Rabbi Louis Wolsey

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RABBI LOUIS WOLSEY


Rabbi Louis Wolsey of the Euclid Ave Temple
CLEVELAND is a city of speakers and men-with-a-message.  It is a forward-looking city where organizations of all kinds are meeting with extraordinary frequency to hear men who can talk well, and who know what they are talking about.  One of the most frequently invited and one of the most popular clergymen of Cleveland, is the minister of the Euclid Avenue Temple—Rabbi Louis Wolsey.  He is invited in season and out, by most all of the progressive societies and clubs of the city to address them, and that he is popular with them all, is attested by the fact that he is not alone asked many times to speak again, but he is even requested to repeat the same address.  He is a recent Lyceum acquisition, and brings to the platform a wealth of experience as a platform speaker.



Who is Rabbi Wolsey?
HE was born in Michigan over thirty-eight years ago, and educated in the public schools of the Michigan village in which he was reared, and also in the schools of Chicago and Cincinnati.  He is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati, and of the Hebrew Union College of the same city.  He has had but two positions in the sixteen years of his ministry, namely, Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Euclid Avenue Temple of Cleveland.  While in Little Rock he was appointed by the Governor of Arkansas, as the Chaplain-General



What an Ohio Audience Thinks of His Address on The Fighting Spirit
THE FIGHTING SPIRIT—What it is, why it is, and how to train it—those were the principal thoughts emphasized by Rabbi Louis Wolsey of the Euclid Avenue Temple, Cleveland, in a masterly address last night.  This was no cut-and-dried discourse, prepared for any and all occasions—it was a firery, eloquent, and ofttimes pathetic resume of what the speaker termed the modern cataclysm.

Hell could never be so frightful as this present war.  It is not shooting at a target—it is an invisible enemy fighting an unseen foe, with all the implements that a hellish ingenuity could devise.  Out of the tumult, the wreck and confusion, Rabbi Wolsey sees one solution to the difficulty, and that is to make war declarations so difficult as to make them impossible.  As the people must suffer through war, he would have no declaration of war made legal until it had first been ratified by the people.  Take away from governing bodies the right to declare war.  The man who is to die on the field of battle should be the one to say whether we are to have war or not. * * * Let us convert the fighting spirit into something useful.  There are crime, stupidity, cowardice, ignorance and disease that take more of martyrdom and heroism to fight and dislodge, than ever were needed on the battlefields of Ypres and the Yser.


Rabbi Wolsey is a magnetic speaker.  He uses simple language.  Much of the time he breaks into a conversational tone, breaking out into eloquent moments from time to time, and one of the most attractive attributes of the man is his whole-souled Americanism—his patriotism, and his desire to see his own country the leader in moral and spiritual affairs as well as every other.—
The Daily News of Lima



Subjects:

The Wandering Jew
I Shall Do As I Please
Fictions About the Jews
The Fighting Spirit
Dare We Be Unpopular
Lincoln's Message to Our Time
Lessing's Nathan the Wise



of the Arkansas State Militia—this as a token of his standing with the leading citizens of that State.  He was also elected by the people of Little Rock as a member of its Board of Education.  This is an evidence of what the people of Little Rock thought of him.

In 1907 he was invited to be the Rabbi of what was then the Scovill Avenue Temple.  This was a small, though the oldest, Jewish congregation of Cleveland.  It was an almost lifeless congregation.  The worshippers were apathetic and indifferent, and they were growing fewer and fewer in number all the time.  From the moment that Rabbi Wolsey took charge of its spiritual activities, the congregation leaped with a bound into new life.  It numbered but 200 families when he took charge, but during the first year of his leadership, it increased almost twofold, raised $100,000 in half an hour for a new Temple, and multiplied activity upon activity for the increase of its religious and moral progress.

