Chaim Weizmann: A Biography
By Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golan
Brandeis University Press (pp. 820)
Chaim Weizmann was a remarkable man who truly deserved the accolade of “a founding father of Israel.”
This majestic work by Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography is as absorbing as it is comprehensive. Both authors have written about Weizmann for many years and this book is a tour de force that should be on the shelves of anyone with an interest in the history and evolution of the Zionist movement.
In their quest to research both the scientist and the Zionist leader in depth, the authors were able to locate his grandson, living in Reading, outside London. The grandson of another well-known Zionist, Buffy Dugdale (the niece of Arthur, Lord Balfour) was also found. Reinharz and Golani also discovered the papers of Harold Davies, who served as Weizmann’s laboratory assistant at the University of Manchester over a century ago.
Weizmann’s journey was extraordinary: From Motol near Pinsk to Berlin to Geneva to Manchester to living in a 15-room mansion in London’s Addison Road before passing his later years at London’s most luxurious hotel, the Dorchester.
He emerged from a background of Hovevei Zion and the circle of Ahad Ha’am. Like many families during the dying years of tsarism, each of the Weizmanns followed a different path.
One of his sisters, Gita, married a Bundist, while a brother, Shmuel, became a member of the territorialist Zionist Socialist Workers Party and later a captain of industry in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Chaim Weizmann even met Lenin at a Paris café in April 1910. The future leader of the October Revolution disparaged Zionism and rubbished the Marxist-Zionist theories of Ber Borokhov.
ACCORDING TO the authors, Weizmann’s charisma was always at odds with his “palpable elitism.” Yet this is what propelled his diplomatic drive to promote the cause of Zion at the highest echelons of the British government. They argue that he was a pragmatist and not a seeker after utopia; that he was, above all, a tactician who disliked the theoretical debates and empty rhetoric of many early Zionists.
In July 1905, Weizmann was appointed to a post to teach organic chemistry at the University of Manchester. Renting a room in an impoverished neighborhood famed for its brothels, he was appointed a research fellow at the modest annual salary of £50.
When he arrived in the UK in 1904 less than 5% of English Jews were members of the English Zionist Federation. Little more than a decade later, he was dancing around his dinner table with his wife and Jabotinsky to celebrate the Balfour Declaration.
Weizmann was sensitive to criticism and expected absolute loyalty from his circle of supporters and admirers. Indeed he fell out with Israel Sieff – albeit temporarily. Pinchas Rutenberg, Judah Magnes, and Louis Brandeis all came in for criticism. Weizmann grew deeply disheartened with the political shenanigans and the trivia of Diaspora disputes to the point of a threatened resignation.
Science was his escape from politics and his research in his laboratory was ”a life preserver.” Nevertheless, in his professional work in chemistry, he was never appointed a professor at Manchester. The authors surmise that this was “not only on scholarly grounds but also on political ones.”
During that period, Weizmann was close to Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Jewish Legion during World War I. The majority of Zionist leaders at that time refused to take sides in the war, hedging their bets on the eventual victor. Weizmann and Jabotinsky alone declared their unequivocal support for the Allies. While both men professed a life-long faith in diplomacy and in England, their relationship during the inter-war years was mired in acrimonious disputes – in particular when Jabotinsky established the Revisionist movement in 1925. The authors evaluate Weizmann’s view of Jabotinsky as “a verbal gymnast, a man who liked to make grand gestures but dodged responsibility.”
Weizmann proclaimed his own adherence to “the prophetic outlook of Zionism” which was misinterpreted as being “soft” and not “tough.” He commented in December 1948 that he was never ashamed of his view.
AT THE beginning of their married life, the Weizmanns lived beyond their means, hiring a nanny and later going on several holidays abroad each year. According to Vera, her husband possessed little financial acumen. Their financial situation finally changed due to his research on the micro-organism, Clostridium acetobutylicum.
He had originally embarked on a program to make isoprene – the precursor of synthetic rubber – in the laboratory. A byproduct of this investigation was acetone, which, when doused with cordite eliminated the smoke arising from fired guns, resulting in the enemy no longer being able to discern the exact position of the opposing army’s guns. Declaring Weizmann’s work to be “secret,” the British Ministry of Munitions asked him to manufacture 30,000 tons of acetone for use in World War I.
He had suddenly not only achieved his desire to become wealthy but had also become able to use his financial position to advance his Zionist diplomacy, such as by throwing numerous dinner parties for the British elite. When he lost his son, Michael “Wiggy” of the 502 Squadron in February 1942 during World War II, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and King George from Buckingham Palace sent him personal letters of condolence.
HOWEVER, THE first Zionist Congress in Basel in December 1946 after the Holocaust essentially marked the end of the Weizmann era and his displacement by David Ben-Gurion. Weizmann was deeply aggrieved that he had not been one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence.
Nevertheless, he became the first citizen of the State of Israel to receive an Israeli identity card (numbered “1”), for which he renounced 40 years of British citizenship.
When the state was established Weizmann was already in decline, “a Samson shorn of his locks.” He stood aside during the War of Independence in 1948 and did not interfere in either military or political matters. Later, in a letter to his long-time British supporter, Simon Marks, he commented that Ben-Gurion reminded him of Winston Churchill – someone “who is good in war and less so in peace.”
In February 1949, Weizmann was chosen as the first president of the State of Israel. Outwardly, he played the ceremonial role assigned to him, but his tenure as president was largely one of inaction, having been elected to the post when he was already “on the brink of incapacitation.” Afflicted by a bout of chronic pneumonia, he descended into the role of a figurehead, half-blind, depressed, and fatigued. Latterly, he did not always recognize his wife, Vera.
His contribution was complete, the job was done, the rebel against Herzl had completed his journey.
UPON HIS death in November 1952, the government declared a week of national mourning, schools and army units held discussions about him, and newspapers put out special editions to record his work for the cause of Zion. A fifth of Israel’s population passed by his coffin.
Although writers often embellish the pasts of national figures to produce an imaginary history and consequently perpetuate the legacy of their subjects, Reinharz and Golani, both academics, wanted to discover the inner Weizmann, the man behind the public mask. They viewed Weizmann’s autobiography, Trial and Error, as good on the early years but less so on when he was at the height of his power. They have therefore produced an exceptional book for the English-language reader. It will become the definitive work on Chaim Weizmann in the years to come.
Jerusalem Post 18 October 2024