Moses Mendelson and Stephen S. Wise (1 cent)

It is well known that none of the children of Moses Mendelson, who in the 18th century decided that Judaism could be compatible with modern western society, remained Jewish.

I wonder about the children of Stephen S. Wise, the reform leader from Cincinnati, who lived in the last part of the 19th and earlier part of the 20th centuries. His son James wrote a short book I recently came across called "Liberalizing Liberal Judaism", published in 1924, when he was a very young man. It suggested that reform Judaism had atrophied, and needed to be made more attractive to the younger generation by, among other things, encouraging intermarriage, and recognizing Jesus as a non-divine teacher. He was convinced that ritual would completely vanish, and that the key to religion in the future would be as a guide for ethical conduct, and that this would be the case for Christianity as well.

Things of course have not worked out this was for Judaism, or for western society in general, for any number of reasons. I wonder what happened to James, and his Jewish identity, and to other Wise children.