Stephen Samuel Wise

Wise was born on March 17, 1874, in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son and grandson of rabbis and their wives. His grandfather, Joseph Hirsch Weiss, was rabbi of Erlau, today known as Eger, and a highly conservative haredi scholar. Wise's father, Aaron Wise, earned a PhD and ordination in Europe. Wise's maternal grandfather, Móric Fischer de Farkasházy, created the Herend Porcelain Company. When Wise's father sought to unionize the company, Moric gave the family one-way tickets to New York. In the U.S., Aaron Wise eventually became chief rabbi of the Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, moving from his own father's Orthodoxy toward Reform Judaism.

Stephen Wise attended local public schools. He received his higher education at the College of the City of New York, Columbia College (B.A. 1892, Cum laude), and Columbia University (PhD 1902). Later he pursued rabbinical studies under rabbis Richard J. H. Gottheil, Alexander Kohut, Gersoni, Joffe, and Margolis. He was ordained as rabbi by Rabbi Adolph Jellinek of Vienna in 1893.The "Wise, Stephen Samuel" entry in the [https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/judaism-biographies/stephen-samuel-wise Encyclopaedia Judaica] In 1933, Wise received an honorary L.H.D. from Bates College.

In 1893, Wise was appointed assistant rabbi of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, Manhattan; its senior rabbi was Henry S. Jacobs. Later in the same year, Wise became the senior rabbi of the same congregation.

In 1900, he was called as rabbi to Congregation Beth Israel in Portland, Oregon. Typical of the activists of the Progressive Era, he attacked "many of the social and political ills of contemporary America."{{cite book|last=MacColl|first=E. Kimbark|title=The Shaping of a City: Business and politics in Portland, Oregon 1885 to 1915|publisher=The Georgian Press Company|location=Portland, Oregon|date=November 1976|oclc=2645815}} In 1906, concerning another rabbinical appointment, Wise made a major break from the established Reform movement over the "question whether the pulpit shall be free or whether the pulpit shall not be free, and, by reason of its loss of freedom, reft of its power for good";{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9802E0DE103EE733A25754C0A9679C946797D6CF |title=Rev. Dr. Wise Surprises Emanu-El Trustees |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 7, 1906 |access-date=August 18, 2013}} in 1907 he established his Free Synagogue, starting the "free Synagogue" movement.

Wise was an early supporter of Zionism. His support for, and commitment to Political Zionism was atypical of Reform Judaism, which had been historically non-Zionist since it adopted the Pittsburgh Platform in 1885. He was a founder of the New York Federation of Zionist Societies in 1897, which led in the formation of the national Federation of American Zionists (FAZ), a forerunner of the Zionist Organization of America. At the Second Zionist Congress (Basel, 1898), Wise was a delegate and secretary for the English language. Wise served as honorary secretary of FAZ, in close cooperation with Theodor Herzl, until the latter's death in 1904.{{cite web |url=http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja/FindingAids/SWise.htm |title=American Jewish Archives |publisher=American Jewish Archives |access-date=August 18, 2013 |archive-date=November 19, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121119035628/http://americanjewisharchives.org/aja/FindingAids/SWise.htm |url-status=dead }}

In 1915, Wise was one of the founding members of the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities, which later became Near East Relief. Historian Claire Mouradian states that his activities over thirty years (from the Hamidian massacres to the creation of the Republic of Turkey) "reveal a constant concern for raising awareness in favor of the Armenians, whose fate seemed to be a premonition of what might be awaiting Jews in Europe".{{cite book |last1=Mouradian |first1=Claire |title=Mass Media and the Genocide of the Armenians: One Hundred Years of Uncertain Representation |date=2016 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |isbn=978-1-137-56402-3 |pages=206–232 |language=en |chapter=A Case of Jewish Coverage of the Armenian Genocide in the United States: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, “Champion of any Wronged People”}}

