Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani’s Chaim Weizmann offers a definitive account of the oft-overlooked Zionist statesman. Known for helping arrange the Balfour Declaration, and for having a crucial meeting with President Harry Truman that inspired America’s formal recognition of the State of Israel in May 1948, Weizmann went on to serve as Israel’s first president. Reinharz and Golani paint a detailed and engaging portrait of Weizmann’s countless, albeit little-documented, accomplishments.
Born in Russia, Weizmann spent most of his adult years in England. But, as the authors note, he felt most alive while traveling, and his peripatetic nature made him uniquely positioned to establish and strengthen international support for the Zionist cause. Reinharz and Golani write, “The proto-Zionist movement that arose in Europe in the late nineteenth century was strong in ideology but weak in practice.” This left room for a figure like Weizmann — who was bolstered by his belief that “practical work was more important than theoretical formulations” — to play a large role. He was a prolific leader: he helped launch Hebrew University, a journal, and a number of other initiatives. In one nine-month period, he sent five hundred letters in Russian, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, and French, “seeking to galvanize his friends and to spur them to work on the tasks they had been assigned.”
The book gives readers an intimate look at the internal politics of the various organizations and Zionist congresses in which Weizmann participated. He interacted passionately with David Ben-Gurion, the Zionist cultural luminary Ahad Ha’am, and heads of state like Winston Churchill and Harry Truman. As the authors recount, “As early as 1902 he had written to Vera, then his fiancée, that the burden of fulfilling the Zionist dream was given to a few chosen men and women. The sense that he was one of them continued to be a motivating force in his life.”
Reinharz and Golani also detail Weizmann’s financial and professional challenges as a scientist, his depression, and his multiple affairs. Perhaps most tragic was the disappointment Weizmann felt when serving as a figurehead for the country he helped to build. Reinharz and Golani recount how for a few hours, Weizmann thought he would be Israel’s first prime minister and actually run the country. Between official appointments, for which he appeared charismatically and confidently, he was frustrated that he no longer had the zestful sense of mission that defined his earlier decades. While it was “up to Ben-Gurion to build the state,” Weizmann remains a source of admiration. After all, he “appeared seemingly out of nowhere during World War I. The war’s impact on the Zionist movement pushed this man, a second-rank activist in a debilitated Zionist movement, onto center stage.”
Dr. Stu Halpern is Senior Advisor to the Provost of Yeshiva University. He has edited or coedited 17 books, including Torah and Western Thought: Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity and Books of the People: Revisiting Classic Works of Jewish Thought, and has lectured in synagogues, Hillels and adult Jewish educational settings across the U.S.
