Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952)

We have the right to build our home in Eretz Yisra’el, harming no one, helping all.

To write a brief biography of Chaim Weizmann is impossible, for his was the central career of Jewish history in the first half of the twentieth century. As he reminded a thousand audiences, Weizmann’s roots were in the old ghetto of the Russian Pale of Settlement. He was born in the village of Motol, near the city of Pinsk, and received the usual pious early training. He attained a doctorate from the University of Geneva in 1900 and remained in the city to teach chemistry there for the next four years.

Weizmann moved to England in 1904. After some months in Manchester, he was appointed to the university faculty. During the First World War, he transferred to London to direct a special laboratory that the British government had created for his important work on the production of acetone, a vital ingredient of naval gunpowder. Weizmann remained at this post until after the war, when he became almost totally involved in Zionism. Nonetheless, throughout his life, he continued, with some fraction of his time, to work as a research chemist. During the Second World War he again pursued chemical research of military importance, both in England and the United States.

Weizmann’s Zionism was a natural outgrowth of his early upbringing. He adhered to the movement announced by Herzl at the very beginning and was already a delegate to the Second Zionist Congress in 1898. He was never in complete sympathy with Herzl, whom he faulted for not loving Judaism as much as he loved Jews, although he understood that “Had Herzl been to a heder [religious school], never would the Jews have followed him. He charmed the Jews because he came to them from the European culture.”

From the beginning of his days in England, Weizmann was busy as a Zionist making contacts and converts in the highest political circles. He led the complex negotiations in London that resulted in the Balfour Declaration. After the British general Edmund Allenby occupied southern Palestine, Weizmann headed the Zionist Commission, which went out to advise the British military government on behalf of Jewish national interest in the country.

In 1919 Weizmann was among the delegation leaders who appeared before the Versailles Peace Conference to present the case for Zionist aspirations in Palestine.

At the London Zionist Conference of 1920, Weizmann was elected president of the World Zionist Organization; he would retain this office, with an interruption from 1931 to 1935, until 1946. As the responsible leader of Zionism, he had to deal with many internal rows. Moreover, in political crisis after crisis he had to defend the Zionist position before the world and often had to induce his followers to swallow bitter pills. For example, in the emotional speech excerpted here, he asked them to accept the Peel Commission’s partition proposal as at least a beginning for negotiation.

At the first Zionist Congress after the Second World War, Weizmann was not reelected to the presidency. Abba Hillel Silver and David Ben-Gurion both stood against him in favor of a more active policy of resistance to the British. Nonetheless, his personal eminence was unchallenged. When the state was declared, Weizmann was immediately invited to be president of its Provisional Government Council. Then, from 1949 to his death in 1952, he was the first president of Israel.

On the Report of the Palestine Commission (Twentieth Zionist Congress, Zurich, August 4, 1937)

I say to the Mandatory Power: You shall not outrage the Jewish nation. You shall not play fast and loose with the Jewish people. Say to us frankly that the National Home is closed, and we shall know where we stand. But this trifling with a nation bleeding from a thousand wounds must not be done by the British whose Empire is built on moral principles—that mighty Empire must not commit this sin against the People of the Book. Tell us the truth. This at least we have deserved.

[Here Weizmann broke down and wept, and then continued after a pause.]

Permit me, at this historic juncture, to say a word to the Arab people. We know that the Mufti [of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini] and [another Nazi collaborator Fawzi al-] Kawkaji are not the Arab nation. In the present world those who have bombs and revolvers at command wield political power. But in the history of a nation their life is like one day, even if it extends over years.

There is an Arab nation with a glorious past. To that nation we have stretched out our hand, and do so even now—but on one condition. Just as we wish them to overcome their crisis and to revert to the great tradition of a mighty and civilized Arab people, so must they know that we have the right to build our home in Eretz Yisra’el, harming no one, helping all. When they acknowledge this we shall reach common ground, and I hope for the time when we shall once more recognize each other. . . .

I consider that two criteria have to be applied in appraising such a principle. The first—does it offer a basis for a genuine growth of Jewish life? I mean both in quality and in volume; does it offer a basis for the development of our young Palestinian culture, of which the Report speaks with true respect? Does this principle afford a basis for building up such a Jewish life as we picture, for rearing true men and women, for creating a Jewish agriculture, industry, literature, etc.—in short, all that the ideal of Zionism comprises?

This is one test. For our great teacher, Ahad Ha’Am, who is with us no longer, it might have been the only one. But times have changed, and Jewish history, which, alas! for the most part, is not ours to mold, faces us with a tragic problem. We must, therefore, apply yet another test. Does the proposal contribute to the solution of the Jewish problem, a problem pregnant with danger to ourselves and to the world? . . .