Stephen Samuel Wise
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Categories: 1874 births | 1949 deaths | American activists | Columbia University alumni | Jewish American politicians | Jewish American writers | Naturalized citizens of the United States | People from Budapest | People from New York City | Reform rabbis | Zionists | Burials at Westchester Hills Cemetery | American Jewish Congress
Stephen Samuel Wise (17 March, 1874 - April 19 1949) was a Hungarian-born U.S. Reform rabbi and Zionist leader.
Education and early careerHe was born in Budapest. He 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. His 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. Stephen Samuel 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. He studied at the College of the City of New York (1887-91), 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, Rabbi Wise received an L.H.D. from Bates College. Zionist activismRabbi Wise was the first (honorary) secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. At the Second Zionist Congress (Basel, 1898), he was a delegate and secretary for the English language. He was also a member of the International Zionist Executive Committee in 1899. 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. Rabbi 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.[1] Public and charitable officesIn 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. He 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. He 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, Rabbi 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. During the war years, Wise was elected Co-Chairperson of the American Zionist Emergency Council. DeathImage:Rabbi Wise 800.jpg
The mausoleum of Rabbi Steven Wise in Westchester Hills Cemetery
Rabbi Steven Samuel 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. References
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