Today its new Temple, built at the cost of much sacrifice and labor, stands at the corner of Euclid and East 82nd Street as one of the monuments to Cleveland's architecture.  It has all been designed under the inspiration of Rabbi Wolsey's ideas, and the architects of Cleveland have unanimously characterized it as the finest specimen of Byzantine architecture in Cleveland.  It is one of the sights of the city.  It is a veritable hive of activity.  It is open, not on Sabbaths alone, but every day of the week.  It now has a membership of 625 families, or about 2500 communicants, to prove

Euclid Avenue Temple, Cleveland
Where Rabbi Wolsey's Congregation Worships
 how the people have responded to Rabbi Wolsey's leadership.  Men, women and children are meeting there constantly to do some good, and it is one of the great moral power-houses of Cleveland.  Rabbi Wolsey has made it a great force for the uplift of not alone his own people, but of the general community.  On Sabbaths, it is always crowded with an eager, attentive, enthusiastic congregation, that listens eagerly to the words of its rabbi-orator.  Jew and gentile alike crowd to the Euclid Avenue Temple, that they may learn what new message or interpretation Rabbi Wolsey has for them, and they never go away disappointed.  He handles his subjects courageously and lucidly; he never minces words, and he never fears to defend the unpopular viewpoint.

As to his standing among his own people and colleagues it may be well to state that he is the President of the Jewish Religious Education Association of Ohio, the organization of which all the Rabbis and Jewish Sunday School teachers of Ohio are members.  He is also the President of the Alumni Association of the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, the one great theological seminary of the Reform Jews of America.




Rabbi Louis Wolsey
If You Want to Know What Kind of a Speaker and Thinker Rabbi Wolsey Is—
Read the following Clipping from a Cleveland Paper:


EVER hear Rabbi Wolsey?  He is a big, deep-chested, upstanding, brainy thinker, with a fine personality and a splendidly ringing voice.  No need to bring your ear trumpet when Rabbi Louis Wolsey speaks.  Not afraid is he to say what he thinks, and to say it out loud.
There was, not long ago, in Cleveland, a gathering of some undiscouraged—yes, enthusiastic—exponents of peace.  They talked to several hundred business men, many of whom were in closest sympathy with one or another of the now warring nations of the world.
Mr. Wolsey was last on the program.  But a few moments could be allotted him.  Then, too, he had the disadvantage of an audience already informed and impressed by his associates at the speakers' table, and also, in all probability, beginning to feel impatiently restive because of business calls in prospect after a couple of hours spent at lunch.
From the very first word that fell from the Rabbi's lips he caught and held the crowd attentive and eager.  His was a straight-from-the-shoulder stroke.  Neither mincing his words, nor evading the issue, he sketched with ardent phrase the fundamental causes of international jealousies.—

R. I. Clegg in Ben Franklin News, Cleveland



A Most Eloquent Speaker

THE speaker of the evening at the Memorial Service of the Elks, Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Cleveland, was then introduced.  He is a man of pleasing address, tall and commanding, dark hair and eyes, and a fine example of the cultured and scholarly Hebrew.  Rabbi Wolsey possesses a rich, deep, sonorous voice of wonderful sweetness and carrying power, and his pure diction and perfect enunciation add to the pleasure of his speech.  Of him it can be truthfully said, that he is one of the most eloquent speakers who ever addressed a Bellevue audience.—
Bellevue (O.) Gazette



An Orator

RABBI WOLSEY is entertaining as a speaker on any occasion, but on last evening there was a note of especial charm added in the deep sincerity with which he spoke of the ennobling work of the teacher and the vital relation existing between the teaching fraternity and the social and intellectual life of the State at large.—
Little Rock (Ark.) Democrat


GIFTED with a beautifully modulated voice and a master of its inflection, he is an orator as well as a thinker.  His logical mind finds apt words to express his thoughts, and his aesthetic nature is never at a loss to beautify his logic with pretty imagery.—
Newport (Ark.) Independent



Non-Jewish Men and Women Impressed

THE dedication oration was given by Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Cleveland.  The highest tribute that can be paid to the discourse by this able orator is that very many non-Jewish men and women who heard the eloquent sermon he gave Sunday afternoon, are still talking about it.  Many went so far as to say it was the most learned and scholarly ever delivered by any man in the city.—
Lima (O.) News


HIS voice is clear and vibrant with feeling, his diction forcible and eloquent, and his manner convincing and eloquent.  He made a profound impression on his audience and more than redeemed his reputation as an orator of superior gifts.—
Shreveport (La.) Times


FOR fully an hour and a half last night at the Temple, Rabbi Louis Wolsey of the Euclid Avenue Temple, Cleveland, spoke to an assemblage of deeply interested listeners.  At the conclusion of his address, when practically everyone present went forward to meet and thank him, there was only one criticism and this was a general one, and to the effect that his address was too short.—
Jacksonville (Fla.) Times-Union



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