Stephen Wise Temple was started in 1964 by Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin and 35 families. Our beginning was a humble one – as we may not have started with a home, but we had a full heart and Rabbi Zeldin’s vision about the future of the Temple and its Schools. Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin knew that the Reform Jewish community in Los Angeles needed a place where children could learn all about our rich Jewish heritage, have a deep connection to Israel and the language of our people, and become the leaders of the next generation. So, as we made our way up the hill from a small office in Beverly Hills to St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, then from classrooms at Leo Baeck to our permanent home atop this hill, we created a house of worship and an education model known the world over for its innovations and excellence – all thanks to Rabbi Zeldin and the original families who supported and believed in his dream.

When it came time to name our synagogue, Rabbi Zeldin did not have to look far, as he had a long history with Rabbi Stephen Wise. Rabbi Zeldin first met Rabbi Wise in 1933, when Rabbi Wise and a Protestant minister, Rev. John Joy Holmes led a protest walk against Nazism. Later, Rabbi Zeldin was a part of a huge protest rally in Brooklyn that drew over 2,000 people and the guest speaker was Rabbi Stephen Wise. Rabbi Zeldin distinctly remembers his booming voice and dynamic presence that ignited the entire rally. As the years grew on, Rabbi Zeldin became quite familiar with Rabbi Wise’s involvement in Jewish organizations like the American Jewish Congress and his elevation to the presidency of the Zionist Organization of America, as well as his fight for freedom of the pulpit. So, in 1964, when Stephen S. Wise Temple was founded, Rabbi Zeldin shared these stories about Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to the founding members, and they unanimously resolved to call our new congregation Stephen S. Wise Temple.

Rabbi Wise died in 1949 and never got to see how Stephen Wise Temple had become a center for Judaism and Jewish education. However, in our early years, his daughter, Justine visited our Synagogue and told Rabbi Zeldin that her father would have been proud of this congregation because it represented all that he believed and worked for in his life – social justice, Israel, communal welfare, Jewish learning, and the survival and prosperity of Jewish culture.

The Man Behind the Name
Written by Dr. Gary Zola

The history of Stephen Wise Temple would not be complete without a better understanding of the man behind the name.

Stephen Samuel Wise (1874-1949) was arguably the most significant and prominent rabbinic leader in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. The remarkable roster of accomplishments which he amassed during a career that spanned more than a half century bespeaks the extraordinary impact Wise had on American Jewry, on American society in general and, to be sure, on the international scene as well. Wise’s expansive horizon of Jewish concern together with his wide-ranging professional endeavors made the sphere of his influence much larger than that of any of his rabbinic peers. And with the help of his powerful oratory, he pushed his way into the consciousness of American society.

Professionally speaking, Wise was something of a Jewish jack-of-all trades. The web of communal involvement which he spun over the course of his career was labyrinthine to say the least. He was a social activist-a loyal partisan to the agenda of the progressive era in which his world view was molded. Wise played a leading role in a panoply of social causes: he was a prominent member of the Child Labor Committee, the Old Age Pension League, the Religion and Labor Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1909, he was one of the signatories on a letter calling for the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

He was also a political activist. Wise campaigned ardently and openly for presidential candidates Woodrow Wilson, Alfred E. Smith and (from 1936) Franklin D. Roosevelt. Intensely involved in the political affairs of New York, Wise quickly became a commanding presence with state and local officials. He loathed the Tammany Hall, and as a member of the New York City Affairs Committee, Wise helped to force the resignation of James J. Walker in 1932. Subsequently, he became Fiorello H. LaGuardia’s ardent proponent and the “Little Flower” relied heavily on Wise for advice and guidance on a multitude of topics.

Wise was a lifelong Zionist. He helped to establish the New York Federation of Zionist Societies in 1897. In 1898, he participated in the Second Zionist Congress in Basle and, with Theodor Herzl’s blessings, he returned to the United States as the “American secretary” to the World Zionist Movement. In 1917, he acted as an important intermediary to President Woodrow Wilson and the president’s trusted advisor, Colonel Edward House, when, together with Louis D. Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, he contributed to the formulation and promulgation of the text of the Balfour Declaration. Subsequently, he attended the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I where he represented the interests of the Zionist movement vis a vis the disposition of Palestine. Wise served as the vice president of the Zionist Organization of America from 1918 to 1920 and president from 1936 to 1938.

In addition to all that has been noted, Wise was an impressive and energetic organization builder. He played a leading role in the establishment of the American Jewish Congress – both during its provisional stage in 1916-17 and, subsequently, after it was permanently established in the late 1920s. He launched, in 1922, a new rabbinical seminary-the Jewish Institute of Religion – which he led as president until it merged with the Hebrew Union College at the time of its founder’s death. In this capacity, Wise touched the lives of scores of rabbinic disciples and, through them, impacted upon the character of the American synagogue in a way that, to date, have not been fully explored. One needs only to mention Wise’s name to one of the dwindling number of his former students, now in their seventies and eighties, to grasp a sense of how impressively he remains, to this day, a beau ideal.

Yet the congregational rabbinate was unquestionably the keystone of Wise’s career. It has been repeatedly noted that the rabbinate was at the very core of this man’s extraordinarily expansive career. As his foremost biographer, Professor Melvin I. Urofsky, noted, “For all his work in secular reform in the American and World Jewish congresses, in founding the Jewish Institute of Religion, in lecturing and writing and being a public personality for more than four decades, Wise saw himself first and always as rabbi…”

It is fitting, then, that two great American synagogues have paid tribute to this remarkable man by using his name as a living memorial. The first is a synagogue that Wise himself founded in New York City: the Free Synagogue (known today as the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue). The other is one of the most dynamic and influential congregations in Los Angeles, the Stephen Wise Temple.

(reproduced from the October 2001 @wise)