This article was written by Dr. Gary Zola and appeared in the October 2001 issue of @wise.

Stephen Samuel Wise (1874-1949) was arguably the most significant and prominent rabbinic leader in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. The remarkable roster of accomplishments which he amassed during a career that spanned more than a half century bespeaks the extraordinary impact Wise had on American Jewry, on American society in general and, to be sure, on the international scene as well. Wise’s expansive horizon of Jewish concern, together with his wide-ranging professional endeavors, made the sphere of his influence much larger than that of any of his rabbinic peers.  And with the help of his powerful oratory, he pushed his way into the consciousness of American society.

Professionally speaking, Wise was something of a Jewish “jack-of-all trades.” The web of communal involvement which he spun over the course of his career was labyrinthine to say the least.  He was a social activist – a loyal partisan to the agenda of the progressive era in which his world view was molded. Wise played a leading role in a panoply of social causes: he was a prominent member of the Child Labor Committee, the Old Age Pension League, the Religion and Labor Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1909, he was one of the signatories on a letter calling for the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

He was also a political activist.  Wise campaigned ardently and openly for presidential candidates Woodrow Wilson, Alfred E. Smith, and (from 1936) Franklin D. Roosevelt. Intensely involved in the political affairs of New York, Wise quickly became a commanding presence with state and local officials. He loathed the Tammany Hall, and as a member of the New York City Affairs Committee, Wise helped to force the resignation of James J. Walker in 1932. Subsequently, he became Fiorello H. LaGuardia’s ardent proponent and the “Little Flower” relied heavily on Wise for advice and guidance on a multitude of topics.

Wise was a lifelong Zionist. He helped to establish the New York Federation of Zionist Societies in 1897. In 1898, he participated in the Second Zionist Congress in Basle and, with Theodor Herzl’s blessing, he returned to the United States as the “American secretary” to the world Zionist movement. In 1917, he acted as an important intermediary to President Woodrow Wilson and the president’s trusted advisor, Colonel Edward House, when, together with Louis D. Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, he contributed to the formulation and promulgation of the text of the Balfour Declaration. Subsequently, he attended the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I where he represented the interests of the Zionist movement vis a vis the disposition of Palestine.  Wise served as the vice president of the Zionist Organization of America from 1918 to 1920 and president from 1936 to 1938.

In addition to all that had been noted, Wise was an impressive and energetic organization builder. He played a leading role in the establishment of the American Jewish Congress – both during its provisional stage in 1916-17 and, subsequently, after it was permanently established in the late 1920s. He launched, in 1922, a new rabbinical seminary – the Jewish Institute of Religion – which he led as president until it merged with the Hebrew Union College at the time of its founder’s death.  In this capacity, Wise touched the lives of scores of rabbinic disciples and, through them, impacted upon the character the American synagogue in a way that, to date, have not been fully explored. One needs only to mention Wise’s name to one of the dwindling number of his former students, now in their seventies and eighties, to grasp a sense of how impressively he remains, to this day, a beau ideal. 

Yet the congregational rabbinate was unquestionably the keystone to Wise’s career. It has been repeatedly noted that the rabbinate was at the very core of this man’s extraordinarily expansive career. As his foremost biographer, Professor Melvin I. Urofsky noted:

“For all his work in secular reform in the American and World Jewish congresses, in founding the Jewish Institute of Religion, in lecturing and writing and being a public personality for more than four decades, Wise saw himself first and always as a rabbi …”

It is fitting, then that two great American synagogues have paid tribute to this remarkable man by using his name as a living memorial. The first is a synagogue that Wise himself founded in New York City: the Free Synagogue (known today as the Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue). The other is one of the most dynamic and influential congregations in Los Angeles, Stephen S. Wise Temple.