Joining U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and others, Wise laid the groundwork for a democratically elected, nationwide organization of 'ardently Zionist' Jews, 'to represent Jews as a group and not as individuals'.[https://web.archive.org/web/20071212030021/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,788721,00.html Religion: Jews v. Jews], Time Magazine, June 20, 1938. In 1917 he participated in the effort to convince President Woodrow Wilson to approve the Balfour declaration in support of Jewish settlement in Mandate Palestine.{{cite web| url = https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/stephen-s-wise-18741949| title = Stephen S. Wise (1874–1949) {{!}} Holocaust Encyclopedia}} In 1918, following national elections, this Jewish community convened the first American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia's historic Independence Hall.

In December 1925, Wise delivered a sermon about Jesus the Jew, making the case that Jews should view Jesus "as a great moral and ethical teacher, a Jew of whom they might be proud because of his teachings." This sermon caused an uproar among some Jewish institutions, culminating in an edict of condemnation against him by the Agudath Harabonim, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis. Because of the outcry, Wise resigned from his position as Chairman of the United Palestine Appeal. But he referred to the Orthodox condemnation as "un-Jewish," and in a statement to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, he protested, "What a mournful commentary upon the infinite hurt which the Jew has suffered at the hands of Christendom, that a Jewish teacher cannot even at this time speak of Jesus... without being hailed as a convert to Christianity or misunderstood by some of his fellow Jews...."{{Cite web|url=https://www.jta.org/2012/02/04/default/kosher-jesus-again|title=Kosher Jesus - Again|author=Adam Soclof|date=February 5, 2012|publisher=Jewish Telegraphic Agency}}{{Cite web|url=http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1925/12/25/104199937.html?pdf_redirect=true&site=false|title=DR. WISE RESIGNS FROM JEWISH FUND; Says He Does Not Wish Sermon on Jesus to Hurt United Palestine Appeal. HE EXPLAINS HIS POSITION. Louis Lipsky Defends Him as a Champion of Zionist Cause and Religion of Jews.|website=The New York Times|date=December 25, 1925}}

In 1938, as president of the American Jewish Congress, Wise said that adoption of the Alaska proposal in the Slattery Report would deliver "a wrong and hurtful impression ... that Jews are taking over some part of the country for settlement."{{cite web |url=http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/content/item/A_Thanksgiving_plan_to_save_Europes_Jews/3377 |title=A Thanksgiving plan to save Europe's Jews |access-date=February 24, 2009 |author=Raphael Medoff |date=November 15, 2007 |work=Jewish Standard }}

Albert Einstein found Wise's mixture of enlightened views and committed Zionism most agreeable, and they became friends when Einstein moved to the US. In a tribute to Wise on his 60th birthday, Einstein said, "Above all, what I admire in him is his bold activity toward building the self-respect of the Jewish people, combined with profound tolerance and penetrating understanding of everything human."An Einstein Encyclopedia, Alice Calaprice, Daniel Kennefick, Robert Schulmann, p.77, Princeton University Press, 2015

During the trial of the sociologist Jerome Davis, Wise stated, based on more than 30 years of acquaintance, that Davis had "never, never" been sympathetic to communism.

{{cite news

| title = Fosdick, SS Wise Testify for Davis: Minister Says Plaintiff in Libel Suit 'Couldn't Be a Communist if He Tried'

| work = New York Times

| date = May 22, 1943

}}

In 1902 Wise officiated as first vice-president of the Oregon State Conference of Charities and Correction. 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.

