CHAIM WEIZMANN

Encyclopedic biography of the first president of Israel.

Born in the Russian-controlled Pale of Settlement to prosperous religious Jews, Weizmann (1874-1952) studied chemistry in Berlin and styled himself a thoroughly Westernized Russian Jewish intellectual, and he was swept up in the nationalist Jewish movement galvanized by Theodor Herzl at the turn of the century. In 1904, he moved to Manchester to work in a chemistry laboratory. Immersed in English Zionist circles, he befriended Conservative Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour, and Weizmann persuaded him about the passion Jews felt for settling in Palestine, as well as founding the Hebrew University. Proving himself useful to England in World War I due to his bacteriology research, and moving about in the highest milieu, Weizmann hammered away at British objections. As Jewish history professors Reinharz and Golani show, the Balfour Declaration, issued late in 1917, came at a moment when British military prospects in the region were at a low point. British policymakers, with an eye to American Jewish interests and the threat of the German government’s courting of German Jews, “judged Zionism to be a potentially serious force worth support and cultivation.” Weizmann worked to unify the international Jewish community and keep immigration to Palestine open as another world war loomed, despite growing Arab opposition and British restrictions, and his charismatic personality dominated the World Zionist Organization as well as the Jewish Agency. In this definitive bio, the authors studiously portray Weizmann as a skilled tactician, striking out alone often righteously, impatient with the progress of Zionism and often failing to include others in his decision-making. They depict him as a Moses figure, a bridge between Herzl and David Ben-Gurion who toiled to advance the Zionist dream yet saw it to fruition only briefly.

A scrupulously detailed work chronicles the incremental triumph of Zionism through its greatest champion.