The last of 23 volumes of Chaim Weizmann’s Letters summarized wonderfully by Aaron Klieman, recalls the Israeli first president’s views of those fateful years for Zionism and Israel from 1947-1952. Chaim Weizmann died at his home in Rehovot on 9 November 1952, shortly before his 78th birthday. All of the letters read together, provide ring side seat to Zionism as an idea to the reality of the Jewish state.
Earlier in 1947, Great Britain turned the future of the Palestine Mandate over to the newly established United Nations. Then in August 1947, the UN suggested that establishing an Arab and Jewish state with a federal union would be the best solution for the communal unrest there.
The head of Arab League says Palestine may be lost in a confrontation with the Zionists, but emphatically states that war is the Arab’s only option.
The UN recommended establishing Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, with an international regime for Jerusalem. Zionists were jubilant; Arab states and the Palestinians were indignant and rejected two state solution. No Arab state is established, Israel is in 1948
In March 1948, two months before Israel’s establishment, the US State Department sought to reverse the US vote in favor of partition for the creation of Arab and Jewish states in Palestine.
The Declaration recounts the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, the birth of Zionism and U.N. recognition of a Jewish state’s legitimacy. It also promises that the state will be a democracy for all its citizens.
This 10-page report, written by the British Colonial and Foreign Office, along with the 1937 Peel (Royal) Commission Report, is one of the two best summaries of the British presence in Palestine. Both are substantial in terms of content, detail and analyses; both were written from Britain’s perspective. Read these along with 1931 Census for Palestine to have a fuller grasp of the politics and the populations that shaped Britain’s Palestine’s administration from 1918-1948
One of four agreements Israel signed in 1949 with Arab neighbors, it does not end “state of war,” between Israel and Arab states. No treaty is signed until 1979.
The Israel Year Book, 1950/51, Tel Aviv, Israel Publications Limited, 1951, pp. 23-34.,(reprinted with permission). The Zionist Movement, the unique instance in world history of a people without a land organizing itself for the rebuilding…
Ben-Gurion elegantly connects modern Israel from messianic redemption to Zionism, building the country through labor and immigration, with dual needs to remain actively linked to the Jewish diaspora and Jewish values through education.
Edited by Leonard Stein in collaboration with Gedalia Yogev, London, Oxford University Press, 1968 [Reprinted with express permission from the Weizmann Archives, Rehovot, Israel, by the Center for Israel Education.] The purpose of the work commencing with…
The biographies listed from Chaim Weizmann’s papers are those individuals with whom he corresponded from the 1870s to 1951. The list includes Americans, Europeans, Zionists and British officials. Each biography is extensive, including affiliation, career high points and other valuable information not usually available elsewhere.
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann Summer 1885 – 29 October 1902 Volume I, Series A, English Edition Edited by Leonard Stein in collaboration with Gedalia Yogev, London, Oxford University Press, 1968 [Reprinted…
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann November 1902 – August 1903 Volume II, Series A Introduction: Gedalia Yogev General Editor Meyer W. Weisgal, Editorial Direction Gedalia Yogev, Editor: English Edition Barnet Litvinoff, London, Oxford…
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann September 1903 – December 1904 Volume III, Series A Introduction: Gedalia Yogev General Editor Meyer W. Weisgal, London, Oxford University Press, 1972 [Reprinted with express permission from the…
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann January 1905 – December 1906 Volume IV, Series A Introduction: Camillo Dresner General Editor Meyer W. Weisgal, Volume Editor Camillo Dresner and Barnet Litvinoff, Oxford University Press, London…
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann January 1907 – February 1913 Volume V, Series A Introduction: Barnet Litvinoff, based upon the Hebrew by Hanna Weiner General Editor Meyer W. Weisgal, Volume Editor Hanna Weiner…
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann March 1913 – July 1914 Volume VI, Series A Introduction: Barnet Litvinoff General Editor Meyer W. Weisgal, Volume Editors Gedalia Yogev, Shifra Kolatt, Evyatar Friesel, English Edition: Barnet…
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann August 1914 – November 1917 Volume VII, Series A Introduction: Leonard Stein General Editor Meyer W. Weisgal, Volume Editor Leonard Stein in collaboration with Dvorah Barzilay and Nehama…
The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann November 1917–October 1918 Volume VIII, Series A Introduction: Devorah Barzilay General Editor Meyer W. Weisgal, Volume Editors Devorah Barzilay and Barnet Litvinoff, Transaction Books, Rutgers University and Israel…
This volume spans the period between October 1918, when Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Commission, had just returned to England from Palestine, and July 1920, the month in which Herbert Samuel began his tenure as High Commissioner for Palestine and in which the Zionist Conference took place in London. These twenty-one months are of crucial importance for the history of Zionism and for the Jews in Palestine (the Yishuv). It is a period in which Weizmann’s ascendancy to the leadership of the World Zionist Organization becomes undisputed.
The dominant theme of this tenth volume (July 1920–December 1921) of the Weizmann Letters, as of Weizmann’s political career as a whole, is one of struggle. Three major conflicts which absorbed most of Weizmann’s energies and thoughts in the period are reflected: the struggle with the followers of Justice Louis D. Brandeis within the World Zionist Organization; the struggle over the provisions and ratification of the Palestine mandate; and the struggle over the northern and eastern borders of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.
The opening of the eleventh volume of the Weizmann Letters, which covers the period from January 1922 to July 1923, finds Weizmann in Berlin on his way back to London from a meeting in Vienna of the Actions Committee of the Zionist Organization. The journey was one of many which Weizmann undertook during this period. Of the nineteen months covered by this volume he spent eleven months outside Britain, an indication of the international nature of the complex diplomatic, political, and financial problems which Weizmann and the Zionist movement faced in these years.
This volume of the Weizmann Letters covers a period of two years and nine months, from the 13th Zionist Congress at Carlsbad in August 1923 until Chaim Weizmann’s departure from London for a visit to Palestine in March 1926. These were years of reorientation in the history of Zionism, with its center of gravity shifting from the political sphere to the task of construction in Palestine. The transition was bound to involve difficulties for the movement, for political work, with its immediate challenges, would naturally be more appealing than the practical work in Palestine, which was gradualist, and only bore fruit after a considerable lapse of time.
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