Rev. Dr. Aaron Wise. [Volume: 2, Issue: 9, June, 1896, pp. 482-487]

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REV. DR. AARON WISE.
(A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.)
In reviewing for one brief moment the history of Dr. Wise's
distinguished ancestry, we learn the secret of his blessed lifework. Dr. Wise's forefathers, for five generations, had been
Rabbis in various congregations in Hungary, all of them celebrated by reason of their deep piety and profound learning.
It was the father of Aaron Wise, however, who made the
family name honored and venerated throughout the length and
breadth of the Magyar Land. For not less than half a century,
Joseph Hirsch Wise had served as Chief Rabbi of the impor —
tant Jewish community, centered in and about Erlau. He was
the respected friend of the highest dignitaries in the Roman
Catholic Church, and when, in I848 the Rabbi, who had taken
a foremost part in the mighty revolution of his countrymen
under the leadership of the immortalized Kossuth against the
imperious sway of the Austrian Hapsburgs, was sentenced to
be shot to death by the royal decree, it was the Archbishop of
the Hungarian town who saved the Rabbi, sheltering him within
the Monastery walls and at last securing for him the pardon
of the young ruler. Dr. Aaron Wise's father is to this day remembered, renowned and revered in Hungary as one of the
stanchest defenders of the old faith against the inroads of what
was feared as the subversive and destructive Radicalism of the