the 1940s he brought reports on the Nazi efforts to exterminate European Jewry to public attention. Wise died on April 19, 1949.

Further Reading

The main source of information on Wise is his autobiography, Challenging Years (1949). This is supplemented by two collections of his correspondence: Personal Letters, edited by Wise's children, Justine Wise Polier and James Waterman Wise (1956); and Stephen S. Wise: Servant of the People, selected letters edited by the Protestant clergyman Carl Hermann Voss (1969). Voss also wrote an account of Wise's friendship with John Haynes Holmes, Rabbi and Minister (1964).

Additional Sources

Shapiro, Robert Donald, A reform rabbi in the progressive era: the early career of Stephen S. Wise, New York: Garland Pub., 1988.

Urofsky, Melvin I., A voice that spoke for justice: the life and times of Stephen S. Wise, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982.

Voss, Carl Hermann, Rabbi and minister: the friendship of Stephen S. Wise and John Haynes Holmes, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1980.

Wise's political activity elicited an endorsement of the Balfour Declaration from President Woodrow Wilson. From 1918 to 1920 he was vice president of the Zionist Organization of America and in 1922 he founded the Jewish Institute of Religion as a rabbinical seminary under a Reform banner. He was also instrumental in establishing the American Civil Liberties Union and the American and World Jewish Congresses. In 1936-1938 he was president of the ZOA and a leader in the boycott campaign against Nazi Germany. Thereafter he continued to serve in leadership positions as he pressed for the rescue and relief of victims of Nazi persecution and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. As a Zionist he worked for consensus and mobilized widespread support for Jewish national aspirations. He was also a social activist involved in promoting the rights of children, workers, and the aged.

In 1907 Wise founded the Free Synagogue in New York, and in 1915 established the American Jewish Congress, which aimed to protect Jewish rights and oppose discrimination against Jews, blacks, and other minorities. In 1922 he founded the Jewish Institute of Religion, which later merged with Hebrew Union College.

Wise was also a key player in establishing the American Zionist movement. He and Louis D. Brandeis helped convince President Woodrow Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration---Britain's pledge to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Wise's speeches and sermons dealt with all sorts of social issues. He clashed with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, over Wise's campaign against the corrupt mayor of New York, James Walker. The discord between them lasted until Roosevelt's presidential election in 1936, when Wise gave Roosevelt his support.

Wise actively opposed Hitler'S policies from the start. The rabbi organized the movement to boycott German products and spoke out against Hitler's behavior at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. He was indecisive, though, about whether to support the Jewish Agency's Transfer Agreement, which allowed them to help German Jews leave for Palestine at the expense of being able to protest the Germans' activities.

Wise's leadership role became increasingly difficult as the Nazis gained power. American Jewry was weak and divided over how to respond. Wise tried to use his influence to save Jews from the Nazis by serving on the President's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, but his efforts were often frustrated by the obstacles created by the State Department, War Department, and even by President Roosevelt, himself. He also found it hard to appeal to the president about European Jewry when America itself faced great danger. In 1943 Wise organized the "Stop Hitler Now" demonstration at Madison Square Garden, but by 1944 was deeply disillusioned. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was a relief to Wise, but he never recovered from the great losses suffered by European Jewry. (see also Boycotts, Anti-Nazi.)

1874 - 1949

U.S. Jewish leader.

Stephen S. Wise was born in Hungary and was brought to the United States as a small child. He received rabbinical training from Adolf Jellinek in Vienna and earned a doctorate at Columbia University. At the turn of the century, Wise was among a handful of card-carrying Zionists in the United States. In 1898 he served as a delegate to the Second Zionist Congress and subsequently helped to establish the Federation of American Zionists (later renamed the Zionist Organization of America [ZOA]). In 1907 Wise founded the Free Synagogue in New York City. Thereafter, his political activity brought him into close contact with U.S. Progressives and the left wing of the Democratic party. He developed close ties to Woodrow Wilson, Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Wise's public activity included the cofounding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909); the establishment of the American Jewish Congress during World War I; securing U.S. support for the Balfour Declaration of 1917; serving as a Zionist spokesman at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I; cofounding the American Civil Liberties Union (1920); leading the ZOA, the United Palestine Appeal, and the American Zionist Emergency Council during the 1930s and 1940s; founding the Jewish Institute of Religion (1922); creating the U.S. anti-Nazi boycott of the 1930s and the World Jewish Congress (1936); and co-founding the American Jewish Conference (1943).

