by Rabbi Joshua Knobel
This Shabbat, we honor our Temple’s founding generation by celebrating the namesake they selected for our cherished community–Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise. Born March 17, 1874, Wise made his way from Budapest to New York as an infant before joining the family business (his father and grandfather were rabbis) in 1893.
As a rabbi, Wise championed many of the progressive values of his era, including women’s suffrage, child labor restrictions, worker rights, and immigrant rights. He also became one of the first and most effective Reform rabbis to publicly champion Zionism, the nascent political movement calling for the creation of a Jewish state in Israel.
In 1907, the backlash resulting from Rabbi Wise’s activism led him to found his own synagogue, the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a community committed to freedom of expression from the pulpit. From his new spiritual community, Rabbi Wise spoke freely and worked tirelessly in support of creating Israel and of making a better America.
Rabbi Wise’s countless contributions to America and to the global Jewish community provide a useful reminder that we can simultaneously serve the needs of our fellow Jews throughout the world and the needs of the disenfranchised here at home. By so doing, this community can become deserving of the praise heaped so readily upon its namesake:
“Above all, what I admire in Stephen Wise is his bold activity toward building the self-respect of the Jewish people, combined with profound tolerance and penetrating understanding of everything human.”
– Albert Einstein
