Stephen Samuel Wise

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

This article is missing information about Wise's significant role in American Zionism and the differing opinions of other contemporary notables.. This concern has been noted on the talk page where it may be discussed whether or not to include such information. (November 2009)

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

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Career and activism

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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 support for, and commitment to Political Zionism was very atypical of Reform Judaism, which was decidedly non-Zionist during this period.

Wise, joining U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and others laid the groundwork for a democratically elected nationwide organization of 'ardently Zionist' Jews, 'to represent Jews as a group and not as individuals'.^[2] In 1918, following national elections, this Jewish community convened the first American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia's historic Independence Hall.

[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 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.

[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 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.

[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.^[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.

[edit] See also

• Slattery Report

[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