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 University Press, 1971 [Reprinted with express permission from the Weizmann Archives, Rehovot, Israel, by the Center for Israel Education www.israeled.org.] The second volume of the Weizmann Letters contains 423 letters written over a period of ten months, between November 1902 and August 1903. This compares with 320 letters in the first volume, which covers seventeen years, although the majority of them were written within a span of about two years. Most of the letters that Chaim Weizmann wrote during the 1902-3 period, when he was 28, came about mainly from the expansion of his public activity. These intensified efforts comprised the setting-up of a 'Jewish University Bureau' at Geneva, a more extensive exchange of correspondence with many people in all parts of the world, and the inception of an orderly office routine that embraced the copying of all outgoing letters and a meticulous filing system. After moving to Manchester in 1904, Weizmann transferred the archives of the Jewish University Bureau to that city, together with correspondence dealing with the affairs of the 'Democratic Fraction'. Consequently, these documents were preserved and, together with the rest of his archives, were ultimately deposited in the Weizmann Archives in Rehovoth. The character of the letters varies considerably during this period. Most were office communications, although these often struck a distinctly personal note. Towards the end of November 1902 the Bureau acquired a typewriter and thereafter most of the letters, including those sent to Russia, were written in German. Only a few original letters have been found and a large part of the correspondence consists of unsigned copies that were kept in the files of the Bureau. Though these copies remained unsigned there is no doubt that the greater part of the original letters bore Weizmann's signature. Those outgoing communications of the Bureau that Weizmann was known not to have signed are not reproduced here. This refers principally to letters dated March and April 1903, when Weizmann was absent from Geneva during his visit to Russia. In addition to the carbon copies there is also extant a letter-book with about 60 'pressed' copies, mostly written in Russian, a few in German. With the exception of three, all of these letters were written during the period covered by the present volume.1 The number of persons to whom letters were addressed is much larger in Volume II than in Volume I. The overwhelming majority of those in Volume I were addressed to three people—Vera Khatzman, Leo Motzkin, and Catherine Dorfman. In Volume II, on the other hand, there are dozens of addressees. To a large extent this reflects the wider scope of Weizmann's communications as a result of his activity in the Jewish University Bureau. But there is also a certain element of chance involved, as no copies were kept of the letters Weizmann wrote in his capacity as head of the Zionist Youth Conference Bureau in 1901 and as head of the Information Bureau of the Democratic Fraction in 1902. Only a small part of this correspondence has survived, in a number of private archives. Personal letters, which occupy an important place in the first volume, are much fewer in the present one. Compared with the 145 letters Weizmann wrote Vera Khatzman, contained in Volume I, we now have only twenty-three to her, most of them written while he was in Russia in March–April 1903 or in transit to and from that country. For much of the period covered by the present volume Weizmann and Vera Khatzman were together in Geneva. The plan for the establishment of a Jewish University or institution of Higher Learning is the central theme of Volume II. There were immediate, pressing reasons for its creation in the exclusion of large numbers of Jews from existing Universities. But a greater aim was never far from Weizmann's thoughts : to challenge the apathetic and even defeatist attitude widespread among the Jewish intelligentsia by establishing an institution in which general studies could be infused with a positive Jewish content. 