There is always embarrassment in discussing personalities in connection with their birthdays. No special significance attaches to a day or birth. It is merely a marked date on the calendar; it serves to suggest striking a balance; it intimates the closing of a period, the creaking preparations for an obituary. And what man likes that?
The sixtieth birthday of Dr. Weizmann finds him keen, active and creative, as absorbed in Zionist work as on the day he entered into leadership over eighteen years ago. Although no longer the official head of the Zionist Organization, he is an ever-present force in all international Zionist affairs; last year he assumed the leadership of the Central Committee for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine; and he is now in Rechoboth, engaged in setting up the Chemical Institute, of which he is the director. He is still the mind that leads in constructive, far-visioned building of the Jewish homeland and the renaissance of the Jewish nationality.
I have had the privilege of personal association with Dr. Weizmann since the Vienna Zionist Congress in 1913. He was then one of the younger men of the Democratic faction and a proponent of the Hebrew University. They were then talking of the University; it seemed fantastic and premature; it was dismissed by the more astute political Zionists as the emanation of the batlon mind. Dr. Weizmann was given the privilege of reading a referat at Vienna, but it was Ussishkin who ran away with the honors by making announcement of actual contributions to a University fund. Dr. Weizmann also functioned at that Congress as chairman of the Permanent Committee, and was a loyal supporter of the Zionist Executive, then composed of Otto Warburg, Sokolow, Tschlenow, Levin, Jacobson and Hantke.
He played the part of parliamentary adjuster with Bohemian light-mindedness, and regarded with indifference the battle royal that was fought out between David Wolffsohn and the Executive, seeming not to care much when Wolffsohn won on the question of control of the Zionist bank.
FORESAW BRITAIN’S FUTURE ROLE
The World War transformed Dr. Weizmann. It made an earnest, responsible man of the easygoing raconteur and wit, of the controversialist who specialized in humor and satire. Even in the early days, he foresaw as others did, but with more conviction, the possible role Great Britain would play in Jewish destiny. He had settled down in Manchester as a professor of chemistry, and was making trial of his powers in conversations with British politicians and intellectual men. What he learned of leadership, which he applied later in the Zionist movement, came from his British contacts. He knew the leaders of the Allied nations, the men who shaped policies and directed the War. He made a deep personal impression upon Balfour, Lloyd George, Robert Cecil, General Smuts and the French statesmen. In fact, all the men who later sat at Versailles and remade the map of Europe had been drawn to Dr. Weizmann as the exponent of a fascinating ideal.
He learned all the ways of statesmanship from these men. They were engaged in liquidating the War. They were called upon to make decisions that would carry the willing support of the Allies and would make the right impression upon the civilized world. Whether the decision was right or wrong, necessity drove them to draw the balance as best they knew how, and make an end of the business. The important thing was to get through with it. They could not allow themselves to be controlled by dogmas or prejudices, but had to adjust all their thinking to the need of stabilizing the world. They regarded the logical as a straight-jacket. They had to be mobile, eclectic, using imagination and improvisation to get them over the rocky road of realistic difficulties. The responsibilities of the world were on their shoulders; they had to take it out of the War and as soon as possible set it on the road to “business as usual.” They were therefore adept in compromise and adjustment; for they had to be opportunists if they wanted to end the discussions.
It was this spirit which seems to have impressed Dr. Weizmann. He had surpassing mobility and great energy. He had a mind which could make plausible and consistent even the most contradictory ideas. He always managed to work his way out of a tight corner. It was these qualities which enabled him to carry the responsibilities of the Zionist movement over a longer period of years than any other personality had ever managed to sustain. He saw the movement through its formative period of reality—from the embryo of the Balfour Declaration, through the days of the Zionist Commission in Palestine, through the establishment of the Keren Hayesod and up to the aftermath of the Passfield Paper, which brought about his resignation to make way for a new Zionist administration which faced the necessity of creating a new method for the building of the National Home.
DOMINANT FIGURE FOR FIFTEEN YEARS
He was the dominant personality in Zionism over the period of 1915 to 1930. I have seen no man during all that time who could so quicken the pulse of the movement and engross its interests in dramatic changes, who could with such charm and clearness expound plans and aspirations to the larger world as did Dr. Weizmann. He built up a network of world opinion favorable to Zionism through personal contact with the leaders of opinion in various {SPAN}##nds{/SPAN}. He made Zionism appear in their eyes as something imbued with mystic fervor, something Messianic, with an exotic tinge that aroused the deeply religious and the imaginative. He was not a Zionist theoretician, but a composer of the elemerts of Zionist idealism. He was never dead sure of himself, and could always see the doubtful that fringed even his most earnest convictions. He was a poet whose thinking was determined by his mood.
Nevertheless, taking all the years of his service together, he maintained a steady and straight line, and from certain fundamental convictions he never deviated. From the first, he identified himself with Chaluziot (labor pioneers) He always felt it as the finest expression of Zionist idealism. Although it brought a great deal which he could not accept, he regarded it as the most dependable factor in the renaissance. It represented courage, sacrifice; it represented determination to have Jewish life entangled in the very roots of the economic and social system in Palestine. It stood for the authentic realities of nationalism.
ALWAYS BELIEVED IN GREAT BRITAIN
He also never deviated from the line that represented confidence in the Mandatory Government. He believed in Great Britain. He felt that more was to be achieved through co-operation with Great Britain than through the pursuit of any alternative policy. It was easy to pick flaws in the British Administration; it was harder to abide by its policies and to keep on building. You might win your argument against the Government without much effort, in your own mind, in the mind of the public; but that was not a sufficient basis upon which the actual building could be continued. He regarded always the continued piling on of reality upon reality in Palestine, the gradual increase of power through numbers and resources, as the determining factor in every phase of Zionist policy.
He staked his leadership upon his faith in Great Britain. Often, he took upon himself the defense of its policies, with disastrous results to his influence in the movement. With a certain perversity derived from his dialectical experiences in the Yeshivah, he would take up the case for Great Britain at a time when it was entitled to no such advocacy on his part. He wanted to offset the extremists with over-moderation. It was quixotic and foolhardy, but showed the strength of his faith in that justice which was ultimately to come from Great Britain.
SPIRIT DOMINATES ORGANIZATION TODAY
The reminiscent mood involves the past tense, and the past tense in this connection suggests finality in Dr. Weizmann’s career. All that has here been said in the past tense continues in the present, for I am firmly convinced that Dr. Weizmann continues to be, in fact, an integral part of the Zionist leadership even though he has officially taken a leave of absence. His spirit dominates, insofar as it represents faith and confidence, much of Zionist policy of today. His temperamental outbursts may now be looked upon with affectionate regret. But his single-minded devotion to the day by day effort to build up strength for the Jewish people in Palestine remains a dominant note of the Zionist Administration of today.
Dr. Weizmann maintains all the ties he formerly had with Palestine, and continues in the most friendly and cooperative spirit to work hand in hand with the Zionist Executive. He is accorded the admiration of all who believe in gallantry in political life. To a large extent, it is a matter for himself to decide now whether the influence he exercises in Zionism shall be transformed into terms of official leadership. The Organization has grown in power and influence during the past four years. Should Dr. Weizmann return to the place he is entitled to occupy in the leadership of the Zionist Organization, he will find a larger and more experienced group of men with whom to be associated in the further development of Jewish Palestine.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