During World War II, Wise emerged as a champion of Roosevelt's wartime strategy. At Roosevelt's request, he even suppressed initial reports of the Holocaust. Wise's stance conflicted with Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, a right-wing U.S. Jewish leader who advocated Zionist militancy and immediate U.S. intervention on behalf of European Jewry. In 1943 the Wise-Silver clash reached a climax, and Silver displaced Wise as American Zionism's undisputed leader.

— MARK RAIDER

Quotes:

"Vision looks inwards and becomes duty. Vision looks outwards and becomes aspiration. Vision looks upwards and becomes faith."

For the American legal scholar, please see Steven M. Wise.

Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise
Library of Congress portrait

Stephen Samuel Wise (born Weisz, March 17, 1874–April 19, 1949) was a Austro-Hungarian-born American Reform rabbi and Zionist leader.

Contents 1 Early life 1.1 Education 2 Career and activism 2.1 Public and charitable offices 2.2 Translations 3 Death 4 Criticism of Wise 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Early life

Wise was born in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son and grandson of rabbis. His grandfather, Joseph Hirsch Weisz, was Chief Rabbi of a small town near Budapest. His father, Aaron Wise, earned a Ph.D. and ordination in Europe, and emigrated to the United States to serve as rabbi of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes in Brooklyn, New York. Wise's maternal grandfather, Móric Farkasházi Fischer, created the Herend Porcelain Company. When Wise's father Aaron Wise sought to unionize the company, Moric gave the family one-way tickets to New York.

Wise emigrated to New York as an infant with his family. His father became rabbi of Rodeph Sholom, a Manhattan Conservative congregation of wealthy German Jews.

Education

Wise studied at the College of the City of New York, Columbia College (B.A. 1892), and Columbia University (Ph.D. 1901), and later pursued rabbinical studies under Richard Gottheil, Kohut, Gersoni, Joffe, and Margolis. In 1893, he was appointed assistant to Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs of the Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, New York City, and later in the same year, minister to the same congregation. In 1900 he became the rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel (Portland, Oregon). In 1933, Wise received an L.H.D. from Bates College.

Career and activism

A founder of the New York Federation of Zionist Societies in 1887, he led in the formation of the nationwide Federation of American Zionists within that year and served as honorary secretary until 1904, in close cooperation with Theodor Herzl.^[1] At the Second Zionist Congress (Basel, 1898), he was a delegate and secretary for the English language. Rabbi Wise's commitment to Zionism was very atypical of Reform Judaism during this period.

In 1918, leaders within the American Jewish community convened the first American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia's historic Independence Hall. Wise, joined by Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and others to lay the groundwork for a national Democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the country, to represent Jews as a group and not as individuals.^[2]

Public and charitable offices

In 1902, he officiated as first vice-president of the Oregon State Conference of Charities and Correction; and, in 1903, he was appointed Commissioner of Child Labor for the state of Oregon, and founded the Peoples' Forum of Oregon. These activities initiated a lifelong commitment to social justice, stemming from his embrace of a Jewish equivalent of the Social Gospel movement in Christianity.

Wise founded the Jewish Institute of Religion, an educational center in New York City to train rabbis in Reform Judaism. It was merged into the Hebrew Union College a year after his death.

Wise was a close friend of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who turned to Wise for advice on issues concerning the Jewish community in the United States.

In 1914 Wise co-founded the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In A History of Jews in America historian Howard Sachar wrote, "In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise."^[3] Other Jewish co-founders included Julius Rosenwald, Lillian Wald, and Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch.

