Behind the Headlines First Biography of Chaim Weizmann

Books about the Entebbe rescue mission appeared within days. But the first biography of Chaim Weizmann, leader of Zionism and first President of Israel, has only just appeared nearly a quarter of a century after his death. Its author is Barnet Litvinoff, who in 1953 wrote the first biography of David Ben Gurion. Like the latter book, “Weizmann, last of the Patriarchs,” has begun receiving admiring notices in the British press. It will be published in the United States in November by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Interviewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Litvinoff asserted that his book shows the peerless contribution of Weizmann to Jewish nationhood. The fact that no biography had appeared for so long was, he said no accident.

After the establishment of the State. “Ben Gurionism became the creed of the country.” The Israeli education system ran down the diaspora, with whose weakness Weizmann was identified. There was also the fact that Weizmann had written “Trial and Error,” a masterpiece of autobiography.

Yet “Weizmann was the whole and Ben Gurion merely a part of the whole. Weizmann led the Jewish world, including Palestine. Ben Gurion was the leader in Palestine,” Litvinoff observed.

BOOK USES PRIMARY SOURCES

The new book covers Weizmann’s entire life: from his birth in Motol to his death in Rehovot. It draws copiously on the Weizmann Papers, of which Litvinoff is now the English edition’s editor under the overall supervision of Meyer Weisgal. Litvinoff edited five of the seven English volumes which have so far appeared. The whole work is expected to fill 23 volumes.

Litvinoff also drew on other primary sources–including the Zionist Archives in Jerusalem and New York, and Britain’s Public Records Office. The biography is, therefore, a major historical study of the whole Zionist struggle.

One of the areas on which it casts new light is Weizmann’s “conquest” of American Jewry and its unification on the Zionist platform. It was at Weizmann’s instigation that the Biltmore Conference of 1942 was held–the first global conference of American Zionism.

ROLE OF AMERICAN JEWRY

The book also puts into a far more critical light what Litvinoff calls “the defection of American Jewry.” Very early on, Weizmann saw that U.S. Jewry was vital for Zionism. Yet it would not criticize Britain until 1942, and then only after Pearl Harbor. American Jewry had been pacifist venerating President Roosevelt, who had been brought to power by New York and the big cities where Jews were strong, according to Litvinoff.

Yet Roosevelt had not wanted to rock the boat in the Middle East. He had been told that America’s oil supplies would be exhausted by 1957, so he was busy filching the Saudi oil fields from under Britain’s nose. The State Department in its appeasement of Ibn Saud and the Arabs, was be having like Britain’s colonial office, and American Jewish was reluctant to criticize Roosevelt.

Strangely, Litvinoff’s biography of Weizmann is not the one the author expected to appear. About five years ago, Richard Crossman, the former Labor Minister, was commissioned to write the first authorized biography. It was hoped that it would appear by 1974, the centenary of Weizmann’s birth. Litvinoff was Crossman’s research director.

But Crossman, busy on other works and fighting against the cancer which killed him early in 1974, backed out of the project after making little progress. It was handed instead to historian Walter Laqueur, who is understood to have been approached even before Crossman came on the scene. Litvinoff, disappointed at not being asked to write the authorized biography, decided to write his own work. It took him a year to complete it.

It is somewhat shorter than he would have liked–due to the limit set by British publisher Hodder and Stoughton. He would have liked to devote more space to Weizmann’s family life. Nevertheless, he has done Justice to his subject. Twenty-four years is a long time. But Chaim Weizmann’s first biography was worth waiting for.