Weizmann, Chaim

▪ Israeli president and scientist

Introduction

in full  Chaim Azriel Weizmann 

born Nov. 27, 1874, Motol, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Belarus]

died Nov. 9, 1952, Reḥovot, Israel

 first president of the new nation of Israel (1949–52), who was for decades the guiding spirit behind the World Zionist Organization.

Early life and education.

      Chaim Azriel Weizmann was born of humble parents in November 1874, in Motol, a backwater hamlet in the western Russian empire, the third of 15 children of Ezer Weizmann, a lumber transporter. Motol lay close to dense forests, surroundings that instilled in the boy a love of trees that was to persist the rest of his life. He spent adolescent summers riding his father's log rafts downriver to Baltic ports.

      Despite slender means, the parents arranged for their offspring to receive the benefits of advanced education after strict Jewish orthodox schooling in childhood. All except one of the children ultimately became scientists, physicians, dentists, engineers, and pedagogues. Chaim himself, on reaching 11, was sent to the secondary school in nearby Pinsk, where his unusual scientific aptitude was encouraged by a discerning science master.

      Upon matriculating (1891), the young student, irked by university quotas restricting Jewish admissions, left Russia to study chemistry in Germany and Switzerland, eking out small remittances from home by teaching science and Russian. After obtaining the Ph.D. magna cum laude at Fribourg, Switz. (1900), Weizmann taught chemistry at Geneva University and concurrently engaged in organic chemistry research, concentrating on dyestuffs and aromatics. By selling several patented discoveries in the late 1890s, he mitigated his chronic financial straits and was able to help his younger brothers and sisters through college. In 1900 he met Vera Chatzman, a medical student, in Geneva, and six years later they married; they had two sons.

      Weizmann settled in England in 1904 upon taking up a science appointment at the University of Manchester. During World War I he gave valuable assistance to the British munitions industry, then (1916) in dire need of acetone (a vital ingredient of cordite), by devising a process to extract the solvent from maize. This achievement signally aided the Zionist (Zionism) political negotiations he was then conducting with the British government.

      Although he gained international renown as a chemist, it was as a politician that he was most eminent. As a youth he imbibed Jewish nationalist culture and ideals (as distinct from traditional pietistic knowledge) under his father's influence. At the age of 11 he wrote a letter in Hebrew to his Hebrew teacher in Motol urging with boyish fervour that the Jewish people must return to Zion.

Early political involvement.

      Throughout his student and teaching years he assumed increasing dominance as a Zionist politician. He initially gained prominence as the leader of the “Young Zionist” opposition to Theodor Herzl (Herzl, Theodor), the founder of modern Zionism, especially in the “Uganda dispute,” which erupted in 1903–05 over a British proposal for Jewish agricultural settlement in East Africa. Elected to the General Council (Actions Committee) in 1905, he played only a secondary role in the movement until 1914. Then, during the early years of the war he took an important part in the negotiations that led up to the government's Balfour Declaration (November 1917) favouring the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

      While in Jerusalem he travelled to ʿAqaba, southern Transjordan (June 1918), where he met Amīr Fayṣal (Fayṣal I) of Hejaz (later first king of Iraq) to discuss Jewish–Arab cooperation. They met again and reached written agreement during the Versailles peace conference (Paris Peace Conference) (July 1919). As an observer, Weizmann attended the San Remo conference of (San Remo, Conference of) Allied Powers (1920), which confirmed the Balfour Declaration and awarded the Palestine Mandate to Great Britain. The same year, Weizmann, who had been president of the English Zionist Federation from 1917, became head of the World Zionist Organization. From 1921 onward he travelled the world tirelessly, preaching Zionist ideology and appealing for funds at mass rallies.

      Weizmann's skill as a negotiator was severely tested during the 1920s. Great Britain, confronted by the mounting problems and civil disorders stemming from nascent Arab nationalism, gradually retreated from its commitment to foster a Jewish national home. A dauntless protagonist, Weizmann nevertheless plunged into the ceaseless imbroglios of British policy vacillations, Arab and Jewish revolts, and Zionist internecine feuds and conflicts that were commingled with opposition to himself by adversaries.

Conflict with Zionist extremists.

      Eventually, Weizmann's doctrines of caution antagonized extremist politicians. Exasperated by counsels of gradualism, some Zionists accused him of undue amenability toward Britain in his political thinking and performance—a characteristic they averred he owed to the genteel influences of the upper English society in which he moved. His control over the world nationalist movement was challenged after Britain announced policy changes unfavourable to Zionist work in Palestine. He therefore resigned in pique in 1930 but was prevailed upon to remain in office. At the 1931 congress, however, he was subjected to a vote of nonconfidence and was not reelected president of the Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, the expanded body of which he had been the main architect in 1929.

      Weizmann turned again to science, founding the Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Reḥovot, Palestine (1934), with the help of friends in England. Earlier, he had toured South Africa (1931) and played a leading part in public efforts to save German Jewry and its property after the advent of the Nazis (1933).

      Back in office by election (1935), Weizmann supported the recommendation of a British royal inquiry commission (1937) to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas, arguing that “half a loaf was better than none.” Opponents furiously challenged this expedience as pusillanimity and craven submission to British interests, though in the end the commission's plan failed because of Arab rather than Jewish rejection.

      Weizmann's unflagging insistence during World War II brought about the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group in the British army. The Sieff Research Institute under his direction also aided the Allied military effort by providing essential pharmaceuticals, and Weizmann conferred with the United States and British governments on methods of producing synthetic rubber. His younger son, Michael, was killed in 1942 while serving as an officer in the Royal Air Force.

      Zionist antagonists revived allegations of Weizmann's pro-British prejudice after he had denounced (1945) on moral grounds the violent campaign waged by Jewish dissident groups against British forces in Palestine. He again lost the world Zionist presidency (1946) and never returned to the official leadership. Nevertheless, Jewish people as a whole continued to revere him.

President of Israel.

      Early in 1948, though divested of formal office, he was sent to Washington by the Zionist leadership for crucial talks with Pres. Harry Truman (Truman, Harry S.). Weizmann persuaded the United States administration both to drop its trusteeship plan for Palestine—a plan that would have jeopardized founding the State of Israel—and to forego its proposal to exclude Palestine's southern province (Negev) from Israel. His intervention also led to American recognition of the newly proclaimed state (May 14) and the grant of a $100,000,000 loan. That September Weizmann became president of the Provisional State Council and the following February was elected president of the State of Israel.

      Worn out by sorrow and arduous political strife and afflicted by frail health and failing sight, he nevertheless maintained a brave front in postwar years. He died in November 1952, after a long illness. He was given a state burial on his estate at Reḥovot. More than 250,000 people filed by the catafalque. The simple, unadorned grave is visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.

Julian Louis Meltzer

Additional Reading

A copious literature on Zionism, Palestine, and Israel contains multiple references to Chaim Weizmann's role in the contemporary context. Those more directly concerned are: Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (1949, reprinted 1972); Meyer Weisgal (ed.), Chaim Weizmann, Statesman/Scientist (1944); Samuel Shihor, Hollow Glory: The Last Days of Chaim Weizmann, First President of Israel (1960; Eng. trans. from the Hebrew of 1958); Meyer Weisgal and Joel Carmichael (eds.), Chaim Weizmann (1962); and The Impossible Takes Longer: The Memoirs of Vera Weizmann (1967), written by his wife. Harold M. Blumberg, Weizmann, His Life and Times (1975), adds little to the biographical literature on Weizmann but provides a valuable pictorial history. In progress is a complete edition of The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Leonard Stein, et al. (eds.), (1968– ). He himself wrote 100 scientific papers and numerous political essays and speeches in addition to a voluminous correspondence and registered 110 patents singly or in collaboration.

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