Purely Commentary
Stephen S. Wise's Dynamic Leadership, Sense
of Humor, Battle for a Free Synagogue . .. His
Distinguished Family's Roles in U. S. Jewry
By Philip
Slomovitz
The Genius and the Prophetic Vision of Stephen S. Wise : Recollections on 100th Anniversary of Noted Leader's Birth
Stephen S. Wise used only green ink in his fountain
pen. He was born on St. Patrick's Day and he had the
sense of propinquity that gave him a special characteristic
akin to a citizenry with which he came in close contact
in matters of political and social welfare interests. In all
other matters he was a thorough individualist. He was
thoroughly American and thoroughly Jewish. He was born
in Budapest 100 years ago, but actually he was as com-
pletely American as one can imagine, having been
brought to this country by parents when he was a year old.
The St. Patrick's Day aspect in Wise's file is inter-
esting. His acknowledgement of a greeting by this com-
mentator on his 70th birthday was dated in his green-
inked, warm acknowledgement as "St. Patrick's Day
1944."
His life was a continuous battle for justice — righte-
ousness in the sense of the prophetic: it was an ideal that
had no bounds and no prejudices: it was for all men.
He held more than one pulpit, until he decided to form
his own Free Synagogue in New York. Aside from a new
dedication that spelled freedom for rabbi and layman,
permitting each the right to differ while propagating per-
sonal views, It was also a revolt against Establishment.
The rebels against established order today are amateurs
compared with the courage of the fighter for freedom in
the pulpit some half a century ago. Rabbi Wise defied
many conventions. He challenged fraudulent politicians.
He championed social justice. He was a pioneer in every
area of good will among the faiths and fairness among
fellow men.
Therefore, his leadership in the anti-Nazi movement
was effective. Whatever may be said about failure to act
in time of crisis: during the Hitler era Stephen. Wise
spoke out often, firmly, demanding action and justice.
Through the World Jewish Congress — he was the
inspirer of the international effort — he labored for the
rescue of those for whom there could be succor. For him
the road to a Jewish Palestine was a major means of
rescuing escapees from Nazism and survivors from the
Holocaust.
Stephen Wise- was a Herzlian Zionist. Theodor Herzl
assigned him to the secretaryship of the World Zionist
Organization's American outpost. It was the beginning of
a long Zionist career for Wise — as president of the
Zionist Organization of America, chairman of the Emerg-
ency Committee for Zionist Affairs, national chairman of
the United Palestine Appeal and a spokesman for Ameri-
can Jewry, primarily in support of the.Zionist ideal.
As president of the American and World Zionist Con-
gresses, he was a leader of world Jewry in advancing the
Zionist cause'unto the triumph of Israel's rebirth. He was
privileged to live to be a witness to fulfillment of prophecy.
His death occurred on April 19, 1949, nearly a year after
Zion's redemption.
The distinguished Christian scholar, author, lecturer,
philo-Semite and Zionist, Carl Hermann Voss, devoted two
books to Dr. Wise. One dealt with Wise and his close
friend and associate, Rev. Dr. John Haynes Holmes. The
other was a volume of and about the letters of Stephen
S. Wise, a volume issued by the Jewish Publication Society
of America.
•
The last picture taken of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise
shows him being welcomed to Brandeis University by Dr.
Abram L. Sachar, the president of the university. The
picture was taken on the weekend prior to Dr. Wise's
hospitalization for the illness that proved fatal. Dr. Wise
had traveled to Boston to make his last two public appear-
ances. In both addresses, one before the congregation of
Temple Israel of Boston and the other before the Ford
Hall Forum, the nation's oldest open forum, Rabbi Wise
reminisced on his lifelong struggle in behalf of peace and
urged his audiences to carry on the crusade.
2—Friday, March 15, 1974
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
presence of one of the vital forces of a great community.
"The theme it seems to me best worthwhile to speak
about for a few minutes tonight is simply this: We are
in the presence of a great body of changing opinion in this
country, ladies and gentlemen, and with the change of
opinion will come the change of policy; perhaps with the
change of institutions, will come a general readjustment
of our economic and political relationships to one another.
Many men have looked upon the prospect with the tremor
of fear. There is no reason to be afraid unless you create
the conditions of revolution, and the conditions of revolu-
tion are moral; they are of the atmosphere of thou -
they are of the essence of feeling. If you breed hat
you will have revolution; if you breed sympathy, you will
have a reform. The thing that it behooves a body of
people like this to do is to prepare their minds in calmness
for the changes that are to come, and to desire them, and
then' they will be peaceful and beneficent.
"What I would urge upon you, therefore, is to look to
your thoughts. They are going to constitute the atmosphere
and condition of change.
A nation can gain distinction only by spiritual means;
only by the uses to which it puts its power."
Stephen S. Wise — 1874-1949
Many of the world's most distinguished Jews are
represented in the latter volume; including Israel Zangwill,
Eva the Marchioness of Reading, Albert Einstein, Claude
G. Montefiore and many others.
Fully to understand and to appreciate Stephen S. Wise
it is necessary to know his philosophy as a Jew and as
an American. His liberalism is fully evaluated in Dr. Voss'
work on Wise and Holmes.
Wise called the house of worship he formed the "Free
Synagogue," which became a famous American institution.
