I was very surprised at a film screening last night to see an aggressive condemnation of the lion of Reform Judaism, R’ Stephen S. Wise, for his role in tamping down protest of the Holocaust. What was more surprising was that the film, Against the Tide was produced by a major Jewish organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Picking a fight with Wise’s legacy is certainly not the safest move to make, and producing a 2-hour movie condemning him is certainly not the most timid way to go about it. It’s a move that takes guts.

I’ve been talking about Wise’s role during the Holocaust ever since a friend in college detailed his efforts to keep Jews from complaining to Roosevelt about the slaughter, and in advising Roosevelt not to view the ongoing Holocaust as an issue requiring specific attention beyond that generally being applied to foreign policy and war efforts in the 1930s and ’40s. I bring up these facts about Wise every so often, and the reception they get is chilling at best, and disbelieving virtually all the time. These facts aren’t well-known, and when they’re aired, they’re very much not-well-liked. The Wiesenthal Center’s making a push to have them aired in a very public and condemning manner could very much alter the common viewpoint, and could even lead to an overall re-evaluation of Wise’s legacy.

Which brings me to this post: Wise’s inaction to save Jews during the Holocaust always puzzled me. One of the hosts of the screening, Republican Jewish political activist Michael Fragin, expressed his position that the film reminds us of how a very different time for Jews in America, when Jews were not comfortable advocating for themselves in the halls of power, is both a cautionary tale and cause for regret. I won’t disagree with him.

But there’s more.

It was at one time I was thinking about Wise’s role that I happened to come upon a review of the 2004 book Preaching Eugenics, which details the involvement of liberal theologians in the Eugenics movement of the first half of the 20th century. And sure enough, Reform Jewish leaders and particularly Wise were among those taking part. After reading the book, it was not very difficult to see how these two issues could be related.

There are only a handful of mentions of Wise, not because he was less fierce in his support for Eugenics, but because Jews were a small part of the national story that included vastly more Christian theologians. This is a quick read, but it’s very informative.

Here they are:

Pg. 14)



Unitarian Minister John Haynes Holmes and Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, both of New York, met through city reform circles and became longstanding friends who engaged in ecumenical experiments such as switching pulpits. Their numerous social reform commitments (and the size of their congregations) provided them both with high profiles. Though of different faiths, they were often of like minds on social questions, and in the 1910s they both endorsed eugenics.

Pg. 19)



Rabbis such as Emil Hirsch and Stephen Wise, who lent their support to a wide range of social reforms, included eugenics in that orbit.

Pg. 82)



Finally, these years witnessed continuing interest in eugenics among Reform rabbis. In 1913, the Free Synagogue of New York announced a series of lectures to be given at Synagogue House, the church’s social service department, on many current social issues, including eugenics. The Free Synagogue was an ideal forum for such discussion. [...] The growing number of churches and synagogues debating eugenics suggests the ease with which liberal congregations embraced the new science; they viewed it as no more radical than settlement house work.

Pg. 109)



Rabbi [Max] Reichler’s work marked the first attempt by a rabbi to reconcile eugenics with the Jewish faith, but he was not alone among Jewish leaders in his interest and measured support for eugenics. Two years earlier, in November 1913, Rabbi Wise sponsored a series of lectures on eugenics and mental hygiene through Synagogue House, his congregation’s social service department. Speakers included notable eugenicist Alexander Johnson of the Vineland Training School in New Jersey. Although it is impossible to assess the turnout for such events (or, for that matter, to assess the tenor of the discussions), it is nevertheless revealing that one of the country’s most well-known Jewish leaders used his synagogue to sponsor discussions of eugenics.

The efforts of liberal-minded religious leaders such as Rabbis Wise and Reichler, as well as those of Rev. Hillis, mark a shift in the relationship between eugenicists and churchmen. The public’s and, increasingly, the eugenics movement’s own desire to find answers to the questions sparked by immigration and world war created space for pulpit leaders to fill. During these years eugenicists demonstrated a greater willingness to grant religious leaders a venue, whether at their national conferences or in the pages of their journals. This impulse to include the views of religious leaders in the eugenics movement would reach full flower in the 1920s with the creation of a new organization, the American Eugenics Society, which actively recruited religious leaders to the cause of race improvement.

Pg. 115)



The organizers of the AES sought that sanction vigorously. While drafting a list of potential members for the organization’s Advisory Council, they included a separate list of nationally known clergymen whom they planned to approach for support. The minutes of these early meetings show that AES organizers assumed from the beginning that religious leaders should play a role in the Society. Whether that role would be merely symbolic or active was a detail the eugenicists left to work itself out. The only evidence of disagreement came after one eugenicist (there is no mention of whom) recommended that the group extend invitations to Reform Rabbis Stephen S. Wise and Sidney E. Goldstein to join the evolving Advisory Council. A cryptic note in the minutes of the 9 June 1922 meeting reads: “It was voted to postpone the election of a Jewish representative.”

Pg. 156)



Reform Rabbi Sidney E. Goldstein (1879-1955), the associate rabbi under Stephen S. Wise at the Free Synagogue in New York, also explicitly linked birth control and eugenics, declaring that with their combined force, “we can prevent the defectives from bringing forth abundantly and peopling the earth after their own kind.”

Pg. 177-178)



In May 1939, representatives from the AES and a bevy of prominent religious leaders gathered at the Society’s favorite meeting spot, the Town Hall Club in New York City, to convene a conference on the Relation of Eugenics and the Church. Although the title of the conference suggested an inattention to ecumenicism (“the church”), in fact, the organizers were careful to ensure that the four featured speakers were a eugenicist, a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a Jewish rabbi.

[...]

More than 135 religious leaders, largely from New York, New England, and Washington, D.C., attended the conference (with a few ministers traveling from Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, and even California to participate). Many of the religious leaders who had been formally affiliated with the AES in the 1930s were in attendance, including Bishop McConnell, Rev. Kenneth MacArthur, and Rabbi DeSola Pool (Rev. George Reid Andrews was noticeably absent). Prominent leaders who had spoken of their support for eugenics in the past, such as Rabbi Sidney Goldstein and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, also attended.

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