Review Essay

Arie M. Dubnov REVIEW ESSAY Kedar, B. Z., ed., Chaim Weizmann: Scientist, Statesman and Architect of Downloaded from Science Policy [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2015). vi þ 285 pp. Less than one-page long, ‘‘Arthur and the Acetone’’ might well be the shortest play George Bernard Shaw has ever written.1 It describes a http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/ fictional exchange between a certain ‘‘Doctor Weitzmann’’ [sic] and Lord Arthur Balfour, Lloyd George’s wartime Foreign Secretary, who heard of a wise Jewish scientist whose scientific inventions might help the British war effort. What could His Majesty’s Government give in return, Balfour inquires: ‘‘A title, perhaps? Baron? Viscount? Do not hesitate.’’ Decisive, Weizmann replies that it is Jerusalem that he wants. Pleased to discover that the Jew did not at University of Haifa Library on May 5, 2016 drive a hard bargain, Balfour does not hesitate either: ‘‘It’s yours,’’ he exclaims. ‘‘I only regret that we cannot throw in Madagascar as well. Unfortunately it belongs to the French Government. The Holy Land belongs naturally to the Church of England; and to it you are most welcome. And now,’’ Balfour concludes the transaction, ‘‘you will be so good as to hand over the microbe.’’ Written in 1936, Shaw’s short, borderline anti-Semitic vignette— Weizmann as a merchant of death, exchanging dead German soldiers for a pound of Palestine—is only one among a long list of speculative descriptions of the origins of the short letter signed by Balfour two decades earlier, on November 2, 1917, which famously stated that the British government would ‘‘view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.’’ The formal pur- pose of the Mandate for Palestine, endorsed by the League of Nations on July 1922, was to put the declaration into effect. In the conven- tional, somewhat Whiggish reading of Zionist historiography, the letter is often regarded as the decisive step toward an ultimate independent nation-state. The underlying assumption providing the subtext for such linear narratives begs scholarly scrutiny, for neither the British nor the League’s bureaucrats had any intention of moving beyond some decorum of ‘‘enlightened’’ quasi-colonial self-government to full-blown national independence. If anything, the stubborn ß The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Review Essay 209 persistence of such teleological assumptions is surprising. Less surprising, though, is the fact that the Balfour Declaration turned Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), the tireless Russian-Jewish chemist-turned-pol- itician, President of the Zionist Organization, and later the first President of Israel, into an almost bigger-than-life, mythical figure. Gearing up toward the upcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration, the collection under review, originating in a symposium held at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2013, returns to Weizmann to tell a timely story about the connection between Downloaded from science and politics, about the deep ties connecting scholarship and nation-building, and the pre-statehood academic institution building to Zionist politics. The dozen chapters collected in the volume bring together some of Israel’s most distinguished historians and scientists in what may very well be an attempt to bridge the ever-increasing gap http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/ between the so-called ‘‘Two Cultures,’’ to use C. P. Snow’s memorable phrase. Joshua Jortner and Raphael Mechoulam discuss the early academic training Weizmann received as a chemistry student at the Charlottenburg Technical University at Berlin (1893–1897), his PhD dissertation from the Catholic Freiburg University, Switzerland, com- bining electrochemistry and organic chemistry (1899), his first patents, based on work conducted at the University of Geneva (1901–1904), at University of Haifa Library on May 5, 2016 and his scientific work in the fields of biochemistry and organic–phys- ical chemistry at the University of Manchester (1904–1911). Raphael Lamed and Ed Bayer explain the process behind the discovery of the Clostridium acetobutylicum, also known as the ‘‘Weizmann Organism,’’ the commercially valuable bacterium discovered in 1916, subsequently used by the British army to produce the much needed acetone, etha- nol and butanol that were used to make cordites, the wartime explo- sives, and Weizmann’s idea of using a similar process to produce biofuels and synthetic rubber. Moving from science history to institution building, Issachar Unna examines Weizmann’s contacts with Albert Einstein, mobilized as early as 1921 to support the nascent Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an institution both men envisioned as dedicated purely for scientific research. The frustration with the direction the university took under Judah Leon Magnes, the American-born reform rabbi appointed as chancellor of the new institution, led to a crisis. It culminated in Einstein’s resignation from its Board of Governors in September 