This Sunday, March 17, marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the namesake of our congregation and a pillar of the 20th Century American Jewish Community who helped shape Jewish life as we know it today. Throughout this week’s daily kavannot, we will explore many of his lasting contributions to our history and tradition.
From a historical standpoint, the convergence of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s simultaneous, strong devotions to the American Jewish community, to labor and civil rights, to freedom of the pulpit, and to Zionism seems unlikely. Few, if any, of Wise’s early 20th century contemporaries held all these passions at once, just as, few, if any, successfully championed any of them with the success that Wise championed them all.
This was, in part, due to Stephen Wise’s refusal to allow the world to dictate his values to him. Despite the countless colleagues who urged him to accept the prevailing philosophy of his time, Wise never allowed the world to convince him that Zionism precluded American patriotism, or that Jewish particularism precluded humanism. For him, they were always the same, all expressions of human progress toward advancing dignity for all peoples – Jews included.
Oddly, the 21st Century finds the American Jewish community in similar straits, as prevailing philosophy suggests that Zionism precludes universalism and that Jewish particularism precludes patriotism. But as Rabbi Stephen Wise demonstrated more than a century ago, we need not accept the definitions foisted upon us by others. We can choose to define our own path.
–Rabbi Josh Knobel