True to its traditions of a free pulpit, a rich religious life, and Jewish–inspired social action, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue builds today on the foundation it has inherited

The roots of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue were planted in 1905, when Dr. Stephen Samuel Wise, who had already attracted national attention from the pulpit in Portland, Oregon, was under active consideration for the pulpit at Temple Emanu–El in New York City. When Dr. Wise learned that his sermons would be reviewed in advance by the temple’s board of trustees, he withdrew himself from consideration. In doing so, Rabbi Wise clearly stated his vision from his Portland pulpit, then sent it to the New York Times: "The chief office of the minister, I take it, is not to represent the view of the congregation, but to proclaim the truth as he sees it. A free pulpit, worthily filled, must command respect and influence; a pulpit that is not free, howsoever filled, is sure to be without potency or honor. In the pursuit of the duties of his office, the minister may from time to time be under the necessity of giving expression to views at variance with the views of some, or even many, members of the congregation."

Within months, Rabbi Wise was giving life to his vision of a free synagogue, holding synagogue services at the Hudson Theater on West 47th Street. After only a few weeks he was conducting services on the Lower East Side on Friday evenings and holding forums on social issues uptown on Sunday evenings. He so inspired those who heard his message that on April 15, 1907, more than a hundred of his followers met at the Hotel Savoy to establish a free synagogue. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who would become the congregation’s first president, declared that day, "The Free Synagogue is to be free and democratic in its organization; it is to be pewless and dueless." A religious school opened that October, and six months later had an enrollment of 150 students. Dr. Wise’s Sunday morning services, held at the Universalist Church of Eternal Hope on West 81st Street, drew more than 1,000 people.

From its very beginnings the Free Synagogue was a ground breaking institution. In December 1907 it established a Social Service Department, the first of its kind in a synagogue. Serving the needs of Jews on the Lower East Side, it was housed in Bellevue Hospital before it came under the roof of the synagogue. From 1907 through 1953 it was headed by Rabbi Sidney Goldstein, who was personally active in all aspects of social service, trained volunteers, and presented innovative lecture series for congregants to keep them up to date with the program. Louise Wise Services, a citywide adoption agency, had its origins at the synagogue when Louise Waterman Wise began finding homes for Jewish orphans who otherwise would have lived out their childhoods in institutions. Although attracted to Reform Judaism and fully committed to Judaism, Rabbi Wise’s Free Synagogue was free to all, "inclusive alike of the non-Jew and the Jew," and in 1922 founded the Jewish Institute of Religion to provide advanced education leading to ordination for Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews.

Rabbi Wise’s vision of a synagogue of life and light, a union of the bright ideals of Judaism and liberal democracy, reflected his lifelong commitment to the values of the faith he grew up in and its wider obligations of education, social justice, and community service. The Free Synagogue expanded rapidly. By October 1910, membership exceeded 500, and that year at Rosh Hashanah the pulpit was moved to Carnegie Hall. The next year, several brownstones were purchased on West 68th Street, and branches of the Free Synagogue started in the Bronx (1914), Washington Heights (1917), Flushing (1918), and Westchester County and Newark (1920). Rabbi Wise led the creation of the Jewish Institute of Religion, which moved into a new building at 40 West 68th Street in 1922 and later merged with the Hebrew Union College, the Reform Jewish seminary.

Construction of the present synagogue building began in 1940. Its cornerstone comes from the Temple in Jerusalem and was presented to Rabbi Wise by Brigadier Wyndham Deedes. On December 8, 1941, the synagogue's Executive Council was scheduled to consider contracts for the final construction but voted instead, that fateful day, to suspend construction for the duration of World War II. Work resumed in early 1947, and the new home of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue was dedicated on January 5, 1950. But Rabbi Wise was not at the dedication; he had died on April 19, 1949, only a month after attending the gala Diamond Jubilee Dinner to celebrate his seventy–fifth birthday. Rabbi Wise’s funeral, appropriately enough, was at Carnegie Hall.

But the history of SWFS is obviously far more than merely an architectural and organizational history. It is the history of an inspiring founder and the inspired men and women who followed and celebrated Rabbi Wise's prophetic dream.

Prophetic light often generates considerable heat, and Rabbi Wise felt much heat, particularly in the early years. Drawn to social causes his entire life and one of the prominent advocates of Zionism in the United States, Wise frequently took courageous, often lonely stands on contemporary issues that led to splits in the synagogue ranks. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., president of the Free Synagogue from its birth, resigned in 1919 in vehement disagreement with Wise’s advocacy of Zionism, although he remained a lifelong friend of the rabbi.

In October 1919, Rabbi Wise took on U.S. Steel, although he had no doubts that his pro–labor sermon would mean the loss of many large gifts to the synagogue’s nascent building fund. "I charge the United States Steel Corporation with resorting to every manner of coercion and even violence" in its attempt to prevent its workers from organizing a union, Rabbi Wise preached. Within a day resignations began pouring into the synagogue, so many that Wise felt compelled to offer his resignation. However, the chairman of the synagogue’s Executive Council, Oscar Strauss, who would become the first Jewish member of a presidential cabinet, rejected the offer: "The pulpit must be forever free, and it must be understood that the Rabbi, speaking the truth as he sees it, speaks to the congregation, not for it."

Rabbi Wise took on the popular Father Charles Coughlin, whose radio programs in the 1930s carried a message of anti–Semitism and isolationism wrapped in populism. He also saw early Hitler’s menacing presence and worked to unify the Jewish community before and during World War II as well as to pressure the State Department and President Frankin Roosevelt to take action to save the Jews of Europe.

