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News Brief

March 18, 1934
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Professor Albert Einstein will speak at the testimonial dinner to be tendered Monday evening at the Hotel Astor in honor of the sixtieth birthday of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. This will be his first public address in this city since his arrival to the United States.

Others who will talk on Dr. Wise’s work in the reliigous field include Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Dr. John Haynes Holmes, Rabbi Sidney Goldstein and Rabbi Louis I. Newman. Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Mayor LaGuardia, Morris Rothenberg, president of the Zionist Organization of America, and Judge William W. Mack will also speak on the various activities of Dr. Wise during his career. Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the Board of Aldermen, will speak on behalf of the American Jewish Congress, which he heads, and of which Dr. Wise is honorary president. Former Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, who is chairman of the dinner committee, will preside.

SPECIAL SERVICE

A. special anniversary service for Dr. Wise will be held at Carnegie Hall this morning. Speakers will include Rabbi William M. Fineshriber, Dr. Frank Oliver Hall, Mrs. Rebekah Kohut, Robert Szold, and Joseph M. Levine. Dr. Wise will respond. The service, which will be conducted by Rabbis J. X. Cohen and Morton Berman, together with the addresses, will be broadcast over Station WNEW.

Another celebration today in honor of Dr. Wise will be an anniversary luncheon at the Hotel Biltmore, which will be attended by more than 1,000 of his friends and associates in the Free Synagogue and the Jewish Institute of Religion, which he founded. Frederick L. Guggenheimer will preside. Ir the evening a reception will be tendered Dr. Wise by the College Division of the American Jewish Congress.

On Monday evening the banquet at the Hotel Astor will take place, and on Thursday there will be a dinner at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn. Similar meetings will be held in Portland, Oregon, Chicago, Boston, and elsewhere.

In an interview anticipating his sixtieth birthday, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, head of the Free Synagogue, predicted his early, voluntary retirement from the many activities with which he has been identified during his lengthy career–the American Jewish Congress, of which he is the honorary president, the Jewish Institute of Religion, of which he is the president, the Zionist Organization of America, of which he is a member of the Administrative body as well as the Synagogue and many other organizations with which he has been identified.

He made this prediction as part of his answer to the question as to whether he felt any satisfaction in his achievements.

“No,” he said, “there can be no satisfaction for a man who is in the midst of battle. How long I shall remain in that battle I do not know, but I confess I have a great horror of a man in public, or, as I am, in semi-public life, surviving himself. The Jewish teacher must learn how to withdraw before he is invited to do so, It will not be many years before shall ask to be relieved of all responsibility in the Synagogue.”

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