An American Reform rabbi and Zionist leader whose caution during the Holocaust has been examined by historians. The 2005 opening said his mistakes "probably stemmed from a desire to not fan the flames of anti-Semitism by drawing undue attention to the sufferings of the Jewish people in Europe under Nazi rule." Today the opening does not mention antisemitism at all, and the word survives only once in the whole article. A reader arriving now learns he was a founding member of the NAACP and not why his response to the Holocaust has been criticized.
Read line by line and written up by hand.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01. “antisemitism” appeared 2 times in this article's opening at its peak. Today the opening has none; the body has 1.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.Red text: written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot.1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005
Stephen Samuel Wise ( 1874 - 1949 ) was a U.S. rabbi and Zionist leader. He founded the Jewish Institute of Religion, an educational center in New York City to train rabbis in Reform Judaism . It was merged into the Hebrew Union College a year after his death. He embraced a Jewish equivalent of the Social Gospel encouraging social justice, and was a close friend of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt , who turned to Wise for advice on issues concerning the Jewish community in the United States. Wise has sometimes been criticized for his initial failure to recognize the Holocaust prior to American entry into World War II , and his dismissal of early reports of the Final Solution as propaganda. Like much of the American Jewish community at the time, his mistakes in this area probably stemmed from a desire to not fan the flames of anti-Semitism by drawing undue attention to the sufferings of the Jewish people in Europe under Nazi rule, fearing an upsurge of anti-Semitism in the United States.1
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 16559611.
The opening as it stood in 2020 5 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Stephen Samuel Wise (1874–1949) was an early 20th-century American, Progressive Era , Reform rabbi , and Zionist leader.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 960764943.
The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023
Hungarian-American Reform rabbi (1874–1949) For other people named Stephen Wise, see Stephen Wise (disambiguation) .Stephen Samuel Wise (March 17, 1874 – April 19, 1949) was an early 20th-century American Reform rabbi and Zionist leader in the Progressive Era .Born in Budapest, he was an infant when his family immigrated to New York.He followed his father and grandfather in becoming a rabbi, serving in New York and in Portland, Oregon.Wise was also a founding member of the NAACP .
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1176578833. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.
Today
“antisemitism” appeared 2 times in this article's opening at its peak. Today the opening has none; the body has 1. Read the current article and compare.
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antisemitism
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Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined between 2005 and 2025.
Then
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Now
early 20th-century american reform rabbi and zionist leader in the progressive era
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
