Stephen Samuel Wise
Stephen Samuel Wise ( born March 17, 1874 in Budapest, † April 19, 1949 in New York City ) was an American rabbi and Zionist leader. He founded the World Jewish Congress and was its first president from 1936 to 1949.
Life
Stephen Wise was born in Budapest ( Austria - Hungary) and arrived at the age of 17 months in the United States. Like his father, Aaron Wise he also wanted to be a rabbi as a child. At the age of 18, he studied at Columbia University and was ordained in 1893 by Adolf Jellinek of Vienna. He first took over the post of deputy rabbi in a community in New York and was able to take its place after the death of the incumbent. In 1900, shortly before his marriage to Louise Waterman, he was rabbi in Portland ( Oregon) and served there during the next six years. In 1902 he received his doctorate at Columbia University, by translating the improvement of the moral qualities of Solomon ibn Gabirol and published. For the Jewish Publication Society, he also translated the Book of Judges in 1908 into English.
After his encounter with Theodor Herzl at the second Zionist Congress in Basel in 1898 Wise was a committed representative of Zionism. From 1916 to 1919 he was in contact with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Edward M. House and developed in 1917 with Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, the text of the Balfour Declaration. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he campaigned for the Zionist concerns and also represented the cause of the Armenian people. In Jewish organizations in the U.S., he was nationally as directors operates for the Zionist Organization of America 1918-1920 he was Vice President and President 1936-1938; for the American Jewish Congress, 1921-25, he was Vice President and until his death president or honorary president. In addition, in 1936 he founded the World Jewish Congress and led him to his death.
In 1922 he founded the Jewish Institute of Religion, which merged in 1950 with the Hebrew Union College.
Wise was a supporter of the social-liberal direction and participated in 1909 in the founding of the National Association for the promotion of colored people ( National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ), as well as 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union. He fought for the right to strike of workers and supported in 1919 a strike against U.S. Steel Corporation and in 1926 a strike of the textile union in Passaic. In 1927, he asked in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti for mercy and justice. 1912 and 1916 he supported the presidential campaign of Woodrow Wilson and later the candidacies of Al Smith ( 1928 presidential election ), Norman Thomas, and - from 1936 - Franklin D. Roosevelt.
As a rabbi he excited the first time in 1906 nationwide stir when he refused after some sample sermons at Temple Emanu -El in New York, to accept an offer for a full rabbi, because his desire for a "free pulpit ", ie freedom of speech without considering the control activity of the municipal council, was not considered by this. Wise's sermons published 1908-1932 in ten volumes under the title Free Synagogue Pulpit: Sermons and Addresses.
His wife Louise Waterman Wise († 1947), worked as a translator and in community work, was influenced in her youth by Felix Adler. In the thirties, she organized for thousands of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany whose provisional admission to institutions of the American Jewish Congress.
After Stephen Wise Kfar Shmuel is named, a moshav was established in 1950 in the Shephelah.