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."{{cite web

|url = http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history_community/Modern/Overview_The_Story_19481980/America/PWPolitics/CivilRights.htm

|title = Working to Extend America's Freedoms: Jewish Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement

|access-date = February 4, 2009

|author = Howard Sachar

|work = Excerpt from A History of Jews in America, published by Vintage Books.

|publisher = MyJewishLearning.com

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090301185659/http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history_community/Modern/Overview_The_Story_19481980/America/PWPolitics/CivilRights.htm

|archive-date = March 1, 2009

|df = mdy-all

}}

File:Doctor Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, has become a laborer in the shipbuilding yards of the Luder Marine - NARA - 533712.tif, Connecticut, during World War I]]

File:קרית ענבים - ביקורו של סטיפן וויז.-JNF044680.jpeg, 1935]]

File:World Jewish Congress War Emergency Conference Atlantic City 1944.jpg, addressing the 1944 War Emergency Conference of the World Jewish Congress her husband was president of, in Atlantic City]]

In 1922 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.[http://library.gwu.edu/ead/k0002.xml Preliminary Guide to the Stephen S. Wise Papers, 1905–1977], Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University In 1922 Wise was one of the founding trustees of the Palestine Endowment Funds, Inc., along with Julian Mack.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rn0rAQAAIAAJ&q=wise |title=66 years of benevolence: The story of PEF Israel Endowment Funds |date=1989 |first=Philip |last=Goodman |publisher=PEF Israel Endowment Funds, Inc.}}

When the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ) was originally established, Wise was appointed the position secretary. After the organization transformed into the Zionist Organization of America, Rabbi Wise fulfilled positions as both president and vice president during his lifetime.

Wise was a close friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who turned to Wise for advice on issues concerning the Jewish community in the United States. In addition, Wise had also acted a liaison to previous President Wilson.

At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, he was a delegate from New York; at the opening of the sixth session on June 28, 1924, he offered the invocation.Official Report of the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention, published by the Democratic National Committee (1924) During the 1928 campaign, Wise was a prominent supporter of Democrat Al Smith.{{cite book |last1=Chiles |first1=Robert |title=The Revolution of '28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal |date=2018 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=9781501705502 |page=120}}

In 1925 Wise became chairman of Keren Hayesod, while continuing efforts to bring the Reform movement around to a pro-Zionist stance. With the rise to power of Adolf Hitler's regime, Wise took the position that public opinion in the United States and elsewhere should be rallied against the Nazis. He used his influence with President Roosevelt both in this area as well as on the Zionist question.

In 1933 while acting as honorary president of the American Jewish Congress, Wise led efforts for a Jewish Boycott of 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".[http://beta.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=230 The Anti-Nazi Boycott of 1933] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131228012059/http://beta.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=230 |date=December 28, 2013 }}, Chapters in American Jewish History, American Jewish Historical Society 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."

Wise, along with Leo Motzkin and Nahum Goldmann, encouraged the creation in August 1936 of the World Jewish Congress in order to create a broader representative body to fight Nazism. Wise served as founding president of the World Jewish Congress president until his death in 1949. He was succeeded by his friend Nahum Goldmann.

Given his position as an influential and highly visible leader of the American Jewish community, Wise was inevitably caught up in the dilemmas facing American policy-makers and Jewish activists when awareness began to grow of the systematic efforts by the Nazi regime to exterminate European Jewry.

Wise's steady nine-year campaign to publicly expose Nazi atrocities against Jews had borne little practical fruit. Roosevelt was reluctant to spend political capital on behalf of foreign refugees, and access to visas and other paths of escape were effectively blocked by the assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini.Andrew Meier, "‘The God-Damnedest Thing’: The Antisemitic Plot to Thwart U.S. Aid to Europe’s Jews and the Man Who Exposed It," Politico, September 23, 2022

As early information of the full scale of the Nazi slaughter began to emerge from Europe, Jews in the U.S. and other countries were cast into an agonizing debate about how, and whether, to press governments to take steps to save them.

On August 8, 1942, Gerhart M Riegner, then representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, sent a cable (now known as the Riegner Telegram) to British and American diplomatic contacts, informing the Allies for the first time about the full official Nazi plans.

