Incidents in Life of Stephen S. Wise Told in Jewish Archives by Voss
Surely no American Jew was ever
more devoted to his heritage than
the late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, but
perhaps none ever had closer rela-
tions with the non-Jewish world as
well. Rabk*.Wise would no doubt
have been pleased to know that a
warm-hearted memorial tribute
would be paid him on his 20th
Yarzeit by his associate, the Con-
gregational minister and notable
Christian Zionist Carl Hermann
Voss. Dr. Voss' memorial essay,
"The Lion and the Lamb: An Eval-
uation of the Life and Work of
Stephen S. Wise," appears in the
April issue of American Jewish
Archives, Concurrently, the Jewish
Publication Society of America is
issuing Dr. Voss' new book, "Ste-
phen S. Wise: Servant of the People
—Selected Letters." In 1964, Voss
published another book, "Rabbi
and Minister: The Friendship of
Stephen S. Wise and John Haynes
Holmes."
"Wise's genius for establishing
The April issue of American Jew-
ish Archives also includes a detail-
ed study of "Rabbis and Negro
Rights in the South, 1954-1967," by
Rabbi P. Allen Krause; a West
Virginia memoir by Nathan Plat-
nick; and an illuminating essay on
"Power in a Midwestern Jewish
Community," by Rabbi Kenneth D.
Roseman. The periodical, now be-
ginning its 21st year of publication,
is edited by Prof. Jacob R. Marcus
and Stanley F. Chyet, of the He-
brew Union College-Jewish Insti-
published on the Cincinnati campus tute of Religion faculty.
of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, the liberal THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, April 4, 1969-35
rabbinical seminary which remem-
bers Stephen Wise as one of its
founders. Wise established the Jew-
Music the Stein-Way
ish Institute of Religion at New
York in 1922 and guided it until
DICK STEIN
1948 when, as Voss points out, "he
stepped aside for Nelson Glueck as
& ORCHESTRA
a preliminary to the Institute's
merger with the Hebrew Union
College."
sonally" that he doubted his abil- ' the wilderness . . . especially so
ity "to judge him impartially," from 1933 to 1945 when few heeded
but found the then young rabbi his warnings and prescience of dis-
"distinctly a stirring man, orig- aster for world Jewry." For years,
inal and forcible, with great "Wise's Zionism, too, made him "a
schemes in his mind." The non- voice in the wilderness," but he
Jewish Davidson urged Wise to lived to see the state of Israel
"diffuse a twentieth-century Juda- established. A few weeks before
ism, fitted to meet the needs of his death on April 19, 1949, he said:
the present day." Wise never for- "I have lived to see the Jewish
got Davidson's advice and went state. I am too small for the great-
on, says Voss, to become "the ness of the mercy which God has
source of a progressive, socially shown us."
American Jewish Archives is
minded faith."
personal relationships," writes
Voss in American Jewish Ar-
chives, "won him a host of
friends in all walks of life and
throughout the whole world."
Jews, too—distinguished leaders
Among them was the Scottish
theologian Thomas Davidson , like Rabbi Solomon Goldman and
who told Felix Adler be was Prof. Horace M. Kallen—responded
"so fond of . . . Wise per- to Wise. Rabbi Goldman thought
him "the most vital, the most dy-
namic, most challenging person in
American Jewry." Prof. Kallen
spoke of him as "peer and com-
panion of the great ones of his
times," but "not less the equal
friendly companion of the little peo-
ple who looked to him for light and
leading."
Wise's courage and forthrightness
won him enemies as well as friends,
but Dr. Voss, who knew him and
worked with him to advance Zion-
ism, dwells on the "ardent and
genuine religious faith" which sus-
tained him. Without that faith,
writes Voss, Wise "could never
have borne the abuse heaped upon
him. . . . He was always a voice in
Many of the delusions of the
world, or to speak more boldly,
all the delusions in the world, are
begotten of our being taught to be
afraid of professing our ignorance,
and thinking ourselves bound to
accept everything we cannot re-
fute.—Montaigne.
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