Stephen Wise papers

The collection has been arranged according to the following broad subject areas: personal affairs; speeches, sermons, and articles, both manuscript and published; the Free Synagogue in New York City; the Jewish Institute of Religion; American Jewish affairs; relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities; New York City affairs; United States affairs; the press (both Jewish and non-Jewish); world affairs; the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress; refugees; Zionism; Palestine and Israel; arts and letters; and individual corrspondence of a general nature.

The papers shed light on the problems of civil liberties, education, labor, politics, and war and peace on the local, national, and international levels during the first half of the twentieth century. Collection also includes material relating to Wise's early career in Portland and New York, as well as correspondence with family and friends.

Those sections pertaining to Wise's involvement in the American Jewish community, New York City, United States, and international affairs (including Zionism and Palestine-Israel) contain correspondence, extensive in some instances with virtually all leading national and international Jewish leaders, such as Louis Brandeis, Jacob De Haas, Albert Einstein, Felix Frankfurter, Richard Gottheil, David Ben Gurion, George Kohut, Julian Mack, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Henrietta Szold, Robert Szold, and Chaim Weizmann. There is correspondence as well with many leading non-Jewish personages. For example, with all American presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Harry Truman (of special note is that with Franklin D. Roosevelt), leaders in the areas of labor and civil liberties, and church leaders, most notably John H. Holmes.

Contains personal and family correspondence including letters from Stephen Wise to Justine and James Wise and Shad Polier; also contains personal documents including funeral instructions from Stephen Wise and a marriage certificate issued by Temple Emanu-El to Stephen Wise and Louise Waterman. Family papers contain a book of poems in German by Leopold Wasserman. This collection also features two early essays by Stephen Wise ("Youth in Religion" and "The Social Problem in the Bible") and letters to Stephen Wise from Theodor Herzl, Albert Einstein, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Justice Felix Frankfurter, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as two reports of meetings between FDR and Wise; also featured are two letters between Israel Zangwill and Lucien Wolff on the subject of Arabs and Jews in Palestine.