1925, merely five months after the flashy opening ceremony of the university, in which Lord Balfour, alongside Weizmann and others, gave their laudatory speeches. Weizmann’s failure in Jerusalem explains to a large degree why he re-channeled much of his energy toward the Daniel Sieff Research 210 Review Essay Institute in Rehovot (established 1934). Renamed in 1949 after Weizmann himself, the Weizmann Institute is considered today to be the jewel in Israel’s academic crown, as Ruth Arnon shows, men- tioning the number of ERC (European Research Council) grants won by its faculty, their publications’ impact factor, and other metrics for research excellence embraced enthusiastically by today’s academic bean counters. The emblematic image of Weizmann as one of the animatic spirits behind Israel’s biotechnology and high-tech industry and the high quality of its researchers becomes clear in that context, Downloaded from but the exact economic and political dynamics, as well as the institutional frameworks that allowed such a hub of scientific and technolog- ical innovation to emerge and continue flourishing, are beyond the chapter’s horizons. Among the historians, Benjamin Z. Kedar, the collection’s editor, http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/ provides a sterling account of Weizmann’s meetings with Lord Balfour and examines a few of the unpublished sections in Weizmann’s memoir, which reveal some discrepancies between the historical record and Weizmann’s overtly dramatic retrospective self-presenta- tion. An analogical move was made in two earlier works by Michael Stanislawski who explored the way in which Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, Weizmann’s sworn rival, mixed true events with fictional ones when composing his autobiography, Sipur Yamai (Story of My at University of Haifa Library on May 5, 2016 Life)—published in 1936, the same year G. B. Shaw wrote his short play.2 In both cases, we find a masterful attempt to create, in retro- spect, a mythologized self-portrait. Hedva Ben-Israel’s chapter returns to the Magnes–Weizmann ri- valry, adding an important ideological context to these enmities. Weizmann’s strong reliance on British and Anglo-Jewish support, the chapter shows, was not only often criticized by his political rivals but also stood in contrast with Magnes’s tactic of forging strong connec- tions with North American philanthropists, which allowed him to secure unprecedented institutional powers in his hands. Far from a complimenting portrait, Magnes re-appears in this chapter as a reso- lute, savvy, and maneuvering power-seeking academic. In Ben-Israel’s view, these power struggles provide the backdrop against which Magnes’s bold support of bi-nationalism, critique of the increasing militarization of the Yishuv, and opposition to Weizmann, should be understood. Benny Morris’s chapter examines Weizmann’s attitude toward the Arab Question, chronicling a gradual transition from complete blind- ness coupled with a considerable dose of European Orientalism, to a better acquaintance with local leaders that was translated into deep mistrust and pessimism. Such convictions fed his belief in partition and population transfer as the unavoidable, even desirable solutions Review Essay 211 to the Arab Question. Weizmann was ultimately forced to acknowl- edge the existence of national sentiments among the Arabs, but this only pushed him to assert in his testimony before the Peel Commission in 1936–1937, that the Arab ‘‘national home’’ is not Palestine but Damascus, Baghdad, and Mecca. Though Morris does not develop the subject, such testimonies also explain the Weizmannite strategy, relying heavily on an uneven, vertical alliance with London, at the expense of striking deals with local neighbors. Thus, when Weizmann writes to Balfour in May 1918 about ‘‘the Downloaded from treacherous nature of the Arab’’ (p. 177), we have evidence that not only discloses his prejudices but also his attempt to secure British support of the Zionist project by making Jews representatives of Western rationality and loyal local allies. Weizmann’s ability to per- suade the Peel Commission to accept his view testifies to the degree to http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/ which he was successful in his efforts. Ultimately, he was an imperial subject. Thus, the 1920 Nebi Musa riots were not described by him using terms like ‘‘terror’’ or ‘‘communal violence’’ but were rather conceived by him as a ‘‘pogrom,’’ i.e., the same kind of violence that was directed at Russian Jews under the Tsarist regime. The British monarch, he hoped, would be a more enlightened emperor. Far less critical of his subject matter, Shlomo Avineri compares Weizmann to Herzl, arguing that apart from crowning the chemist as at University of Haifa Library on May 5, 2016 the unquestionable leader of the Zionist movement, the Balfour Declaration also brought the Zionist movement back to life after long years of stagnation following the Uganda controversy, and re- deemed Herzl’s image from accusations of false messianism.

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