File:Riegner_Telegram.png

Riegner asked that Stephen Wise be made aware of the cable's contents. But U.S. State Department officials did not pass it along.Andrew Meier, "‘The God-Damnedest Thing’ Wise was not informed about the telegram until Riegner sent him another cable directly, almost three weeks later, on August 29. "Received alarming report," the cable read, "that in Fuhrers headquarters plan discussed and under consideration all Jews in countries occupied or controlled Germany number 3-1/2 to 4 million should after deportation and concentration in east should at one blow exterminated to resolve once for all Jewish question in Europe." This was precisely the plan that the Nazi regime was putting into motion.

Wise, innocent of the State Department's earlier receipt of the same news, passed this warning along to his government contacts. And, as was his general policy, refrained from speaking out about the reports of mass slaughter until they had been fully vetted by the State Department.{{Cite book|title=The Swedish Jews and the Holocaust|last=Pontus|first=Rudberg|isbn=9781138045880|location=Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon|oclc=972901368|year = 2017}}

It was almost four months before U.S. Under-secretary of State Sumner Welles confirmed to Wise that the Riegner Telegram's information was accurate. Wise then held a press conference in Washington, D.C. On November 24, 1942, and announced that the Nazis had a plan for the extermination of all European Jews, and that the number of Jews murdered had already reached 2 million.{{cite web |url=http://www.southerninstitute.info/holocaust_education/ds10.html |title=Southern Institute |publisher=Southerninstitute.info |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304190302/http://www.southerninstitute.info/holocaust_education/ds10.html|archive-date=March 4, 2016|access-date=March 23, 2018 }}

During the war years, Wise was elected co-chair of the American Zionist Emergency Council, a forerunner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Wise was an ardent opponent of the post-war efforts by Isaac Nachman Steinberg, co-founder of the Freeland League, to create a community for Jewish refugees in Suriname. In a letter to Keren Hayesod emissary Ida Silverman he wrote, "I personally believe, that Steinberg needs to be lynched or hanged and quartered, if that would make his lamented demise more certain."[אַסטור, מיכל. געשיכטע פֿון דער פֿרײַלאַנד־ליגע. ניו ־יאָרק: פֿרײַלאַנד־ליגע, ז' 718, 1967.]

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. He was invited to deliver the annual Charles P. Steinmetz Memorial Lecture at Union College in 1944.[https://users.math.yale.edu/~bbm3/web_docs/steinmetz.doc DR. CHARLES PROTEUS STEINMETZ MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES]

Wise's liberal Judaism conflicted with the view of Orthodox and Conservative Jews of the time, a dispute that continues through the present. They felt he worked too closely with his government and was too cautious in accepting and publicizing the early reports of the Holocaust.

Holocaust scholar Dr. David Kranzler, author of Orthodoxy's Finest Hour, wrote in 2002 that Wise had a "penchant for protecting his close friend and confidant US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) regardless of the cost to the Jews of Europe." Kranzler accused Wise of failing to recognize the existential threat to European Jewry prior to American entry into World War II, dismissing early reports of the Final Solution as propaganda, and obstructing rescue efforts.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.ou.org/publications/ja/5763/5763fall/ORTHODOX.PDF |title=Orthodoxy's Finest Hour: Rescue Efforts During the Holocaust |magazine=Jewish Action |publisher=Orthodox Union |access-date=August 18, 2013 |date=Fall 2002 |first=David |last=Kranzler |author-link=David Kranzler |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090311214126/http://www.ou.org/publications/ja/5763/5763fall/ORTHODOX.PDF |archive-date=March 11, 2009}}

Kranzler also suggested that Wise did not voluntarily publicize the Holocaust after the Riegner cable, but rather that he was pressured into going public by the American Orthodox Jewish community, who confronted him after receiving what is known as the Sternbuch Report on September 2, 1942. Kranzler wrote that Wise declined to publicize these reports until after the U.S. State Department had formally confirmed their accuracy, almost three months later. Kranzler complained that "Every time a unified committee for rescue was organized which was not entirely under Wise’s control, he would force the committee to dissolve."Kranzler, Orthodoxy's Finest Hour