It was this pulpit that Rabbi Edward E. Klein took as senior rabbi in 1949. In 1943 Rabbi Wise had personally selected Klein with the hope that he would succeed him, and so he did, guiding the congregation for the next thirty years. Cast in the same mold as his predecessor, Rabbi Klein was not only a beloved pastor to a vital, growing congregation but was a tireless community and religious leader as well. He spoke vigorously against huge expenditures on the arms race and was one of first religious leaders in the United States to protest American involvement in the Vietnam war. A president of the Lincoln Square Community Council and a founder of the West Side Jewish Community Council, Rabbi Klein played a key role in the development of the Lincoln Center area, paying especial attention to the relocation of the people who were uprooted by the project. And he broke ground by installing an Associate Rabbi, Sally Priesand, the first woman to be ordained a rabbi.

When the SWFS Social Service Department, the only agency housed in a synagogue ever to be supported by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, lost Federation funding after almost four decades, it was Rabbi Klein who rallied the congregation to underwrite the vital social service programs, a tradition we follow today in our funding of the Young Adventurers, a group for challenged adults, and Camp Shalom, a summer program for children from the community.

In 1980, Rabbi Balfour Brickner brought his vision of liberal Judaism to the pulpit of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. Long active in Union of American Hebrew Congregations in interreligious affairs and the force behind the Reform movement’s National Commission on Social Action, on the bimah Rabbi Brickner continued a message based on social action and lay leadership. Never one to shrink from controversy, Rabbi Brickner spoke out boldly against U.S. involvement in Central America, corporate involvement in then–apartheid South Africa, abortion rights, civil rights, the environment, and the rights of the Palestinians.

But Rabbi Brickner also changed the synagogue itself, bringing to it a more participatory style of worship. Always philosophically accessible, the bimah became physically accessible, a place for congregants as well as clergy. The synagogue was also well guided by Associate Rabbi Helene Ferris, whose pastoral guidance reached out to all members. Music, always an integral but formal part of SWFS through the leadership of the distinguished liturgical composer, Dr. A. W. Binder, became visible in the person of the synagogue’s first cantor, Ellen L. Stettner. Cantor Stettner in turn started the children’s choir and the Stephen Wise Singers, an adult group that participates in SWFS services and has performed in several synagogues. A congregation that once listened today takes part in both traditional and contemporary music.

After Rabbi Brickner’s retirement in 1991, Rabbi Ira S. Youdovin took the pulpit until 1994. Rabbi Youdovin was one of at least six children of the congregation who have pursued rabbinic careers, among them sibling Rabbis Aaron and Melinda Panken. (Aaron Panken is currently Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). Dr. Martin A. Cohen, professor of Jewish History at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, served the congregation in 1994–95, and reinvigorated adult study. His Saturday morning Torah study deepened the congregation’s commitment, as did his formal and informal instruction from every synagogue platform.

Senior Rabbi Gary M. Bretton–Granatoor was the fifth person to hold that office in the congregation’s nine–decade history. A strong teacher and leader, he brought the pulpit still closer to the congregation. As the Reform movement embraces traditions renewed by contemporary interpreters, Rabbi Bretton–Granatoor enriched worship with mi’shebeirach prayers and music with the strains of Israel and the modern Jewish experience. In the prophetic tradition of Rabbi Stephen Wise and the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue rabbis, he continued the call to social action, to learning, and above all to a meaningful Jewish life led in the knowledge and practice of Judaism.

Upon Rabbi Bretton–Granatoor’s leaving the SWFS pulpit, Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff assumed the position of interim rabbi. A distinguished rabbi who served his previous pulpit in Westfield, New Jersey, for more than thirty–five years, Rabbi Kroloff is the former president of the Central Conference of America Rabbis and has served the Reform movement in several important ways, including teaching at HUC–JIR, the Reform seminary and working on major movement committees and the new Reform siddur. He brings to SWFS his rich spiritual and pastoral experience.

The 1990s have seen our congregation’s dedication to a full Jewish life grow and intensify at every level. The Balfour Brickner Early Childhood Center has grown rapidly, and its graduates can enter our Religious School and continue their Jewish education through high school. Congregants participate in a variety of adult education programs, from informal Shabbat morning Torah study to a year–long program leading to adult bar/bat mitzvah. An education task force is now studying our entire educational program and looks forward to active and rich learning for the whole congregation. Our commitment to hands–on social activism is reflected in such projects as our Emergency Food Program that feeds seventy homeless men and women every Shabbat morning, the ten-bed shelter for homeless men we maintain on Synagogue premises in cooperation with the Partnership for the Homeless, which has been running continuously since 1987, and the Momentum program which feeds, clothes, and counsels AIDS patients.

Now, our history continues into its second century. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch joined us as Senior Rabbi in 2004 following a remarkably successful tenure as executive director of ARZA (Association of Reform Zionists of America) where he served for twelve years.  Cantor Dan Singer joined us in 2006 and his magnificent voice, vibrant spirit and warm presence enrich our congregation’s spiritual, educational and communal experiences. Together, they have transformed worship in the synagogue with a zest for tradition and music that has led to increasing number of attendees at services.

The vision of Stephen Wise’s Free Synagogue remains a goal to which we all still aspire, enriching all aspects of our lives with the ideals of Liberal Judaism.

This history was originally drawn together by Chris Platt from historical documents and rabbinic commentaries and has been updated by Florence Reif Richman. Special thanks to our former librarian, Helen Singer, to Ruth Klein, and to Ruth Grant.