Jonah Wise

Rabbi Jonah Bondi Wise (February 21, 1881 – February 1, 1959) was an American Rabbi and leader of the Reform Judaism movement, who served for over thirty years as rabbi of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan and was a founder of the United Jewish Appeal, serving as its chairman from its creation in 1939 until 1958.

Jonah Wise was born on February 21, 1881, the son of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise the founder of Reform Judaism in the United States. He graduated from Hebrew Union College (which had been founded by his father in 1875) and the University of Cincinnati in 1903. He continued his studies at the University of Berlin and the University of Bern.

Wise was Rabbi of the Mizpah Temple in Chattanooga, Tennessee from 1904 to 1906, and served as Rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Portland, Oregon starting in 1910. Rabbi Wise was chosen to lead the Central Synagogue in Manhattan, the oldest Reform congregation in continuous use in New York City and whose cornerstone had been laid by his father in 1870.

Rabbi Wise had been selected in 1931 to head the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, working to restructure the organization's finances in the face of efforts to liquidate the philanthropy which had suffered financially during the Great Depression.

Wise was described as "a pioneer in Jewish religious broadcasting" by The New York Times, beginning his "Message of Israel" Sunday morning radio broadcast in 1934, which continued until two weeks before his death.

After Adolf Hitler came to power, Wise traveled to Germany, where he created a program to provide temporary relief to the Jewish community there and arranged for financial assistance to those who had fled the country. He was chosen by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 to serve as a delegate to the Évian Conference, where representatives of 32 countries met at Évian-les-Bains, France, to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees.

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