In the U.S., Aaron Wise eventually became chief rabbi of the Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, moving from his own father's Orthodoxy toward Reform Judaism.

Historian Claire Mouradian states that his activities over thirty years (from the Hamidian massacres to the creation of the Republic of Turkey) "reveal a constant concern for raising awareness in favor of the Armenians, whose fate seemed to be a premonition of what might be awaiting Jews in Europe".

[7] In 1917 he participated in the effort to convince President Woodrow Wilson to approve the Balfour declaration in support of Jewish settlement in Mandate Palestine.

This sermon caused an uproar among some Jewish institutions, culminating in an edict of condemnation against him by the Agudath Harabonim, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

In a tribute to Wise on his 60th birthday, Einstein said, "Above all, what I admire in him is his bold activity toward building the self-respect of the Jewish people, combined with profound tolerance and penetrating understanding of everything human.

"[14] In 1922 Wise founded the Jewish Institute of Religion, an educational center in New York City to train rabbis in Reform Judaism.

With the rise to power of Adolf Hitler's regime, Wise took the position that public opinion in the United States and elsewhere should be rallied against the Nazis.

[19] Urged by Wise to protest to the German government, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull issued a mild statement to the American ambassador to Berlin complaining that "unfortunate incidents have indeed occurred and the whole world joins in regretting them."

Wise, along with Leo Motzkin and Nahum Goldmann, encouraged the creation in August 1936 of the World Jewish Congress in order to create a broader representative body to fight Nazism.

Roosevelt was reluctant to spend political capital on behalf of foreign refugees, and access to visas and other paths of escape were effectively blocked by the assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini.

[20] As early information of the full scale of the Nazi slaughter began to emerge from Europe, Jews in the U.S. and other countries were cast into an agonizing debate about how, and whether, to press governments to take steps to save them.

"Received alarming report," the cable read, "that in Fuhrers headquarters plan discussed and under consideration all Jews in countries occupied or controlled Germany number 3-1/2 to 4 million should after deportation and concentration in east should at one blow exterminated to resolve once for all Jewish question in Europe."

Wise was an ardent opponent of the post-war efforts by Isaac Nachman Steinberg, co-founder of the Freeland League, to create a community for Jewish refugees in Suriname.

In a letter to Keren Hayesod emissary Ida Silverman he wrote, "I personally believe, that Steinberg needs to be lynched or hanged and quartered, if that would make his lamented demise more certain.

"[24] Wise translated The Improvement of the Moral Qualities, an ethical treatise of the eleventh century by Solomon ibn Gabirol (New York, 1902) from the original Arabic, and wrote The Beth Israel Pulpit, among other works.

Holocaust scholar Dr. David Kranzler, author of Orthodoxy's Finest Hour, wrote in 2002 that Wise had a "penchant for protecting his close friend and confidant US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) regardless of the cost to the Jews of Europe."

Kranzler accused Wise of failing to recognize the existential threat to European Jewry prior to American entry into World War II, dismissing early reports of the Final Solution as propaganda, and obstructing rescue efforts.

In 1942, after Bergson read the news stories of Stephen Wise's November 24 press conference, he pivoted into a full-bore fight to combat the slaughter of European Jews.

[28] The Bergson Group's stance on European Jewry was opposed to Wise's: they believed their actions would save more Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.

As part of his collaboration with Bergson, Hecht created a giant pageant publicizing the Holocaust called We Will Never Die which debuted at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1943.

[29] Hecht recruited show-business friends like Kurt Weill and Moss Hart to write and stage his pageant, and to raise public awareness of the Nazis' mass murder of Jews as stridently as possible.

[32] Well after the war Hillel Kook was interviewed in Manhattan by David Kranzler and said that he was considered by Wise to be a betrayer of Zionism since he was willing to save Jews by finding safety for them anywhere in the world, not only in Palestine.

He stated in the Sol Blum led fall 1943 Congressional hearing investigating Hillel Kook that Jews should be saved (only) by opening the gates to Palestine, which doomed multitudes to a terrible fate, including being murdered.

Historian Saul Friedländer said that Wise prevented the shipment of food packages from American Jews to German-occupied Poland for fear that the Allies would interpret the aid as being sent to the enemy.

In the spring of 1941, Rabbi Wise contacted the World Jewish Congress representatives in Europe to halt forthwith any shipment of packages to the ghettos.

[33] Nachum Goldman, a high level executive of the World Jewish Congress and close to Wise, went to the US State Department and according to the protocol, a copy of which is in A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust, pleaded for deporting Kook or drafting him into the army for the war, which may well have led to his demise.