Stephen Wise

Stephen Samuel Wise
Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise Library of Congress portrait
Born	(1874-03-17)March 17, 1874 Budapest, Hungary
Died	April 19, 1949(1949-04-19) (aged 75) New York City
Occupation	Rabbi, writer

Stephen Samuel Wise (born Weisz, March 17, 1874 – April 19, 1949) was an American Reform rabbi and Zionist leader.

Wise was born in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son and grandson of rabbis. His grandfather, Joseph Hirsch Weiss, was Chief Rabbi of a small town near Budapest. His father, Aaron Wise, earned a PhD and ordination in Europe, and emigrated to the United States to serve as rabbi of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes in Brooklyn, New York. Wise's maternal grandfather, Móric Fischer de Farkasházy, created the Herend Porcelain Company. When Wise's father Aaron Wise sought to unionize the company, Moric gave the family one-way tickets to New York.

Wise immigrated to New York as an infant with his family. His father became rabbi of Rodeph Sholom, a Manhattan Conservative congregation of wealthy German Jews.

Wise studied at the College of the City of New York, Columbia College (B.A. 1892), and Columbia University (PhD 1901), and later pursued rabbinical studies under rabbis Richard J. H. Gottheil, Kohut, Gersoni, Joffe, and Margolis. In 1933, Wise received an L.H.D. from Bates College.

In 1893, he was appointed assistant to Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs of the Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, New York City, and later in the same year, minister to the same congregation. In 1900, he launched his career as the rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Portland, Oregon; typical of the activists of the Progressive Era, he attacked "many of the social and political ills of contemporary America." In 1906, concerning another rabbinical appointment, Wise made a major break with the established Reform movement over the "question whether the pulpit shall be free or whether the pulpit shall not be free, and, by reason of its loss of freedom, reft of its power for good"; in 1907 he established his Free Synagogue, starting the "free Synagogue" movement.