Louise Waterman Wise

Following her mother's unexpected death in 1890, she began reading literature from a wide variety of cultures, finding Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings on rebelling against tradition particularly appealing.

With Adler's encouragement and despite her family's protests, she led art classes for the underprivileged and worked in the settlement houses of New York City's slums.

The experience strengthened her Zionist sympathies, and four years later she visited Palestine and gave money and support for Henrietta Szold's work for children there.

She also painted portraits of Gertrude Lightstone Mittelmann, Claude G. Montefiore, Dr. Charles Parkhurst, Dr. James Morris Whiton, and Professor Albert Einstein.

She translated Aimé Pallière's French study on conversion to Judaism, La sanctuaire inconnu, into English under the title The Unknown Sanctuary in 1928.

In 1931, she created the Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress, which sought to alert the public of the dangers of fascism and anti-Semitism in and out of America.

She travelled across the United States to raise funds for medical aid for wounded British and Russian civilians and for children evacuated from London during the Blitz.

Wise supported her husband and his goals for the next forty-seven years of their marriage, following him to Portland, Oregon when he served as rabbi of Temple Beth Israel and then back to New York City where he founded the Free Synagogue.

Over a thousand people attended the funeral, including Deputy Mayor John J. Bennett, National Community Relations Advisory Council chairman Henry Epstein, Fiorello La Guardia's wife, former New York City Council President Newbold Morris, and American Jewish Congress delegations from Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore.