Israel’s 1st president disdained European Jews, ‘but he was ready to die for them’
Two historians co-author intimate portrait of fallible leader, born exactly 150 years ago, with new details on Chaim Weizmann’s struggles after losing his RAF pilot son in WWII
Reporter at The Times of Israel
Israel’s founding president, Chaim Weizmann, suffered from a sharp decline in mental health during the final decade of his life. After the loss of his son Michael in World War II, Weizmann took to international travel and “relations or infatuations with many women,” according to his latest biographers.
“Chaim Weizmann: A Biography” — co-written in Hebrew by Jehuda Reinharz and Motti Golani, and published in English last May — recontextualizes the Zionist leader known for securing a homeland-promising declaration from Britain’s Lord Balfour. By the time Weizmann ascended to the new state’s symbolic presidency three and a half decades later, both his political power and mental health were largely shattered.
“Weizmann was willing to sacrifice everything for the good of the big task and plan he had: his family, his health, his career as a highly promising chemist. And after 1948, [he sacrificed] his place as a leader who can no longer carry on,” said Reinharz in an interview with The Times of Israel.
Born in Belarus 150 years ago this month, on November 27, 1874, Weizmann was the third of his parents’ 15 children. After studying chemistry in Germany, he relocated to Britain where he came to direct British Admiralty Laboratories during World War I. A savvy relationship-builder, Weizmann became the British government’s go-to Jew regarding the Mandate for Palestine.
Although he grew up in the pogrom-ridden Russian Empire, Weizmann viewed himself as a European with roots in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain. His disdain for Jews in Eastern Europe, said Reinharz, was akin to psychology’s concept of projection.
“Weizmann’s disdain for Polish Jewry and Eastern European Jewry in general, was first of all a rebellion against the culture from which he himself stemmed,” said Reinharz.
“He adopted the elitism of the upper-class English man,” said Reinharz. “The result was a feeling of contempt toward the Jews in the eastern European villages and cities, their dress, their mode of living and their religious beliefs. He was not willing to live with them, but he was ready to die for them,” he said.
Overshadowed by Theodore Herzl and David Ben-Gurion in the Zionist pantheon, Weizmann is most comparable to Mahatma Gandhi, said Reinharz.
“Both [Israel and India] emerged out of the retreat of the British Empire. Like Weizmann, Gandhi led his people on a path that was marked by ups and downs in relations with Britain. Like Weizmann, his exceptional personality was the key to his leadership,” wrote the authors.
Reinharz was born in Haifa in 1944, during the British Mandate. He authored several dozen books on Jewish and Israeli history and won numerous literary awards. His co-author, Golani, is a prolific author of books on Zionism and Israel and chair of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University.
‘Contours of memory’
For decades, biographers of Weizmann avoided writing about the late president’s personal struggles and mental health. However, Reinharz and Golani took a less obsequious approach.
“We do not believe that there is such a thing as political biography,” said Reinharz. “There is only a biography that is trying to understand the subject from all available resources and in all of its aspects. A person is ‘one container’ and his health also has a place in his politics. This is dramatically true in the case of Weizmann, who was a hypochondriac,” said Reinharz.
Weizmann never fully recovered from the loss of his son, who was a pilot with the Royal Air Force. In February 1942, flight lieutenant Michael Oser Weizmann, 25, was killed in action when his plane crashed over the Bay of Biscay. His body was never recovered.
After Michael’s death, Weizmann occupied himself with solitary travel and extramarital affairs, write the authors. (His elder son, Benjamin (Benjie) Weizmann, did not immigrate to Israel and lived as a farmer in Ireland following his discharge from the Royal Artillery in World War II.)
“After 1944, [Weizmann] became weaker politically, mentally and physically,” said Reinharz. “There were many months in which he traveled by himself. He was constantly traveling to New York, London, Paris, Jerusalem, and more. He was in great distress after his son Michael [was killed] and [those were the] years in which he had relations or infatuations with many women,” said Reinharz.
In the book’s closing chapter, called “Contours of Memory,” the authors analyze the final years of Weizmann’s life, including how both Weizmann and his wife worked to shape his legacy.
In particular, Weizmann and his wife Vera — a medical doctor — were eager to elevate the Weizmann Institute of Science. During Weizmann’s presidency, the couple lived in a house on the institute’s grounds in Rehovot, outside Tel Aviv. The institute was named for Weizmann in 1949, as something of a consolation prize for the presidency not coming with real power.
To keep the eyes of future historians away from certain aspects of her husband’s life, Vera Weizmann — who died in 1966 — destroyed more than two decades of personal correspondence with him.
“[One] hint can be found in the few letters that did survive from that period. They are full of optimism, admiration for her husband and full of joy. So it is clear to us what it is she wanted to hide from her husband and posterity,” said Reinharz.
In three years as Israel’s president, Weizmann regularly hosted prime minister Ben-Gurion at his home in Rehovot for consultations. When Weizmann died in 1952, some obituaries called him “the greatest Jewish emissary to the gentile world.”
The enduring impact of Michael’s death on Vera and Chaim Weizmann is evident at the couple’s grave in Rehovot. At Vera’s request, the monument designed for her husband resembles the tombstones made for missing British soldiers.
Chaim Weizmann: A Biography by Jehuda Reinharz, Motti Golani, Haim Watzman (Translator)
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