Stephen Samuel Wise
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- For the American legal scholar, please see Steven M. Wise.
Stephen Samuel Wise (17 March 1874 - April 19, 1949) was a Austro-Hungarian-born U.S. Reform rabbi and Zionist leader.
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[edit] Education and early career
Stephen Samuel Wise was born in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Wise was the son and grandson of rabbis. His grandfather (named Weiss) was Chief Rabbi of a small town near Budapest. His father had earned a Ph.D. and ordination in Europe.
Wise's maternal grandfather, Mor Fischer, created the Herend Porcelain Company. When Wise's father, Aaron Wise sought to unionize the company, Mor gave the family one-way tickets to New York.
Wise came to New York as an infant with his family. His father became rabbi of Rodeph Sholom, an 'uptown' Manhattan Conservative congregation of wealthy German Jews.
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 was called to the rabbinate of the Congregation Beth Israel, Portland, Oregon. In 1933, Wise received an L.H.D. from Bates College.
[edit] Zionist activism
Library of Congress portrait
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 rally for equal rights for all Americans regardless of race, religion or national ancestry.[2]
[edit] 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 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"[3]. 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.
[edit] 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.[4]
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.[5]
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.[6]
[edit] 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.
[edit] Death
Wise died on April 19, 1949, aged 75. He is interred in an unmarked mausoleum in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. the Free Synagogue is named after him.
[edit] References
[edit] 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