1940s screenwriter and Jewish activist Ben Hecht had been recruited to the inner circle of the Zionist movement known as the Bergson Group. This was a committee led by Zionist Hillel Kook, who in his interactions with Americans favored the less alien-sounding alias Peter Bergson. Bergson and his team were members of the Irgun, a radical faction of Zionists who favored direct action over slow diplomatic negotiation. Bergson's original mission in the U.S. was to seek American help in creating an armed Jewish force to fight in the war. In 1942, after Bergson read the news stories of Stephen Wise's November 24 press conference, he pivoted into a full-bore fight to combat the slaughter of European Jews.PBS.org, American Experience: "The Bergson Boys," retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/holocaust-bergson/

The Bergson Group's stance on European Jewry was opposed to Wise's: they believed their actions would save more Jews from the Nazi Holocaust. Most American Jewish institutions sided with Wise; Bergson and Wise jockeyed for influence over U.S. policy.

As part of his collaboration with Bergson, Hecht created a giant pageant publicizing the Holocaust called We Will Never Die which debuted at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1943.Hecht, Ben, Child of the Century, ©1954 David Fine Inc., New York, pp. 560-566 Hecht recruited show-business friends like Kurt Weill and Moss Hart to write and stage his pageant, and to raise public awareness of the Nazis' mass murder of Jews as stridently as possible. As plans for the show accelerated, a disgruntled Hecht wrote that he was abruptly contacted by Wise:

{{poemquote|Rabbi Stephen Wise, head of the Jews of New York, head of the Zionists and, as I knew from reading the papers, head of almost everything noble in American Jewry, telephoned me at the Algonquin Hotel where I had pitched my Hebrew tent.

Rabbi Wise said he would like to see me immediately in his rectory. His voice, which was sonorous and impressive, irritated me. I have never known a man with a sonorous and impressive voice who wasn't either a con man or a bad actor. I explained I was very busy and unable to step out of my hotel.

"Then I shall tell you now, over the telephone, what I had hoped to tell you in my study," said Rabbi Wise. "I have read your pageant script and I disapprove of it. I must ask you to cancel this pageant and discontinue all your further activities in behalf of the Jews. If you wish hereafter to work for the Jewish Cause, you will please consult me and let me advise you."

At this point I hung up.Hecht, Child of the Century, page 564}}

Wise was successful in preventing some performances, but not the national broadcast, of We Will Never Die.{{cite news|url=https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/history-ideas/2019/07/the-hollywood-legend-who-mobilized-the-english-language-on-behalf-of-the-jews-of-europe-and-israel/|title=The Hollywood Legend Who Mobilized the English Language on Behalf of the Jews of Europe and Israel|work=Mosaic Magazine|date=3 July 2019|author=Richman, Rick}}

In the 2002 book A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust, David Wyman and Rafael Medoff argued that Wise hindered the Holocaust rescue attempts of the Bergson Group and others.{{cite book |last1=Wyman |first1=David S. |last2=Medoff |first2=Rafael |title=A race against death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust |date=2002 |publisher=New Press |location=New York |isbn=9781565847613}}

Well after the war Hillel Kook was interviewed in Manhattan by David Kranzler and said that he was considered by Wise to be a betrayer of Zionism since he was willing to save Jews by finding safety for them anywhere in the world, not only in Palestine. That was seen as competition with Zionism. Wise's position was that the Zionist cause is foremost. He stated in the Sol Blum led fall 1943 Congressional hearing investigating Hillel Kook that Jews should be saved (only) by opening the gates to Palestine, which doomed multitudes to a terrible fate, including being murdered. This ideology was shared by the then dominant Zionist leadership.