He defined this freedom by explaining that "the chief
office of the minister is not to represent the views of the
congregation but to proclaim the truth as he sees it. To
him the rabbi was "not' the message-bearer of the congre-
gation, but the bearer of a message to the congregation."
He said: "A free pulpit, worthily filled, must command
respect and influence; a pulpit that is not free, 'however
filled, is sure to be without potency and honor . . . "
It is interesting to note that on the 25th anniversary
of Dr. Wise's ministry in the Free Synagogue his Christian
friend Dr. John Haynes Holmes dedicated to him this
hymn he had written:
The flames of Sinai clothe no more
The presence of the Lord;
The desert winds no echoes bear
of Moses' thund'rous word;
Yet still in wildernesses far
Moves Israel's chosen band,
Resolv'd throicoh want and waste and woe
To find the Promised Land.
Dust unto dust, Hosea's bones
Lie deep in Zion's sod;
The ashes of the centuries hid
The stones Isaiah trod;
Yet still on Israel's altars burn
The fires of prophecy,
And lips with living coals are touched
The doom of sin to cry.
0 God of Israel, not in vain
Thy sons proclaimed Thy law;
The witness born on Judah's hills
Hold now a world in awe;
And lo, in this beloved land,
In him, thy servant true,
In these Thy people, strong and free,
Thy spirit lives anew.
Dr. Wise established a close friendship with Woodrow
Wilson when he was governor of New Jersey. In 1911,
the man who was to be elected President of the United
States the following year said in a sermon at the Free
agogue in Carnegie Hall:
. . I have thought it a real privilege to come here
this evening, ladies and gentlemen, because I have known
something of the work of the Free Synagogue—all America
has known something of it, for a voice like Dr. Wise's
cannot be confined to a single community. It rings through
a continent. I have always looked upon him as a man who
illustrated the statesmanship of morals. Statesmanship is
not wholly a matter of measures; it is a matter of
principle and a matter of impulse.
"So that when I see a congregation like this organized
to translate sympathy into action, I know that I am in the
A Stephen Wise •recollection is incomplete without
reference to the distinguished members of his family.
His wife, Louise Waterman Wise, who played a great
role in American Jewish Congress affairs, was a noted
artist and a translator of literary classics from the French.
Her translation of Edmond Fleg's "I Am a Jew" was
especially noteworthy.
Their son, James Waterman Wise, who now makes
his home in Paris, France, was a noted lecturer and was
the author of several important books.
Their daughter, Judge Justine Wise Polier, distin-
guished herself as a jurist and as a leader in movements
to protect indigent children and to guarantee the legal
rights of less fortunate in the community she served. She
was among the most distinguished leaders in the American
Jewish Congress Women's Division as well as in the
World Jewish Congress.
In-honoring the memory of Stephen Samuel Wise, it is
imperative to pay high respects to Louise Waterman Wise.
She has been honored with structures that serve as social
service centers in New York and in Jerusalem. She will
be remembered for the many orphans for whom she
secured adoptions in affluent homes. She was the founder
of the American Jewish Congress Women's Division. She
must be remembered for the courage she shared with her
husband. Offered honorary membership in the Excellent
Order of the British Empire during the crucial years of
British betrayals of trust to the Jews in Palestine, she
wrote to the British ambassador to the United States of
her "deep unhappiness over the conduct of the British
Mandatory Government with respect to the Jewish people
in Palestine." She rejected the proffered honor.
It would be foolhardy to overlook the faults. No one,
no matter how great, is without some faults or misjudg-
ments. After a rift with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dr. Wise
renewed his close friendship with the President and be-
came one of his strongest defenders. Just before the
meeting of the "Big Three," after which FDR had said
that he had learned more about Zionism in three minutes
from Ibn Saud than he had known until then, Wise met
with Roosevelt for a 15-minute conference at the White
House. Wise emerged from it, as was reported on Jan. 26,
1945, stating that President Roosevelt "remains an under-
standing and sympathetic friend of Zionism." Dr. Wise
added: "I have had a very encouraging talk with the
President."
But subsequent events proved that Dr. Wise may have
been tragically misled.
This is the time to put on the record an important
meeting this writer had, together with the late Dr. Hayim
Greenberg and Herman Shulman, with the late Sena+-' ,
Arthur H. Vandenberg, the Friday before President Rc
velt's death. As the organizer of that meeting — for
years until then I was the Zionist contact man with
Vandenberg — I had set it up for 10 a.m. that Frida y .
TraVeling was difficult and uncertain in those war years
and the train from Detroit to Washington was to be four
hours late. From a Pennsylvania station stop I managed
to send wires resetting the meeting for 4 that afternoon.
It was good fortune to be able to reach all—Vandenberg,
Greenberg and Shulman.
The moment we stepped into Vandenberg's office,
after a cordial greeting, he picked up the then current
copy of the New Palestine—as the official organ of the
Zionist Organization of America was then known. He
pointed to the streamer headline quoting Dr. Wise that
President Roosevelt reaffirmed his interest in and friend-
ship for Zionism.
Throwing the paper into the wastebasket beneath his
desk, Vandenberg said:
"The trouble with you people is that every time the
Great White Father waves his wand you jump right
through the hoop."
Then he told of his relationship with the President.
(Continued on Page 56)