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February 14, 1975 - Image 54

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1975-02-14

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••' •



54 Friday; February 14, 1975

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Jottings

for a

Portrait

by Meyer W. Weisgal*

Richard Crossman, in his Weizmann
Memorial Lecture, delivered at Rehovoth
in 1959 threw much light on Weizmann's
pro-British statesmanship. His salient
achievement, explained CrossMan, was that
he persuaded British statesmen to take. a
considerable risk for the sake -of a good
cause.
Here, indeed, we claim that the per-
sonality of a single man changed the
course of history. Without Weizmann,
clearly there would never ..have been a
Balfour Declaration or a Mandate; only
the halting, painful build-up of Jewish life
in Zion or the sort which had preceded
World War I, and which well might have
been extinguished by the convulsion_s of
Arab nationalism.
But for how long could the Weizmann
spell last ? Could it hold out until the' Jew-
ish population of Palestine had grown
strong enough to fend for itself? Perhaps
the very kernel of Weizmann's national
achievement lies in the answer to these
questions for, by the very force of his
personality, he gave the State in-the-mak-
ing just the time it needed.
Laboriously, patiently, and adamantly
he compelled his followers to build the
Jewish homeland regardless of the political
climate that prevailed. Time and again,
he reminded all of us - that a State is not
created by decree: Even if all the govern-
ments of the world give us a country, he
said, it will only be a gift of words. "But
if the Jewish people go and build Palestine,
the State will be a reality:"
He hoped that when it came into being,
the Jewish State would do so by normal
evolution, developing from mandated home-
land to sovereign commonwealth. But the
Russian view of politics and life, and of
Jewish people, paced, to speak, by his
the Anglo-Saxon ordering of society.
ceaseless exhortation, had built so solidly
But the projection of Weizmann's per-
and so well that the infant state survived
sonality in the political structure and spi-
even the fearful convulsions of its pre-
ritual atmosphere of the State of Israel is
mature birth and emerged viable, strong
not more than one facet of his seminal
enough to live.
role in Jewish life. Above all else, the
• was
Were I to be asked today to assess the
an integrating and synthesizing force, and
respective contribution of the first of the
his lifelong devotion to Zionismwas, in
nation.,builders, I would put it this way:
turn, rooted in something even broader.
it was Herzl, writer and playwright, who
Perhaps the the basic tenet of his philo-
set the international stage for the Zionist
sophy was his belief that the character of
movement; Ben-Gurion, labor leader and
a human being, or of a nation, matters
h-alutz, who proclaimed and established Is-
more than anything else: "What man is
, rael, and Weizmann, who created the
means more in the long run that what he
Jewish State..., •
does. The same is true of nations."
Lest I be accused of letting emotions be-
This theme reappears in all 9f, his im-
cloud logic, I quote from Sir Isaiah Berlin,
portant statements. Speaking shortly be-
who says it differently and better: "The
fore the partition resolution of the United
State of Israel was constructed, whether
Nations in 1947, he. spoke movingly about
or not it knows this, in his (Weizmann's )
the "quiet moral picture of the soul of
image. No man has ever had a comparable
Abraham Lincoln" in dontradistinction • to
monument built in his lifetime."
Napoleon's near-conquest of Europe. And,
The figure of Weizmann personifies a
to make it crystal clear where he stood,
fusion of the best valfies of the Jewish
he said:
Diaspora in Eastern Europe and those of
"To which of these is the modern world
the Western world. And in Israel, now,
more indebted ? To the conquerors and pro-
we can perceive a vivid reflection of that
consuls of Rome, to the thinkers and
selfsame and unique synthesis.
poets of G,reece, or to the prophets of Is-
Despite its complex and troubled official
rael or to its priests ? Rome did certain
relations with the British Government in
things, and Greece was certain things.
the past, Israel _today, in the organization
Rome conquered the world and adminis-
of its public life, is almost exclusively the
tered. Greece did little conquering by com-,
product of English constitutional and judi-
parison, but it was certain things. It was
dical ideals. And this because its founda-
the thinking, feeling, esthetic • spirit of
tions, broad and deep, were laid during
the ancient world. In a certain sense—and
the period of the British Mandate, when
in a certain sense only7--the contradistinc-
Weizmann's theory of a British alliance • tion between Rome and Greece also marks
burgeoned. And at the same time, in its
the difference between prop,het and priest
daily life, in the flavor of its politics, in
in Jewish history."
the note of its unflagging discussions, in
During the last phase of his life, the
its intellectual posture, in its passionate
first era of Israel's statehood, Weizmann's
argumentativeness, and its . addiction to
main anxiety was for the qualitative cha-
theoretical formulations--we can hear the
racter of the State.
echo of the turbulent intelligentsia of pre-
Once, late in 1951, I was summoned to
Soviet _Russia, from which Weizmann him-
his home in Rehovoth. I was certain the
self emerged.
end had come. But during the s half-hour
Like Weizmann himself, Israel then is
'spent at his bedside, it was he who did
an organic coalescence of the Jewish-
most of the talking, despite his very frail
condition.
* From a speech at the Weizniann-Ralfour
Afterwards, when I came home, I wrote
Assembly in November 1967, marking the
down what he said—or as much as I could
50th Anniversary of the Balfour Declara,
remember. The burden of his conversation
Lion.
was approximately this:

