This week we’ve been focusing our daily kavannot on the life and legacy of our namesake, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, whose birthday we celebrate this Sunday (he was born on March 17, 1874 and died April 19, 1949).
His commitment to the dream of establishing a Jewish national home in the Land of Israel inspires us still. Our temple and schools are named in his honor because our founder, Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin of blessed memory, was deeply moved by Wise’s rabbinate, his leadership, and his undying commitment to Zionism.
Though he died twenty years before I was even born, I have an interesting personal connection to him. First through Rabbi Zeldin who as a thirteen year old boy encountered Rabbi Wise addressing an overflowing crowd at Madison Square Garden in 1933, speaking out against the rise of facism in Europe. I am also connected to him through my maternal great-grandparents who, as I shared with you in my Yom Kippur sermon, attended a fundraiser in 1936 organized by Rabbi Wise for what was then called the “United Palestine Appeal” (later becoming the UJA) to gather resources in order to make the Zionist dream of a Jewish state possible.
Below is something that Rabbi Wise wrote in his autobiography about his love for Israel and his belief that – someday, somehow – the hope of thousands of years would be realized.
“My unwavering faith that the Jewish State would be established was the legacy I had received forty years earlier from Herzl himself.
I have often told of my last conversation with him in April 1904 at the meeting of the Zionist Actions Committee, a few months before his death at the age of 44 on July 3. Herzl placed his arm around me and said, ‘I shall not live to see the Jewish State. But you, Wise, are a young man. You will live to see the Jewish State.’
I thank God that it was given to me to live till that glorious day of May 14, 1948, when out of the centuries of Jewish suffering and persecution, of prayer and hope and labor, the prophecy of Theodor Herzl was at last fulfilled.”
This is a beautiful example of visionary leadership. Herzl knew that he wouldn’t live to see a Jewish State but because of his hard work – work that likely led to his untimely death due, in part, to exhaustion – we have the gift of Israel.
I love thinking about the fact that I am connected personally to Theodor Herzl because Wise knew Herzl and Zeldin knew Wise and I knew Zeldin.
As we celebrate our founders this weekend, I give thanks for their leadership and example.
And though we face tremendous challenges at this moment, like Herzl, like Rabbi Wise, and like Rabbi Zeldin, our faith in the continued vibrance of the Jewish State is unwavering.
Am Yisrael Chai,
Rabbi Yoshi
