THE JEWISH STATE OF UGANDA
Weizmann was born into an Orthodox family in Belarus, Russia, in 1874. He was one of 15 siblings. He studied chemistry in Germany and stood out as a gifted student. Aside from his great intelligence, Weizmann also had great charisma and a charming personality, something not very common among intellectuals and scientists. From his youth, Weizmann was interested in the Zionist movement and participated in the congresses led by Theodore Herzl. At the 1903 congress, Herzl made a very controversial statement, thinking that he had already exhausted all other options, he accepted the British offer to establish “a national home for the Jewish people … in Uganda, Africa; a territory that belonged to the British Crown”. When Herzl announced his acceptance of this plan, Weizmann left the congress in protest along with the entire Russian delegation.
BECOMING BRITISH
In 1904 Weizmann was invited to teach at the University of Manchester, in England. Later, and after obtaining British citizenship, he met Lord Arthur Balfour, a very influential English politician. Balfour tried to persuade Weizmann to support Uganda’s offer. But far from changing his opinion, Balfour was persuaded by Weizmann that Israel (then called “Palestine”) was the only national and spiritual home of the Jewish people: “If I offered you to go to Paris, you would not go there, because London is your home, “ Weizmann told Balfour, ” Jerusalem has been our home when London was still a swamp. ” So passionate and contagious was Weizmann’s conviction that from that moment Lord Balfour became a great ally of the Zionist movement and supported for the rest of his life the return of the Jews to Jerusalem.
WAR AND ACETONE
In 1914 England declared war on the German Empire and its allies. This was the First World War. England had a very serious technical problem: did not have acetone, an essential solvent to activate artillery fire and dynamite. For many years England imported acetone from Germany, something that was not possible now. Winston Churchill came to Weizmann urgently and asked him to work on a formula to produce acetone locally, fast, and in large quantities. Acetone was normally made from wood, and it took hundreds of tons of wood and a very difficult process to distill it. Weizmann, who was already known in scientific circles as “the father of industrial fermentation” began working day and night on his mission until he finally developed the formula to produce the precious solvent from corn and potatoes, materials that were much easier to obtain. If Chaim Weizmann had not discovered the formula for producing acetone, England would not have won the First World War. This was well known to Lloyd George, who was the Minister of Defense during the First War and later became Prime Minister of Great Britain.
WHAT CAN THE CROWN DO FOR YOU?
Towards the end of the war, and when England had already displaced the Ottomans from the Middle East, Lloyd George thanked Chaim Weizmann for his services and asked him: “What can England do for you?” Chaim Weizmann replied: “I don’t want anything for myself, but my people need their own land.” And that is how in 1917 Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour drew up the document known as the Balfour Declaration, granting the Jewish people “the first national home”, neither in Uganda nor in Entre Ríos, but in the Holy Land of Israel! This was the beginning of what eventually culminated in the miracle of the birth of Medinat Israel in 1948, where, as we will see now, Chaim Weizmann also played a decisive role.
THE AMERICAN VOTE
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine and create two states, one Arab and one Jewish. But neighboring Arab states warned that they would not accept a Jewish State and they will declare war on Israel. They also did everything possible in the political arena to prevent the nations from accepting a Jewish State. The British chose to remain neutral. And the US government, which had voted in favor of a partition, began to have its doubts and was planning to vote for delying a final resolution. This meant that if the Jewish State declared its independence, the United States, its most important ally, would oppose or at best abstain from voting, and thus the creation of a Jewish State could be suspended or canceled. The US vote was in the hands of President Harry Truman. In the first months of 1948, Truman refused to meet with any American Zionist leaders because he wanted to maintain America’s neutrality in light of the tremendous pressure he had from the oil-rich Arab countries. May 15th, the date on which the British were to leave the territory of Israel, was approaching, and Truman’s support for the future declaration of independence was absolutely necessary. Chaim Weizmann was in the United States to guarantee the US’s support, but Truman refused to receive him.
MILLIONAIRES LOOKING FOR COINS
On March 12, 1948, Dewey D. Stone of Brockton spent the day in New York City with his friend Chaim Weizmann, who expressed concern about Truman’s refusal to meet with him. Stone was a passionate American Jew and that night, he returned to Boston and met with Frank Goldman, president of B’nai B’rith. Stone shared with him his concern that there was no way that President Truman would agree to meet with Weizmann. Goldman said that by coincidence, he recently saw Eddie Jacobson in Kansas, who received an award from the B’nai B’rith, and that Jacobson shared with him that he was a personal friend of President Truman and his partner in some businesses. Goldman offered to call Jacobson right then and there and ask him to see Truman as soon as possible. But they ran into a problem: they didn’t have enough coins to make a long-distance call. It is told that the two millionaires, Stone and Goldman, went table by table asking for quarters until they had enough coins to call Jacobson. Jacobson was not very enthusiastic. He said that convincing the President was going to be impossible. Stone then invited Jacobson to New York and took him to see Chaim Weizmann. Like Balfour and so many other people before him, Jacobson was absolutely captivated by Weizmann’s personality and passionate arguments, and at the end of the meeting, he accepted to talk to Truman. Stone told him “all you have to ask President Truman is that he would agree to meet with Weizmann. Weizmann will take care of the rest.”
CAN YOU SAY NO TO A FRIEND?
When Jacobson arrived at the White House, “unannounced”, President Truman was very happy to see him but warned him that he would not agree to talk about Palestine or the partition plan. Jacobson nodded and said to Truman, pointing to a bust of Andrew Jackson: “I’m not going to talk about Palestine. I just want to ask you to meet Chaim Weizmann, a national leader with the same values and temperament as Jackson”, whom Truman revered. Truman laughed because he fell into the trap of his friend and had no choice but to give in. Truman and Weizmann finally met in Washington and by the end of the meeting, Truman was so convinced of the Jewish cause presented by Weizmann that he promised to recognize the State of Israel when the British would leave.
A SEFER TORA IN THE WHITE HOUSE
On May 14th, 1948, when the British were about to leave, Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel. President Harry Truman, keeping his promise to Chaim Weizmann, recognized the newly created Jewish State just 11 minutes after its founding. Chaim Weizmann was appointed as the first President of the State of Israel, a position he held until his death in November 1952. One of the first things Weizmann did after being elected President was to visit Washington DC. On May 25, 1948, Chaim Weizmann visited the White House, he thanked president Truman for recognizing the Jewish State and presented to him a Sefer Tora (see picture above) for his friendship and support for the People of Israel.
Rabbi Yosef Bitton
