Rabbi Stephen S. Wise's corrupt family

Monday, 24 September 2012

Amusing story of how the father (also a rabbi) and older brother (Otto Irving, a lawyer) of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (née Weissfeld), unduly influenced a wealthy 80 year old woman, to amend her will, leaving her money to the Wise family! This, perhaps, indicates where Stephen Wise's honesty came from. Full article on the NYT link.

Incidentally, in 1940, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise had a German maid named Elise Fritz living in his Manhattan home.

The New York Times, October 10, 1895

Partial Stephen S. Wise family tree I've put together, but far from complete—this is a difficult one. His mother was previously married, and to another "Fischer" at that. She had two children with her first husband, and once widowed, she married Aaron Wise (Weiss), apparently in 1870. The photos (except the one of Otto found in a Californian newspaper), are from ancestry.com, a useful, but expensive website.

Virtually all of the sources I've checked are highly contradictory about the their family's details, but it seems as though Stephen Wise's mother had six of her own children, and adopted at least one other child. An 1880 Federal Census lists the Wise family, and those living in their home at 710 Fifth Street, NYC as:

In 1880, the initial of Stephen Wise's middle name was "I", so perhaps it is really "Irving" like his elder brother, and not "Samuel".

10 comments:

Anonymous25 September 2012 01:14

Hi BRI,

also check out this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/17/world/grave-of-bubis-is-desecrated-by-an-israeli.html

It´s about an Israeli who desecrated the grave of Ignatz Bubis (president of the council of jews in Germany)during the funeral ceremony in Israel and made afterwards accusions to the press, that bubis former led brothels, did black market business after the war, financed the student revolt in 1968 and even more things like that.
I´ve not heard, that this guy, Meir Mendelssohn, was ever persecuted for the things that he said about bubis and for desecrating the funeral.
Bubis was setenced to 12 years in prison in the 1950s in East Germany for black market business, but escaped to West Germany, where he dealed with real estate. German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote a theater play about an unscrupulous real-estate broker. Bubis and his friends prevented the performance of the play. The play was given in netherlands and even in Israel, I believe, but never performed in Germany until today. Today in Germany they deal with Bubis a moral role model to young people, they even call him a "moral instance".
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Henry26 September 2012 08:04

You've been working hard, Black Rabbit.

It may not be apparent to the newcomer to these topics, but given how things are today in the western world, I consider Stephen Wise to be the most influential personality of the past one hundred years: certainly it was the small group of Jews he belonged to that set in motion the events that have brought the west to its current parlous state, with worse yet to come.

I've a number of books and essays about Wise but almost all are mute on his early background. Indeed, his own autobiography 'Challenging Years' is prefaced with 'A Biographical Note', seven pages long, in which his son and daughter tell the reader that [in the following pages] their father:

''[....] described the major issues and struggles he had confronted with a minimum of emphasis on his own life. Thus the omission of even the dates and places of his personal history was deliberate, and grew, as his foreword indicates, out of a strong distaste for self-discussion and revelation.''

They then go on to say:

''Aaron Wise [....] immigrated to America in 1875 to prepare a home for his wife and children [....] Upon Sabine, the mother of Stephen, fell the task of caring for the four children she brought to this country in 1875 and the three who were born here''.

Source: Challenging Years: The Autobiography of Stephen Wise, pp. xi-xii.

N.B. The middle 'S' of his name is not used in the title of the book.

Aaron Wise died on the 30th March,1896; five months after the report about the conflicting wills in the New York Times, and in the NYT report on his death the date 1864 is given as the year in which he (Aaron) married Sabina.

See here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E04EFDA143BEE33A25752C3A9659C94679ED7CF

However, on April 23, 1945, Stephen Wise writing to a Mrs Nathan G. Schuman, claimed the following:

''She [Sabina] and my dear father, Dr. Aaron Wise, who in 1875, became rabbi of Temple Rodeph Shalom in New York, were married in the late '60s, I think it was. My mother was a woman of fine understanding of goodly sympathies. and great courage. All of her children - and there were seven of us - were all agreed that she was much abler than the rest of us put together [....] and altogether was a true mother of Israel.''

Source: Stephen S. Wise: Servant of the People. Selected Letters edited by Carl Herman Voss, p. 268.

So we have been variously informed that:

1) Aaron and Sabina married in 1864. (New York Times)

2) Aaron and Sabina married in the ''late'' 1860s. (1945 letter from Stephen Wise)

3) Aaron went to the US in 1875 and Sabina followed him with four children, but still in 1875, with three more children being ''born here'' later. (A Biographical Note)

4) Sabina had seven children: ''All of her children - there were seven of us''. (1945 letter from Stephen Wise)

The truth however is rather different than thus far presented.

Cont....

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Replies
Henry26 September 2012 08:08

This comment has been removed by the author.
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Henry2 October 2012 02:40

Here's another example of the recurring 2/3 year contradictions in the family dates.

It's a photo of Ida's gravestone which states she was born on September 23 1867, which means her age on the 1880 census (for year: May 31, 1879 - June 1, 1880) should have been recorded as age 12, not 15.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=31431107&PIpi=16939162

Here's the gravestone of Aaron and Sabina:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=31427215

And finally, the forbidding mausoleum of Stephen S. Wise:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rabbi_Wise_800.jpg

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Monday, 24 September 2012

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise's corrupt family

10 comments:

"When a Jew, in America or in South Africa, talks to his Jewish companions about 'our' government, he means the government of Israel."

- David Ben-Gurion, Israeli Prime Minister