Historian Saul Friedländer said that Wise prevented the shipment of food packages from American Jews to German-occupied Poland for fear that the Allies would interpret the aid as being sent to the enemy. Unlike Wise, Friedländer believed that the Nazis were distributing aid packages to the concentration camps and ghetto Jews. In the spring of 1941, Rabbi Wise contacted the World Jewish Congress representatives in Europe to halt forthwith any shipment of packages to the ghettos. "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." {{cite book |last=Friedländer |first=Saul |author-link=Saul Friedländer |title=The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 |page=304|title-link=The Years of Extermination |date=2007 |location=New York, NY |isbn=9780060930486}}

Nachum Goldman, a high level executive of the World Jewish Congress and close to Wise, went to the US State Department and according to the protocol, a copy of which is in A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust, pleaded for deporting Kook or drafting him into the army for the war, which may well have led to his demise.

In spite of the above, there is a street named for Wise in Jerusalem at a very prestigious location - right by the Israel Museum, the National Library and very near the Knesset. There is also a plaque installed by the Jerusalem municipality and the World Jewish Congress at the house where Goldman sometimes resided (Ahad Ha Am street) and he was given the highest Zionist and Jewish leadership position after the war at the World Jewish Congress, World Zionist Organization, Jewish Agency.

File:Rabbi Wise 800.jpg]]

Wise married Louise Waterman. The couple had two children: writer James Wise (1901–1983);{{cite news|title=James W. Wise, 81; Author and Lecturer Warned of the Nazis |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/30/obituaries/james-w-wise-81-author-and-lecturer-warned-of-the-nazis.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=November 30, 1983 |page=B6 |access-date=November 29, 2024}} and Judge Justine Wise Polier (1903–1987).{{cite encyclopedia|last=Rooks-Rapport|first=Joe |author-link=Joe Rooks-Rapport|title=Louise Waterman Wise (1874–1947)|encyclopedia=Jewish Virtual Library|url=https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/wise-louise-waterman|access-date=December 29, 2017}}

Wise died on April 19, 1949, in New York City, 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,{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1949/05/13/archives/synagogue-is-renamed-to-honor-rabbi-s-s-wise.html |title=Synagogue Is Renamed To Honor Rabbi S. S. Wise |newspaper=The New York Times |date=May 13, 1949 |access-date=October 18, 2008}} as is Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles, which was founded by Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin in 1964. A street is named after him in Jerusalem next to the Israel Museum, and others in Haifa, Rishon LeZion and Petah Tikvah.

• American Jewish Congress
• Free Synagogue
• Jerome Davis (sociologist)
• Pittsburgh Platform
• Political Zionism
• Slattery Report

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{cite book|author=Rafael Medoff|title=The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust|url=|date=1 September 2019|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=978-0-8276-1470-3}}

{{Wikiquote}}

{{Commons category|Stephen Wise}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20121024062238/http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/biography/51 worldjewishcongress.org]
• [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=216&letter=W Jewish Encyclopedia article on S.S.Wise]
• [https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/wise.html Stephen S. Wise (Jewish Virtual Library)]
• [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX101.html Biography at PBS.org]
• [http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/silver/endnotes.html#wise Cleveland Jewish History note on Wise]
• [http://jewishhistorylectures.org/2013/05/03/stephen-samuel-wise-and-the-jews-of-america/ Stephen Samuel Wise and the Jews of America] by Dr. Henry Abramson
• [http://library.gwu.edu/ead/k0002.xml Preliminary Guide to the Stephen S. Wise Papers, 1905–1977, Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University]
• {{Gutenberg author | id=35670| name=Stephen Samuel Wise}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Stephen Samuel Wise}}
• [http://digifindingaids.cjh.org/?pID=365016 Stephen Wise Papers] at the American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY
• [https://www.wnyc.org/story/rabbi-calls-womens-suffrage-1915 Stephen Wise Speaks Out for Women's Suffrage in 1915 Recording]

{{World Jewish Congress}}

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