In 1925, Wise became Chairperson of Keren Hayesod whilst he continued his efforts to bring the Reform movement around to a pro-­Zionist stance. With the rise to power of the Hitler regime, Wise took the position that public opinion in the United States and elsewhere should be rallied against the Nazis. He, along with Leo Motzkin, encouraged the creation of the World Jewish Congress in order to create a broader representative body to fight Nazism. He used his influence with President Roosevelt both in this area as well as on the Zionist question.

In 1933, acting as honorary president of the American Jewish Congress, Wise led efforts for a boycott of Nazi Germany. He stated "The time for prudence and caution is past. We must speak up like men. How can we ask our Christian friends to lift their voices in protest against the wrongs suffered by Jews if we keep silent? What is happening in Germany today may happen tomorrow in any other land on earth unless it is challenged and rebuked. It is not the German Jews who are being attacked. It is the Jews".^[4] Urged by Wise to protest to the German government, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull issued a mild statement to the American ambassador to Berlin complaining that "unfortunate incidents have indeed occurred and the whole world joins in regretting them."

During the war years, Wise was elected Co-Chairperson of the American Zionist Emergency Council, a forerunner of AIPAC.

Translations

Wise translated "The Improvement of the Moral Qualities," an ethical treatise of the eleventh century by Solomon ibn Gabirol (New York, 1902) from the original Arabic, and wrote The Beth Israel Pulpit, among other works.

Death

The mausoleum of Rabbi Steven Wise in Westchester Hills Cemetery

Wise died on April 19, 1949, aged 75. He is interred in an unmarked mausoleum in Westchester Hills Cemetery located in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, which he founded in 1907 and served as Rabbi until his death, is named after him.^[5] As is Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles, CA, which was founded by Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin in 1968.

Criticism of Wise

Dr. David Kranzler has criticized Wise for his alleged failure to recognize the Holocaust prior to American entry into World War II, and the allegation that he dismissed early reports of the Final Solution as propaganda.^[6]

In his book Holocaust Victims Accuse, Moshe Shonfeld asserts that Wise prevented the shipment of food packages from American Jews to Poland due to fear that it would be interpreted by the Allies as giving aid to the enemy.^[7] This allegation is also made by historian Saul Friedlander, who writes: "In the spring of 1941 Rabbi Wise had decided to impose a complete embargo on all aid sent to Jews in occupied countries, in compliance with the U.S. governments's economic boycott of the Axis powers (whereby every food packages was seen as direct or indirect assistance to the enemy)... Strict orders were given to World Jewish Congress representatives in Europe to halt forthwith any shipment of packages to the ghettos, despite the fact that these packages did usually reach their destination, the Jewish Self-Help Association in Warsaw. 'All these operations with and through Poland must cease at once,' Wise cabled to Congress delegates in London and Geneva, 'and at once in English means AT ONCE, not in the future.'"^[8]

Authors David Wyman and Rafael Medoff, in their book A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust, make a further allegation that Wise displayed a lack of leadership that hindered the Holocaust rescue attempts of others.^[9] He is also alleged to have advised President Franklin Roosevelt not to meet with the 400 Orthodox Rabbis that marched on Washington in 1943 and to have attempted to squelch the broadcast of "We Will Never Die" an attempt to bring attention to the slaughter of Jews in Europe.

See also

• Slattery Report

References

1. ^ American Jewish Archives
2. ^ Religion: Jews v. Jews, Time Magazine, June 20, 1938.
3. ^ Howard Sachar. "Working to Extend America's Freedoms: Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement". Excerpt from A History of Jews in America, published by Vintage Books.. MyJewishLearning.com. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history_community/Modern/Overview_The_Story_19481980/America/PWPolitics/CivilRights.htm. Retrieved 2009-02-04. 
4. ^ American Jewish Historical Society
5. ^ Staff. "Synagogue Is Renamed To Honor Rabbi S. S. Wise", The New York Times, May 13, 1949. Accessed October 18, 2008.
6. ^ Review Essay, Orthodox Union
7. ^ Google Books
8. ^ Friedlander, Saul. The Years of Extermination, p. 304.
9. ^ New Press

External links

• Jewish Encyclopedia article on S.S.Wise
• Stephen S. Wise (Jewish Virtual Library)
• Biography at PBS.org
• Cleveland Jewish History note on Wise

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