'The University', he said, 'would head the Exilarchate'. We had already perceived the early crystallization of this plan in Volume I. In the summer of 1902 Weizmann and Berthold Feiwel, his close personal friend, published a 1 The majority of these copies are in Weizmann's handwriting. But there are also a number of them that were typed during the first few days after the Bureau acquired its typewriter. Later on the Bureau adopted the practice of making carbon copies. As to problems of deciphering these copies and the effect on translations, see explanatory, note brochure (which also bore Martin Buber's signature), Eine Jiklische Hochschule, in which they explained the impelling factor in proposing such an institution as principally the plight of Jewish student youth in Eastern Europe. When Weizmann returned to Geneva at the beginning of November 1902 he immediately began the organization of the 'Bureau der Jiidischen Hochschule' there, thus launching practical and systematic action to implement the proposal. The prior condition for the orderly conduct of the Bureau—the availability of funds to finance current activity—had been assured during Weizmann's visit to Baku and Rostov in the autumn of 1902, when he succeeded in obtaining pledges for about 4,500 roubles, of which actually about 3,000 roubles had been paid in by the summer of 1903. In addition to Weizmann, his friend Samuel Levinson, a chemist, was employed in the Jewish University Bureau as Secretary. Upon his emigration to the United States in the spring of 1903, Levinson was succeeded by Saul Stupnitzky. Vera Khatzman and Catherine Dorfman also helped in the work from time to time. The Bureau operated in close collaboration with other members of the Democratic Fraction: Feiwel in Zurich, Buber in Vienna, and Davis Trietsch and Moses Glikin in Berlin. The last-named moved in January 1903 to Zurich in order to help Feiwel, in a clerical capacity, in all matters pertaining to the Hochschule and the Democratic Fraction, and remained there until his return to Russia in the spring of the same year. Feiwel went to live in Geneva in May 1903 and took a direct share in administering the Bureau until the Sixth Zionist Congress (Basle, August 1903), after which he settled in Berlin. Beginning with March 1903 Alfred Nossig became one of the Bureau's permanent aides in Berlin. In July 1903 Ben- Zion Mossinson, then studying in Berne, also became a member of the Bureau. With his return to Geneva at the beginning of November 1902, Weizmann brought back a plan of action for the preliminary stage of setting up the Jewish University. It may be assumed that the principal guide-lines of this plan had been formulated by Weizmann and Feiwel during their stay at the Swiss vacation resort of Leysin in the summer of 1902 ; in all probability Weizmann also discussed it with Buber when they met in Vienna in October, at the time of the Annual Zionist Conference. The most important objective that Weizmann set for himself at this phase was the creation of an organization, to be headed by eminent academics, which would undertake the responsibility for implementing further stages of the scheme, viz., conducting large- scale propaganda and setting up the institution itself. Within this framework it was intended to establish Committees for a Jewish University in a number of large cities, but chiefly in Berlin and Vienna, as well as a Central Committee under the auspices of which it was proposed to undertake the preparatory work of the Bureau in Geneva. A second aim, towards whose attainment the Bureau directed its main efforts in the initial months, was the holding of a series of surveys among Jewish students in Western Europe and Russia as well as among Jewish professors and scholars. The terms of reference of these surveys were defined by Feiwel in the provisional summing up of the results of the only one that actually took place and that was published in the summer of 1903. The terms read : 'To undertake a thorough examination of the material and scientific basis required for the creation of a Jewish University such as the constitution of a Faculty of Jewish Studies, the attitude of Jewish professors and scholars towards Jewish and general studies, the situation and composition of the Jewish student public, and the scope and nature of learning by Jews in Europe." The statistics which it had been hoped to gather in these surveys were meant to serve as propaganda material in explaining the need for a Jewish University as well as providing basic information. A great deal of attention is devoted in these letters to a plan for publishing a periodical intended to serve as the organ of the Jewish University Bureau and the Democratic Fraction. At the outset Weizmann adumbrated the importance of the proposed periodical as essentially to establish independence from the official Zionist press, which displayed a lack of sympathy. But after a while, as the prospects grew of the plan being fulfilled, he described its purpose in bolder terms. In a letter to Joseph Pokrassa of Kharkov, written at the beginning of February 1903, he dwelt on the need and possibility of injecting new forces into the Zionist movement and the prospect of 'penetrating areas hitherto barred to Zionism'. He went on : 'To realise these aims the small group of active people whose energies are now divided will have to unite' through the medium of an organ that must be 'directed towards the Jewish elite, towards the authentic Jewish intelligentsia of Western and Eastern Europe.