"The State of Israel was con-
structed, whether or not it knows
this, in (Weizmann's) image. No
man has ever had a comparable
monument built in his lifetime."

' "My greatest trial as I lie here, helpless,
is having to watch all the mistakes we
are making ... The Jews are a small, a
very small people, but also a great one.
An ugly people, but also beautiful ... A
people that builds and destroys, a people
of genius and, at the same time, a people
of stupidity . .. With their obstinacy they
will drive their heads through but
the breach remains always gaping at
you .. He _paused, then- added: "Those
who- strive consciously to reach the moun-
tain-tap remain bound to the bottom of
the hill."
In retrospect it struck me that Weizmann
hadn't talked about Israel or the Israelis
but only about the Jewish people as such.
To him, World Jewry and the Jewish
State were an integral One. The Jewish
people, and not the citizens of Israel alone,
constituted that generating power that
would make his vision a reality.
Always, he envisaged a coalescence of
the best minds and hearts of the Jewish
community of Israel and of those outside
—in a joint striving of the Jewish people
as a whole for self-realization. Funda-
mentally, he saw Zionism as a synthesis
of the creative energies of the entire Jew-
ish people, energies which were to function
harmoniously, both in the one center where
Jews controlled their own fate directly
and in those numerous centers outside
Eretz Israel where Jews were bound to
remain .subject to the influences of the
Diaspora. Hence his constant pre-occupa-
tion with the establishment of basic cul-
tural institutions in Israel. His interest
in them was never only that of a man of
learning, of a high-brow. It was not an
intellectual whim \ that made him ascribe
paramount consequence to the creation
and maintenance of institutions of learn-.
ing. He was guided by his conviction that

only through the development of the cha-\
racteristic Jewish contribution to civiliza-
tion—which may be summed up as mind
plus feeling—could Israel, in the long run,
survive at all. And only thus would its
survival have historical value.
This conviction stands out as another
instance of that fusion, so marked within
him, of traditional Jewish values and the
accumulated knowledge of the best part
of Western civilization—science, in the
largest sense of the term. From the very
early days of Zionism, nothing diverted
Weizmann from building cultural bridges
between the Yishuv and the Diaspora.
Impelled by this philosophy, he played
a principal role in the founding of what
became the Technion—the Israel Institute
of Technology. He was the leading pro-
ponent of the idea of the Hebrew Uni-
versity of Jerusalem, and he laid the
foundation-stones of its first building in
the midst of the first World War, literally
within sound of enemy guns. Virtually on
the morn of Hitler's ascension to power,
he opened the Daniel Sieff Research Insti-
tute, which was to be the first unit of the
Weizmann Institute of Science. Whati
institutions mean to the vitality any ,
s-
tige of present-day Israel I leave others
to judge.
In his opening address before the first
Knesset (Parliament) in Jerusalem in Feb-
ruary 1949, - Weizmann again set forth his
fundamental views of the Jewish motion:
". We have finally won the right to
toil and labor in order to give expression
-to our distinct national identity, and to
make our contribution to the spiritual
treasure of the world. First, let ‘ us strive
to strengthen our constructive resources
of science and research which are the basis
of human achievement. Yet, for all the
decisive importance of science, it is not by
science alone that we shall win through.
Let us build a new bridge between science
and the spirit of man ... All my life I
have labored to make science and research
the basis of our national endeavor. But I
have always known full well that there
are values higher than science, the only
values that offer healing for the ills of
humanity—the supreme values of justice
and righteousness, peace and love . ."

Reprinted from the Israel Digest

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